“I like your short hair. And your T-shirts and boots. You look really weird right now. Well, no, not weird. Just . . . not like you. At all. Actually, you look a lot like Brigitte Bardot.”
I would narrow my eyes at her, but I think the mascara might smear. “Who?”
She points to my right, at her collage of various classic film actresses and vintage fashion ads. Her mom could easily clue in on the whole Iris likes girls thing just by looking at her room, but straight people do really love to gal-pal us up rather than face the truth—even when it’s hung on the walls.
I look at the actress she’s pointing to, and then I turn, staring at myself in her vanity mirror.
All I see is my mother and memories. But before I can lose myself in the thorns that come with all that, Iris’s door jerks open.
“Iris, do you and Nora want—” Ms. Moulton comes into Iris’s room without knocking and comes to a dead stop when she sees us. “Oh.” She frowns at the sight of me. “Nora! You look . . .” She stops, completely thrown by the change. That’s good. I do not want to look like Nora when I go.
“I’m thinking of doing makeup and hair for the senior musical,” Iris says. “Nora said she’d be my guinea pig. Her sister has some wigs because of the PI thing. What do you think?”
“It’s very Brigitte Bardot,” Ms. Moulton says.
“That’s what I said!”
The two of them share a smile, all conspiratorial and warm.
“You always look great.” Ms. Moulton smiles at me. “But this is cute, too. You did a good job, Iris. The theater department would be lucky to have you.”
“Thanks,” Iris says, like she didn’t just come up with that lie on the spot.
“Did you two want something to eat? I was going to order pizza. Half vegetarian, half pepperoni?”
“Sounds good,” Iris says. “Nora?”
“That’d be great. Thanks.”
“I’ll holler when it’s here,” she says, closing the door behind her.
We’re quiet for a moment, Iris fussing with the collar of the black cashmere cardigan she put me in. Finally, she lifts her gaze to meet mine in the mirror.
“You’re good at coming up with stuff on the spot,” I say, careful not to call it good at lying, even though that’s what it is.
She shrugs. “I spent a lot of time finding ways around my dad’s rules.” Her hands are suddenly still, like she’s as surprised as I am that she’s brought him up.
We haven’t talked about what she told me in the bank bathroom. I don’t want to push her, but I worry if we don’t talk about it sometime when there isn’t a bomb she built between us, she’ll think that what she told me is another kind of bomb, one that’s ticking down. And it’s not. She was strong, then and now. It’s one of the reasons I love her.
I’d like to punch that asshole ex-boyfriend who didn’t like wearing condoms, and I’d love to destroy her father . . . but that’s another matter.
“I had a lot of rules to follow, too.” I hate how tentative it comes out, but that’s how I feel. With Wes, everything came out in a horrible flood of stories that never seemed to end until suddenly, there weren’t any more to tell, and then we just had to endure in the space between them.
This is different. This is giving pieces up and getting some in return. The ground was tilted toward me when I was with Wes because I had the truth and he didn’t. But with Iris, she and I can be on even footing. We can know each other, piece by piece. We can build something with that knowledge.
“I bet,” she says. “Are you scared?” She fiddles with my collar again, and then her hand settles on my good shoulder. There’s a little catch to her breath when my shoulders relax under her touch, and I lean back into her, trusting her to hold my weight. Her fingers stroke my shoulder as the back of my head presses into the soft heat of her stomach.
“I can’t be scared,” I tell her.
She bends, a lock of pin-curled hair swinging over her shoulder. She presses a kiss to my forehead, then the tip of my nose, then an upside-down kiss on my sticky lip-glossed lips.
When she pulls back, she says the thing that burns the doubt and worry away and replaces it with something more. Something stronger.
You can be scared with me.
— 68 —
August 30 （22 days free）
the truth
Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida
I’m not surprised when they take me to a private visitation room. She’ll have made friends in here, dazzled a guard or two, maybe even a whole handful. If there’s one thing my mother knows, it’s how to work a person and a system. It’s why I’ve never worried too much about her in here.