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It wasn’t the best mall ever yet out of all the shitty attractions in West Versailles, Texas besides the 7-Eleven next to Brunswick High, it was the most tolerable.
It was where you could get a Frappuccino from Cinnabon and dive face first into a mocha wearing a hat of whipped cream shaped like a helter-skelter. Then you could walk past the ugly Charlotte Russe clothes and past the slightly tolerable baby pink Abercombie tops and near the hot skater guy at Tilly’s while pretending to ponder on whether to buy a Blink-182 shirt and sneak into an AMC movie if you wanted.
Hope and Lindsay followed this itinerary to its exhaustion. It was no longer fun to carry around a Frappuccino like an accessory even though the mocha was actually kind of good.
“What do you mean you don’t want to get Frappuccinos?” Lindsay half-questioned, half-whined. “That’s like, our thing”
“I just don’t feel like it anymore” replied Hope. “It’s so cliché.”
“Honestly you’re kind of right. It’s getting so old, who buys Frappucinos anymore?” she followed up with nervous laughter that Hope mentally caught like a pitcher.
Hope didn’t want to explain the real reason she didn’t want to buy a Frappuccino and how her Mom caught her digging through her purse for Frappuccino money. She’d look uncool, even in front of Lindsay who treated her like a minor deity. She would have to shuffle around cupboards and drawers in her one-story house to look for her mom’s shiny white Coach purse. It was an addiction.
I wonder how far she’d go, Hope wondered. It wasn’t the first time the idea floated in her mind.
Both of them had this cute teacher named Mr. Skevic. Well, Hope wasn’t really sure if he was all that cute or if he was the only male teacher under forty at Brunswick that wasn’t obese and balding.
Last year after Mr. Skevic’s class ended for the semester and he wrapped up his last lecture on Greek tragedies, she dared Lindsay to ask him out to dinner.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be sitting right here,” Hope twisted her lips upward into an acidic smile “silently cheering you on”.
“Nooooo! Oh my god, you’re like, so fucking annoying!”
“But you like him, don’t you?”
Lindsay looked at him starry-eyed, barely concealing her attraction. "Yeah he’s really hot”
“Then make a move”, said Hope while she pantomimed a missionary sex gesture with her fingers.
“God Hope”, Lindsay playfully pushed her away, “you’re so gross!”
--
Hope didn’t have many friends, real friends at least, and only got closer to Lindsay recently.
Lindsay could probably be friends with anyone she wanted to, because they’d be hypnotized by her spider leg eyelashes and cherub face and long dirty blonde hair usually pushed out of her face with Sanrio clips. She was model pretty, American Apparel ad pretty yet something about her clips and spaciness made people feel like they were entitled to her attention, especially boys. Gawking boys with their pungent Axe body spray and vocabulary that could rival a lab rat’s. They loved her but didn’t really know what to say around her so every conversation was along the lines of:
“Hey”
“Hey!”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing much! What about you?”
“Nothing really. This class is so boring right?”
“Yeah, Mrs. Gwendolyn talks at a snail’s pace” (she usually giggles at this point)
“Yeah she does I guess. Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Do you want to come to Hit-Wok with a bunch of us?”
Hope had half-heartedly tagged along to Hit-Wok with Lindsay a few times with the intention of bashing her skull amid witnessing her new friend’s tête-à-tête with at least three guys from the Lacrosse team at once.
Hope stared at the Golden noodles enveloping the stringy beef. It resembled the giant red stones she saw once when hiking with her father in Utah. She managed to eat one spring roll despite the crust tasting like watery cardboard.
She stared at Hope for a moment, watching her giggle while one of the Lacrosse guys jokingly called her bloated.
“You know we’re joking right, by the way? You’re super skinny” A different Lacrosse guy chimed in. Hope pursed her lips in disgust, his remark like an acrid aftertaste.
“Of course she knows that.” Hope verbally flung before Lindsay had the chance to open her mouth “She’s not retarded.”
Surely they’d hate me now, Hope thought. Sometimes, people, especially angry people like her have to let whatever is inside out little by little, or else she’d one day explode like a neglected pressure cooker.
