The Sea of Jessica
Katherine Orfinger (Rosemont College)
Tabby sat on the floor of her best friend Jessica’s bedroom, watching Jessica apply makeup with a page torn out of Marie Claire as a reference. It was only the second time the girls had hung out all summer, and in Tabby’s absence, the bedroom had become something as unrecognizable as the current state of their friendship. A Backstreet Boys poster peered sulkily at the two girls, and the laminate floor was coated with a powder of cheap cosmetics and Cheeto dust, both of which Jessica frequently lifted from a nearby Walgreens while Tabby reluctantly stood guard. Next to a halfway made-up daybed, a tape player stood on a small table with a neglected houseplant. In the opposite corner, a vanity was crammed near the window, the corresponding stool having been pressed into service in the kitchen at the breakfast bar. The rest of the room was littered with the odds and ends of girlhood: Beanie Babies at odd angles on the floor as if they’d suddenly dropped dead, numerous Nancy Drew titles collecting dust beneath stacks of notes passed during class, and empty cans of Diet Coke.
Tabby was half-tempted to go home. She had summer reading to do to prepare for her upcoming eighth grade year and, as her mother kept reminding her, eighth grade was the time to begin developing proper study habits which would then carry her through high school. But Jessica had been busy nearly all summer with stupid-ass Andrew, so she’d jumped at the chance to spend time with her best friend, even if she’d spent nearly the entire afternoon languishing in Jessica’s bedroom, watching her apply makeup that she didn’t even need.
As far as Tabby could tell, Andrew was not nearly as interesting or fun or cool as either of them, so she really had no idea why Jessica liked him so much. “I feel pretty when I’m with him,” Jessica had said by way of explanation on the many occasions Tabby had pressed her for one. In Tabby’s world, “pretty,” was neither an emotion, nor a sensation, but she took Jessica’s word for it. What else was she supposed to say?
She watched Jessica’s lips part as she painstakingly applied mascara. Bored, trying to suppress her irritation with Jessica, Tabby catapulted herself from the daybed to the floor, arms outstretched as if making a snow angel. She wiggled exaggeratedly, and went, “Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh,” with her mouth. Jessica glanced back at the photo of the model and sucked her teeth disdainfully when her eyes returned to her own reflection. Tabby stuck her left leg straight up in the air, admiring the way the sunlight hit the pale fuzz that covered it. Jessica dabbed at her cupid’s bow with a scented tissue. Tabby made a noise not unlike that of a propeller and flung her other leg upwards. Her foot accidentally hit the post of the daybed, surprising both of them. The earring Jessica was trying to put on slipped from her fingers, and she lunged to grab it, but missed. “I got it, I got it!” Tabby scrambled to pick up the star-shaped, plastic dangle. She handed it back to Jessica, who snapped it into place on her earlobe. “God, I’m so freaking tired of wearing these stupid clip-ons,” Jessica complained.
“Why? They look real to me,” Tabby said.
Jessica rolled her eyes. “They’re for babies.”
She turned her attention back to the mirror and produced an eyelash curler, fumbling awkwardly with it. Even to Tabby whose familiarity with makeup was limited to ChapStick, it was obvious that Jessica had never done this before. After two tries, the curler fell from Jessica’s unskilled fingers and onto the vanity, upsetting a small container of highlighter, which plummeted onto her lap. “Are you kidding me?” she shrieked, jumping up.
Tabby, too, was suddenly on high alert, as if a gunshot had gone off. She stood, shoulders tensed, looking at Jessica as though for the first time. Her entire face seemed to be fully made up, and beneath the layers and layers of cosmetics, Tabby thought she saw the friend she used to know, the person who would sit on the floor with her and make string bracelets, some of which still clung to Tabby’s wrists, though Jessica had discarded hers long ago. There was a hint of something beneath the eyebrows plucked thin and high, beneath the pigment on her eyelids that reminded Tabby of a metallic bug, there was someone who used to laugh with her, not at her. Where there was once a fullness in her sunburned cheeks, there was now a cheekbone, a streak of blush. And Tabby paused on her friend’s mouth, which was glossed to such a shine it looked like glass, and she feared it would break, but simultaneously, she wanted to be the one to break it—even if it meant cutting her own self on the shards.
As quickly as the thought had come to her, it vanished, and Tabby realized Jessica was panicking. “Let me help,” she said, taking the now empty container from Jessica’s hands, which were shimmery with powder. Tabby set the container down, being careful not to disrupt any of the other goops, pastes, and powders all over the tabletop. She grabbed a tissue and started dabbing Jessica’s hands, which did little to remove the pigment.
“I’m going to have to change,” Jessica lamented, gesturing hopelessly down at her clothes, now ruined by the spilled powder. “I don’t have anything else to wear. Ugh, this is a disaster.”
