Dead Little Mean Girl

I was passing by her room when she said that, the thin door not enough to keep her voice contained. I paused even though I knew I’d regret it, and she continued. “Emma, Dana’s daughter, is boring and fat. This house is ghetto, this town is gross. Dana got her lesbian all over Mom and I want to puke whenever they touch each other. Like, keep your gay to yourself, please.”

It was stupid, awful and bigoted. It was also crap; neither of our mothers was demonstrative, probably because they wanted us to be comfortable and their relationship was still new to us. Quinn was making stuff up to her father. I shook my head and rolled my eyes, about to head back to my room, when she said, “I don’t even dare wear shorts around here. Dana’s constantly checking me out.”

Oh, no. Nope, not today, Satan.

“My mother’s not a pedo,” I snapped, slapping hard on Quinn’s closed door. “And she’s been nothing but nice to you. If you’re going to lie, at least do it where someone can’t call you on your crap.”

“I gotta go, Dad.” Something smacked against the wall and I heard her stomping my way. I stepped back right as she pulled open her door, her eyes narrowed to slits, her hair tied up on top of her head in a sloppy bun. She wore one of those tank tops that showed off a belly button ring and a pair of pink and blue checkered pajama pants.

“Don’t listen to my phone conversations!” she screamed in my face, a spray of spittle striking my cheeks.

I winced and wiped my face, my jaw grinding. “The walls are thin. And don’t pretend me overhearing you calling my mother a pedophile is somehow worse than you saying it in the first place.”

“You’re standing outside of my door, you fat bitch. Don’t even!” Behind her, Versace snarled like he was Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell. I eyed him, he eyed me back and then he charged. Quinn could have stopped him, easily in fact, but she moved aside to let him come at me, the little turd of a dog darting in to attack. Razor-sharp teeth tore into my skin, Versace’s head worrying back and forth when he got a good grip on me. I yelped and punted the little jerk to get him off me.

He hit the wall with a thud and a whine.

Quinn flew out of her room to scoop up her teeth-gnashing baby, checking him for lingering injury. She assessed him for damage, bending all of his limbs to ensure I hadn’t snapped them in half like an ogress.

“Oh my God. Stay the hell away from my dog! Ugh, you are such a bitch!” I stared at her in horror, rivulets of blood streaking down my bare foot to stain the rug below. I was so mad I thought I’d rip her hair out, but hearing the kerfuffle, both of our moms crested the stairs to intervene, Karen stepping between us. She herded Quinn back into her bedroom while my mom took me to the bathroom to bandage my foot.

Mom shut the door to tune out the screeching harpy next door.

“Are you okay?” She sat on the edge of the tub, pulling my foot into her lap. It wasn’t so awful—a few puncture wounds, a scratch. Thankfully Versace wasn’t a German shepherd, though my ankle throbbed something fierce. Chihuahua teeth are no joke.

“Would you be? Her dog bites me and I’m the asshole.”

“Language,” Mom chastised. Right, language. Because that was the important part. But being snide wasn’t going to help my cause, and so I sat on the toilet, looking at the countertop. Quinn had commandeered it from day one, multiple baskets holding her lotions and potions and skin care. There were trays for her makeup, bins for her feminine products and EpiPens, and a cup holding combs and hairbrushes. The upstairs bathroom used to be mine, but her stuff was a flag staked into the ground, claiming that six-by-eleven space for the nation of Quinn.

Can I secede? Please?

Mom dabbed at my cuts with hydrogen peroxide. “She’ll calm down. Karen says Quinn’s struggled with the separation.” Mom glanced up from her doctoring, strain lines framing her eyes and mouth. “I know she’s being difficult, but we can give her a chance to settle in before we call it a wash, right?”

“She just told her father on the phone you were checking her out,” I said. “I’m not sure she deserves a chance.”

That stopped her cold, and she peered up at me from behind her dark brows. Her mouth did a pucker thing, her shoulders tensed and she sighed. “I’ll talk to Karen, but the point remains. She’s having a hard time. Let’s be the bigger people.”

Whatever.

“If the dog bites me again I want it gone,” I added as an afterthought. “I don’t need to be mauled in my own home.”

Mom nodded and reached for the Band-Aids. “That’s fair. Maybe we’ll get him a muzzle.”

Can we get one for Quinn, too?

Nah, I’m not that lucky.

