Ashton’s words ignited a fire in Emma’s curious mind. That afternoon, as she went from class to class and played the role of the dutiful student, her thoughts were overflowing with images of the exotic and exciting world that was high school. She’d been dreaming of it for years, ever since she was a little girl playing with her dolls.
Back then, she had to have a babysitter, so her parents hired Bridgette, one of the neighbor girls. Bridgette was like one of those cool, fashionable teenagers from the movies, and she soon became a role model to Emma. Whenever she came over, Bridgette would spend the whole night watching adult movies and television while she chatted on the phone with her friends. Normally, Emma wasn’t allowed to watch such mature shows, but with Bridgette, she could do whatever she wanted. Most nights, they watched TV together, and if ever a naughty scene popped up, Bridgette would tell Emma to cover her eyes until it was over. Of course, Emma was always peeking through her fingers.
Sometimes, when Bridgette thought Emma was fast asleep in her bed, she would bring her boyfriend into the house, and Emma would secretly watch them from the second-level balcony. Once, Bridgette caught her peeking, and she made Emma pinky swear that she wouldn’t tell her parents.
“Swear it, Emma,” she said, “or we won’t be able to hang out anymore.”
Emma didn’t want that to happen, so she never told her parents what Bridgette did, not even when she left Emma alone for hours in order to attend a party down the street. Emma didn’t mind, though, because when Bridgette came back, she told Emma all about it and even showed her pictures on her phone. Now, those pictures were all she could think about, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to experience it for herself.
That night, she found herself pacing the hall just outside her parents’ bedroom, where her mother was sewing up one of her father’s work shirts.
“Okay,” Emma mumbled. “What do I say? What do I say?”
“Emma, do you need something, honey?”
Emma froze right where she was standing. “Nope, nothing, nothing at all.”
“Then why are you pacing around like a crazy person?”
“I wasn’t pacing,” Emma said, finally finding the courage to enter the room. With her hands behind her back, she moseyed in and stopped at the foot of her parents’ bed. “I was just wondering if you wanted some help.”
Pausing in mid-stich, Mrs. Walters glared suspiciously at her daughter. “Okay, what do you want?”
“Nothing! I was just trying to be helpful. Can’t a kid offer her mother some help without her thinking she has an ulterior motive? Really, Mom, you just broke my heart.”
Dramatically, she clutched her chest and threw her head back in despair, but once she realized her performance wasn’t working, she dropped the act and came clean.
“Okay, Heidi wants me to spend the night at her house on Friday. Now, before you say no, hear me out. If you let me go, I will do the dishes for three weeks without complaining.”
“Yes, you will,” her mother replied, “because that’s your job, which you rarely do as it is.”
“Well, I’ll start! Please, Mom, please! I’ll never ask for anything else again, not even Christmas or birthday presents!”
Her mother called for silence with a lift of her hand. “Okay, no need to lie. I get it. You really wanna go.”
“So can I?” Emma pressed, her brown eyes shimmering with hope.
“If your father agrees to it.”
Just like that, all her hopes went up in flames. Her parents, green-skinned with horns protruding from their foreheads, were hovering over the blazing fire. She could practically hear their deep, demonic laughter as she glared at her mother. Her cruelty knew no limits.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Wow, Mom, it’s like feminism never happened in this house. You know, you’re taking women back to the Dark Ages.”
Mrs. Walters’s right eyebrow twitched upwards. “Is that so?” she said. “Well, my little feminist scholar, go on and tell me when the women’s rights movement started, since you’re the expert on the subject.”
“Uh ... 19 ... 81.”
“Yeah, right after MTV,” her mother mocked with a dry laugh. “You need to pay more attention in school, kiddo. Now, go talk to your father, and if he agrees, you can go.”
Downstairs, Mr. Walters was slouching around in a tattered t-shirt and baggy sweatpants. In truth, he was supposed to be drawing with his youngest daughter, but once his wife left the room, he just sat her down on the carpet with some markers and paper and told her to make something pretty. It wasn’t good parenting, he knew, but after a long day at work, he just wanted to sit back, relax, and watch some television. Besides, Lydia seemed to be having plenty of fun without him.
“Daddy, look!” she said, proudly holding up her most recent masterpiece. “It’s a butterfry.”
Mr. Walters briefly glanced in her general direction. “Yes, that’s very nice, sweetie.”
As soon as Emma walked in, Lydia rushed over to her and started jumping around like an excited young pup. “See my drawing? See my drawing? It’s a butterfry!”
“You mean, butterfly.”
“Yeah, a butterfry. Do you like it? Do you like it? Daddy likes it.”