“We’re literally just going to walk around the mall. Why does it even matter?” Tabby’s words came out more sharply than she intended. It wasn’t her fault, though, that she’d been ready to go to the mall at noon, as the girls had agreed. Nor was it her fault that it was now almost 2:00 PM. Not to mention that Tabby grew hungrier by the moment, and she knew that pedaling the bicycle (which would transport them to the mall) was entirely her responsibility, and that Jessica would insist on riding on the pegs, which made the trip even more difficult than if she were on the handlebars.
“I can’t just go to the mall dressed like a slob,” Jessica said vehemently.
“Then just put something else on. You’re taking forever,” Tabby said.
Jessica’s lips narrowed, now looking more like a blade than a pane of glass. Uncomfortable under her gaze, Tabby was suddenly self-conscious about the storm of frizz that was her reddish hair, the abject flatness of her chest, and the explosion of freckles on the left side of her face. Jessica looked entirely disapproving, and Tabby gazed at the floor. She felt ugly, and if it hadn’t been such a searing sensation in her chest, she would have had the foresight to remind herself that if pretty isn’t a feeling, ugly isn’t either.
She turned around as Jessica discarded her soiled clothes on the bedroom floor, next to the overflowing hamper. She couldn’t name the feeling overtaking her, some intangible heaviness weighing her down, and suddenly she felt like she must have been stupid to have thought she could make Jessica laugh by pretending to be a helicopter. A baby, she was sure she was acting like a baby and that was the reason she didn’t get Jessica’s sudden obsession with stupid-ass Andrew, or this new preoccupation with primping before the mirror every time they went anywhere.
With a sigh, she flung herself down on the daybed. Jessica rummaged in her dresser, looking for the right pair of this and the right thing to go with that… Tabby looked down at her own unremarkable outfit: a black t-shirt that hung pleasantly loose on her and a pair of capri blue jeans with embroidered flowers creeping up one leg. Do I look like a slob? she thought. She briefly considered asking Jessica for her opinion but decided she didn’t care, and then just as quickly she was distracted by a large magnolia petal visible floating on the breeze outside the bedroom window. She watched the piece of flower drift until it was out of her line of vision, then turned back to Jessica, who stood shirtless, facing away from her. Tabby observed her friend with the same level of interest she’d given to the magnolia, though Jessica’s skin was much darker than the porcelain-colored flower. She bent slightly, and one strap of her pale-yellow training bra slipped partly down her shoulder. Absently, she pulled it back into place, and Tabby noticed a quality about her spine not unlike the lengths of string she used to braid into bracelets of varying thicknesses, colors. She understood now, when Jessica complained of having gained weight, where those extra pounds were. As her heart began to pound accordingly, Tabby averted her eyes back to her own hands, now twisted anxiously in her lap, her fingernails bitten down to the quick. Am I ugly? She thought. She had no name for this feeling, tearing through her very soul, though it felt quite ugly indeed.
They decided to go to the mall.
The scents from the food court’s smorgasbord of cuisines reached the two girls as they entered the mall from the back. Jessica inhaled deeply, theatrically so, and Tabby felt herself shrinking next to her. She saw Jessica scanning the food court, where they had entered, as though enemies might be lurking, then her gaze wandered further, taking in the oblong shopper’s metropolis. Women with feathered hair hawked perfumes in delicate bottles with names Tabby found silly and strange. Shoes missing their mates sat on pedestals as high as their prices. Bored high school students manned the Dippin Dots and Auntie Annie’s counters. A bookstore advertised numerous book-related products and a café, none of which were actual reading materials. A Macy’s took up the entire south end of the mall, next to which was a small Abercrombie and Fitch, a Gymboree, a Hollister, a Lucky Brand, a Levi’s Store, and a Claire’s.
Jessica stood up a little straighter and grasped at the strap of her purse (which contained several dollars in singles and coins, two lip glosses, a lipliner, and a tampon). “Let’s go to the bathroom first,” she said to Tabby.
Tabby sighed but followed. Maybe she just has to pee, she thought absently. Yeah, right. Once inside the bathroom, Jessica began outlining her mouth in a shade nearly indistinguishable from the other swaths of cosmetics that were already on her lips. Mostly out of boredom, but partly out of spite, Tabby wondered aloud, “Does Andrew like it when you put all that schmutz on your face?” Jessica snorted but did not turn around. “Cause, if I was a boy,” Tabby continued, “And I had to kiss a girl, I’d be like, ‘Oh no, what if I get that all over me?’ And then it would all be ruined anyway. All seven thousand years you spent putting it on… Whoosh!” she flushed a toilet for emphasis and laughed.
