hot oil treatments and other signs from god

“Do you believe in signs?”

Shivers danced up my spine and my breath caught in my chest. Since the death of the Accutane dream, I had spent the rest of eighth grade squirreled away in the library. In the dusty old books, words whispered secrets to me, and I was bursting to share them with someone. I saw signs in books by Hemingway and poems by Thoreau. I didn’t understand most of what I read, but I knew it was important. I even wrote stories inspired by Hemingway. My characters were dark and tortured, but nothing much ever happened. Could Alyssa be the one to share my stories and signs with?

“Yes,” I croaked, trying to control my voice. “I believe in signs.”

Alyssa sat up on her bed and scooted closer to me. I leaned in, anxious to compare the signs we both saw all around us.

“Look,” she whispered, opening up the magazine she was holding and tapping her purple-painted finger on the page.

I took the magazine in both hands, wanting to fully appreciate the importance of the sign Alyssa was sharing with me. I searched the page for something significant, but came up empty. All I saw was an ad for a hot oil treatment. Two beefy football players had a pretty cheerleader hoisted on their shoulders. They looked up at her adoringly as she ignored them, beaming at the camera while running her fingers through her thick head of blond hair. The ad read: “Has your hair had a lift lately?”

“I don’t get it,” I confessed.

“Don’t you ever just see something again and again and then finally say to yourself, wow, this must be a sign. I should definitely do something about this.”

“I guess,” I shrugged, watching Alyssa buzz around the room as she brushed her wavy blond hair, spritzed perfume on her neck and applied lip-gloss in her vanity mirror.

“It’s settled. I’m going to do it.” Alyssa asserted as she grabbed her purse. “Come on, we’re going to the store.”

“What for?” I asked, starting to feel really dense.

“Look. I’ve seen this ad everywhere lately. On television, on the side of a bus, and now in this magazine. What does that tell you?”

“I don’t know. This company spends a lot on advertising?”

“No! It means my hair needs a lift. We have to go buy that hot oil treatment right now. Don’t you see? It’s a sign!”

I took this as a sign that Alyssa was crazy. She already had perfect Prell hair, which she brushed dutifully every night before encasing each curl in a fat roller. Her heart-shaped face was delicately framed by soft, bouncy curls. The girl was a walking shampoo commercial, and now she wanted to improve upon her perfection. This I had to see. I avoided the mirror and followed Alyssa out the door.

Walking the streets with Alyssa, I felt prettier and uglier all at the same time. I imagined that people looked at me differently when I was with her. Sure, I had the skin of a swamp toad, but there must be something special about me if a girl as pretty and popular as Alyssa had picked me to be her friend. On the other hand, I often felt like a warty wicked witch dwarfed by Cinderella at the ball.

Everything about Alyssa was perfect – even her name. All of the prettiest girls had names like pastries: Alyssa, Tiffany, Amber. The letters blended together, producing a gooey sweetness that tickled the tongue. My name sounded like an industrial strength cleaning product. Noreen. Gets your floor shining every time. Eats the grime off your tiles. Cleans the gunk out of your drain. What were my parents thinking?

Freckles peppered the bridge of Alyssa’s nose like cinnamon flakes, and her coffee brown eyes popped against the milky white of her skin. Trying to improve her appearance would be like putting one extra light on the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. What was the point?

“I just read this really cool article in the magazine,” Alyssa said as we headed towards the store.

“About what?”

“Identifying your best and worst features.”

“Great,” I enthused.

“Let’s do it!” she demanded, bouncing along beside me.

I would rather store pieces of burning coal in my mouth, but I decided to play along anyway.

“You go first.”

“Okay,” Alyssa agreed, needing little prompting. “My best feature…. God, I don’t know. Which one should I choose? I really like the shape of my face. But then again, Roger once said I had kissable lips. They do pucker nicely. My eyebrows have a natural arch. My skin is super soft. I really don’t know. Oh wait! My nose. Definitely my nose. Everyone says I have a button nose. That’s cute, right?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s cute.” How could I not agree? The girl oozed cute. The snot that shot out of her nose during a sneeze was probably cute, with its own bouncy blonde hair and freckles.

“So what do you think? Is my nose my best feature?”

“Sure. I’d go with the nose.” I assured her as she slid her finger down the bridge of her best feature.

“Okay, cool. Now you.”

“Now me, what?”

“What’s your best feature?” Alyssa asked, studying my profile as I squirmed uncomfortably under her gaze.

“I don’t have one.”

“Of course you do. Everyone has at least one. Look at me. I have a bunch.”

“Lucky you,” I responded with an involuntary eye roll.

