Whatever Doesn't Kill You (9 page)

“Nope. Not for as long as I've known him.”

“That's weird.”

I shrug. I'd never thought of it as weird before that Simon doesn't go out on dates. He doesn't go out with friends either. He doesn't do much of anything, as a matter of fact. He's just…here.

Ashley is charming and animated over dinner, like she's part of the family. She makes a big show of playing with Wex, pretending to steal his nose even though he's really too old for that game, but Wex eats it right up, giggling and trying to grab her hand. Afterward she plunks herself down on the couch with us to watch
TV
—just makes herself right at home.

“So what's there to do around here at night?” she wants to know.

I shrug. “I usually watch
TV
and knit. Or go over to Katie's. That's pretty much it. What do you do at night?”

“Hang out. Go to the park or the mall or something.”

We sit for a few minutes, staring at the
TV
. Ashley takes the remote control and flips through the channels, but there's nothing on worth watching.

“Hey, you want to see something?” I say finally.

“What's that?”

Simon is busy helping Wex get his pajamas on and his teeth brushed, and I know that as soon as Wex is in bed, Simon is going to flop out on the couch for the evening. I dig in the pocket of his jacket and pull out a huge wad of keys. I stuff them in the pocket of my hoodie, holding them tight so they don't jingle and attract Simon's attention.

“Let's go downstairs. You were asking about the guy who killed my dad; I want to show you something.”

I'm feeling oddly nervous as I lead Ashley down the hall to the stairs. I've taken Katie down here before, but never anyone else. I feel like a pirate showing the new cabin boy where I've stashed the treasure chest.

I've never been in a medieval dungeon, but I imagine it would look a lot like the room in our basement where the storage lockers are. They're old-school creepy, with slatted wooden doors padlocked shut, packed with piles of musty boxes, artificial Christmas trees and bicycles in varying states of decay. There are a few empty lockers, and I always picture some emaciated guy inside, banging on the slats with a tin cup.

Ashley looks a little jumpy. “You're not bringing me down here to lock me in one of these cages to get back at me for being mean to you or something, are you?”

“I hadn't planned on it.” Hmm. That almost sounded like an apology. “I just thought you might like to see this.”

I pull Simon's keys out of my pocket and shuffle through them until I find the little brass key that opens our storage locker. It's full of stuff from our old house—furniture that wouldn't fit in the apartment, Rubbermaid containers full of my mom's old clothes, cardboard banker's boxes stuffed with old papers. I open up the one on top and pull out a file folder of old newspaper clippings.

“This is the guy who killed my dad.”

“Wow.” Ashley flips through the folder, skims the articles. “That's pretty amazing. Look at this—your name's in here, like, a hundred times. You're famous!”

“Yeah, for about six months, when I was born. And look how far it's gotten me. Besides, having everybody feel sorry for you isn't the same as being famous.”

“Oh, come on. You're actually pretty all right, you know.”

“Thanks. You're different than I thought you were too.”

Ashley hands the folder back to me and opens up another box. “What's in this one?”

“I think that's Simon's old yearbooks and stuff.”

“Really? What was he like in high school? I bet he was a hottie.”

“How would I know? I was hardly even born when he graduated.”

Ashley pulls out a blue hardcover book with gold embossed lettering and flips through it. “Look at these haircuts. All the girls look like that chick from
Friends
and the guys look like they're trying to be George Clooney on
ER
.”

I take the book from her and flip through it, looking for a picture of Simon. “Here he is. On the basketball team.”

“Ooh, a jock. Let me see. Was he cute?”

“Dude, he's my
brother.
”

Ashley laughs. “I know. Just curious.” She looks over my shoulder. “Wow. He looks so different. Look how skinny he is. I mean, not like he's fat now, just not as… bony. He looks better now.”

“You are too weird.” I flip through more pages. I don't bother to buy the yearbooks at my school. With only three people in my social circle to sign them, it hardly seems worth it. But it looks like Simon was a pretty popular guy: on nearly every page, somebody has proclaimed what a great friend he was, promised to get together over the summer, scribbled the same dirty limericks I still see scrawled on desks and bathroom walls at school now. I guess some art forms are just timeless.

Suddenly Ashley snatches the book out of my hands and slams it shut.

“You know what we should do tomorrow?”

So apparently we're a
we
now. “What's that?” I ask.

“We should totally cut school and get you a makeover.” She looks me over thoughtfully. “How much money do you have?”

“A little. Why?”

“Perfect. We're
so
going shopping. Your wardrobe needs an update. And when was the last time you had a haircut?”

I run my hands over my braid, frizzy from that afternoon's snowfall. “I don't know, when I was ten, maybe?”

Ashley laughs. “That's like, what, six years?”

“Five and a half, I guess. Maybe longer. Maybe I was nine.”

“Great. Then it's decided. I'll meet you here; we'll hit up the clearance racks at Limeridge. That should give us a good start. And we're getting your hair done.

I know a place you can get it done for eight bucks, and they actually do a pretty good job.”

“Um, I…” I mull it over. I've never skipped school before. I mean, I've missed days when I was sick, and I did leave early once last semester when Wex fell on the playground at his school and split his lip open and the principal couldn't get hold of Simon or Emily. But to full-out take a day off without permission—that's just not something that's ever occurred to me. It's not like I think Simon will freak out, or even notice, for that matter, it's just…naughty. It's something Emily would do, but not good old, reliable Jenna. And for something as shallow and superficial as shopping for clothes? I can't help but wonder what Ashley's angle is. Is she dressing me up so she won't be embarrassed to be seen with me at school? Or is it something more sinister: is she planning to pick out clothes that are just out of style enough to earn me more mocking from her old gang?