“You’re an idiot,” Jessica said matter-of-factly.
“Well, if I’m an idiot, you’re an idiot too,” Tabby pointed out. “Because only an idiot would be best friends with another idiot.”
Jessica contemplated this, and Tabby thought she saw a flicker of a smile on Jessica’s face. A lightness bloomed within her chest. Just as quickly, Jessica capped the lipliner. “Whatever.” She puffed her lips out at her reflection then sneered at herself. “Disgusting,” she said under her breath. The depths of this statement struck Tabby in some private, overlooked corner of her soul. Its utter untrueness hit her, creating an invisible barrier between the two girls, rendering Tabby unable to argue, and Jessica unable to hear anything she might’ve said anyway. Tabby couldn’t fathom how Jessica could possibly place herself in the realm of “disgusting,” when in her own appraisal, Jessica outshone every mannequin and model in the whole mall.
She awkwardly tried to match Jessica’s strut as the two of them made their way out of the food court, where they would not eat, as they had precious little pocket money and it did not make sense to spend money on food when they’d brought granola bars and Oreos from home. They passed several stores and lingered at Hollister, which Jessica swore smelled exactly like Andrew. It was enough to make Tabby queasy, but it was Jessica’s stomach that dropped when she actually did spy Andrew across the walkway, his hand deep in the back pocket of a girl neither Jessica nor Tabby recognized. The girl was a head taller than he was, with dewy skin, slender arms, and full thighs Tabby found strangely compelling. She wore very short cut-offs that left little to the imagination, and a green camisole with nothing over it.
“Who. Is. That?” Jessica said slowly, the despair thickening with each syllable. She suddenly crouched to the floor, pretending to tie her shoe. Tabby stood squarely in front of her, ostensibly blocking her from Andrew’s sight. Andrew and the mystery girl seemed not to notice Tabby and Jessica, and Tabby regarded Andrew coldly as they walked past. Andrew looked like he always did, with a messy patch of mousy hair atop his utterly unremarkable face, thin lips curved into an absent smile, eyes the color of who cares, wearing an oversized Red Sox jersey and cargo shorts. Jessica could expound on the warmth and wonders of his smile for hours, while Tabby found him so disinteresting that she could hardly picture his face at all if she weren’t looking directly at it.
“I can’t believe this,” Jessica breathed as she watched the two of them disappear into the Vans store. “How could he do this? How could this happen? To me? ”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” was all Tabby could say, rubbing Jessica’s back in small circles as Jessica theatrically wiped her lower eyelids with her knuckles so as not to smear her makeup.
“It’s not okay,” Jessica blubbered. “She’s prettier than me, too. Skinnier.” Her voice broke on the last syllable. Tabby gathered her hysterical friend into a hug.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, more firmly this time. “Okay? He’s… he’s a big-headed, liar boy who sucks, and he’s dumb, and… and just because he likes you doesn’t mean that he’s the only one who’s ever going to like you and you deserve somebody who sees you for real, not some butthead, dick-faced, rat boy with bad hair, who doesn’t even—”
Jessica’s face broke into a smile, even though two blackish tears were beading on her chin. She swallowed hard, sending tiny raindrops of mascara onto her tank top. “Oh, alright, alright. I know you never liked him. I guess you were right this time,” she sniffled.
“It’ll be okay,” Tabby insisted, partly because she did not know what to say, and partly because she wanted Jessica to believe it. But most of all, she was imagining her own version of being “okay,” back in Jessica’s bedroom, fingers adeptly tying knots and making bracelets, like they used to do, when they talked about anything and everything, not just who was kissing who or who saw so-and-so holding hands with what’s-his-name.
Tabby realized that Jessica was still inside her embrace, and she burrowed her freckled face into Jessica’s sleek black bob, trying to tease out all the different smells: baby powder, cherry blossom body spray… “Are you sniffing my head?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah.” Tabby released her.
Jessica stood up with a flair, tucking her hair behind one ear. “I don’t want to think about this right now. C’mon, we’re still here, we’re still at the mall. I won’t let him ruin a perfectly good day. Might as well make the most of it.”
Tabby smiled, already eager to forgive the nearly entire summer that Andrew had ruined for her, ready to point out that Auntie Annie’s was offering a free lemonade if you bought two medium sized pretzels, but Jessica’s face was already shining as she hurried over to Claire’s. “We should get our ears pierced!” she pointed excitedly at a display of silver jewelry. Tabby thought she detected something a bit unhinged behind Jessica’s too-wide smile, but she said nothing. She stood awkwardly, all of her weight on her left side, watching Jessica paw through the rack of earrings, looking for the cheapest pair. “Your mom will kill you,” Tabby said.
