Shirley Jackson used to be my best friend but even then I didn’t really like her because she was better than me at everything. She was prettier, for one thing, and even though neither of us wanted a boyfriend she could have gone steady with any boy in ninth grade, maybe even tenth. Also, her clothes were nicer and her mother let her wear false eyelashes and over-the-knee boots. My mother wouldn’t even let me get my tragus pierced, not until I was at least sixteen. 

Shirley got good grades, so Mother said we could be friends, probably because she hoped those grades would rub off on me. They didn’t. Shirley didn’t have to study or even pay attention while I could study eighteen hours a day and still not get A’s in algebra. 

Sometimes Shirley and I would ride the metro downtown and play a game she called Double Dutch Dare. If I told Mother I was going to the library and Shirley and me were studying for a test, she’d let me go, and that’s what we were doing the last time Shirley and I hung out, Going to the library. We rode the bus to Huntington metro and Shirley said it was her turn to go first and we stood under a red maple while she dug a pair of dark sunglasses and an invisible-dog leash from her knapsack. Last summer she’d stolen these at the boardwalk and now she brought them out whenever she wanted to pretend she was blind. I thought it was stupid—there’s no such thing as an invisible seeing-eye dog—but Shirley thought it was hilarious. 

We got on the metro and Shirley moved the leash so it looked like the dog was sitting beside her. After a while, the dog got bored and started sniffing other peoples’ shoes, and they laughed, and Shirley kept a straight face, like she really was blind. I was sitting beside her and I could see that behind her sunglasses her eyes weren’t even closed. When we transferred to the Orange line, she cupped my elbow with one hand and led the dog with the other. This was how real blind people walked around, she said. 

We got off the metro for good at Eastern Market, and Shirley stuffed the glasses and leash back into her knapsack. It was my turn, so I led us to the farmers market and we walked through tables stacked with miniature pumpkins and half-gallon jugs of cider. I took us to the street corner and composed myself, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be poor and lost and far from home. When a woman with puffy brown hair pushed an old-fashion baby carriage around the corner, I ran to her, pretending I was relieved to see her because I had lost my purse and metro card and could I please have $5 to get home. She didn’t believe me, I could tell, but she didn’t trust herself not to believe me either, so she gave me some money from her diaper bag and kept pushing the baby carriage.

For Shirley’s next turn, we ducked into an alley that took us to a neighborhood I didn’t recognize. It looked like something from my great-grandmother’s photo album, with little brick houses and concrete porches. Shirley said she wanted to do a house and she pointed to a house hidden behind a clump of tall bushes set back from the street. In the summer the house was probably invisible because even now you could tell it had been overgrown and green with vines and ivy covering everything. 

When we got to the front porch, Shirley grabbed my arm. “Don’t say anything,” she said, and she knocked on the door.

After a couple of minutes I was ready to leave. The house was giving me the creeps. “No one’s here,” I said. “Let’s go to Starbucks. This is boring.”

As soon as I said this I knew I’d made a mistake. Shirley put her hand on her hip and cocked her eyebrows. She looked quickly over her shoulder and shook the doorknob. It wasn’t locked and in no more than five seconds Shirley and I were standing in the living room.

I’d never been in a house where the front door opened directly into the living room. The wall across from us was mostly taken up with a large green couch with old-fashion lace doilies on either end. Above the couch hung a framed mirror so it looked like a picture of us—of Shirley and me, Shirley in her leather coat, and me with my pale yellow hair—decorated the room. One of those cut-glass jars sat on the coffee table, filled with wrapped candies.

“Have a peppermint.” Shirley laughed and tossed me a candy.

I followed Shirley like this through each room and we pretended to be just home after a long day at work. “What will I make my husband for dinner,” Shirley said in the kitchen as she opened the refrigerator. In the dining room she found where the silver was kept and she ran her finger down the backs of the knives. In the bedroom she opened the bottom drawer of a woman’s dresser and she ruffled through the clothes in the closet. “Such ugly blouses,” she said.

By this time I had moved to the second bedroom. The blinds were drawn and it was dark but I could see that the room was much smaller than any other room in the house, with barely enough space for a single bed and a chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. It was clean, though, and the bed was made up tight with a creamy white bedspread. What caught my eye, though, was something arranged on the bed. Tiny bouquets? Dried herbs tied with ribbons? I found the light switch near the door but even with the light on it took me a while to understand what I was looking at. There, laid out carefully on the bed, was an arrangement of thick locks of hair, each tied with a red ribbon. Glossy brown hair.  Silver hair. Blonde. Curly. Auburn. Hair as black as midnight. All lined up in straight rows across the bedspread.

