Played - Liz Fichera

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lunch that other girls at school had tried BOTOX, even Jenna Gibbons. That was why I remembered. That was why I was standing in Drew’s enormous bathroom, pressed against the double marble sinks, inches from a sadistic-looking syringe, squinting into about one hundred obnoxiously steaming-hot vanity lights. Maybe there was something to this BOTOX frenzy? And maybe feeling pretty was just as important as being pretty. “Okay,” I heard myself say. “Do it. Between my eyes. Just once.”

      Drew flashed a triumphant smile, her thumb ready at the end of the pump. “Trust me, after you see what this will do, you’ll be begging for more.”

      “Won’t your dad notice it missing?”

      She shrugged. “He hasn’t so far.”

      Then she positioned the syringe inches above my forehead.

      I sucked in a breath.

      “Lean back,” she said, reaching for my neck with her other hand.

      Every nerve, muscle and brain cell in my body told me that this was stupid and wrong, but I wasn’t in control. It was that other girl inside of me, the fiercer, spunkier one who’d been calling the shots—no pun intended—lately. That voice inside my head kept telling me that I needed to be cooler, more spontaneous. Different. Definitely different. So I leaned back, closed my eyes, tilted my head and begged for different.

      “Ouch,” I said when the needle pierced my skin, freezing my forehead like it’d been doused with dry ice. Then the feeling spread to the rest of my face. “This so better be worth it,” I said to Drew through gritted teeth.

      Drew took a step back, still holding the syringe in her right hand. She reached inside a jar on the counter that was stuffed with cotton balls.

      “It feels like my forehead is on fire.”

      She dabbed my skin with one of the cotton balls and some other liquid that I couldn’t see. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t last.” She took a step back, still studying me, and tossed her ponytail over her shoulder.

      “Better not. I’ve got the leadership conference this weekend.”

      Drew frowned. “Good gawd! Total dorkdom, Riley. You might as well wave the white flag on your social life right now.”

      “And what social life would that be?” I didn’t bother hiding my sarcasm. Besides, it wasn’t as though Drew had a better social life than I did. Otherwise, why would she be hanging out with me? “It’s my parents’ fault. They’re making me go,” I added, which was a complete lie. “And it looks good on college applications.” Now that was true. It was pretty hard to get into the Art Institute of Chicago—that was my dream—so I figured I’d need all the help I could get, especially since I was kind of mediocre at anything besides art classes, at least as far as my grade point average was concerned.

      “Whatever.”

      I ignored her frown.

      But then Drew smiled. She finally said what I longed to hear. What I never heard. “You look different already.”

      I wanted to believe her. No, scratch that. I needed to believe her. It gave me hope. It lifted weight off my shoulders. For a moment, it was as if my life had real possibilities. Potential. Magic.

      Welcome to the inside of my crazy head.

      2

      Sam

      My buddy Peter and I hitched a ride in the bed of Martin Ellis’s pickup. Martin drove and Vernon Parker called shotgun. There was a party tonight somewhere near the Estrella foothills. When you lived way out on the Rez like we did, sometimes that was as close to real excitement as you got.

      Going out beat the alternative, which was stay home, watch my grandmother weave baskets on the front stoop and pretend that my heart hadn’t been pulverized into a thousand pieces.

      Martin’s truck chugged its way along a single-lane dirt road. The sun had already begun to set and by the time we reached the foothills, the sky would be as black as a bruise. Someone would have already started a campfire and (hopefully) someone else would have brought beer—just a can or two apiece, but that was probably all that anybody could sneak from home.

      Peter and I clung to the sides of the truck as Martin charged up and out of bumpy washes that snaked across the Sonoran Desert. Peter was another Rez kid and a junior at Lone Butte High like me. Despite being fifty pounds lighter, he was as tall as I was. That’s why our legs kept knocking whenever Martin sped like a madman over the washes. Across the truck bed, Peter kept giving me the stink eye from behind his wire-rimmed glasses, even as his glasses kept slipping down his nose.

      “Stop it,” he yelled over the grind of the engine.

      “Stop what?” I yelled back, tasting a thin layer of dust on my lips.

      He shook his head. “Stop thinking about it.” Peter and Martin were the only ones I’d told, but I was pretty sure everyone on the Rez knew. Even though the Gila River Indian Reservation stretched forever in just about every direction, it was microscopic, if you know what I mean. Sometimes the biggest places could be the tiniest.

      I shrugged and looked away from Peter, preferring to stare across miles of brown desert and dried tumbleweeds as if it were the most exciting scenery in the whole world.

      As usual, Martin continued to drive like a maniac. Frankly, I was surprised his old man’s truck could do more than thirty-five. If the truck were a hospital patient, someone would definitely be reading it its last rites.

      I turned away from Peter and focused on the wake of dust that swirled like a minitornado behind us in the darkening sky. If Peter referred to That Which Shouldn’t Be Named one more time, I was seriously thinking about ripping off a truck panel. It was bad enough that Peter even thought it. But he surprised me.

      “I can’t believe you’re gonna bail on us this weekend.”

      I breathed easier and looked at him. “I know. Can’t help it. My mom wants me to go.” Total lie. My parents, my dad especially, had stopped being interested in what I did at school ever since I’d started going to Lone Butte High. Not sure why, exactly. But it was better for all of us when they stayed out of my business. Besides, they both worked all the time at the casino on the Rez and Mom was studying for her master’s degree whenever she wasn’t working, so it was probably easier that they didn’t have to worry about me. One less hassle.

      “Why don’t you tell her that you don’t want to go? Martin, Vernon and me, we’re gonna drive down to Coolidge. Supposed to be a fair in town or something. Maybe even a rodeo.” His eyebrows wiggled. “Maybe even hot rodeo queens.”

      “You wish,” I said.

      “A dude can dream. What else I got?”

      I laughed. But then I dragged my tongue across my lips, tasting more dust. “Too late for me, anyway,” I said. “Already paid for it.” Another lie.

      “Seriously?”

      “Seriously.” What I didn’t share was that Lone Butte High School had paid my registration fee to the Maricopa County High School Leadership Conference. They’d paid the fees for the two sophomores, two juniors and two seniors with the highest GPAs. I happened to be one of the two juniors. Sucks to be the other sixty students who were invited but had to pay out of their own pockets. Now all I had to do was show up to school tomorrow morning and board the bus. It would get me to Monday and put about 250 miles of desert between me and the Rez.

      “What do you want with some leadership bullshit?” Peter said. “You need someone to tell you what you already know?”

      I swallowed. The truth? I really didn’t know. My guidance counselor at school, Mr. Romero, had told me about it. He’d said things like conferences and awards looked good on college applications. He’d said I had to be more of a game player, especially since there was a good chance I was going to graduate early and colleges were already starting to inquire about

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