Carrie Diaries

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Transformation

Dear Ms. Bradshaw, the letter begins. We are pleased to inform you that a place has become available for the summer writing seminar with National Book Award–winning novelist Viktor Greene. If you wish to attend, please inform us immediately as space is limited.

The New School.

I got in! IgotinIgotinIgotin. Or at least I think I did. Does it specifically say I got in? A place has become available…. At the last minute? Did someone drop out? Am I some kind of backup student? The course is limited…. Aha. So that means if I don’t take the spot someone else will. They’ve already got dozens of people lined up, maybe hundreds —

“Daaaaaaad!”

“What?” he asks, startled.

“I have to — I got this letter — New York...”

“Stop jumping up and down and tell me what this is about.”

I put my hand on my chest to quell my thumping heart. “I got into that writing program. In New York City. And if I don’t say yes right away, they’re going to give my space to someone else.”

“New York,” my father exclaims. “What about Brown?”

“Dad, you don’t understand. See? Right here: summer writing course. June twenty-second to August nineteenth. And Brown doesn’t start till Labor Day. So there’s plenty of time...”

“I don’t know, Carrie.”

“But, Dad...”

“I thought this writing thing was a hobby.”

I look at him, aghast.

“It isn’t. I mean, it’s just something I really want to do.” I can’t express how badly I want it. I don’t want to scare him.

“We’ll think about it, okay?”

“No!” I shout. He’ll think about it and think about it and by the time he’s thought about it, it will be too late. I shove the letter under his nose. “I have to decide now. Otherwise...”

Finally, he sits down and actually reads it.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “New York City in the summer? It could be dangerous.”

“Millions of people live there. And they’re fine.”

“Hmmmm,” he says, thinking. “Does George know about this?”

“About my acceptance? Not yet. But he was the one who encouraged me to send in my stories. George is all for it.”

“Well...”

“Dad, please.”

“If George is going to be there...”

Why should George have anything to do with it? Who cares about George? This is about me, not George. “He’s going to be there all summer. He has an internship with The New York Times.”

“Does he?” my father looks impressed.

“So going to New York for the summer is a very big Brown thing to do.”

My father takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s a long way away...”

“Two hours.”

“It’s another world — I hate to think I’m losing you already.”

“Dad, you’re going to lose me anyway, sooner or later. Why not get it over with sooner? That way you have more time to get used to it.”

My father laughs. Yes — I’m in.

“I guess two months in New York couldn’t hurt,” he says, talking himself into it. “Freshman year at Brown is intense. And I know how difficult this year has been for you.” He rubs his nose, trying to delay the inevitable. “My daughters — they mean so much to me.”

As if on cue, he starts crying.

“You surprise me,” Donna LaDonna says a few days later. “You’re a lot tougher than I thought.”

“Uh-huh.” I squint into the viewfinder. “Turn your head to the right. And try not to look so happy. You’re supposed to be bummed out about your life.”

“I don’t want to look ugly.”

I sigh and lift my head. “Just try not to look like a goddamned cheerleader, okay?”

“Okay,” she reluctantly agrees. She pulls her knee up to her chin and looks at me from beneath her heavily mascaraed lashes.

“Great.” I click the shutter, reminded of Donna LaDonna’s “big secret”: She hates her eyelashes. Without mascara, they’re pale stubby spikes, like the lashes on a dog. It’s Donna’s biggest fear. Someday, some guy will see her without mascara and run screaming from the room.

Sad. I click off several more shots, then shout, “Got it.” I put down the camera as Donna swings her legs off the porch railing. “When are we going to do Marilyn?” she asks as I follow her into the house.

“We can do Marilyn this afternoon. But it means we have to do punk tomorrow.”

She heads up the stairs, leaning her head over the side. “I hate punk. It’s gross.”

“We’re going to do you androgynous,” I say, trying to make the prospect as appealing as possible. “Like David Bowie. We’re going to paint your whole body red.”

“You’re insane.” She shakes her head and storms away to change, but she isn’t angry. I’ve learned that much about her anyway. Having a hissy fit is Donna LaDonna’s way of teasing.

I push aside an open box of cereal and hike myself onto the marble countertop to wait. Donna’s house is a smorgasbord of textures — marble, gold, heavy silk drapes — that somehow don’t go together and create the impression that one has entered a fun house of bad taste. But in the last few days, I’ve gotten used to it.

You can get used to anything, I guess, if you’ve been there enough.