* * *

The damage went deeper than the bite marks. Quinn was such a problem child, I secretly hoped Mom and Karen would break up. I knew it wouldn’t happen—they were far too happy—but my peaceful home was in tatters as a result of their relationship. As a result of Quinn. Mom kept assuring me that Quinn was adapting and to be patient, but I knew what evil lurked behind that bedroom door. A bona fide bitch. And bitches kept right on bitching because that was their basic bitch function.

Quinn threw the curveball our first day of school. I went downstairs in my jeans, sweatshirt and wet hair, expecting attitude, but she was smiling at the breakfast table. Rare. And conversational. Rarer. For the briefest moment, I wondered if maybe Mom was right. Maybe Quinn had purged the douche bag demon festering inside. Or maybe her fairy godmother had granted her a modicum of decency sometime during the night.

“You have good hair, Emma. Like, a nice color and it’s long. You should wear it down,” she said.

I blinked at her over my wobbly pile of scrambled eggs, expecting a second head to sprout from her neck. She smiled. I glanced over at my mother, who was hovering by the sink. Mom and I shared a look. She nodded, encouraging me to say something equally accommodating. It took me a minute to get over my opossum-in-headlights shock, but after a couple of bites I managed, “Thanks. I’ve been growing it out.”

“You can use my flat iron to straighten it before school if you want. Tomorrow or whatever.”

“Oh. Cool.” I had no idea how to use a flat iron, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I apparently didn’t need to, either.

“...I’ll show you later. After school.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

One morning of her being nice didn’t assuage the pain of our introductory weeks, but it did shake my resolve to hate her with the fury of a thousand suns. The whole time we waited for the bus, she chattered about how she missed her old friends and how much a new school terrified her. I mustered some sympathy for her that day. Actually, I maintained that sympathy the first week of school because she was nice to me. In turn, I introduced her to everyone I knew because that’s what you did when you had the new kid on your hip.

I wasn’t so stupid as to think that we were going to be best friends, but she was tolerable enough that I thought maybe we could coexist amicably. I was even encouraged when I found out we were going to be in the same art class. Quinn liked photography and I slanted toward sketching and inking, but art was a common interest.

The first day of art class, she took the seat next to me. The way the classroom was set up, there were four double rows of black tables, each one big enough for three workstations. I sat at the end, Quinn took the middle and, right as the bell rang, Nikki Lambert came running into the room, her hair dyed pink and gray and purple, to take the third seat. She wore a black shirt, a short black skirt, black-and-white striped tights and a pair of black combat boots. She was a punk rock chick with runway style, cool in that outcast “too mature for the rest of us” way. She and I weren’t super close friends, but we’d hung out a bit during sophomore year and over the summer, and I liked her a lot.

“Hi, I’m new. Quinn Littleton,” Quinn said as an opener. “I’m Emma’s—My mom’s dating Emma’s mom, so we’re like sisters living in lesbian land.”

Nikki dropped a camouflage bag with a red anarchy symbol embroidered on the side onto the table. Her eyebrows lifted as she looked between me and Quinn, a weird smile playing around her mouth. Her lip piercing gleamed silver as she wriggled it around with her tongue.

“I’m Nikki.” Nikki waved at me and I noticed that each of her fingernails was painted a different color. I thought it was awesome. So did Quinn. She reached out to take Nikki’s hand, pulling it close to admire it.

“The gray is Opi, yeah?”

Nikki peered at her for a long moment, not snatching her hand away but clearly surprised by Quinn’s friendliness. So was I. I never would have had the guts to be so outgoing with a stranger.

“Yeah. I think so,” Nikki said.

“I love their stuff. I’m such a nail polish whore.”

They shared a look that I couldn’t quite read. Before anything else could be said, our teacher, Mr. Riddell, walked in. He always looked like he smelled something foul—his brow was knitted with worry lines, his nostrils were pinched, his mouth was flat and wide like a guppy’s. Even his smiles looked pained. But the better I got to know him, the more I understood that this wasn’t an indicator of bad disposition. Nature had given Mr. Riddell a resting sad face.

“Welcome, everybody,” he said. “I’m looking forward to a creative year!”

We didn’t do any art that day, just got a tour of the classroom to see where all our supplies were kept. Mr. Riddell talked about his syllabus and asked us what we’d like to focus on for the year. It was the standard first-day stuff. By the time the bell rang, I was eager to get started but that’d have to wait another day. I stooped over to grab my book bag, and when I stood, there was Quinn, a grin on her face.

“Mind if I invite Nikki to lunch?”

“We’re having lunch together?” I blinked stupidly.

Quinn smirked. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we?”

I nodded despite the because you hated me two days ago rattling around inside my brain. “I don’t mind. She’s pretty cool.”