Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

I shaved the rest of my hair off and I don’t got time for you to pretend like you want to be my friend still. That ok?

Im not pretending , he wrote.

I like u

Whyd you shave off your hair??

And plus, Perry was more likely to meet up with him if she knew she had a friend nearby. This was something he’d learned over the years: girls felt better if they traveled in twos. He’d learned to make it work in his favor. Flirt with the homely one in the pair and it stirs something up, a kind of pride — they always knew they were the better choice in the pair — that they’d feel ashamed of, try to tamp down by ramping up the loyalty. Show the other girl she wasn’t the jealous type, that she was the strong one, and fine, no problem, agreeing to take a walk, hoping with each step that he’d come after her, knowing the farther she walked that she’d had it wrong all along, feeling worse because of it, and more often than not this girl, this scorned dummy, walking home with a hot face and a throat full of tears. Leaving Jamey plenty of time with the friend, the girl he’d been after all along.

So handling two was fine by him. But anything more than that and shit got chaotic. Flirt with three and you seem like a perv, someone who could buy beer but never someone to take a ride with. Ignore one and flirt with the others and the third will be the one to bring up your cleft lip, your gut, your outdated jeans.

I don’t know why , she replied.

I just did it

Im sure u look real tuff , he wrote.

Aint nobody mess with u now

Right?

Dayna was another type of girl, one he had to keep on his toes around. The type of girl to dare you to think exactly what anyone would think if they saw a bald girl in boys’ clothing charging toward them: What the fuck is that? She was downright begging for it, waiting for you to make a face or let out a Damn, girl! so she could stomp a mudhole in you, slice you up with her sharp tongue. Say how she had to get back before Perry could even get out of the car, drive them both away faster than you could pop open the beer you’d brought for them.

She might even hate you more if you said how pretty she looked, said how you always wanted to be with a bald woman, see what it was like.

He had to walk a fine line. Had to flirt with her only so far, had to make up the rest in pretend respect and pretend fear.

No one messed with me before

Why you want to meet up?

I wanta get to know u gals in person , he wrote.

He pounded the desk. Ain’t no one in high school using the word gals . He’d never even really used it, it was something his momma said. Why don’t you bring any gals around? He looked over at his momma now, cuddling the TV remote to her neck like it was a teddy bear, her eyes half-closed, which meant she was close to asleep. She looked like someone’s doll baby that grew up and never lost none of its puffy rings of flesh, its blue-white skin, its half-lidded eyes. She hadn’t been stirred by his pounding on the desk, a blessing. Quickly, he wrote:

I get lonly

Lonley

However u spel it

It was a risk. No telling if a girl like Dayna would feel disgusted at this kind of confession, or would soften, feel sorry for him, want to help him out. He knew Dayna was a good speller, hoped that acknowledging his own poor spelling would help to thaw her.

There are red squiggly lines that let you know if something you wrote is all fucked up and misspelled

You just right-click and choose the word you meant

Awsome, thanks

I see what u mean

Neat trick

He didn’t know what she meant by right-clicking. Didn’t care. She was like one of his teachers in school, acting like everything was so easy to understand, and he was just being stubborn. He wanted to tell her to forget it. It wasn’t worth all this ass-kissing he had to do to get her to do what he wanted, he’d just work Perry harder, maybe even climb in her window one night.

Sorry you get lonely

I’ll see if Perry wants to meet up

It had worked. She was the type of girl, he now knew, to feel flattered by confessions. To feel like she alone was worth confiding in. Probably because she felt like she had endured more pain than Perry, had more character. And it might be true, but Jamey didn’t give a shit. Perry was the one with the blond ponytail, the grass-green eyes, the criminal’s heart. He was pretty sure about that last one, anyway. It was a crucial part of the equation that made up the girl he was looking for: it meant she was up for anything.

Thank u

I mean thank you

We’ll have a good time, dont worry

I’m not worried , she wrote.

Dayna has signed off.

He hadn’t been lying when he’d confessed to getting lonely. He’d never been good at loneliness. Especially now that he was home, and home meant his momma watching him with her flat doll’s eyes, eyes filled half with indifference and half with desperate suckling need. In jail he would have called his loneliness boredom . But now, outside, he saw it for what it was. He needed to put his hands on something, again. He’d start with his hands, see where it went. Some girls just went with it. Some did and then didn’t. Some made him work for his reward.

He knew it was disgusting, wrong, this kind of need. He knew because it was the same kind of need he watched pulsing out from his momma. But it was beyond him. It was biological. It was instinct. As natural as a lion feeding off some thrashing animal, fighting hard to stay alive even as its belly opened up. That lion probably didn’t feel all that great listening to the animal howl and die. But a lion’s got to eat.

PERRY COULD SMELL HERSELF. It was the same odor she’d smelled all night, lying in that cell, coming off those women in waves. Crotch, left too long without a washrag. Salt, sweat, and something nasty, something nastier than sex, something hot and close like blood. Now she was the one with her skirt hiked up over her hips, now she was the brown lump wearing three layers of clothing, dirt on her face and lining her nails. Now she was the one trying to braid her hair like nothing, like there wasn’t no smell, and if there was it was your problem, not hers.

She’d gone straight to class, hadn’t stopped to wash up first, and now she regretted it. A girl had let her have a piece of paper, but no one had a pen for her to borrow. Without something to concentrate on, the smell seemed to be getting worse. A boy in the next row shifted, turning away from her; the girl in front of her leaned forward, hunched over her work. Everyone probably trying to breathe with their mouths, so as not to whiff in any more of her.

The only saving grace was that Travis wasn’t in class. Perry looked over at his empty chair, glad that he wasn’t there to catch a whiff.

She raised her hand, asked if she could go to the bathroom. The teacher nodded, waved her off. As she stood, a fresh burst of the smell bloomed out.

In the bathroom, she smelled her hair, her hands, her clothing. Went into a stall and put a hand into her underwear, brought it up to her nose and inhaled. She smelled stale, unwashed, like her body would smell if she stopped caring. Her hair still held a whisper of the fruity shampoo she’d used the morning before. Her armpits smelled mostly like the baby powder in her deodorant, only a small oniony fang of B.O. peeking through. Nowhere could she find the source of the crotch smell, but she still smelled it anytime she moved. Like it was the sum of all her parts. Like as a whole she was no better than a hooker’s unwashed vagina.