The Moon and More(14)
Author: Sarah Dessen

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“You just take a shower?”

I blinked, startled. I didn’t know what it was about Mrs. Ye, my best girlfriend Daisy’s mom, but she had this way of totally disarming me. Even about something so simple as having damp hair at twelve thirty on a weekday.

“Um, yeah,” I said, as she went back to applying hot pink polish to a woman wearing a terry cloth beach cover-up. “I got hot cleaning up the storeroom at work. Plus it’s filthy in there.”

“Hmmh,” she replied, the meaning of which even without the language barrier—which was sizeable—was impossible to decipher. Then she said something to Daisy in their native Vietnamese, the undecipherable words flowing off her tongue as quickly as the polish off the brush.

“Okay,” Daisy replied. “Do you want mayonnaise?”

Her mom added something else, again so quickly I couldn’t have caught it even if it was in a language I spoke. This time, Daisy said nothing, only giving a quick nod of her head. I followed her out into the parking lot of Coastal Plaza, where her parents’ salon, Wave Nails, was located right between a liquor store and AZ Grocery. Booze, food, and pampering. What else did you need on vacation?

“Hot,” Daisy said, putting on her huge sunglasses as we started down to the other end of the mall to Da Vinci’s Pizza and Subs. “Too hot.”

“Well,” I pointed out, “you’re not exactly dressed for summer.”

She turned, leveling her eyes at me. Daisy had been my closest girlfriend since her family had moved here in seventh grade, but her beauty could still totally disarm me at random moments. My style was slapdash at best, but she was always photo ready, cribbing styles from the fashion magazines she read nonstop. She was small, with delicate features she made even more stunning with the makeup she got up early to apply carefully every morning. Nobody dressed like her, mostly because she produced most of her looks at her mom’s sewing machine, which she’d taught herself how to use when she was twelve. Colby was not exactly New York or Paris when it came to fashion, but you wouldn’t know this by looking at Daisy. She was dressing for the life she wanted, not the one she had.

Which was why, while I was sporting my basic summer uniform of cutoff shorts, tank top, and flip-flops, she had on a black sleeveless dress and platform wedges, her hair pulled back in a neat chignon. Like Audrey Hepburn, if she passed Tiffany’s and headed south. Very south.

“What you don’t understand,” she said now, smoothing her small hands over her dress, “is that this is the perfect dress.”

“It’s black and long and it’s ninety degrees out.”

She sighed. After Daisy spent much of the first year we knew each other trying to get me to be even slightly fashionable, we decided for the sake of our friendship to agree to disagree. Which we did pretty much constantly.

“Black and long,” she repeated, her voice flat. “That’s really how you describe this?”

“Am I wrong?”

“It’s a vintage A-line, Emaline. It’s classic. Knows no season.”

“It’s a dress,” I replied. “It doesn’t know anything.”

This she didn’t even dignify with a response. Despite our sartorial differences, the reason we’d bonded, at least initially, was our shared perfectionism when it came to school. Before she arrived, I’d regularly been near the top or the best student in just about every class I took. Then, suddenly, there was this new girl, whip smart, better read, and bilingual. If we hadn’t hit it off I was pretty sure we would have hated each other.

Now she adjusted her sunglasses as a guy on a moped passed us, engine whining like a gnat. I hated mopeds, but for whatever reason they were ubiquitous here, like saltwater taffy and hermit crabs being sold as pets.

Daisy wrinkled her nose. “God, I hate mopeds.”

I smiled. “You better talk to Morris, then. He’s still making noises about getting one.”

“That boy needs a car, not a toy,” she said, sighing. “But first he needs a job. Did you hear he got let go from that catering gig?”

“No,” I said, not that I was surprised. Since Daisy and Morris started dating—around the same time hell froze over, pigs flew, and bears began relieving themselves in other places than wooded areas—I’d learned that I couldn’t talk about him the way I once had. Used to be, he was My Friend Morris and I was free to complain about his slackness as much as I wanted. Now he was Her Boyfriend and different rules applied. We were still working out what they were, however.

The truth is, anyone would be lucky to date Daisy. First, she was gorgeous and smart, clearly headed for what she and I referred to as GTBC: Great Things Beyond Colby. This was in comparison to the other category we created, AGN: Ain’t Going Nowhere. Which, if we’re honest, is where Morris would fall instantly if he wasn’t someone we cared about. This shorthand began as a kind of game, a way of passing the time while pouring over our slim yearbook. But in the last year, as college loomed and then overtook us, it got real, and now two categories weren’t even really enough. A lot of people were going Beyond Colby, but not necessarily headed for Great Things. Like myself, actually. Columbia would have gotten me to Great Things, for sure, just like the Savannah College of Art and Design, where Daisy would enroll at the end of the summer, earned her a spot. East U, however, was a more lateral move. But at least I was moving.

Morris, like about thirty percent of our class, would be going to Coastal Tech, the community college twenty minutes past the bridge over to the mainland. There was a good four-year school just past North Reddemane, Weymar College, but locals rarely went there: it was pricey and private, not to mention geared towards the arts, which our high school didn’t have the funds or faculty to provide beyond the basics. Coastal Tech, however, was affordable and offered both day and night classes in subjects like office administration and dental assisting, things that could get you employed right out of the box. Unlike my slate of fall classes, which would likely include Spanish-American history, a required overview of English literature, and an introduction to psychology. I could only imagine what would have been at Columbia.

Morris wanted to get a degree in automotive systems technology, with an eye towards getting a job at one of the local dealerships or repair shops. Which was very ambitious. It was also not as much his idea as that of our lone guidance counselor, Mr. Markham, who was young and energetic, and took Morris on as a personal project senior year. “Transport is a human need. People always have to get from here to there,” he said over and over again, pushing the Coastal Tech brochure across his desk. So Morris planned to enroll. Then again, he had also planned to work for Robin at Roberts Family Catering. Not that I could really say this to Daisy.