Lindsay Hunter: Ugly Girls

When they got to the gate, Baby Girl pulled her headphones down, turned off her music. Took a deep breath, like she was about to say something, but the chimes in Perry’s phone sounded. “Turn that shit off!” Baby Girl hissed.

It was a text message from Jamey. Perry, girlie, where are u? Im online. Perry turned the ringer off, stuffed the phone back in her pocket.

“Okay,” Baby Girl said. “Let’s make a left at the stop sign instead of a right this time. And let’s take the first SUV we see. These motherfuckers all have two-car garages but someone’s bound to have a third car stuck out in the driveway that we can gank.”

She was right. In front of a yellow house with a rock garden instead of grass, there was a huge black Suburban. Baby Girl pointed up. Blue light gently flickered behind the white curtains in an upstairs window. Someone was awake watching TV, or had fallen asleep while watching it.

“It’s on ,” Baby Girl whispered. She pulled the slim jim out, worked it into the door. The lock went with a soft pop . For Perry, that pop was an exploding cosmos of possibility. White tails of glitter shooting out. It felt like she and Baby Girl were mirrors reflecting the light from the streetlamps back and forth a million times. They were light. They could do anything, go anywhere. They were light. Tomorrow Perry would be tired, wrung out like Jim would say, but this was why it was worth it. Who else was out at this hour, doing what they were doing, marking every moment, trying to live? No one else. Wake up! she wanted to shout at the white curtains, at all the windows in this neighborhood. Wake the fuck up.

Baby Girl hot-wired the car, backed out of the driveway. And it was just like Perry thought being that high up would be. She felt as tall as a tree.

THE SUV WAS A STUPID IDEA. Too obvious. Baby Girl had read in one of her brother’s old books how you had to build up your tolerance for fear until it became part of you, as natural and unassuming as your own hand. And how often did you think about your own hand? Not often. That’s where you had to get with fear. But even so, building up a tolerance didn’t have to mean doing dumb shit over and over.

“We should ditch soon,” she said to Perry. “Don’t you think any cop could drive by and wonder, ‘Hey, why is this baldheaded bitch driving a truck that clearly don’t belong to her?’”

“Whatever,” Perry said. In the beginning she’d say stuff like You ain’t ugly when Baby Girl said mean shit about herself. Now it was mostly Whatever .

“They’ll probably accuse me of kidnapping you, too, since no pretty girl in her right mind would be associated with—”

“Fine, we can ditch. Okay? Let’s ditch.”

Baby Girl knew she’d ruined it for Perry. She was over there feeling like a queen high up in her seat and Baby Girl had broken the spell. She almost laughed, it felt like such a triumph. She wasn’t as pretty as Perry, but she was meaner.

After Charles came out of his coma he was different. Sweeter. Not interested in going out once it got dark. His edges were dulled. It was sad to see. So Baby Girl took up where he left off. Went from Dayna to Baby Girl, Charles’s nickname for her before his accident. Shaved half her head. Took his CDs, even some of his clothes, not that he seemed to care. After the accident he just wanted to wear basketball shorts, probably because of the elastic waistband. Lately Baby Girl had been considering carving a scar into the bald part of her head like the one her brother had from his stitches, jagged and mean-looking, like a child had practiced writing an S there. Baby Girl wanted her outside to look like how she felt on the inside. Which was Fuck you .

Tonight she was wearing a pair of Charles’s jeans, so huge on her that she had to cuff the bottoms three times, and what used to be his favorite black T-shirt. Sports bra to tamp those fuckers down. Work boots she’d stolen from Payless. Kicked them, box and all, out the door while the saleslady was in the kids’ aisle. Pretended to consider the shoelaces for a while, then went on her way.

She always tried to feel a glimmer of regret. It was so easy to take advantage. Why did she have to be the type to take advantage? Well, she wanted those boots. That was the main thing when you got right down to it.

Plus lip liner and gloss. That completed her look.

Baby Girl’s prettiest feature was her lips: plump and pink. She had watched tons of YouTubes featuring women who knew about makeup demonstrating what to do with lips like hers and had settled on the liner-and-gloss method. It called them into focus while maintaining their natural color. And it made her look like a tough bitch.

Perry looked like some kind of garden fairy, only tall. Bright green eyes, black eyelashes, blond hair. Tanned legs. Smallish boobs. Baby Girl was grateful that Perry wasn’t entirely perfect: she had a widish nose, a fang on one side of her mouth, and way back, a gray molar. Fixable problems but only if you had the money for it. And Perry didn’t. But neither did Baby Girl. Which was an important level to share.

Tonight Perry wore her usual ponytail, the same shorts from yesterday, a yellow T-shirt. Sandals. Each toe with a chipped remnant of polish. Perry came off like she didn’t give a fuck about stuff like that. Baby Girl had learned that that was usually the way with pretty girls.

They drove, windows down. Somehow this Suburban didn’t have a CD player, or if it did, Baby Girl didn’t know where.

“Let’s get something to drink ,” Perry said, which meant she wasn’t so pissed about ditching anymore. Baby Girl knew she meant something they could get shitty on. That meant going to the other Circle K, the one with the guy who sold to anyone.

“Okay,” Baby Girl said, “but after that we got to dump this thing.”

“Oh hell yeah,” Perry said, attempting one of Baby Girl’s signs.

“You can be a real fuckin’ hillbilly sometimes,” Baby Girl told her.

“Oh well,” Perry said. Her other favorite comeback lately.

Baby Girl made a U-turn. Up ahead, she could see flashing lights. She gripped the steering wheel. Her heart thudded like bass turned way up.

But it was just a tow truck. In her headlights she saw a man with his hands to his head, a jagged spill down his shirt. The tow truck driver seemed to be ignoring him. “Yo, that guy is wasted ,” Baby Girl said as they passed.

Perry leaned up, pulled her phone out of her back pocket, studied it. She made a quiet noise, something like a snort, then put her phone back in her pocket. “Who keeps blowing your shit up?” Baby Girl asked.

“Just this guy,” Perry said. “I don’t even know him.”

Perry’s stepdad, Jim, was a prison guard. A quiet guy who seemed as big as a standing bear. Perry loved him, Baby Girl knew, but she also seemed dead set on making sure he had a heart attack. Once he saw Perry’s phone bill he’d want to know who this guy was. Happened every time. It seemed like a luxury to Baby Girl, toying with that kind of love and concern. But she knew better than to say shit about it to Perry.

She waited until Perry was looking out her window again, then pressed the button on her phone to check for texts. Nothing. She had gotten used to something waiting there for her nearly every time she checked, but in the past couple of days, nothing. She had gone too far, of course she had. Quickly, she texted, Hey, sorry if I acted like a stupid bitch. Miss talking to u. The u was her way of speaking his language, reaching out. Corny-ass text speak that no one she knew used, except for him. Jamey. Thinking his name made her feel like she had to pee. That always happened when she felt excited. Or scared. She pressed SEND, pushed the phone way down into her pocket, so she couldn’t easily get it out to check again in the next thirty seconds.