Much to her surprise, Lindsay giggled and laughed even louder and leaned against her shoulder. The Lacrosse guy who called Lindsay bloated guffawed, and the white-knight froze in embarrassment while his face burned like a kiln.
“Bitch..” he spat, his insult trailing off.
Lindsay started tagging along with Hope more afterwards and even started ditching the Lacrosse guys when they hounded her with invitations to Hit-Wok.
“You like, speak your mind and stuff, which is something most people don’t do” she smiled at Hope.
Sometimes Hope would catch Lindsay staring at her intensely. Then when Hope would stare at her back, she’d look away.
I think I saw this once in a movie, Hope thought. Between a guy and a girl.
--
Hope started inviting Lindsay to the mall. Her Mom loved Lindsay’s bubbliness and thought she would be a good influence on Hope, because she had good grades and volunteered sometimes at the Animal Shelter on West Creek Blvd. She was eager to drop Hope and Lindsay off at Greenwood Central Mall every weekend.
“I swear, it isn’t a big deal! My mom makes me do that for college apps” Lindsay sighed. “But there’s this one dalmatian I take care of that’s sooo cute!”
Hope smiled, because to her Lindsay was one of those people who was genuinely sweet and wasn’t making a whole deal about it like she noticed some girls did.
She wasn’t sure how to vocalize her support. “I think it’s cool”
When Lindsay liked something, she’d smile real big without any hesitation and her eyes would widen then close, the outer corners left crinkling.
Hope tried to smile like that but just couldn’t without looking psychotic, so she settled with placing her hand on Lindsay’s back.
Taking Lindsay’s hand while the two teenage girls stood directly outside of Zumiez, Hope brushed her brunette locks out of her face and smiled with a wicked playfulness.
“I know something even better than Frappucino’s we can drink”
“Like what?”
“We’ll make it ourselves. In the bathroom"
“That’s soooo ghetto”
“Trust me on this it’ll be really good and you’ll thank me”
“Hmmm” Lindsay gave in with no real hesitation. “Okay!”
The two girls were seated criss-cross on the floor of the Greenwood Central Mall’s 2nd floor bathroom at the very last stall.
The entirety of the mall, bathrooms especially, was kept relatively clean thanks to the threat of affluent suburbanites directed at mall supervisors, trickling down to manager’s, store associates, and lastly cleaning staff who worked tirelessly to make sure upper-middle class consumers always experienced no less than royal treatment. One could lick a Frappuccino off the floor and feel cleansed if anything.
A bottle of Sprite from 7-Eleven laid catty-corner on its side, nutrition label facing up in front of Hope and Lindsay while Hope poured codeine into a Styrofoam cup.
“How many Jolly Ranchers should we add?” Lindsay asked eagerly.
“I think three maybe four is good enough”
Hope had no idea what she was doing. She saw her older brother make lean with his group of annoying guy friends and girlfriend. The two siblings made a truce after Hope caught him smoking weed in the backyard while their parents were visiting their divorced aunt in Rhode Island.
She remembered the expression on his face when she turned on the backyard patio light and opened the door.
“Promise you won’t tell mom” He pleaded.
“I won’t” She meant it.
“You want to try?” He said, offering her the poorly rolled joint.
The two rarely fought afterwards. “You two are getting along SO well lately!” their mom would exclaim, beaming.
The siblings would look at each other, Hope coughed loudly and her brother would laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Their mom would ask.
--
Hope offered the Styrofoam glass to Lindsay’s face. Lindsay took it and sipped it mildly. She made a face at first and then continued to sip.
“It’s not the worst thing I’ve drank”
The two took turns slipping until the Styrofoam cup was empty.
“Let’s get out of here Lindsay”
Hope washed the cup in the sink to rid any trace of purple liquid from the cup.
“Fuck, this place doesn’t have a trash can” Hope wanted to kill whoever decided that it was a good idea to ditch all paper towels for hand dryers.
She opened the stall and propped open the silver cubical trashcan used for tampons and stuffed the Styrofoam cup. She gagged. It still reeked of period blood.