head to toe

left pinky toe
it was the day their second grade teacher handed out the first report cards of the year. alice had gotten a 1 in conduct, like she always did, and carrie got a 1 in math. of course these grades were based on simple worksheets and class games, but they were still terribly distraught, as they had heard of college and assumed this prevented them from ever getting in.
its the same as a C, alice said. alice knew these things because she had a 7th grade brother.
what if we stay in second grade forever because we're too dumb to pass? carrie asked as she knelt to remove her orange socks.
they were in alice's upstairs bathroom, the one with the tiny cracked white tiles on the walls and floor, the one with the best light and the most mirrors. it was the pretty bathroom, they called it, as opposed to the normal one.
we probably will. its what gabe said.
as carrie was wiggling out of her courderoy jumper she imagined being a grown woman in ms. michaels class, of spilling out of the tiny desks and knowing everything she was going to say before she said it but still being stuck on addition. she might be a mother at that point, or a teacher herself, although she wasnt sure if you had to pass 2nd grade before moving on to things like mothering and teaching. she looked at the crumpled jumper on the floor and had a sad wave, one of those moments when the dread grabs you around the throat and squeezes just tight enough to know what could be coming.
carrie was standing in her panties. alice already had a mirror down from the cabinet, preparing to do her back.
dont cheat, alice warned. you know, since i won last time i'll probably win again.
i think you cheat, alice. i think my birthmark counts as one anyway. i bet some people would say it counted for lots.
nope. just beauty marks, not birth ones. no one wants to win the birthmark contest anyway. that would be weird. ok, start now.
they had different methods for counting their beauty marks. carrie started at her toes, combing every inch of her skin with the tips of her bitten fingers. alice just went all over, with no system at all. she would do one shoulders with the mirror first then examine her shins. the only rule, other than not cheating, was you had to count in your head.
carrie wasnt finding any new ones. there was the one on her right ankle, the middle of her right shin and on the back of her left calf muscle. that was the one she liked the least, the one on her calf. it was paler than the rest, and not perfectly round like cindy crawfords. she figured it was a mistake, but counted it anyway since the competition was so close. the next one was on the boniest part of her hip bone, and then none on her stomach. her arms were chock full of them, one of her favorites on the crease of her left elbow, one halfway up her right forearm, two side by side (she called them sisters) on her left wrist. and then her collarbones was where they really mattered- in a nearly symettrical necklace shape starting at each tip of her shoulders. she only had one on her back, right in the middle, but that was still up for debate as alice was the only one who could get a good look. alice was sitting on the side of the porcelain tub doing her legs as carrie picked up the round, backless mirror off the window ledge to hold over her shoulder, just in case there were some she had missed before. there werent, just one boring one on her left shoulder blade. as she was putting the mirror back alice jumped up and screamed,
i knew it! a new one on my knee!!!
as carrie was turning to look, the spotted old mirror slipped off its place on the ledge and landed on her left foot, shattering into peices. blood immediately spidered out onto the pristine white floor as both girls stood in horror at the first sight of what was inside of them.

upper right thigh, left collarbone
it was her first deep dive, and she was completely unprepared. the only reason she signed up for this trip was to be with rich and collin. to be in another country, with only rich, collin, and 8 other people. as so far it had been worth it, except for the inability to swim 2 back and forth laps during the preliminary swim test (shouldnt they have tested us when we were still in america? she wondered as the freckled instructors told them what was on the docket for the day) without becoming completely disoriented and near collapse. despite two failed attempts at the written test and a ruptured eardrum, despite a complete lack of interest in belize and an un-understanding of how lucky, lucky, lucky she was to be on a trip with her high school friends to a wholly new place. despite all those things she had made it to the second to last day, to an 80 ft dive, and it had indeed been everything she had wanted it to be.
not that she really had a crush on either one of them. she didnt want to come back to woodward saying she was dating one of them, or had kissed one of them on the foreign beaches of belize. she just wanted everyone and everything else that got in her way at home to be turned into eraser dust. she wanted them all to herself. they were fabulous when they were together, the three of them, alone with their own inside jokes and the attraction that seemed fluid between all three of them, the whole that was better than any one of its parts. she was ecstatic when, because there was an odd number of people in their diving group, the instructors allowed the three of them to be each others diving buddies.
they had stayed up all night every night they had been there, finally lulled to sleep in the blue dew of morning by the sounds of birds cawing and peoples farway voices. they snuck out at night to wander around the sleepy town. they joined in soccer games with the locals and snuck into fancy hotels, their biology teacher lazily sipping pina coladas, indifferent to the dangers they were putting themselves in. they drank cokes from plastic baggies and got so sunburnt they blistered. one night they tiptoed into the big dorm room with the bunkbeds at dawn and crawled into bed together, muffling their laughs in each others shoulders and hair. one night they slept outside on the craggy beach, ignoring the creatures crawling around them and the temperature dropping by the hour. they talked about how far away they felt, how far away they felt from home and from everyone else on the trip but also how far away they felt from anyone other than each other, even back at school. one night as colling left to pee behind a towering palm tree, rich tried to kiss her. she didnt let him, saying that he was just doing it because he thought he should. but maybe all of this doesnt mean we want to kiss each other, she said. it doesnt have to. she had felt the pull of biology, felt the unavoidable pull between pretty much every man she had ever come in contact with and herself. teachers, her friends dads, men in stores, and it wasnt always sexual, though she could sense when it was. it was just a recognition, an unspoken understanding of what they both knew was true. sex. but she never felt the pull with rich or collin, not even when rich tried to kiss her. and that night, as she lay in bed between them, it was almost as if she was just those jagged metal particles that float in air between two sides of a magnet.
it was beautiful underwater. it was lush and colorful and lively, complicated and unsettleing. she was worried about the equipment, about breathing correctly and letting the pressure out as necessary. she was the last one in the group, meandering behind them all so that her often wild flipping around wouldnt cause anyone to worry, or, worse, laugh. they were about to pass through a tunnel of coral, and had been instructed not to touch any of it. collin went, then rich, and then she began gliding through it, trying to manage her bouyancy so she didnt hit the bottom. but as she was a foot away from emerging she saw ahead of her the saddest and the sweetest thing she had ever seen, something that made her stomach jump with equal parts fear and pure satisfaction. collin and rich, hanging behind the other two, in the middle of the sea's vast, gaping mouth, were holding hands. she squeezed the release too much and she sank into the coral, and her body was lit on fire by a thousand angry teeth, burning and clutching into her like a wall of fiery needles.

right wrist
she wasnt going to speak to him. she wasnt going to say anything. she could hear the car pulling up, his stupid door closing. she could hear the wretched squawk of the door opening and of him sorting through the mail, probably throwing what wasnt his on the ground in a messy pile. it wasnt her job to apologize. she was just going to look ahead at the oven and pretend as though her best friend, who she now hated, wasnt walking past her and into his room, which he wasnt paying enough for considering the size. she was going to pretend that their relationship, since they had moved in, hadnt been a steady march towards mutual jealousies, betrayals, annoyances, and ultimate doom. she was going to pretend that her face wasnt burning from anger, and from shame, and from the bitter and unfortunate resignation that this wasnt going to work.
maybe if she did something with it, the pizza, while he was walking by it would be less awkward. hollow footsteps coming down the hall, towards their filthy kitchen with mold growing like snow inside of bowls. she opened the oven door and peered in. he had stopped at the kitchen and was looking in, she could tell from the corner of her eye. she reached in with the oven mitt to pull the pan out as he said, in a voice heavy with defeat
should we just have sex?