Gorgeous by Rachel Vail Page A

swallow tiny sips without letting it touch my tongue, in between modeling sunglasses.
    As we tried them on, Roxie told me this story about how she and a friend of hers (her old right-handed man) from the city went one time last year to the makeup counter at Bloomingdale’s and Roxie said she thought she had left her sunglasses there while trying on makeup a few days earlier. The lady asked what color and Roxie said sort of brownish? And the lady hauled this big plastic bin up onto the counter and let Roxie try on all the lost sunglasses until she’d found a pair she liked.
    “Where’s Bloomingdale’s?” I asked.
    Roxie grinned. “You are so bad.” She looked at her watch. “We don’t have time.”
    That’s not even what I meant, but she looked so delighted with me I didn’t say, No, I was just making conversation and trying to avoid jealous questions about this old right-handed man who seemed so much more fun and wilder than me. Roxie had a pair of red sunglasses on, so I grabbed another pair just like them so we could smoosh our heads together in the mirror and make faces. We actually looked pretty cool, I have to say, and Roxie insisted they were the bomb on me, so she bought them for me as a thank-you present for coming with her. I told her she didn’t have to, but she insisted and then bought the matching pair for herself and we walked on, linked again but now shaded, with coffee drinks.
    “ We are the bomb,” I said, and she threw her head back and laughed out loud.
    As we crossed a huge street the light changed, so we decided to just hang on the bench there on the island between lanes of traffic.
    “If I tell you something,” Roxie said, looking straight ahead, her legs stretched out ahead of her, “will you promise never to tell anyone?”
    “I told you the other day,” I reminded her, “I am like the Fort Knox of secrets. I never reveal anything. It’s my only virtue.”
    “Really?”
    “Sad but true.” I said. “Who would I tell, anyway? You’re pretty much the only person in school still talking to me.”
    “Your best friend is kind of a prig.”
    “Yeah,” I said, feeling shaky though not really nervous. Why would I be nervous? “She’s great, but opinionated.”
    “If you say so,” Roxie said doubtfully. “Seems to me like the cheese has blown completely off her cracker.”
    I laughed. “You think?”
    “No doubt,” Roxie said seriously. “So, swear you won’t tell, even her?”
    “I swear I won’t tell Jade or anybody else what you are about to tell me,” I said. My heart was pounding hard, though I totally didn’t feel worried about keeping her secret. I’m not good at much, but I really can keep a secret.
    “We didn’t move to the suburbs because of gardening.”
    “Okay,” I said. Sweat was starting to soak my forehead.
    “We moved because of me,” she whispered, leaning back to look at the sky.
    I took another sip of the crude oil in my cup and tried to calm myself down. What was going on with me?
    “I didn’t get into high school,” she whispered.
    “What do you mean?” I took off my sweatshirt jacket and sat there sweating and shaking like a junkie in my tank top. Luckily Roxie was staring at the sky, so she didn’t notice.
    She smiled, but not her normal happy smile—a tight, sad smile. “Private school, right? I went to a K-through-eight, so in eighth grade you have to apply out. I was, like, whatever, not stressed, you know? I mean, my parents know everybody and obviously I wasn’t going to Brearley or whatever, but…”
    She kept talking about schools I had never heard of as if anybody would know why you would roll your eyes about one place or another. I was busy trying not to have a heart attack in the middle of traffic. Deep breaths, I was telling myself, catching just bits and pieces of what she was saying, until the punch line. “Zero for eight. Not even wait-listed, and my mother is on the board there.”
    “That sucks.”
    “To put it