Pamela Browning - Snapshots

Martine glanced around at me. “Your turn to give Bungie a bath,” she said in a blithe singsong that always set my teeth on edge. “I did it last time.”

I knew what was behind Martine’s attitude, other than the borrowed earrings, that is. I’d been invited to tag along on an outing with friends from Spanish class, and Martine was jealous because she wasn’t included. Why should she be? She’d opted out of Spanish for French, airily pointing out that she needed to know French so she could converse with future lovers.

I rubbed my earringless lobes and kept a watchful eye on Bungie, who had tired of bouncing and was no doubt dreaming up her next mischief. “Get real, Martine,” I said. “We both bathed her last time, and Rick helped.”

“Well, I’m watching The Young and the Restless. I want to find out what Nikki will do if Victor hires the thug who made the indecent comment to her.”

I had little patience for soap operas, or, for that matter, Martine at the moment. “I’m all dressed and ready to go. I don’t care to get dirty.” I stalked over to the bookcase, where I’d left yesterday’s earrings after removing them last night. I slid them into the holes in my ears and squinted critically at my image in the mirror over the couch.

“So?” Martine flounced back around and gave her full attention to the drama unfolding on the TV screen.

Outside, Bungie began to whimper and paw at the door.

“We could do it together,” I suggested. “You hold her and I’ll squirt the water.”

Martine shook her head. “Uh-uh. You’ve got the wr-o-o-ng number.”

“Come on, Martine,” I wheedled in desperation. It was almost time for my ride.

“No way.”

I tried reasoning. “If Bungie pokes a hole in the screen, Mom will start talking about how we ought to give her to the people next door.” This had been a constant refrain from our mother, who said the neighbors would provide a better place for Bungie, seeing as they had no kids and stayed home all the time, and we would be going away to college in the fall, anyway, and then who would take care of that dog? Mom, that’s who, and she’d never even wanted a pet. You may have figured out by this time that our mother was anything but an animal lover.

Martine got up, and at first I thought she was giving in. Instead, she walked to the back door and held it open. The ecstatic Bungie immediately began to race in frantic circles around the kitchen, tracking muddy smudges wherever she stepped. With a triumphant smirk, Martine went back to her TV program, ignoring my outraged shrieks.

Past experience had taught me that there was no point in further arguing, so I grabbed Bungie and hustled her outside, where I washed her as best I could without hog-tying her. Of course, Bungie shook water all over me, and of course I ended up a mess, after which I went back inside and cleaned up the footprints in the kitchen. By the time I’d finished, I was so angry that I could have throttled Martine.

Which was why, when the gang stopped by, I told them to go on to the mall without me. Then I went upstairs and composed a letter informing Furman University that I was accepting their kind offer of financial aid and would enter as a freshman in the fall.

When she found out, Martine was shocked. Rick was surprised but cautiously supportive. My parents were ecstatic.

During the frequent periods of doubt that ensued after I made this momentous decision, I reminded myself that my father could be right. It was time for me to stop being the person I’d always been and to start creating the woman I wanted to be. The ideal way to do that, in my estimation, was to sever my identity with Martine and Rick once and for all.

The only thing was, I’d miss my soul mates, the two most important people in the world to me. I’d miss them so very much.

And they, of course, would miss me.

1990

Click: Prom night in our senior year at John C. Calhoun High, Columbia, South Carolina. The three of us are posed in a latticed gazebo. Rick is standing between Martine and me, one arm around each. We’re wearing identical black dresses, strapless and slinky, with a wide white band circling the top of the bodice and identical chrysanthemum corsages on our wrists. I’m smiling up at Rick, whose expression is serious. There’s something spacey about the way Martine is grinning into the camera, though I didn’t notice it at the time.

The fact that I wouldn’t be at the University of South Carolina the following year made senior-prom night—our last big blast together—even more poignant and important. Rick insisted on squiring both Martine and me to the dance, declaring that he’d have the two prettiest dates there. We were more than agreeable, since Martine had broken up with her boyfriend a couple of months before, and I wasn’t dating anyone special.

It should have been perfect—the limo, our corsages, everything. Our class had chosen to hold the prom the Saturday night at the beginning of spring break at the biggest hotel in downtown Columbia. The theme was Summertime, like the song from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Martine and I shopped for two months, checking out boutiques and department stores in Greenville and Charleston before we found the perfect dresses, which were excruciatingly expensive. Dad sprang for them anyway, remarking that when you were a man blessed with two beautiful daughters, it was your responsibility to keep them looking good. Martine and I giggled at that; we were tall and blond and attracted more than our share of attention because there were two of us, but lots of other girls at our school were just as pretty and every bit as pampered by their fathers.

Trouble started to brew a couple of weeks before the big event when I casually mentioned at the dinner table one night that Rick and one of his friends were going to chip in to rent a room at the hotel on prom night. Adjourning to hotel rooms after the dance had become standard procedure at our school, and I was sure that our parents would fall into line. We’d heard lots of chatter about other kids’ parents paying for the rooms, the rationale being that they didn’t want the kids driving home drunk, and they were good kids, never any problems, so why tempt fate? Safe at the hotel, kids could hang with their friends, watch TV, and if they were going to sneak a few drinks, so what? I’d heard stories of people puking their guts out at last year’s prom, of a girl who’d called her parents at three in the morning begging them to come to the hotel and get her, but I’d discarded them as exaggerations. Besides, in every group of teenagers, you’d find guys who considered it cool to drink until they barfed and girls who got scared when their dates became too familiar.

After I innocently dropped the information over dinner one evening that Rick was planning to get a hotel room and that Martine and I intended to stay there overnight, my father slid his chair back from the table and drew his brows in the way that usually preceded a lecture. Martine darted a covert warning glance in my direction.

“And I suppose Rick will be bringing you home in the morning?”

“Sure,” I said, already sorry I’d floated the idea.

“How? I doubt that the limo driver is going to stick around waiting that long.” Renting a limousine for prom night was the norm, and Rick had already paid the deposit.

“Maybe Rick will leave his car at the hotel earlier and drive us home in the morning,” I said, definitely on shaky ground.

“Sometimes guys do that, leave their cars there the afternoon before the dance,” Martine chimed in.

“Hunh. So let me get this straight. After the prom, everyone sits around a hotel room in their prom finery? On the beds?” my father asked, a scowl spreading across his handsome face.