“She won’t even notice,” Jessica countered.
“My mom will kill us both.”
“No, she won’t. C’mon! C’mon, c’mon!” Jessica tugged Tabby’s arm.
“Won’t it hurt?” Tabby protested.
“Well, yeah,” Jessica laughed. “But you know what they say, ‘Beauty is pain.’” Tabby felt something small and brittle break inside her, she knew she was in over her head, drowning in a riptide in the sea of Jessica. Where the hell did she hear that? Tabby thought. She looked at her fraying bracelets. Why does this hurt so bad?
“What do you think?” Jessica held a small pair of plain silver-colored hoops to one side of her face, a pair of dull studs on the other. Tabby pretended to deliberate between the two. “I like the hoops,” she said flatly. She took the studs from Jessica’s hand and held them to her own face. They looked even darker compared to her red hair, like a stain, a burn mark.
“Hot,” Jessica said, nodding her head vigorously with approval. She took both pairs and walked over to the clerk, a lanky woman who couldn’t have been older than nineteen. She wore concealer that didn’t quite match her skin tone, and only drew more attention to the small blemishes she was trying to hide. Her name tag read Danielle. She directed the two girls over to a tall chair next to a round mirror, instructing them to wait while she fetched the piercing gun.
Something not unlike heat flared in Tabby’s chest. She saw desire in Jessica’s eyes, smudged makeup and all, and for a moment, Tabby let herself believe it was she who Jessica desired. The remark she’d made earlier in the bathroom, “If I was a boy…” reverberated in her head because that was the only way any of these wild emotions made sense. But she didn’t want to be a boy, a weird, smelly boy. She didn’t know what she wanted, save for this strange heat coursing through her body to go away.
Jessica gracefully climbed into the chair, swinging her feet, which didn’t touch the floor, back and forth. She made the piercing process look painless, barely flinched as the gun pushed the earring through the lobe. Once it was finished, she examined herself in the round mirror, her fingertips grazing the newly placed earrings. “Don’t touch them,” the clerk said. Jessica’s hand returned to her lap. “Your turn,” the clerk said, gesturing to Tabby.
Tabby’s hands were sweating as she clambered into the seat. She gave the earrings to the clerk, who unwrapped them with a gloved hand. She watched as the clerk loaded the earring into the piercing gun, then drew two dots on Tabby’s earlobes. “Does that look good?” Tabby swallowed hard and nodded. Already she could hear her mother raging in her head.
“Can you count to three?” Tabby breathed.
“Sure.” The clerk pinched Tabby’s right earlobe with her gloved hand. “Ready?” Tabby said nothing. She held her breath and looked for Jessica, who was watching her disinterestedly. A baby, I must look like such a baby. “One… two… three.” The gun made a frightening clicking sound and the earring’s post was jammed through the soft flesh of Tabby’s lobe. She choked back a gasp as the pain radiated through her whole head. She was sure her hair must’ve been standing straight up. Jessica hid a giggle behind her hand. Tabby’s eyes smarted and began to water.
The clerk repeated the process on Tabby’s other ear, and she bit her lip, seeing stars. She handed Tabby a mirror, and she glanced at herself just long enough to see that there was no gushing blood, no gaping wound. Two brushed silver-colored earrings shone in her reddened ears.
“Thanks,” she said, sliding out of the seat.
The two girls paid for the earrings, and listened as the clerk showed them the after-care kits and explained how to use them. Even as the pain receded, Tabby worried that her head might implode from the pressure of trying not to cry. “C’mon, let’s get going,” Jessica said as soon as her receipt was in hand. They scurried out of Claire’s and once they were out of earshot, Jessica produced two tubes of LipSmackers from her pocket.
“When did you buy those?” Tabby asked.
“I didn’t,” Jessica replied slyly. “Do you want watermelon or bubblegum?”
Wordlessly, Tabby took the bubblegum flavored lip gloss from her best friend’s outstretched hand and thrust it deep into her pocket. Her other hand hovered near her newly pierced ear, as if waiting to catch dripping blood. She paused in the middle of the walkway, breathing deeply, and waiting for Jessica to turn around and notice that they’d been separated. But Jessica kept walking, head held too high in an effort to compensate for her wounded heart and ego, seemingly unaware that she was venturing into increasingly unfamiliar territory, and this left Tabby with no choice but to scamper after her, in an effort to close the yawning gap.
Katherine Orfinger holds a BA in English from Stetson University and is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Rosemont College. Her work has been supported by Craigardan, The Academy of American Poets, and Disquiet International, and has appeared in Touchstone, The Write Launch, Beyond Queer Words, and others. Katherine draws inspiration from her Floridian hometown and Jewish faith. She currently resides in Pennsylvania with her partner.
