Read Online Sister Golden Hair: A Novel by Darcey Steinke - Free Book Online Page B

wanted to present when I stepped on the bus. My chin had to have a delicate look and my lips had to be relaxed and slightly parted. I wanted to look mysterious like a Victorian heroine, with pale cheeks and sunken, glittering eyes. In Philadelphia I’d blown the first day of sixth grade by acting friendly and wearing a shirt I’dtried to sew myself out of calico fabric. I swore I would never let that happen again. I had a new persona I’d been planning to introduce the first day of school: a girl wise beyond her years who was not at all nerdy or spastic or prone to crying jags. When people asked me where I was from I was going to say Northampton or Old Lyme, as if my life were resplendent with rope swings and sleeping porches. But now that I was out on the bus stop I realized nobody really cared.
    Sheila was the only one I wanted to meet. I’d watched her from our deck, lying out with her girlfriends on towels in her small backyard. She was fully developed, as grown-ups liked to say, and dressed like Julie from The Mod Squad . She wore a choker around her neck, a floral blouse with lace at the wide cuffs, and rose-colored corduroys.
    I was convinced there was a direct connection between breast development and the way girls lost interest in playing jacks and singing along to John Denver songs. In the sixth grade, my friend Kelley had been happy to jump rope with me until her chest began to swell and the creases around her nose got greasy. After that she drifted to the back fence where the boys hung out. I had noticed that once a girl went over she was impossible to get back unless you yourself went over too. Then you could be friends again and talk about pop idols and blue mascara.
    Besides Sheila and Dwayne—a sullen older boy in tight bell-bottoms and a Skynyrd T-shirt—the onlyother kid at the bus stop was Jill Bamburg. She lived in the duplex next to ours. She looked exhausted, with gray pouches under her eyes. During her mom’s parties, I’d watched Jill and her little sister, Beth, in white nightgowns, and her older brother, Ronnie, use homemade wands to make bubbles the size of small dogs. After the liquid soap ran out, they dropped objects from their second-story window and timed how long it took them to fall.
    I moved closer to Sheila. She smelled like musk oil and Eve shampoo. She jumped away as if she might catch geekiness from me, so I sunk back to where Jill stood. I spoke to her, hoping, idiotically, that it might make Sheila jealous.
    “What a drag school’s starting,” I said.
    Jill looked at me with her flat brown eyes.
    “I guess so,” she said, looking past me up the road to see if the bus was coming.
    Finally the bus pulled up and the double doors swung out with a loud metal click. I got on last and saw Sheila sitting next to a red-haired girl wearing a Tweety Bird T-shirt. Dwayne sat with the boys in the back who were singing a Doobie Brothers’ song. Junior high went from sixth to ninth grade, but Dwayne looked much older; he must have flunked and been held back. Jill sat with a friend in the middle of the bus. Only one girl was alone. She sat by the window, her white-blonde hair long in the front to hide a port-wine birthmark that stained her cheek. She looked upat me hopefully but I decided that sitting beside her was too big a risk.
    I took an empty seat near the front instead. I knew that proximity to the driver offered a certain amount of protection. This period of grace lasted only for the first few days, though. After that, being close to the driver became a liability.

    In school Sheila moved among a flock of shiny-haired girls in colored corduroys, cheesecloth shirts, and Earth shoes. They were like jewels dropped in the muddy hallway waters, with their bright fingernails, glittering eye shadow, and peacock-feather earrings. At lunch they sat together and talked about lip gloss flavors and whether patchouli oil smelled better then musk. They looked so alike it was hard to tell one