Chapter Twenty

“You gonna stick by me?”

“Maybe…”

**

“Come on Letty, let’s go,” my aunt called out early Monday morning, leaning through the door to my room.

“What…” I moaned, rolling over to look at her, still not sure of what, when, where, or who I was.

“You heard me,” she replied, laughing. “Get up, lazy! We’re going shopping.”

“Shopping?” I asked, groaning.

“Yes, shopping. You need some new clothes; you can’t keep wearing Leon’s old hand-me-downs. Besides, you’re sixteen now, and it’s about time you had some things that will make you look like a girl.”

“I do have girly clothes,” I protested, continuing the thought to myself, “somewhere…in the back of a closet…at my mom’s house…where I’ll hopefully never see them again.”

“Oh, don’t even think about trying to get out of this,” my aunt laughed. “Now, get out of bed and get dressed so we can go!”

“I’m going, I’m going,” I sighed. “And here I thought I was going to get to sleep in, for once…”

“Letty, it’s eight-thirty. You did get to sleep in! Normally you’d be in school now, right? So stop complaining! Now, I’ll be back to check on you in fifteen minutes. You’d better be dressed by then!”

After my aunt left the room I just laid in bed, staring at the ceiling for five minutes. Shopping. God, what a waste of time. Why spend all that time and energy looking for something to wear when it just gets dirty?

Shopping with my aunt turned out not to suck as much as I thought it would, though. She didn’t try to force me into getting girly shit, even though she wouldn’t let me shop in the guys’ department. We just wandered through the clearance racks at Macy’s for hours, picking up jeans, tank tops, some sheer tops that I think were originally supposed to have something go underneath them, a couple pairs of nicer black pants, some sweaters… I almost couldn’t carry all of it out of the dressing room up to the cash register.

Walking through the mall on the way back to the car, I could’ve sworn we were done for the day. But then, my aunt pulled me into Victoria’s Secret. I couldn’t believe it.

“What are we doing in here?” I asked her.

“Well, every girl ought to have some pretty underwear…even if she’s the only one who ever sees it,” my aunt replied. “And,” she continued, “Letty, you had better be the only one seeing this stuff for a while. Like, for years. Until you’re twenty-five, at least. Maybe thirty.”

I pretended I hadn’t heard her, just wandered off to start looking around. But I couldn’t help thinking of Dom as I looked through the racks, picking up various things. Most of what I ended up with was just practical stuff…racer-back bras so the straps wouldn’t get in my way while I was working on cars, basic colors. But I got some pretty things, too. Sheer, lacy, you name it. And lots of cute little thongs…solids, patterns. It’s funny, you know…the less material there actually is in a pair of underwear, the more it costs. My aunt insisted, though.

I couldn’t believe how tired I was when we finally got back to my aunt’s place that night. Who knew shopping could take so much energy? And so much time? It had actually been kind of fun, though. Better than just hanging around at the house watching the clock tick waiting for Tuesday afternoon to come, at least.

I thought I was going to get to sleep in Tuesday, before I had to go over to the DMV to take my driving test, but I was wrong about that, too. My aunt hauled me out of bed at nine am, then made me change like three times before she was satisfied with what I was wearing. I felt like a fucking Barbie doll by the time we left the house, I swear.

And as if the clothes weren’t enough, my aunt dragged me to the salon, too.

“We’re going to see Clarice,” she announced after we’d gotten into the car and I had nowhere to hide.

Clarice is my aunt’s best friend. They’ve known each other forever - since they were in kindergarten. She’s Leon’s godmother, even. And, ever since she graduated from high school, Clarice has had a chair at this salon, Designs by Gloria. I don’t know who Gloria is supposed to be, the owner’s name is Jorge. But, every time I saw Clarice - which was just about every weekend when she’d come over to my aunt’s place after mass - she’d play with my hair and complain that I never let her do anything fancy with it.