You can even get used to the idea that your ex–best friend is still dating your ex-boyfriend and that they are going to the senior prom together. But it doesn’t mean you have to talk to them. Nor does it mean you have to talk about them. Not after you’ve lived with the fact for four months.

It’s just another thing you have to live through.

I pick up the camera and examine the lens. I gently blow away a speck of dust and replace the cover.

“Donna?” I call out. “Hurry up.”

“I can’t get the zipper up,” she yells back.

I sigh and carefully place the camera on the counter. Am I going to have to see her in her underwear again? Donna, I’ve discovered, is one of those girls who will shed her clothing at the slightest provocation. Actually, that’s wrong. She requires no provocation at all, only a minimum amount of privacy. The first thing she did — the first thing she always does, she informed me, when she brought me to her house after school — is take off her clothes.

“I think the human body is beautiful,” she said, removing her skirt and sweater and tossing them onto the couch.

I tried not to look but couldn’t resist. “Uh-huh. If you have a body like yours.”

“Oh, your body isn’t bad,” she said dismissively. “But you could use some curves.”

“They don’t exactly hand out perfect breasts like candy, you know. I mean, it’s not like you can go into a store and buy them.”

“You’re funny. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tell us that babies came from a store.”

“And boy was she wrong.”

I head upstairs to Donna’s room, wondering once again, how we ever got to be friends. Or friendly, anyway. We’re not really friends. We’re too different for that. I’ll never completely understand her, and she has no interest in understanding me. But other than that, she’s a great girl.

It feels like a million years ago when I walked into that photography class at the library and got paired up with her. I kept going to the class, and so did she, and after the piece came out about the queen bee, her attitude toward me began to thaw. “I still can’t figure out f-stops,” she said one afternoon. “Every time I see the letter ‘f,’ I think of the word, ‘fuck.’ I can’t help it.”

“Fuck stops,” I said. “They’re like truck stops but you only go there to have sex.”

After that, Donna stopped hating me and decided I was this wacky, funny, crazy girl instead. And when we were again assigned to work in pairs, Donna picked me as her partner.

This week, we had to come up with a theme and photograph it. Donna and I chose “transformation.” Actually, I came up with the idea and Donna eagerly agreed. With Donna’s looks, I figured we could dress her up in different outfits and make her into three different women, while I’d take the pictures.

“Donna?” I ask now. Her door is open, but I rap on it anyway, just to be polite. She’s bent forward, struggling with the zipper on the black silk vintage dress I found among my mother’s old clothes. She swings up her head and puts her hands on her hips. “Carrie, for Christ’s sake, you don’t have to knock. Will you get over here and help me?”

She turns around, and for a moment, seeing her in my mother’s dress feels like the past and future rushing together like two rivers emptying into the sea. I feel marooned — a survivor on a raft with no land in sight.

“Carrie?” Donna demands. “Is something wrong?”

I take a deep breath and shake my head. I have a paddle now, I remind myself. It’s time to start rowing into my future.

I step forward and zip up the dress.

“Thanks,” she says.

Downstairs, Donna arranges herself seductively on the couch, while I set up the tripod.

“You are funny, you know?” she says.

“Yeah,” I say with a smile.

“Not ha-ha funny,” she says, leaning back on her elbows. “A different kind of funny. You’re not what you seem.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, I always thought you were pretty much of a wimp. Kind of a nerd. I mean, you’re pretty and all, but you never seemed like you wanted to use it.”

“Maybe I wanted to use my brains instead.”

“No, it’s not that,” she says musingly. “I guess I thought I could run right over you. But then I read that piece in The Nutmeg. I should have been pissed off, but it made me kind of admire you. I thought, ‘This is a girl who can stand up for herself. Who can stand up to me.’ And there aren’t a lot of girls who can do that.”

She lifts her head. “I mean, you are Pinky Weatherton, right?”

I open my mouth, full of arguments and explanations as to why I’m not, but then I close it again. I no longer need to pretend. “Yeah,” I say simply.

“Hmph. You sure had a lot of people fooled. Aren’t you afraid they’re going to find out?”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t need to write for The Nutmeg anymore.” I hesitate and then deliver the news. “I got into this special writing program. I’m going to New York City for the summer.”

“Well.” Donna sounds slightly impressed and also slightly envious. Not to be outdone, she says, “You know I have a cousin who lives in New York?”

“Uh-huh.” I nod. “You’ve told me a million times.”

“She’s this big deal in advertising. And she has a million guys after her. And she’s really pretty.”

“That’s nice.”

