Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies

Chapter 2

Sandy opened her eyes as soon and Maggie lowered the eyeliner pencil, and she turned her head to check her reflection in the bathroom mirror. When she applied her own makeup for school, she’d always gone with light colors to help her blend in instead of stand out. In her opinion, her best makeup jobs were the ones that looked like she wasn’t wearing anything.

But Maggie had insisted on doing her makeup for the party, saying, “Makeup at night runs by a whole other set of rules, sweetie.”

She was probably right, but under the bright bathroom lights, Sandy thought her face looked over done. Her eyelids were darker with a line of brown around her eyelashes and hint of violet shadow above that. Her cheeks were dusted with a plum blush, and her lips felt sticky from a vivid magenta lipstick plus a layer of “lip shine” to make her mouth look wet.

But the makeup was nothing compared to the dress. When she’d first worn it, she hadn’t noticed how clingy it was, or how short. Before, it had looked sexy. But with the makeup added and a pair of dangling silver chain earrings borrowed from her mother, she felt like her image screamed “desperate for attention.”

That was the voice of depression, which had been spending a lot more time talking in the wake of the prom. Everyone else went. Chess nerds had dates with other chess nerds, but Sandy was lower on the school’s social pecking order. She settled at the very bottom with the rest of the losers who nobody would ask out.

The other candidates at the bottom had bad hygiene habits, or were considered ugly for one reason or another. Sandy was supposedly pretty, but this was according to her friends and family. They were biased, and they didn’t count. But she knew she took better care of herself than the stinky kids, and she would have figured one of the ugly guys or the stinky guys would have been desperate enough to call her. That no one did made Sandy feel like the ugliest, dirtiest person in the world.

And now she was going to a party, alone, in a dress that screamed “will someone PLEASE LOOK AT ME?!”

Sensing her uncertainty, Maggie settled a hand over Sandy’s upper arm and offered her a gentle reassuring squeeze. “It looks like too much now because of these bright lights. But in a darker room, you’ll look great.”

“Maybe I should put on a choker?”

“No, it won’t look right with this kind of dress, and besides, it will just make people stare at your neck. With a dress like this, you want guys staring at your tatas instead.”

Sandy giggled nervously and then said, “Okay, I’ll trust you.” Despite her gleeful tone, it wasn’t a joke, just a statement of fact.

In all the time they’d been friends, Maggie had never given Sandy bad advice. She was the best thing that had ever happened to Sandy, and Sandy wasn’t sure if she said it often enough.

Maggie said, “All right, now you’re all dolled up. Let’s go downstairs and see what your folks think.”

Sandy felt her heart beat faster. Though she most likely didn’t need to stress out, she thought the dress might meet or exceed her parents’ limits for patience. Once they’d come to accept her, she often worried that she would do something they considered going too far, and then they would reject her and insist she go back to her old life.

It was for this reason that she avoided talking to them about her thoughts on boys, although she had many thoughts on the topic, some of them vaguely naughty.

She also avoided dressing too sexy, most of the time opting for jeans, a T-shirt, and canvas sneakers. There would be no mistaking her for a boy, but she avoided being too girlish, just in case it might lead to talks about “toning her act down.”