Free Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

restaurants: a sub shop, a pizza place, a diner with lit-up panels of glistening hamburgers. I kept seeing other Ault students in groups of two or three. After the bus had let us off—it hadn’t been full, and no one had taken the seat next to mine—I’d hoped that I would be able to blend into a crowd of strangers, but the mall was almost empty. I told myself that the other students were probably going to the movies, which would start in less than an hour, and then I could wander around in peace. First I had to get my ears pierced.
    The mall didn’t have the kind of girlish store that sells barrettes and cheap jewelry. My only option seemed to be the male counterpart to such a store—a place with a motorcycle in the window that had flames running up the back panels, and lots of leather clothing.
    A guy in his late thirties, with a long ponytail and a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, stood behind the counter. “Help you, miss?” he said.
    “I’m just looking.” I needed a couple minutes, I thought. I walked to a rack of leather jackets and touched the shoulders. The jackets were very soft and had that deep, bitter smell.
    “Help you?” the guy said, and I turned. But this time he was talking to Cross Sugarman, who stood in the entrance of the store looking around. As I turned back toward the jackets, I couldn’t keep from smirking. Cross’s presence didn’t matter to me; what was gratifying was that his absence
would
matter to Dede. Then I remembered how warmly Dede had acted when I’d told her I was getting my ears pierced, and I wondered if I should feel guilty for being spiteful.
    I approached the counter. “I want to get my ears pierced.” I paused. “Please.”
    “Piercing’s free,” the man said. “Earrings run from six ninety-nine up.”
    He unlocked a door to the counter, pulled out a velvet tray of earrings, and slid it toward me. There were moons and crosses and skeleton heads, all in both silver and gold. I felt a twinge of loneliness; getting your ears pierced was an activity to do with another girl, with a friend, so she could help you choose. I pointed to a pair of silver balls, the plainest pair I saw.
    “Sit there.” The man nodded his chin toward a stool on the outside of the counter. He came around, and I saw the piercing gun, a white plastic square-edged object that was mostly featureless, with a silver rod that would jump forward, through my ear.
    “Do you ever miss?” I asked. I laughed, and my laugh came out high and nervous.
    “No,” the man said.
    “Does it hurt?”
    “No.” He set the gun against my right earlobe.
    I thought that if I had a friend, even if it were only Dede, I would squeeze her fingers. I felt a pinching sensation, and then a burn. “Ouch,” I said.
    The man chuckled.
    I wanted to stand and run from him. But if I ran, I’d have only one ear pierced. The idea that I was trapped made it difficult to breathe. I could feel the gun touching my left earlobe, the man’s fingers in my hair. He pulled back on the trigger, and I shuddered, my shoulders jerking up.
    “What the hell!” The man curled his body around so we could see each other’s faces and glared down at me. “You want this done or not?”
    “Sorry.” As I looked at him, the composition of his face began to dissolve. A glowing, pulsating greenish spot—like when you look at a lightbulb and then look away—covered the tip of his nose and part of one cheek. A wave broke in my stomach. “Oh my God,” I said softly.
    He moved out of my line of vision and pressed the gun to my earlobe again. The green spot remained in the air where his face had been; it expanded outward, seething. I closed my eyes.
    Afterward, I could hear, but I couldn’t see anything. I felt as if I were lying beside a railroad track and the wheels of a train were spinning next to my ears. The whole world was skidding past, everything that had ever happened flipping in circles, and I was responsible. “You know