Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

“You cut your hair off,” I said without thinking. Then she lowered her head, and I saw it was covered in cuts and pink, raw patches and tufts of leftover hair — she hadn’t done it herself.

“What happened?” I asked.

Sophie never cried — I’d seen her do so exactly once, at nine, when a Frisbee we were playing with hit her square in the face. Even that seemed more like a physical reflex than sadness. When we were kids, she would sometimes scream with rage, her eyes crazy, but by the time she was fifteen or so, the only indication she was upset was her breathing, which would go sharp and shallow, her nostrils flaring. She was breathing like that now. She didn’t answer my question.

“Here,” I said, “come in.”

She sat on my bed. She wasn’t wearing one of her usual dresses, but a white T-shirt and a baggy pair of jeans. Her neck and shoulders were painfully skinny; her scalp was pale.

“Do you want anything?” I asked. “I have Sprite.”

She nodded. I was glad I had something I could give her. She popped the can open and drank, and her breath slowed down.

“I finished the movie,” she said.

It was such a left turn that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her. “Sorry?”

“I mean, I still have to edit it. That’ll take a while. But I finished shooting.”

She sipped again, reached up as if to smooth her hair, found nothing, and brought her hand awkwardly down.

“Sophie,” I asked again, slower this time, “what happened to your head?”

She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I didn’t like my hair that much anyway.”

I put two and two together, finally. “Did CeCe do this?” I asked.

Sophie scratched her raw scalp. “I still don’t get why she’s so mad,” she said. “I don’t want anything she wants. I’m not going to stop her from marrying him or whatever.”

I was still trying to make sense of the logistics.

“CeCe found you at the party, and she shaved your head?”

Sophie looked at her Sprite. “More or less,” she said.

So while Andrea had been telling me what a great brother I was, CeCe had been taking a razor to my sister’s scalp. Or maybe it was earlier, when I was trying to maneuver my way into Andrea’s pants. Or earlier, when I was using my status as Sophie’s helper to ingratiate myself with people. I hadn’t even managed to warn Sophie beforehand, because I was too excited about going to the party. I felt like calling Andrea and asking her to come over. I wanted to punish myself by showing her how useless I was.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should’ve been there.”

Sophie shrugged. “She kept saying she warned you. Like that would mean something to me.”

“She did warn me,” I said. “I could’ve helped you. Instead I was off being a dumb-ass.”

The fact that I’d failed her because I was hoping to get laid was especially gross to me. I was ashamed of myself, like she’d caught me masturbating.

But Sophie looked at me sharply, anger in her eyes.

“I know you think I can’t take care of myself,” she said, “but it’s not your job to protect me.”

“I know you can take care of yourself,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You don’t. You’re always trying to run interference for me. What do you think I was doing before you came here? Do you think I was just curled up in a ball somewhere?”

I thought of what Andrea had said about Sophie snapping at people in class. Wasn’t she nicer now? Didn’t people like her more?

“No, but—” I started.

“But what?” she asked. Her bald head made her anger scarier — she looked like a dying person, with a dying person’s feverish eyes. “I’m not crazy, and I’m not retarded. I’m not blind. I don’t need you to be my guide dog.”

Now I was angry.

“All I’m trying to say is I feel bad that you got hurt,” I said, “and I wish I’d been there. Sorry if that makes me such an asshole.”

She sighed. She reached up to touch her scalp; her hand was already learning to expect bare skin there.

“You’re not an asshole,” she said. “I just don’t want you to think you have to keep me safe. That’s my job.”

I was still feeling angry, and guilty, and I could tell the second one was only going to get worse. I wanted to push some of the blame off onto Sophie.

“You’re not very good at it,” I said.

She just shook her head. “I am,” she said. “It’s just really hard.”

She drained her Sprite, scratched at her ankle. She was wearing sneakers with no socks. She looked like a twelve-year-old boy. I remembered a kid I’d played with when I was about that age, a scrawny boy who came around when my friends and I were playing tetherball after school. The kid was wearing a plain T-shirt, which marked him as different, because we all had shirts with our favorite cartoon characters or sports teams on them. He said his parents were spies, which I didn’t believe — in retrospect, since it was spring, they were probably migrant farmworkers. As proof he taught us some phrases he said were French — they were actually gibberish, I knew even then, but I remembered them for years and used to repeat them to myself when I couldn’t sleep. After that day, though, I never saw the kid again. I wondered if Sophie wanted to be like this, showing up in my life just for a second, asking for nothing.

“If I’m not supposed to help you,” I said, “what do you want me to do?”

“Can I sleep in your bed?” she asked. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I don’t want to be in my apartment right now.”

It surprised me that she didn’t want to be alone, and that she’d admit it, but I was glad to have something to do. I cleared the textbooks off the bed; she kicked off her sneakers and crawled in, but she didn’t lie down. Instead she lowered her head.

“Can you?” she asked.

I put my hands to her scalp. It was hot and smooth. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched her bare skin. As a kid I’d imagined I could read her thoughts through her head, but now I couldn’t even guess. She shut her eyes, and I took my hands away. As she slept, her face got calm — even with her shaved head she looked so normal, somebody’s twenty-one-year-old sister who needed a place to stay.

Sophie slept for hours with no sign of waking up, and I couldn’t stop myself from going to find CeCe. I knew where she lived — she and her two equally high-maintenance roommates, both of whom were dating slightly-less-popular versions of Daniel, had exclusive pre-parties there on Friday nights, and even people too cool to want an invite or too uncool to ever get one (until recently I’d been the latter) knew where they were held. I didn’t know what I’d do when I got to her — I knew I couldn’t hit her, even though I wanted to. I thought maybe there was something I could say that would make her cry, and then Sophie, sleeping soundly in my bed, would have the upper hand.

CeCe’s roommate Leigh, a tall girl who was dating the heir to a pesticide fortune, answered the door. I could see behind her into the living room — there were actual framed pictures on the walls, landscape prints and photos of the girls laughing. Leigh’s hair was wet. The air around her smelled like shampoo and perfume.

“CeCe’s not here,” Leigh said. “She went home to see her family.”

“When will she be back?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It might be a while.”

I felt stupid and powerless. What was I supposed to do, leave a message? I looked down at my empty hands.

“Look,” she said. “We’re all sorry about what happened. If we’d been there, it wouldn’t have.”

“Well, you weren’t, were you?” I shot back.