“Have you eaten? Javier made pozole.”
“The party already started so we have to be quick . . . ,” Mabel said.
“Take it up to your room.”
“I can’t wait to see what you decide to do.”
Ana turned back to her canvas and sighed.
“Me, too, Marin. Me, too.”
We started with our makeup, applying eye shadow between bites of soup and tostadas. Mabel emptied her jewelry box onto her bed, and we combed through it for accessories. I chose gold bangles and sparkly green earrings. Mabel chose a braided leather bracelet. She thought about switching her gold studs for another pair, but decided to keep them in. We crunched tostadas, finished all the soup in our bowls. We pulled off our shirts and slipped on the dresses, stepped out of our jeans and looked at each other.
“Just different enough,” I said.
“As usual.”
Since we’d met, we had a thing for our names’ symmetry. An M followed by a vowel, then a consonant, then a vowel, then a consonant. We thought it was important. We thought it must have meant something. Like a similar feeling must have passed through our mothers as they named us. Like destiny was at work already. We may have been in different countries, but it was only a matter of time before we would collide into each other.
We were getting ready for the party, but the time was getting later and we weren’t hurrying. The real event was us, in her room. We kept reassessing our makeup even though we barely wore any. We showed each other our empty soup bowls and went back into the kitchen for more.
We were on our way back up to Mabel’s room when I heard Ana and Javier talking in their living room.
“Such good soup!” I called to Javier, and Ana called back, “Let us see our beautiful girls!”
They were sprawled on a sofa together, Javier with a book, Ana sifting through a box of scraps and small objects, her mind still on her collage, trying to solve the mystery of what should come next.
“Oh!” Ana said when she saw us, dismay on her face.
“No, no-no-no-no,” Javier said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mabel asked.
“It means you aren’t leaving the house in that dress,” Javier said.
“You guys,” Mabel said. “Seriously?”
Javier said something stern in Spanish, and Mabel’s face flushed with indignation.
“Mom,” she said.
Ana looked back and forth between Mabel and me. Her gaze landed on Mabel and she said, “It looks like lingerie. I’m sorry, mi amor, but you can’t go out like this.”
“Mom,” Mabel said. “Now we don’t have any time!”
“You have plenty of clothes,” Javier said.
“What about that yellow dress?” Ana asked.
Mabel sighed and stormed up the stairs, and I found myself still standing before them, wearing the same dress as their daughter and waiting for them to tell me something. I felt the heat rise in my face, too, but from embarrassment, not indignation. I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted them to tell me no.
Javier was already back to his book, but Ana was looking at me. I could tell she was deciding something. I still don’t know what she would have said if I had waited a little bit longer. If she would have said anything. But the possibility that she might not tell me to change was crushing. Gramps never looked at my clothes.
I didn’t wait around to see if her eyes would find their way back and if the right words would follow. I heard Mabel’s door slam and I ran up after her. She was digging through her drawers and saying how stupid all her clothes were, even the good things, but I didn’t listen because I was trying to figure out what to do. I had the pair of jeans that I’d worn over but my shirt was too plain. So I took off the dress and picked up the scissors Mabel kept on her desk and I cut the dress right below the waist.
“What are you doing?” Mabel said. “You don’t have to change.”
“It’ll look better like this anyway,” I said.
I pulled the jeans up and tucked in the fraying seam of what used to be a dress. I looked in the mirror and it was true—it looked better. And when we went back downstairs Javier complimented Mabel’s new outfit and kissed her on the forehead while she muttered “whatever” and rolled her eyes. And Ana jumped up from her place on the sofa and took my hands.
“You look beautiful,” she said. “Good choice.”
I was buoyant with gratitude as we left the house. Mabel’s parents called their reminders that we take a car home, not ride with our friends if they’d been drinking, not walk if it was after eleven. We called back our okays. I drifted down Guerrero Street, a girl with her best friend, a maker of good choices.
Too many people were at Ben’s house. They crowded the foyer and the kitchen, made it difficult to hear anything anyone said to us. Mabel gestured to the kitchen, and I shook my head. It wasn’t worth it. I caught a glimpse of Ben in the living room and grabbed Mabel’s hand.
“Where’s Laney?” I asked him when we were settled there on the soft green rug, the city lights through the windows, the nostalgia of everything taking me over. In seventh grade, Ben and I had spent a few months kissing each other until we realized we had more fun talking. I hadn’t been in that room with him for a long time, but even with everyone else there, and the loudness of it, the way people were showing off for one another and getting wilder, I remembered our mellow afternoons, just him and me and the dog, once we discovered that we were meant to be just friends.