American Girls Read Free

crazy thing was that after I flashed my passport (stamped once from a horrible weekend “getting to know” Lynette in the Bahamas), they let me through security like a fifteen-year-old traveling alone was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe it was, but I’d never done it. They didn’t even find the mini can of mace attached to my key chain. By the time I got on the plane, I felt even more invisible than I had at home, and I munched my sad peanuts like there were no other options. I had become the human equivalent of one of those balloons we used to send into the air with our name and address on the string in the hope that someone might mail it back, but no one ever did.
    Maybe my sister was onto something, and I was depressed. A normal person would have at least bought an in-flight snack box. The thought did cross my mind that once I landed in LA, I could take a taxi to Disneyland, or hightail it to the Hollywood sign, or get one of those maps of the stars’ houses and maybe even become the youngest member of the paparazzi and get accidentally famous for my pictures in a straight-to-Pay-Per-View-movie kind of way. I thought those were optimistic ideas, but maybe they were really depressing.
    When we landed, my sister was waiting right outside the gate, inside security, plastered to her cell phone.
    â€œYes,” she’d said. “She’s here. I see her now. She looks fine. I know. Okay. Love you too.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” I thought about hugging Delia, but her hands were crossed over her chest and she didn’t make a move in that direction.
    â€œWhat am I doing here? Have you completely lost your mind?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI’ll be the judge of that. Well, right now, I’m missing work because my phone rang this morning and I had to talk Cora off the ledge. Seriously, I’ve got to hand it to you. I thought I was a grade-A fuckup for not going to college, but you’re leaving me in the dust. Is something happening?” Her voice lowered a bit. “Is anyone molesting you? Because I wouldn’t send you back, and I would always believe you.”
    â€œNo!” I said. “Gross. Who would molest me? Dad? Lynette? No, it’s just … I don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œYou flew all the way across the country and you don’t want to talk about it. Fine for now, but I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, they’re gonna want you to talk about it.”
    I hadn’t seen my sister in almost a year. She’d always been pretty, but now she had the smoothed-down look of a Barbie doll. Her hair was straight and the glossy black of an expensive magazine cover. She had on a wifebeater, blue jeans, and five-inch-high dominatrix heels: black leather with silver studs. But she could still walk faster than me, in my Converse low-tops, Old Navy denim, and red Georgia sweatshirt.
    â€œThey wanted to send you right back home,” she said. “You can thank me for the fact that you get to stay here to cool off for a couple of days. But you’re under house arrest, okay? No running off to the Coffee Bean for celebrity sightings. I want to understand what’s going on. You know this makes me feel guilty too, don’t you?”
    Just walking through the LA airport made me glad that I wasn’t in Atlanta. When you go up the escalators at the Atlanta airport there’s a mural on the walls that features a mystery-race toddler with creepy blurred-out genitals playing in a fountain. I think it’s supposed to be friendly and We love everyone, yay! but it’s just weird. The LA airport is the exact opposite; no one is trying to look friendly, and everyone we passed looked half starved and almost famous.
    â€œYou’re not listening,” she said. “Does it even bother you that I could lose my job for missing work today? Finding an actress to fill my shoes is like finding a clover