Still, maybe this is the kind of thing one does when one has friends who aren't all charter members of the Loser Club. I toss the yearbook back in the banker's box and put the lid back on.

“Sure,” I say finally. “Let's do that.”

TUESDAY

As I braid my hair in the morning, I feel a nervous twinge. Do I really want to do this? I can hear Katie's voice in my head, telling me not to sell out, not to pretend to be someone else for the sake of having a new friend. But since I don't have any old friends left, what's the point of holding on to old habits? I do look scruffy. I've always chalked it up to my own personal style, but in truth I've never really put much thought into how I look, and I've never thought much of people who do. But who knows? Maybe if I look better, people will treat me better.

Simon is helping Wex with the zipper on his coat when I get out to the living room, and I dive past him and out the door without saying a word. It's not that I think he'll be mad about my skipping school; it's just that I don't want to have a conversation about it right now. I'm feeling conflicted enough as it is.

Ashley is waiting outside the building, dangling a set of car keys in her hand.

“We're taking my dad's car,” she says. “We just have to walk down and pick it up from his work. He's working a twelve-hour shift. All we have to do is make sure we get it back before he gets off work at seven tonight.”

“Oh. We'll have to be back before that—I have to pick up the kids from the bus.”

“Really? You do that every day?”

“Rain or shine.”

It's neither rain nor shine today. The sky is cloudy and ominous, and I wonder whether we might get that snowstorm Griffin was talking about the other day. The weather feels strangely appropriate, like the sky is angry at us for doing something wrong.

Ashley's dad works at one of the steel plants, and as we walk she chatters about how important his job is, how hard he works, how much money he makes. We wander down to the bottom of Ottawa Street, under a huge green metal building suspended over the road. It's like another world down here. Huge coil carriers, twenty-four-wheeled trucks loaded up with six massive coils of steel apiece, slog by us on the slushy roads.

From the way Ashley is talking, I'd have expected her dad to drive a Mercedes or something, not a dumpy old Ford that smells of cigarettes and greasy fast-food wrappers, but it's better to have a ride than take the bus on a day like this.

I fasten my seat belt as Ashley makes a big show of adjusting the mirrors.

“When did you get your license?” I ask.

“I haven't got it yet. But I took driver's ed last semester and I've got my
G
1.”

“Don't you have to have your
G
2
to drive alone?”

“Yeah, but I'm not alone.” Ashley grins. “I've got you.”

“Um, you know I'm only fifteen, right?”

“That's fine. If we get pulled over, you're nineteen and left your license at home, okay?”

My heart is racing. This is now officially the wildest thing I've ever done. “Nineteen. Okay then.”

We get to the mall just as the doors are opening, salesclerks rolling open the metal doors and pushing racks of stuff out into the aisle.

“All right.” Ashley rubs her hands together with a gleam in her eye. “We need a game plan. How much money do you have to spend?”

I shrug. “Like, a hundred bucks.”

“Whoo. All right, that's not much, but we'll make do.” She looks me up and down. “What are you, a size eight? Ten?”

“I have no idea.”

“All right, we'll figure it out.”

It's clear that Ashley sees shopping as some kind of competitive sport. At the first store we come to, she grabs me by the hand and pulls me past racks of the newest styles—thirty-dollar blouses and fifty-dollar sweaters— and back to the clearance racks. And she's got some mad skills, too, plunging her arm elbow-deep into the mass of marked-down sweaters and pants and coming out with a bright blue T-shirt marked down from
$
17.99 to
$
3. She looks strangely triumphant, like a picture I once saw of a bear who'd just yanked a big salmon out of the river.

“This would look awesome with your hair color,” she tells me. “You're
so
trying this on.”

“Um, okay.” I start to head off to the changeroom, but Ashley stops me.

“Are you kidding? We're getting more than that.” And she proceeds to load me up. Again and again she plunges into the mass of clothes, coming up with a pair of jeans for
$
6, a sweater for
$
7.50, a skirt for
$
2.99.

I feel like a Barbie doll as she shoves me into change-room after changeroom, nodding approvingly or clucking her tongue if the neckline isn't quite right or the butt is too baggy. And remarkably, the mirror in the changeroom tells me she's right: it does feel pretty good to stare back at myself in a blouse that fits, a pair of pants without holes, a hoodie that actually makes me look like I have a figure. By the time I'm down to my last twenty dollars, I've actually managed to amass a decent wardrobe.

“It's too bad we couldn't find you a coat,” Ashley says, “but next time you get paid, we'll get you one.”

I'm exhausted from the marathon shopping spree, but oddly enough I'm beginning to understand that look of victory on Ashley's face when she digs into a pile of clothes and magically pulls out something that looks good. Still, I've never been dressed and undressed so many times in one day, and it's a bit of a relief to be back in my old clothes again at the end of the shopping spree. My relief is short-lived, though, as Ashley steers me toward the washrooms near the top of the escalator.

“Just so you know, we're throwing those out,” Ashley says, pointing at my jeans. She grabs my shopping bags and puts them down on the counter by the sinks, then roots through my haul of clothes until she finds a green sweater and a pair of new jeans. “Put these on.”

It's snowing when we get outside, and Ashley does a cursory job of brushing off her dad's car. I get in and buckle my seat belt, my stomach rumbling a little.