“Well, Dad would like anything you draw because you’re so little and cute and ...” Just then, a brilliant idea struck her, bringing a smile to her face. “Hey, Liddy, you wanna do me a favor?”
She shrugged. “What is it?”
Beckoning Lydia to come close, Emma crouched down and whispered the instructions into her sister’s ear. “Got it?” she asked once she’d finished speaking. Lydia nodded her head eagerly, making Emma grin. “Okay, go tell Dad. And remember, think cute.”
Smiling wide enough to make her dimples show, Lydia skipped over to her father and then hopped onto the couch beside him. “Daddy,” she said as she crawled onto his lap and took his face in her tiny hands, forcing him to look at her. “Daddy, Emma wants me to tell you something. It’s important.”
“What is it?” he murmured, straining his eyes to find the television screen.
“Emma wants to ... to ... uhh ... sweep Heidi’s house.”
Mr. Walters nodded. “Okay, broom’s in the closet.”
“Okay,” Lydia replied and then she jumped off his lap and ran back to Emma with a victorious smile on her face. “He said the broom is in the closet, Emma.”
“Yeah, I heard him,” she grumbled back.
“What’s wrong?” Lydia asked.
“I didn’t say sweep the house, you dummy; I said—Oh, never mind. Just forget it. Go back to your drawing.”
“But I’m outta paper.”
Emma shrugged. “So improvise,” and then she gently pushed Lydia aside and approached her father much like a mouse would a cat. “Hey, Dad,” she said, wringing her hands, “can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Um, okay, so Heidi wants to know if I can sleep over at her house on Friday. I already asked Mom, and she said I could as long as you agreed to it, and I know you will because you’re such a cool dad and all ...”
With one click, the television was off, leaving Mr. Walters sitting in an eerie silence, his expressionless face partially obscured by the shadows. Emma shifted uncomfortably and even considered leaving, but then she heard her father’s voice.
“Will her parents be home?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Will there be boys?”
“No.”
“Are you lying to me right now?”
“No, I swear.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then you can go.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “Are you serious? I can go?”
“That’s what I said.”
In hindsight, he should have kept the television on because the sound would have muffled Emma’s screams and saved his sensitive ears. Like a banshee she sounded, and then she started jumping up and down with glee, making the bookshelves rattle. Mr. Walters threw his hands up in defense when suddenly she charged him and assaulted him with hugs and kisses.
“Thank you so much, Dad!” she cried. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Oh my god, I have to tell Heidi!” She let out another ear-piercing shriek before running into the kitchen and grabbing the phone of the wall. Her hands were shaking as she quickly dialed her friend’s phone number.
Heidi’s mother answered the phone in a soft, pleasant voice. Emma tried to match her tone, but her excitement made that impossible; she practically screamed, “Hi, Mrs. Hoffman! Is Heidi there?”
“Is something wrong, dear?” Mrs. Hoffman asked right away. “You sound frantic.”
“No, everything’s fine. I just have something I need to tell her.”
“Okay, just a moment.”
While she waited, Emma paced around the kitchen, moving at a slow, steady pace, which quickly turned into a brisk power walk. As soon as she heard Heidi’s voice on the other line, Emma blurted out, “I can go!”
“You can go?”
“I can go!”
“YOU CAN GO?”
“I CAN GO!”
“Emma!” her father shouted from the living room. “Quit all that hollerin’! Even the neighbors can hear you!”
Emma cringed. “Sorry, Dad! – Look, Heidi, I have to go, but I just had to tell you the good news before I went to bed. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, okay? – Okay, good night!”
After hanging up, Emma ran out of the kitchen and made a mad dash for the stairs. Along the way, she passed her sister, who was sitting on the floor with her markers. Turns out, she had decided to continue her drawings, after all, but on a new canvas—her own skin. By the time she was finished, it looked like a rainbow had thrown up all over her.
“Uh, Dad,” Emma said, “Liddy drew on herself again,” and then she raced up the stairs before the blame could be passed to her.
“Lydia Janine Walters!”
Once safely inside her bedroom, Emma slammed the door shut and then threw herself onto her bed with a squeal of delight. On her back she lay, gazing up at the glittered ceiling and letting her thoughts drift far away from her boring reality. In her mind, she was already at the party, standing off in the corner with a drink in her hand. Then, in one fateful moment, the crowd would part, and she would see him standing there. He would smile. She would shyly smile back. And then he would slowly make his way toward her and ask her to dance.
That was what happened in all the stories anyway. A chance meeting with a dashing, debonair stranger – it was what teenage fantasies were made of!
