Marilou Is Everywhere by Sarah Elaine Smith

Author:Sarah Elaine Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

The hair dye was my idea. Virgil had said I should keep Bernadette’s mind off her troubles, after all. It was just an experiment. It was just for a little while, to make Bernadette feel better. It was a kindness.

I wondered why she’d suddenly turned on me when we had just a moment earlier been peaceably eating sandwiches and planning Clinton’s death. The only thing I could think was my hair had been wet, but when it dried blond, some important piece of the resemblance fled. That was the only way I could figure it. If I dyed my hair and found a spare of Jude’s glasses, maybe I could keep Bernadette from thinking about her missing girl.

To be clear: This was nothing but delusion. I look nothing like Jude, even disregarding skin color. She had the tuned bones of someone nearly grown up, and her forearms were bladed with muscle. I was pudgy from eating and starving and Pepsi and salt. She was much taller than me, with wider eyes. My face was still round. And I had a way of standing around which indicated I would like to be pulled inside out and swiftly disappeared from the earth. Jude had another sort of way about her. People shut up when she raised her eyes to them. By this I mean: I was no brilliant actress, with no real disguise. Bernadette was in much worse shape than anyone knew.

Actually, Jude and I do have the same kind of low voice. We both sound like we’ve been smoking hard, longer than we’ve been alive. Virgil had even said so before. But that is the only resemblance I’ll claim. It’s no great struggle to trick someone who asks you if you want coffee, then pours you some, then asks again.

One day, I got Shayna to walk with me to Pecjak’s to buy us some Popsicles. We had been watching Dr. Phil all day and our thoughts seemed unreal. While she was paying, I slipped down the aisle and put a box of black hair dye down my shorts. It was easy because Shayna was telling Sissy Pecjak about how to draw perfect eyebrows on a face.

“No,” she said when I dumped it in her lap back at home.

“It’s not for you. It’s for me.”

“You got the kind with no dimension to it. Blue tones’ll make you look like an old tooth.”

“I don’t know nothing about tones.”

“Yeah, clearly you don’t. You sure? This shit’ll make you look dead, I’m just saying.” She sighed. I pulled her after me into the bathroom and sat on the closed commode.

The dye was cool. Something unlocked in my spine as she painted it on my skull. I felt like something had snapped right in my backbones for once. She piled the strips of my hair up in a do on my head like a curled swan. I got taller, I’ll swear it, right then.

We didn’t either of us have a watch or anything to tell how

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