“Uh-huh,” I murmur. Now that I’ve gone ahead with this whole makeover idea, I’m beginning to have second thoughts. Old Sadie may have been predictable and understated and, sure, kind of on the conservative side of things, but I knew her! I knew I could roll out of bed in the morning, grab my jeans and a shirt, and be done. Dressing: achieved! And now to just cast that off and set myself loose in the dangerous jungle of original style, where fashion faux pas lurk at every turn?
“Calm down. You look like you’re having a panic attack.” Aiko giggles. “This isn’t like you’re trying to be someone else. It’s about finding out what fits you. You!”
Me.
I take a short breath. They’re right — I was comfortable with my old look, but the reminder of how much I molded myself around Garrett snaps me back to reality. Enough with the exploration metaphors; it’s time to just relax and see how I feel in this new skin.
Besides, if I don’t like this look, I can always try a new one.
“There he is, the nerd himself!” LuAnn calls ahead. Josh is just up the street, feeding quarters into the meter. “Sorry,” she adds cheerily, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. “I meant geek.”
“How’d it go?” He takes a look at our armfuls of bags and then laughs. “Wait, don’t answer that.”
“This? Ha. It was a slow day.” LuAnn starts piling things onto the backseat.
“You kept up with them? I’m impressed,” Josh tells me as I pass over my own bags. I shrug, suddenly self-conscious.
“How was the harbor, or wherever you went?” I ask, too aware of his eyes flicking over me. But despite the fact that I started the day a gawky girl with overgrown bangs and came back looking completely different, he doesn’t seemed surprised, just . . . curious.
“Fun.” Josh breaks into a smile, waiting until all of our bags are unloaded before locking up again. “I walked the whole city.”
“Great.” We start to head up the street to the venue, where a line is already snaking back from the doors. “Well, great for you,” I correct myself. “I think I was better with the shopping.”
He laughs. “To each his own.”
“Josh!” Aiko suddenly elbows him. “You haven’t said anything about Sadie’s new look!”
“Ooh, yes. Tell us what you think,” LuAnn insists. “Gorgeous or what?”
“Guys!” I protest, flushing. “Stop it.” I turn to him quickly. “You really don’t have to answer that.”
“Yes, he does!” LuAnn nudges him from the other side, joining Aiko in an elbow onslaught until Josh is bent double, laughing.
“OK, OK.” He pulls away from them. “It’s, uh, nice.”
Nice? I blink. Is that a good thing?
“Nice? Nice?” LuAnn screeches. “Boy, you need help. Sadie is a work of art. A vision. A dream!”
“LuAnn.” I blush, pained. “Please . . . ?”
She must see the embarrassment on my face, because she stops her theatrics. “Oh, fine.” She sighs. “He’s a boy, ‘nice’ is like a soliloquy from them. We’re lucky he didn’t just grunt.”
The doors finally open, and the line begins to inch forward. “You ready?” Aiko asks me, rolling up her sleeve in preparation for the underage wristband. I pause. If I was with my dad, we would already be inside by now: me camped out on a prime stool at the bar with a lemonade while he trades touring war stories with roadies and bouncers he knows from way back when. But even though I’ll probably spend the gig crushed up with everyone else on the main floor, getting my toes trampled by some overenthusiastic frat boys from Vermont, I’m actually more excited than ever. I’m in the city for a show with my new friends, and if that sounds simple to you, then you clearly have a way more exciting high-school life than I do.
I grin, giving my head a tiny shake to feel the curls flutter against my face. Suddenly the dress doesn’t feel so foreign; the armful of cool carved bangles I picked out feels just perfect. It’s different, sure, but as I’m finally starting to see, different can be good.
“Ready!”
It’s time to get ruthless. Living in a shrine to your failed non-relationship isn’t helping with this whole moving on thing, so something’s got to give. And that something is every photo, every gift he gave you, and every crappy mix CD he made full of depressing British indie bands from the 1980s.
Get thee gone.
Keep a couple of mementos, sure, for when you’re way older and wiser — like, in college — and can laugh about the time you wasted on him. But for now, that crap needs to be stuffed in a shoe box on the very back shelf of your closet — out of sight and even further out of mind.
17
“One copy of The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder?”
“Donate.”
“A program from the Sherman Amateur Dramatic Society production of Brigadoon?”
“Trash.”
“The collected poems of Rainer Maria Rilke?”
“Keep!”
Kayla pauses rifling through the great piles of my possessions littering my bedroom floor. Like me, her hair is tied back and she’s wearing her oldest jeans; unlike me, she’s armed with a garbage bag and a look of steely determination. “Sadie . . .” she warns, her tone exasperated.
“I like Rilke!” I protest. “‘Live the questions now,’ ” I quote. “See? It has nothing to do with Garrett.”
Kayla flips the book open and reads the inscription. “‘Sadie, Happy Hanukkah. Love, Garrett.’”
I snatch it away from her. “So he likes Rilke, too. I am allowed to keep some stuff!”
“You said you needed my help,” Kayla cries. “Total Garrett detoxification. But we’re not even halfway through your library, and you keep wanting to save things.”
“But look at everything I’m donating.” I point to the not-at-all-insubstantial stack of books, movies, and CDs that I’ve decided to purge from my life. Sure, my mom reorganized the place just six weeks ago, but that was merely a surface job. This? This is an archaeological excavation we’re on here; delving through the sands of time and/or my hoarding habit to find every Garrett-related artifact and purge it from my life. Everything I have only because of Garrett goes, that’s the rule. No exceptions, no excuses. It’s time I figure out what I like for myself.