“Fine, party pooper. If you won’t pick, I will.”

Alyssa scrutinized the deep craters and red ridges of my skin as if I were a topographical map. I fidgeted during the inspection, watching her button nose scrunch up like a bunny’s. She was right – her cute button nose was her best feature.

“Hmm. I can’t decide,” Alyssa said softly as she continued her quest for my best feature.

“Just forget it, okay? I don’t have a best feature.” I almost shouted as I pulled away from her.

“You do too, dummy. It’s just a close call between your eyes and your smile.”

“Really?” A wide smile invaded my face, but then faded as I wondered if Alyssa was making fun of me. Could I possibly have two whole good features? And both of them displayed prominently on my face?

“Sure. See – when you smile your lips look really full and your whole face lights up.”

“It does?”

“Totally. But your eyes…. First of all, your lashes are super long and thick. You don’t even need mascara! I’m so jealous. My lashes are short and thin. Totally lifeless. I practically spend a fortune of mascara.”

“Bummer.” I tried to empathize, but I was too ecstatic over my luxuriously long lashes that made Alyssa feel bad about her own. Who knew?

“Plus, your eyes are huge and full of different colors. Like today, they’re really green. But yesterday, when you wore your blue top, they were gray. That’s so cool!”

“Wow. Thanks!”

“But, you do have a killer smile.”

“If you say so.”

I let my stride match Alyssa’s as I batted my long-lashed eyes at strangers passing by.

“Okay. On to the bad news.” Alyssa frowned.

“What’s that?” I asked, my killer smile still stuck to my face.

“What’s your worst feature?”

“My face,” I responded reflexively. I wished I could swallow the words the second they came out, but they were already out in the atmosphere like a big, belching burp.

Alyssa studied me as she walked by my side. I wondered, would now be the time to finally reveal what it felt like to be stuck living behind my skin? After all, Alyssa had been the first person to stare straight into my face and not projectile vomit. Would she understand what that meant to me?

“Yeah, I guess your face is pretty bad,” she agreed, not unkindly.

The little bit of confidence that her previous words had inspired crumbled like stale crackers. Alyssa didn’t notice, though. Her words were waiting to dive off her tongue and out into the open.

“Okay, on to me. My worst feature, by far, is my feet,” she confessed, biting her bottom lip and stomping her feet on the ground as she walked.

“Your feet?”

“Yeah. Well, actually, my foot. The right one. On the bottom.”

“The bottom of your right foot is your worst feature?” I asked, incredulous.

“Totally. It’s so gross. I have the worst scar from my surgery. Remember?

Of course I remembered. It was how Alyssa and I had become friends.

I had always known Alyssa, though we had never really been friends. We went to the same grammar school and lived a few blocks from each other. Alyssa was a year ahead of me, but she wasn’t snotty like most of the older girls. She always said hi and was nice to everyone.
As I was walking home from one of the last days of eighth grade, I saw Alyssa limp off the bus with crutches and a heavy book bag. She was just finishing her freshman year of the Catholic girls’ academy I would attend the next year. My own book bag was light with a lack of homework, so I walked over to Alyssa and offered to carry her book bag home.

“Seriously? That would be awesome. Thanks!”

“So what happened?” I asked, shouldering her burden of a bag.

“It’s too gross to talk about. You couldn’t handle it,” Alyssa assured me in a throaty voice.

“Do you have a cold or something? You sound really hoarse.”

“No. It’s from the surgery.”

“If you had surgery on your throat, then why do you need crutches?” I asked, unable to make the connection.

“Are you sure you want to hear this?” Alyssa whispered in her throaty new voice.

“Absolutely!”

“It was a planter’s wart.”

“In your throat?” I asked, covering my neck protectively with my free hand.

“Eww, no! Gross! On the bottom of my foot.”

“Yuck!” I agreed. “Exactly what is a planter’s wart?”

“I don’t know, exactly. It’s this big painful thing that grows out of your skin, and it hurts so bad you can’t even put a sock on. It’s really gnarly, actually.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It is. Wow, you really get me!”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it sounds super painful.”

“You have no idea!”

“So, how did you lose your voice?” I asked.

“The only way to get rid of the wart is to have surgery and cut it all out. The doctor didn’t give me enough stuff to numb me or something. My foot was open and he was scraping the thing out, when all of a sudden, ahhh! Oh my God! It hurts! It really hurts! Oh my God get that thing outta me!” Alyssa squealed and screamed and dug her nails into my arm, her face flush with pain.

“Oh my God! What can I do? Should I call for help?” I panicked, supporting her arm and looking up and down the deserted block for someone to call 911 before she fainted dead away.

