I'm So Vain

21

21

"So who was that rexie hanging off of you yesterday?" Penny asked as the cashier rung up her Camel lights and she tucked her fake id back into her wallet. "Oh," I said, blushing slightly, "That's just Nicole. She's one of the leads in the play. She's pretty cool."

"She looks like a giraffe. No," Penny said, lighting up as we stepped off the curb outside of the gas station, "she looks like the walking dead. All bones no skin; dark, nasty bags under eyes, the whole bit." I didn't say anything, just stared at my feet as Penny took a drag. "I don't get girls like that. Like, skinny is hot. Nicole Richie circa 2006 is not." I bit my lip and paused before saying, "She's...I mean, she seems really nice." Penny stared at me with a look of almost disbelief, as if she couldn't wrap her head around the concept that I might be standing up for someone– and against her word, at that. "She seems like a freak," she said, as if correcting me, and then added, with a shrug, as she threw her cig in an ashtray, "but maybe she is nice." The way nice rolled off her tongue, you'd think she was saying 'infected with HIV'.

"So um...where'd you go last night?" Nicole asked as we walked to the theater's ladies room together. "I had a doctor's appointment." I said glancing at my phone. "Oh?" she said. She pointed to the restroom door, I thanked her and headed off towards it.

She waited outside the bathroom for me and picked up where we'd left off, "Was it just a check-up or what?"

"No," I said, "It was my first meeting with my plastic surgeon." Her eyebrows shot up, "Really?" She seemed to be genuinely asking this, as if she was thinking maybe I was just pulling her leg. "Um, yup," I said, "Really." 

"So like..." she trailed off, staring ahead of her with wrinkled eyebrows as we climbed back up the stairs to the stage, "You're getting surgery, then?" I rose an eyebrow at her. Good, I felt like saying, you figured it out. Now can you tell me what comes after "A" in the alphabet? "Mhm," I said instead. "Where?" 

"I'm getting a nose job." Now her eyebrows really climbed up her skinny little forehead, "Why?" I glanced at her, said nothing. "I mean," she said, blushing, "it's just...your nose seems perfect, to me. I don't know why you'd want to change it at all." My phone buzzed just then, and I looked down to open a message from Penny. 

how's rexie

I grinned and hit reply, typing without thought, 

she's rly living out the richie legacy. 

Penny replied almost immediately,

how so

My fingers hit the keys quickly and I angled the phone away from Nicole as her eyes strayed over towards it,

skinny and stupid

Penny texted back a laugh and a question,

wutddd rexie say

I'm surprised my nail polish didn't chip, my fingers slid across the keypad so quickly,

cant seem to figure y sumone would get cosm surgery. wut can i say, richie, we cant all b as naturally breathtakng as u

Penny was amused, but at that moment Nicole asked me, "Who are you texting?" My stomach knotted itself and reknotted itself until I was sure some boy scouts had taken up camp in there. What had Nicole ever done to me? Why was I such a thickheaded slimeball? "Um, no one important," I said, and I turned off my phone and stuck it in my back pocket. 

But even as I did this and took a seat on the stage next to Nicole, I was formulating a plan in my head to tell Penny later that Mrs. Dibden had made us all turn off our cells. I couldn't even take this one tiny stand against her. I felt her hands wrapped around my waist and my chest, constricting me, cutting off my oxygen. But I wore them like a corset: I found them flattering and let them suffocate me, even as I began to turn blue.