I don’t know, for some reason I’ve never really been into the whole hair and makeup thing. Even when I was little, I hated it when my mom tried to play with my hair. Maybe ‘cause she was usually drunk when she did it and ended up ripping huge chunks of hair out of my head… And then, when I started hanging around the Toretto house and helping out with the cars, all that mattered was keeping my hair out of my face. I actually cut it myself one time, when I was about eleven. Got sick of it always being tangled, always being in the way. Huge mistake. My mom was pissed, wouldn’t take me anywhere to get it fixed or anything. I remember, she said she wasn’t about to waste any of her money on my stupidity. And I’d managed to cut it so it was all different lengths. So parts of it were long enough to be in the way all the time, but none of it was long enough to put up in a ponytail or anything. Mia fixed it up for me a little bit, but I still looked completely ridiculous for almost six months, until it grew out a few inches. I wore my hair up just about every day after that. After I started living with my aunt, I got a little more into the whole beauty thing. Not like I spent hours in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror all of a sudden or anything. But I kind of liked having Clarice mess with my hair, looked forward to her coming over. I hadn’t seen her in a while, though, since I went to live with Leon.

So, it wasn’t like I minded going to see Clarice, even though I didn’t really like the atmosphere at the salon she worked at. People all staring at you and shit. Ugh. I hate that. And that day wasn’t any different, in terms of people staring at me. Actually, it was worse. Clarice had somehow gotten the idea into her head that since I’d started living with Leon and was in the garage all the time I must be neglecting my hair. She must’ve spent at least twenty minutes reading me the riot act about how my hair was getting all dried out and I needed to spend more time, take better care of it or it was going to start falling out of my head and I’d be bald before I hit eighteen. Then I had to sit there and try to figure out ways I could just disappear while everyone in the salon stared at me. Clarice does not have a quiet voice. I didn’t say anything while she washed my hair, then put some hot oil deep conditioning shit on it, but I had to protest when she brought out the scissors.

“Clarice, come on,” I said, trying to pull away from her. “You just trimmed my hair like three months ago. What d’you think you’re doing with those things?”

“Yeah, well, your hair looks like it hasn’t been trimmed in years, all these split ends. What the hell have you been doing to it, anyways? Using it as a dip stick?”

“Uhm…” I mumbled, trying to sound convincingly innocent, remembering a day the week before when Leon had accidentally spilled some motor oil all over me - including my hair. I had to wash it like twenty times just to get the smell out…

“Never mind, don’t answer that…I don’t want to know,” Clarice sighed. “Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to put it up off your face,” was all she’d say as she started snipping away.

I almost couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror when she was done drying and curling my hair. It turned out to not be so bad, though. She’d cut the front part a little, given me these little wispy pieces that just brushed my chin, and trimmed maybe an inch off of the rest of it. She curled the ends a little, and it actually looked pretty good, even though I never quite got the point of curling hair that was all ready curly to begin with.

The torture didn’t end with just the hair, though. When Clarice asked what I was planning on doing for my birthday, I made the mistake of telling her I was going for my driving test. When she found out I was going to the DMV, she insisted on putting some makeup on me, too.

“Honey,” she said, laughing when I tried to pull away from her, “the lighting at that place is enough to make anyone look completely horrid. I know you don’t really need any makeup to look good, and I know you don’t like it…but unless you want to look as pale as your aunt when they take your picture and then have to carry that thing around for at least the next five years…”

I had to laugh at that. My aunt is white. Like, as pale as you can possibly be without your skin being completely transparent. Like, if she were a heroin addict she’d never have any trouble finding a vein to stick a needle into. She never gets tanned either, no matter how much time she spends out in the sun. Just turns a little pink. I don’t think there’s any way in the world I could look like her. We do have the same eyes, though.

“God,” Clarice exclaimed as she peered at my face. “If I had your skin, Letty, I swear I’d be married to a millionaire by now.”

“Yeah, right,” I laughed, rolling my eyes. “Sure, Clarice, whatever.”

“Let’s see,” she muttered to herself, turning to her makeup case, rejecting one thing after another. “Too dark…too bright…too green…ugh…why do I still have this? It’s so 1987. God…where is that blusher? I put it right here, I know I did… Jorge, did you take my Delusion Coloring Stick again?” she called out, glaring over towards the front desk. “’Cause if you did, I swear to God I’m gonna kick your happy little gay ass from here to Kansas so you can go play with the rest of Dorothy’s friends…”

“Oh God,” I cringed. “Tell me she is not going to put the same stuff on me that Jorge uses. As fabulous as he is, I really, really, really don’t want to look like a fifty year old drag queen…”