“No!” I’m totally fine now, ding-dong. That’s what happened during surgery.” Alyssa explained calmly as she continued to limp with her crutches. I exhaled in relief, marveling at her acting ability while blushing at my own stupidity.

“Oh,” I responded dumbly.

“I screamed so loud and so long because of the pain, my voice changed just like that. The doctor says it’s probably permanent.” Alyssa said with a shrug.

“Wow. That sucks.”

“Not really,” she smirked.

“What do you mean?”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

“Promise you’ll never tell anyone, and I’ll be your friend forever.”

“Of course!” I promised, thinking it was an easy trade-off to gain a pretty and popular friend just by keeping a secret.

“I like my voice like this. It’s sexy, don’t you think?”

“Um, yeah. I guess.” I lied. I had no idea what sexy was. I only knew that I wasn’t it.

“You know what else? The boys like it, too. They try to get me to say words like ‘hard’ and ‘stiff’, because they like the way it sounds with my sexy new voice.”

“Really?” Were boys that easy? Could a silly voice get them that excited? I hoped I would get a cold really soon so I could try it out myself.

“Sure. They love it. So I play dumb and say all sorts of words, just to torture them some more.”

“What other words do you say?”

“Lots of things: tight, wet, nipple.”

“Nipple? How do you work the word ‘nipple’ into a conversation with boys?” I asked suspiciously.

“Easy. I say something about cleaning a baby bottle or something. Only I say it really slow and low. Like this – it’s really hard to clean the nipple of a baby bottle. It gets so stiff. See?

“And that does it? Just like that?”

“You should see the reactions! They melt like butter. Boys are totally easy.”

I peered at Alyssa with a new level of respect, wondering about all of the other boy things she could teach me.

“I got this,” a rough voice barked as Alyssa’s book bag was lifted off of my shoulder. It was Tony, a jock that played on Alyssa’s father’s football team.

“Oh, okay,” I said as he cozied up to Alyssa.

“How’s your foot?” Tony asked in a voice very different than the one he had used to address me.

I watched, mesmerized, as Alyssa’s limp worsened and her big brown eyes blinked out a secret message to Tony.

“It really hurts, but I’ll be okay. Eventually.” Alyssa’s voice suddenly became deeper and lower, causing Tony to lean in even closer to catch each syllable. This was exactly the kind of maneuver that should be taught in school. It seemed much more useful than equations.

“See ya later,” I waved at Alyssa, feeling like a fly buzzing around a birthday cake.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Alyssa called after me as I walked away.

“Home, I guess.”

“No way. You’re coming home with me.”

“Why? Do you need help or something?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah. Let her go home. I can help you.” Tony offered without even looking at me.

“No. I want her to come over. Please, Nor?” Alyssa batted her eyes at me, and I found it just as difficult as the boys to say no to her.

“Okay,” I smiled, walking back towards Alyssa and Tony.

“Thanks, Tony. See you later!” Alyssa swung her hair, batted her eyes and flashed her smile effortlessly, as I resumed possession of Alyssa’s book bag. We walked up Alyssa’s steps while Tony pouted after us.

Alyssa and I had spent nearly every day together since that first day two months ago. We usually hung out in her room, where we sang along to her karaoke machine, made crank phone calls and experimented with make-up. Alyssa was very sensitive about my skin. She never said I had pimples or zits. She called them “blemishes”.

“Every woman has blemishes. You just have to know how to deal with them,” Alyssa instructed as she dabbed cover-up on my most stubborn “blemishes”. I liked that she referred to us as women, even though I knew for a fact that she still stuffed her bra with shoulder pads.

As Alyssa helped transform me into a woman with the help of some blush and eyeliner, she advised me on what high school would be like.

“Don’t let Mr. Romo get you alone. He’s a total perv. But unbutton your blouse and show some cleavage in his class. You’ll get an A without ever turning in a paper.”

“Is that allowed?” I asked.

“Duh! Of course not. But everybody does it. And watch Miss Avery in Algebra. She’s always drinking Diet Pepsi. But it’s a well-known fact that she mixes rum in it every morning.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! My parents were going to pay good money, money that they didn’t have, to send me to a school full of drunks and pervs. If the teachers were that messed up, what would the students be like?

Alyssa had one very big flaw – Roger, known privately to me as “Bubble Butt”. Bubble Butt was the boy she was in love with. He had a space between his front teeth wide enough to stick a match into, and his butt bubbled out behind him. Bubble Butt never called me by name. No matter who I was with or where I was, he would shout, “What’s up, crater face?” I ignored him, of course, but I daydreamed of siccing a pack of rabid dogs on him, then watching them shred his bubble butt to ribbons.