“How absolutely ghastly!” Shirley said from the door, delighted. “We’re leaving,” I said. “It’s my turn. We’re going to Starbucks.”

This made Shirley angry, I could tell, but she followed me out the house and down the street. By the time we got on a bus it was almost 2:30. Shirley pushed ahead of me and she sat in the back and I sat down in the middle. The seat next to mine was empty but I didn’t think anything about that, not until a boy with an old brown coat climbed across me and sat in the window seat. He was older than us, maybe 16 or 17, and his hair stuck up in little tufts all around his head.

When I turned around to look at Shirley I could tell she had wanted the boy to sit by her and not me, but she would never let on to this. Instead, she rolled her eyes and fanned her hand in front of her face, like she was getting rid of a bad smell. Then she mouthed the word “ghastly” and laughed. I could tell it was the word “ghastly” because she exaggerated the word, like she was talking to someone who read lips.

I rolled my eyes and turned to the front of the car, but I was nervous because I knew it was my turn and I didn’t want to talk to this boy. I wouldn’t be very good at it, not like Shirley. 

The bus lurched forward but the boy next to me had his legs in front of him, stretched out long, and he didn’t pitch in his seat like I did. He was wearing brown corduroy pants worn in the knees and a pair of heavy work boots. He sat with his legs stretched in front of him, his hands locked together in his lap. I stared straight ahead and in a little bit, I started to get an idea. I shifted a bit in my seat, like I was losing my balance, and I reached out to steady myself by putting my hand against his shoulder. It was wool and felt dusty, and as soon as I touched it, I felt sick to my stomach. But Shirley was watching so I kept going.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the boy in the coat. “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling right. Would you mind if I changed seats with you? It might help me if I changed seats. Would that be alright?”

The boy looked at me as if he had just noticed I was sitting next to him. His eyes went to the top of my head and then he looked me straight in the eyes. His eyes were brown and they had these gold flecks in them. He examined my grey skirt and black leggings and he didn’t even care that I could see him looking at me, he was rude like that.

Finally, without saying anything, he hitched his weight forward, so he could stand. I looked over my shoulder, to see if Shirley was watching. Her eyebrows were arched and I could tell she was waiting for me to do something. The funny thing was that by now I really was feeling sick. The people on the bus were crushing in on me from all sides. I was sweating and all I wanted to do was get off the bus.

The boy with brown coat stood up and held on to a strap. The bus jostled us back and forth and I knew I had to stand but I didn’t know if I could do that, if I could stand.

“What’s the matter?” the boy said, standing over me, holding on to the strap.

I opened  my knapsack and dabbed at my forehead with a handkerchief, the one with the blue embroidery in the corner that had belonged to my great-grandmother. Behind me I could see Shirley laughing. She thought this was part of the game but I really was afraid I was going to throw up and I put my great-grandmother’s handkerchief to my mouth.

“Christ,” the boy said. “You’re not going to puke, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.” I pushed myself over to where he had been sitting and rested my head against the window. The glass felt cool against my forehead and I closed my eyes but even with my eyes closed I could tell the boy was still standing. All I wanted to do was get off the bus and go into a Starbucks and have a caramel hot chocolate.

The bus lurched to a stop and I kept my eyes closed tight. Something pulled hard at my head, like maybe I’d caught my hair between the window and the seat, and when I opened my eyes the boy in the brown coat had a hank of yellow hair in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. He was pushing his way to the front of the bus, holding my hair in front of him like a wilted bouquet. “Hey, fella!” a man in a black cap called out, and the old woman sitting next to him let out a little scream.

I raised my hand to my head and started to cry. The old man and old woman put their arms around me, looking at where the boy had cut my hair. They smelled like peppermint toothpaste and mothballs. 

By now, Shirley was making her way through the crowd. “Don’t pay any attention to her,” she called out, her face hard with anger. “I know this girl, I know that boy.”
She grabbed my arm and she slapped my face hard. 

“They’re just showing off.”

Laura Huey Chamberlain lives, works, and writes in Alexandria, Virginia. Her fiction has appeared in journals such as Hobart, jmww, MoonPark Review, and Cease, Cows, and she was a finalist for the 2019 Best Microfiction. Follow her on Twitter at @LauraHChamb.