“But I mean, really pretty. And successful. Anyway…” She pauses to adjust the dress. “You should meet her.”

“Okay.”

“No, seriously,” she insists. “I’ll give you her number. You should call her up and get together. You’ll like her. She’s even wilder than I am.”

I pull into my driveway and stop, confused.

A red truck is parked in front of the garage, and it takes me a second to realize that the truck is Lali’s, and that she’s come to my house and is waiting for me. Maybe she and Sebastian broke up, I think wildly. Maybe they broke up and she’s come to apologize, which means that maybe, just maybe, I can start seeing Sebastian again and Lali and I can be friends….

I make a face as I park next to the truck. What am I thinking? I could never go out with Sebastian now. He’s ruined, like a favorite sweater with a hideous stain. And my friendship with Lali? Also permanently damaged. So what the hell is she doing here?

I find her sitting on the patio with my sister Missy. Ever polite, Missy is helplessly trying to make small talk, probably as confused as I am about Lali’s presence. “And how’s your mother?” Missy asks awkwardly.

“Fine,” Lali says. “My father bought her a new puppy, so she’s happy.”

“That’s nice,” Missy says, with a glazed smile. She looks away and spots me coming up the walk. “Carrie.” She jumps to her feet. “Thank God you’re here. I have to practice,” she says, making a piano-playing motion with her fingers.

“Nice to see you,” Lali says. She stares at Missy’s back until she’s safely inside. Then she turns to me.

“Well?” I say, crossing my arms.

“How could you?” she demands.

“Huh?” I ask, taken aback. I’m expecting her to beg for forgiveness and instead she’s attacking me?

“How could you?” I ask, astonished.

And then I notice the rolled-up manuscript in her hand. My heart sinks. I know immediately what it is: my story about her and Sebastian. The one I gave to Gayle weeks ago and told her to hold. The one I was planning to tell her not to bother publishing.

“How could you write this?” Lali asks. I take a step toward her, hesitate, and then gingerly take a seat on the other side of the table. She’s playing the tough guy, but her eyes are wide and watery, like she’s about to cry.

“What are you talking about?”

“This!” She bangs the pages onto the table. They scatter apart and she quickly gathers them up. “Don’t even try to lie about it. You know you wrote it.”

“I do?”

She hastily wipes the corner of her eye. “You can’t fool me. There are things in here that only you would know.”

Double crap. Now I actually do feel bad. And guilty.

But then I remind myself that she’s the one who’s responsible for this mess.

I rock back in my chair, sliding my feet onto the table. “How did you get it anyway?”

“Jen P.”

Jen P must have been hanging out with Peter in the art department and she found it in Gayle’s folder and stole it. “Why would Jen P give it to you?”

“I’ve known her a long time,” she says slowly. “Some people are loyal.”

Now she’s being really nasty. She’s known me a long time too. Perhaps she’s chosen to skip that part. “Sounds more like a case of ‘like attracts like.’ You stole Sebastian and she stole Peter.”

“Oh, Carrie.” She sighs. “You were always so dumb about boys. You can’t steal someone’s boyfriend unless he wants to be stolen.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re so mean,” she says, shaking the manuscript. “How could you do this?”

“Because you deserve it?”

“Who are you to say who deserves what? Who do you think you are? God? You always think you’re just a little bit better than everyone else. You always think something better is going to happen to you. Like this” — she indicates my backyard — “like all this isn’t really your life. Like all this is just a stepping-stone to someplace better.”

“Maybe it is,” I counter.

“And maybe it isn’t.”

We stare at each other, shocked into silence by our animosity.

“Well.” I toss my head. “Has Sebastian seen it?”

The question seems to further agitate her. She looks away, pressing her fingers over her eyes. She takes a deep breath as if she’s making a decision, then leans across the table, her face twisting in pain. “No.”

“Why not? I would think it would be another useful brick in your we-hate-Carrie-Bradshaw edifice.”

“He hasn’t seen it and he never will.” Her face hardens. “We broke up.”

“Really?” My voice cracks. “Why?”

“Because I caught him making out with my little sister.”

I gather the pages she’s thrown onto the table and tap them up and down until the corners are neatly aligned. Then I giggle. I try to hold it in, but it’s impossible. I cover my mouth and a snort comes from my nose. I put my head between my knees, but it’s no use. My mouth opens and I emit a whoop of laughter.

“It’s not funny!” She makes a motion to get up but bangs her fist on the table instead. “It is not funny,” she repeats.

“Oh, but it is.” I nod, laughing hysterically. “It’s hilarious.”