Emma let out a blissful sigh. “It’s gonna happen. I know it.”
. . .
The rest of the week dragged on slowly, as it usually did when a girl was eagerly anticipating the week’s end. Once Friday finally came, Emma was so excited that she could hardly focus on anything else. When her friends spoke, she was only half listening, offering up the occasional “Mhm” as a reply.
During lunch, Michael and Calum successfully flicked ten corn kernels into her hair without her noticing. They would’ve kept going if Luke hadn’t told them to stop. And all the while, Emma just sat there with this dazed, dreamy-eyed expression. At her next class, Emma was stuck with the painstaking task of plucking each kernel out of her brown curls.
After school, Emma got off the bus with Heidi. “I can’t believe your parents are letting you stay home alone,” Emma said as they hiked up her long, winding driveway.
“Actually, they’re not,” Heidi confessed. “They think I’m spending the night at your house.”
Emma’s pace slowed considerably, her legs weighed down with dread. “You lied to your parents?”
“So did you! Look, Emma, it was the only way this would work.”
“But what if your parents call my house?”
“They won’t! ... At least I don’t think they will ... They never have before, so why would they start now? My parents trust me.”
“Heidi, I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore. We’re gonna get caught.”
“No, we won’t. Besides, there’s no going back now. The party is at nine, so we only have five hours to get ready. We’re gonna need every one of those five hours if we’re going to pass for high school girls.”
With their task decided, Emma and Heidi hurried into the house to begin their beauty preparations. After showering, Emma, dressed in a white cotton robe, joined Heidi in the master bathroom for the next phase: body hair removal. The inexperienced blonde was busy plucking her eyebrows when Emma entered the room.
“How do I look?” Heidi asked upon turning.
“Uh ... surprised.”
“What?” Leaning over the counter, Heidi carefully studied her reflection. “Oh, no! I plucked them too much! I was trying to get them to look like the girl in the picture’s, but I couldn’t get them even, so I just kept plucking and plucking. God, I’m so stupid!”
“Well, at least they’re even now.”
Heidi tossed the tweezers back into the drawer. “I’ll try to fix them later. Now, it’s time to move on to the next phase: bikini waxing.”
“But I’m not wearing a bikini.”
“Do you even know what bikini waxing is, Emma?”
“No, and I don’t think I want to.”
Instead of replying with words, Heidi reached over and unscrewed the top of the white container which lay on the counter. Inside was a thick orange liquid that appeared to be bubbling.
“What’s that for?” Emma asked with wide eyes.
“Removing hair.”
“Removing hair from where ...?”
Slowly, Heidi’s eyes began to trail down Emma’s body, falling lower and lower. Before they could reach the targeted area, Emma caught on and yelled, “No way!” before dashing out of the room.
Heidi was right on her tail, and no less than ten steps down the hall, she caught Emma and tackled her to the ground, where they then began to wrestle for dominance like two bickering children.
“It’s like taking off a band-aid, Emma! It doesn’t hurt that bad!”
“I hate band-aids!”
“Oh, come on, Emma! Everybody’s doing it!”
“I don’t care! If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you?”
“Ugh, you sound like my mom!”
“What do you think we’re gonna be doing at the party anyway?”
“I don’t know! I just want to be prepared for—Oww! Not the hair! Not the hair! I just conditioned it!” With the last of her strength, Heidi tore Emma’s hands off her precious golden locks, and then both girls collapsed beside each other, chests heaving from exhaustion.
“Fine,” Heidi said in between pants, “no wax.”
Upon recovering, the girls went to the bedroom of Heidi’s older sister, Meghan, who was away at college. Inside her closet, they found four years’ worth of clothes from all of Meghan’s previous fashion phases: from her preppy phase, her vampire goth phase, her emo phase, and finally her scene phase, which was very similar to her emo phase, only brighter and happier. At that time, she wore a lot of neon leggings, cheap hair extensions, and modeled her eye makeup after a raccoon. Now, since she’d moved on to her artsy hipster phase and shopped only at vintage stores, she had no use for the clothes of her past, so they were ripe for the picking.
“For tonight,” Heidi decided, “we’ll need the heavy artillery.”
“Meaning?”
Pushing aside the rest of the hangers, Heidi reached into the darkest depths of Meghan’s closet and pulled out two of the most sinful black dresses Emma had laid eyes on.
“For about a month,” Heidi explained, “Meghan went through a major slutty phase. My parents told her to throw these out. Lucky for us, she didn’t. Now they’re ours.”
Emma gulped. “Oh boy.”