Alyssa made me spend countless hours walking around Bubble Butt’s block in the hopes that he would come out and talk to her. I held my breath each time we passed his house, praying he wouldn’t show his face. I tried to warn Alyssa that Bubble Butt was a waste of lip-gloss, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the name he called me. I was sure she would detour around his block if she knew how mean he was to me.

“He’s really nice, Nor,” she assured me. “He’s just shy.”

“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes as Alyssa smirked and fluttered her mascara-laden lashes.

As Alyssa and I walked back into her house with the hot oil treatment, we tripped on a mountain of muddy cleats.

“Oh my God!” Alyssa squealed, shoving the hot oil treatment into my hands.

“What?”

“It’s the football team. They’re here!”

“What’s the big deal? They’re always here.”

Alyssa’s father regularly invited the team over for cookouts and team meetings. Alyssa usually loved to bask in their testosterone, but she was panic-stricken.

“Hide the hot oil treatment. Pronto!”

“Why?”

“You should never let a boy know your beauty secrets. It adds to the mystery.” Alyssa instructed as she shook out her hair and plumped her lips.

I didn’t know what mystery Alyssa was referring to, but I deferred to her expertise and hid the bag behind my back.

“Smell me,” she demanded, shoving her armpit uncomfortably close to my nose.

“Yeah, you’re good.” I assured her.

“Breath?” Alyssa blew a hot breath into my face.

“Peppermint,” I nodded my approval.

“Good. Let’s go.” I followed Alyssa into the sweat-soaked den, fretting over the state of my own pits and breath.

The boys were a heaped mass of lanky limbs on the couch, shoving fistfuls of popcorn into their mouths as they watched an old football game on TV. I hung back behind Alyssa and watched her survey the group. Her eyes had the confidence of a fisherman shooting fish in a barrel.

“Hey, Alyssa!”

“We didn’t know you were here.”

“Missed you at practice.”

“I always play better when I know you’re watching.”

“Did you see the last game? That pass was for you.”

“Nah, she didn’t see it. She was too busy cheering for me.”

“You wish, lame ass.”

Alyssa glided into their midst as the boys tripped over themselves to make room for her on the couch. She was only a few feet away from me, but her voice had taken on that breathy whisper and I couldn’t make out a single syllable.

I lurked in the doorway, watching the scene unfold like a sitcom. I might as well have been home on my couch in front of the television. None of the boys acknowledged my existence, and Alyssa seemed to have forgotten me as well. I wondered if boys, or even a boy, would ever orbit around me in the same way.

Alyssa was comfortably encased in boy bubble wrap, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the tickling ensued. The boys loved to tickle Alyssa, producing that squeal that apparently made their neck hairs, and other boy bits, stand at attention.

Confident that my absence would go unnoticed, I made my escape to Alyssa’s bedroom. I tucked the hot oil treatment safely under a teddy bear on her bed, and then sat at her vanity mirror and stared at myself.

Scrunching up my face, I tried to replicate Alyssa’s cute little bunny button of a nose. I succeeded in flaring my nostrils, and looking as though I were smelling a dirty diaper. Next, I attempted to swing my hair seductively from side to side. Had anyone been watching from the window, they would have assumed I was fighting off a swarm of bees. Finally, I forced an open-mouthed laugh and squealed Alyssa’s throaty scream. Sadly, I sounded like a dying dolphin.

Resigned to the fact that I was as un-Alyssa as was humanly possible, I spritzed some of her perfume on and headed out the door. I resolved to practice my hair swing the whole way home.

“Well?” Alyssa waited expectantly in front of her house. Her shoulders were tense and she clapped her hands excitedly.

“Well, what?”

“What do you think?”

This was one of Alyssa’s favorite games. She would change something slight – a different shade of pink lip-gloss, beige eye shadow instead of brown – and she would expect me to notice.

“Of what?”

“I know! It’s subtle, right? But you can really see a difference, can’t you?”

“New mascara?” I ventured.

“No!”

“Hair cut?”

“Close.”

“I give up.”

“I did it! Can’t you tell?”

I gasped for air, wondering whom on the football team “it” had been with.

“You had sex?”

“Oh my God no! Are you crazy? It’s my hair, dummy! I did the hot oil treatment.”

“Oh! Okay.”

“Okay? That’s all you have to say? Doesn’t it look bouncier and shinier? I feel like a new me. You’re next!”

“Whatever,” I shrugged, knowing I would never let Alyssa anywhere near my hair after the home perm disaster. Clumps of my hair were still falling out.

“But not now,” Alyssa whispered, grabbing me by the shoulders and bringing me close to her face.

