“Louise, darling, you look so well today,” Mamie Ross crowed as she swept up to my mother and me.
She pinched my chin to give me two smacking kisses on each cheek. I knew she left red lipstick on my skin but before I could wipe it off myself, she licked her thumb and rubbed it against the marks with a little giggle.
The woman wasn’t a day under fifty-five. She should not have been giggling.
A year ago, having such a spiteful thought would have made me sick to the pit of my stomach. Now, I was always sick to my stomach so I didn’t have as hard a time with the evil thinking.
“She does, doesn’t she?” Mum demurred, smoothing a hand down my hair. “A little too brown though, maybe.”
There was no maybe about it. She had almost blown a gasket when I’d come in from sun tanning the other day. Peasant brown, she’d called me. I had inherited her platinum hair but I had my dad’s golden skin. She didn’t mind when his tanned, which it did because he loved to golf and he loved to fish. She minded with me because I was supposed to be a little lady.
What my skin tone had to do with that, I’d never know except that her family had come from England and parts of British Columbia were still behind the Tweed Curtain.
“No, she looks lovely. And so thin! Have you been dieting?” Mamie continued.
Everyone in Entrance knew I had cancer. When my parents found out, they had put out an announcement in both the Entrance Herald and the parish newsletter. Still, no one out and out talked about it.
Which I found, increasingly, frustrating as hell.
What were they going to say when I lost my hair?
Oh darling, what a fashion-forward statement you’re making!
Such bullshit.
I smiled widely at Mamie. “No diet, just trying to stay healthy.”
She nodded sagely. “Wise girl. I yo-yo dieted for years and now my skin doesn’t fit quite right.”
“She’s sick, Mother. She isn’t on a fucking diet,” Reece Ross sneered at her as he stepped up to our little grouping.
He was wearing a suit, as was proper for Sunday service, but the tie was loose around his neck and the top three buttons were undone. He was one of the handsomest boys at Entrance High and in most of my classes. We didn’t talk much though, mostly because he was cool in a burgeoning bad boy way and I was a good girl.
So, I was surprised that he’d come to defend me.
Especially against his own mother.
I’d wanted to do that countless times with my own mother but never found the gumption. It made me look at Reece Ross, who was known around town as a hotshot basketball player and all-round player, with new respect.
Mamie’s mouth opened and closed uselessly.
My mother glared at Reece, disgusted by his lack of decorum.
“That said, you do look pretty great for a sick girl,” Reece added, his gaze roving languidly over my modest dress, the curves beneath it.
I’d been blessed when puberty hit with an abundance of breast and ass and a small waist that, with my blond hair, made me look almost like a Barbie. It was ironic and cruel given the family I was born into. I was a Lafayette and as such, I was to be defined by certain qualities such as piousness, generosity and grace. Not sexuality, wickedness and beauty.
Anger burned clean through the murkiness in my blood, purging me clean for one glorious second before I remembered myself and became boring again.
“Thank you,” I said, idiotically.
My mother smiled, as did Mamie.
Reece glowered at me.
The older women bent close, cutting us out of their heart to heart. Reece took the opportunity to step closer to me, his cologne strong in my nose.
“You dying?” he whispered harshly.
Anger again, a brief flare. “You care?”
“Do you?” he bit back. “I watch you live your pretty life, Louise, and it looks fucking dull. Worse than death, some might say. If you’re truly dying, don’t you think it’s time you lived a little?”
“Let me guess, you’re volunteering to show me how?”
His grin was a slim slice across his face. “Interested?”
“Why are you suddenly so into me? I don’t think we’ve spoken ten words to each other and I’ve known you all my life.”
Reece stepped back slightly, crossing his arms and affecting that teenage boy stance that spoke of artificial bravado and casualness. “I was hoping you’d be more interesting now. With the cancer and all.”
“Are you trying to be a massive asshole or does it come naturally to you?” I snapped.
My hand flew to my mouth to cover my gasp. It wasn’t that I never swore. I just never did it in public or even anywhere outside my head. I’d never said an ill word to anyone and yet at the slightest provocation, I was being absolutely vile.