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“Uh-huh.” I squint into the viewfinder. “Turn your head to the right. And try not to look so happy. You’re supposed to be bummed out about your life.”
“I don’t want to look ugly.”
I sigh and lift my head. “Just try not to look like a goddamned cheerleader, okay?”
“Okay,” she reluctantly agrees. She pulls her knee up to her chin and looks at me from beneath her heavily mascaraed lashes.
“Great.” I click the shutter, reminded of Donna LaDonna’s “big secret”: She hates her eyelashes. Without mascara, they’re pale stubby spikes, like the lashes on a dog. It’s Donna’s biggest fear. Someday, some guy will see her without mascara and run screaming from the room.
Sad. I click off several more shots, then shout, “Got it.” I put down the camera as Donna swings her legs off the porch railing. “When are we going to do Marilyn?” she asks as I follow her into the house.
“We can do Marilyn this afternoon. But it means we have to do punk tomorrow.”
She heads up the stairs, leaning her head over the side. “I hate punk. It’s gross.”
“We’re going to do you androgynous,” I say, trying to make the prospect as appealing as possible. “Like David Bowie. We’re going to paint your whole body red.”
“You’re insane.” She shakes her head and storms away to change, but she isn’t angry. I’ve learned that much about her anyway. Having a hissy fit is Donna LaDonna’s way of teasing.
I push aside an open box of cereal and hike myself onto the marble countertop to wait. Donna’s house is a smorgasbord of textures—marble, gold, heavy silk drapes—that somehow don’t go together and create the impression that one has entered a fun house of bad taste. But in the last few days, I’ve gotten used to it.
You can get used to anything, I guess, if you’ve been there enough.
You can even get used to the idea that your ex–best friend is still dating your ex-boyfriend and that they are going to the senior prom together. But it doesn’t mean you have to talk to them. Nor does it mean you have to talk about them. Not after you’ve lived with the fact for four months.
It’s just another thing you have to live through.
I pick up the camera and examine the lens. I gently blow away a speck of dust and replace the cover.
“Donna?” I call out. “Hurry up.”
“I can’t get the zipper up,” she yells back.
I sigh and carefully place the camera on the counter. Am I going to have to see her in her underwear again? Donna, I’ve discovered, is one of those girls who will shed her clothing at the slightest provocation. Actually, that’s wrong. She requires no provocation at all, only a minimum amount of privacy. The first thing she did—the first thing she always does, she informed me, when she brought me to her house after school—is take off her clothes.
“I think the human body is beautiful,” she said, removing her skirt and sweater and tossing them onto the couch.
I tried not to look but couldn’t resist. “Uh-huh. If you have a body like yours.”
“Oh, your body isn’t bad,” she said dismissively. “But you could use some curves.”
“They don’t exactly hand out perfect breasts like candy, you know. I mean, it’s not like you can go into a store and buy them.”
“You’re funny. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tell us that babies came from a store.”
“And boy was she wrong.”
I head upstairs to Donna’s room, wondering once again, how we ever got to be friends. Or friendly, anyway. We’re not really friends. We’re too different for that. I’ll never completely understand her, and she has no interest in understanding me. But other than that, she’s a great girl.
It feels like a million years ago when I walked into that photography class at the library and got paired up with her. I kept going to the class, and so did she, and after the piece came out about the queen bee, her attitude toward me began to thaw. “I still can’t figure out f-stops,” she said one afternoon. “Every time I see the letter ‘f,’ I think of the word, ‘fuck.’ I can’t help it.”
“Fuck stops,” I said. “They’re like truck stops but you only go there to have sex.”
After that, Donna stopped hating me and decided I was this wacky, funny, crazy girl instead. And when we were again assigned to work in pairs, Donna picked me as her partner.
This week, we had to come up with a theme and photograph it. Donna and I chose “transformation.” Actually, I came up with the idea and Donna eagerly agreed. With Donna’s looks, I figured we could dress her up in different outfits and make her into three different women, while I’d take the pictures.
“Donna?” I ask now. Her door is open, but I rap on it anyway, just to be polite. She’s bent forward, struggling with the zipper on the black silk vintage dress I found among my mother’s old clothes. She swings up her head and puts her hands on her hips. “Carrie, for Christ’s sake, you don’t have to knock. Will you get over here and help me?”