“It’s Roger.”

An audible groan of disgust escaped my lips.

“I scouted out his block, and he’s outside right now playing basketball in his driveway. I just couldn’t go up to him alone. You have to go with me or I’ll die!”

“I don’t know, Alyssa. That guy’s a real jerk. Can’t you go alone?”

“You’re supposed to be my friend and support me. Please? I promise we won’t stay long. We’ll just walk by and see if he says hi first. If not, we’ll just walk really quick and pretend we’re late for something.”

“Late for what?”

“I don’t know. Your doctor’s appointment.”

“Why does it have to be my doctor’s appointment? He’s your crush. Let it be your doctor’s appointment.” I pouted.

“No! I don’t want him to think I have something contagious!”

“Fine. Babysitting then.”

“Okay. If he doesn’t say hi, then I’ll say, ‘Hurry up. We’re late for babysitting.’ How’s that?”

“Yeah, that’s good.”

“Cool. Let’s go.”

Alyssa subjected me to another inspection of her odors, and we were on our way.

I heard the basketball bouncing against the pavement before I saw Bubble Butt on the sidewalk.

“Oh my God there he is!” Alyssa squeezed my arm.

“Great.”

“Quick! Act like I said something funny. Start laughing.”

“Say something funny and I’ll laugh.” I challenged.

“I can’t think of anything right now. Just laugh. And laugh loud so he looks up.”

I tried my best to fake a loud laugh but it came out sounding like a snort. The snort tickled my throat and produced a choking fit. As I gasped and wheezed for air while choking on my own saliva, Bubble Butt looked up and stopped bouncing his ball.

“Okay. You can stop now,” Alyssa demanded through her clenched teeth.

“Can’t. I’m…choking,” I gasped.

“Enough!” Alyssa whispered, pounding me roughly on the back. I swallowed a big gulp of air and managed to quiet my hacking cough just as we approached Bubble Butt.

“Hey,” he nodded at Alyssa, spinning the basketball on top of one finger.

“Oh, hi Roger. I didn’t know you lived on this block,” Alyssa lied in her lowered voice.

“Yep. All my life. What are you up to?”

“Nothing much. Just going for a walk. It’s so hot out here.”

“You should come swim in my pool some time,” Bubble Butt offered, keeping his eyes on the spinning basketball.

“Sure. That would be cool. I just got a new bathing suit. It’s a bikini.”

“Bet you look good in it, too,” Bubble Butt finally stopped spinning the ball and looked Alyssa up and down. I looked up at the trees, hoping for a bird to swoop down and carry me away. A long sigh of aggravation escaped my lips and filled the silence.

Bubble Butt looked over at me for the first time. His lips turned back like a dog about to bite.

“What’s up, crater face?” he snarled.

I looked at Alyssa, waiting for her to react. I could almost hear the echo of the slap I was sure she would deliver across Bubble Butt’s face in my defense. Then she would grab me by the hand and we would stalk off together angrily. She would agree that Bubble Butt was a total jerk, and I would help her pick her new crush out of the batch of boys vying to fill the position.

But there was nothing but silence. I waited and Bubble Butt waited, until finally, Alyssa’s perfect lips parted. Her throaty laugh landed like darts in my chest. She slapped at Bubble Butt’s arm playfully, letting her hand linger on his bicep.

“Oh, Roger! You’re so bad,” she giggled. Bubble Butt laughed along with her, and once again it was like I wasn’t even there.

“So, are you going to the game this weekend?” Alyssa asked, batting her stubby little lashes at Bubble Butt.

I stared hard at Alyssa until my eyes no longer focused on any one feature. Just like that, she didn’t seem pretty to me anymore. All I saw was a glob of lip-gloss and blush and liner making one big mess. It was too much work to be Alyssa – hair rollers and hot oil treatments, fake laughs and batting eyelashes. I had been looking for signs all around me. This sign came in loud and clear. Alyssa was not my friend.

The anger sitting in my chest lifted and I felt lighter. It was time to go.

“Later, Bubble Butt,” I waved as I walked away from them.

“ I do not have a bubble butt!” Alyssa screamed after me, her voice shrill and sharp like a whiny child’s.

I turned around and saw Alyssa inspecting her ass, frown lines etched deep into her usually smooth forehead.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I smiled, shooting my finger in Bubble Butt’s direction before turning back to walk down the block.

My killer smile blossomed wide as Alyssa's voice reverted to its throaty whisper. I imagined her muttering apologies to Bubble Butt, blaming my behavior on my menstrual cycle. She might have called after me a few times; I couldn't be sure. Not that it mattered.

I wasn't listening anymore.