Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

She washed everything anyway. Soaped up her hands and worked the pink lather into her face, her neck, her armpits. Soaped up a wad of toilet tissue and pushed it into her underwear, wiping. When she was done she stood in a stall, letting the air cool her dry. Someone had written SLOPPY CUNT in red marker, the only words in this stall. If she’d had her book bag she’d have taken out a pen and written YEP.

In the hall she felt cleaner, more awake, her neck and hands cool. The soap she’d used smelled like bubble gum and toilet cleaner; she breathed in, hoping to smell it on herself, nearly happy enough to laugh when she did. There was even a pen on the floor by the drinking fountain. As she bent for it she heard footsteps coming around the corner, stood up just in time to see it was Travis.

“You weren’t in class,” she said.

He still had on his work uniform, and there was a deep line in his hair from where he’d worn his visor. Perry could smell the dishes on him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t have to be sorry. I was just hoping to see you.” In the mirror Perry had seen that her hair was limp, flattened, all the shine gone out of it. She was glad, it felt like a miracle, that she’d pulled it into a ponytail before running into Travis.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. He picked at his shirt, drips of grease dotting it like raindrops. “I mean, I meant, did I miss anything?”

“I want to kiss you again,” Perry said. She took a step toward him, she couldn’t help it, she wanted to be near to him.

“I know,” he said, stepping back from her. “Me, too.”

It was a shock, a literal shock, like someone had fastened a clamp over her heart and pushed a pedal that sent a current right into her body, up through her throat and down to her toes. He’d said he wanted to kiss her, too. Perry felt filled up, like someone had poured a kettle of hot water over her head. But he’d also backed away. Here came the hideous smell again.

“Maybe I’ll stop by again,” she said, “if you’re working.”

“No,” he said, “don’t do that.”

He’d said it quickly, like the idea repulsed him. “Oh,” Perry started to say.

“Meet me somewhere else,” he said. “Tomorrow night I’m off. We can meet at my house or something. My mom works nights.”

“I can do that. I can take the bus. I’ll meet you there, if you tell me the address.”

“Thirteen forty-six Baton Rouge,” he said. “Take the bus to White Road and then walk into the neighborhood behind the 7-Eleven.” She repeated it back to him, twice, trying to stamp it deep in her memory. The smell was cascading off her, she half expected to see it pouring over him like candle wax, but he asked her to come over, he gave her an address, and it was like he couldn’t smell her at all. She wondered if she’d even tell him about her night in that cell, tell him about the other women.

“I’m going to skip this class,” he said. “So I’ll just see you later.”

This was a relief. Perry hadn’t wanted to walk back with him, hadn’t wanted to break the spell, do something to change his mind. Hadn’t wanted to walk into class with him, either, didn’t want anyone thinking she’d gone to the bathroom to meet up with him. Not that she hadn’t done something like that before. She just didn’t want anyone thinking it about him.

And she didn’t want him thinking anything like that about her. In the night she’d thought how it could be something she had pride in, that she’d survived all those hours in that cell. That she’d thrived, even. But now she felt ashamed even thinking about telling Travis about the drugstore, the jail cell, the other women. She watched him walk down the hall. His shirt was wrinkled, and a bit of it had come untucked, but it fit tight across his shoulders. So it was settled: She wouldn’t say shit to him about her night. She’d pretend like it never happened.

CHARLES WAS STILL IN BED when Baby Girl got home, which meant their uncle hadn’t been home, or if he had, hadn’t noticed that Baby Girl wasn’t home to make sure Charles got up when he was supposed to. She’d left him in there, not wanting him to see her bald head yet, not wanting to answer when he asked where she’d been. Instead, she’d gotten online. She wanted, more than anything, to show Jamey that she didn’t care that he was only into Perry, that she’d just wanted to be his friend all along, she’d never been interested. She’d nearly convinced herself of it, driving home. She even started feeling sorry for him, how he tried to convince her that he really did want her to come along on the meet-up, how he confessed that he was lonely. He had no idea who he was talking to now. He had no idea things had changed, she had the power, and she would do everything she could to make him see that she was beyond caring about him. He wanted Perry, he could have her. He would see that any hold he had on Baby Girl’s emotions had dropped away, as mean as a rock slide.

And Perry would see it, too.

After she signed off, she went to Charles’s door and pushed it open. He was flat on his back, eyes open, his hands folded over his shirtless chest. He’d once seemed rock solid to Baby Girl, but now he’d gone all soft and pale, his nipples almost womanly with how fleshy they were, how they drooped whenever he stood.

“I think it’s time for me to get up,” he said. “My butt hurts.”

He was upset, Baby Girl could tell. He was talking to her like she was going around the room and stealing all his things, right there in front of him, while he lay helpless on his back.

“You know how to read a clock, Charles,” she said. “You know what time you need to be up. You don’t need me to come in and get you, do you?”

His room smelled like breath. “But you always do,” he said.

“Well, if I ever don’t, like this morning, you got to be able to get yourself up. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My butt hurts.”

“Get up, then.”

He swung his legs around. His boxers were loose and Baby Girl looked away so she wouldn’t see his stuff, but it didn’t matter. When he stood his thing peeked out the front, shriveled and brown-pink. Charles had had plenty of girls before his accident. Some of them had tried to be nice to her, offering up lip glosses and gum and, once, a pink condom in a glitter wrapper. They’d come and gone. Baby Girl had heard some of what went on in Charles’s bedroom, girls moaning or laughing or yelling. It had made her feel sick, scared even, she couldn’t see the point in it all. But now, in his bedroom on this morning, there wasn’t no sex in what dangled from his boxers that Baby Girl could see.

Why did she have to always remember how he used to be? The doctors had said some days would be better than others. Some days he’d be a five-year-old, some days he’d be like an eighth-grader. But he’d never be the same person he was before the accident. And it wasn’t like Baby Girl was waiting for him to be, waiting for some miracle to alight on his head like some kind of mercy bird. It was just that now she knew: there wasn’t no point. You just did shit and waited to see what happened. Charles’s accident had been like a line in the sand. And Baby Girl had crossed it over and over.

“Get dressed,” she told Charles. “I’m going to take a shower, and then later I’ll take you to the library.”

They had adult programs there, mostly for homeless people, but Charles loved it. Those were his friends now, some of them with child brains like his. And it was somewhere she could leave him while she and Perry met up with Jamey. She could leave him home watching videos, make him a sandwich and chips to eat on the couch, but he’d been left alone too long already, because of her. Because she wanted to go out and shave her head in a drugstore bathroom just to show the world how little she gave a fuck. Now she saw that the fact that she wanted to show the world anything meant she gave a fuck, way too much of a fuck.