Free It's Not the End of the World by Judy Blume Page B

it was my turn to do Val. I didn't do as good a job on her. I tried, but her hair is awfully long. She had to give me advice. She said, "Rinse behind my ears now. That's it. Watch it, Karen . . . the water's running down my face. Okay . . . now the cream rinse. Take two capfuls and rub it in all over. Good . . . rub some more in if that's not enough. Okay . . . now give me another rinse. Careful... it's going down my back."
    Val wrapped her head in a towel like mine, then she ran the tub. She poured in three-quarters of a bottle of bubble bath. While the tub was filling we rubbed each other's heads until they were damp. Val gave me a couple of barrettes to pin up my hair so it wouldn't get all wet when I took my bath.
    She let the water run almost to the top of the tub and by then the bubbles were so thick you couldn't see through them.
    I don't feel funny getting undressed in front of Debbie, because I have known her forever. But I did feel strange in front of Val. She could tell too. She said, "If you want, I won't look until you're in the tub. You can hide under all the bubbles." Then she turned around and I took off my clothes, dropped
    them in a heap on the floor and stepped into the tub. When I did, some of the water ran over the side.
    Then Val got undressed and I didn't look, even though she didn't care if I did. More suds overflowed when she got into the tub, but Val didn't pay any attention to that. She said, "When I grow up I'm going to be a nudist. People would get along better if they didn't wear any clothes. Then they couldn't pretend to be what they're not."
    "But you'd get cold in the winter," I told her.
    "Possibly. Maybe I'll move to a warmer climate."
    That reminded me of Gary Owens. I wonder if there are nudists in Houston?
    We soaked in the tub for half an hour. Neither one of us used soap or a washcloth. I guess if you sit in bubble bath all that time you're bound to get clean.
    When we finally came out of the tub Val put on her mother's terry robe, which was about four inches too long. It dragged all over the wet bathroom floor. I got into my pajamas. We both smelled very nice. Then we brushed out each other's hair.
    When that was done Val sat down on the closed toilet seat and rubbed some kind of oil all over her legs. "I have to shave my legs now," she said.
    I don't know anybody who shaves her legs yet. Debbie says she will when she's fourteen or when her legs get hairy, whichever comes first.
    Val ran a silver razor over her legs. Zip zip zip. She reminded me of my father, shaving his face. I used to love to watch him. He'd always put a dab of shaving cream on my nose when I was little. "Don't you ever cut yourself?" I asked Val.
    "Oh, sure. But nothing serious. I've had lots of practice. I've been shaving since September."
    "Did your mother show you how?"
    "Nope. I learned myself. Want me to do yours?"
    "No," I said. "My mother would kill me. She says the earlier you shave the more you have to keep shaving. And anyway, the hair on my legs is very light See..." I held a leg up for Val to look at.
    "You're lucky," she said, inspecting it. "I'm a very hairy person."
    I noticed that when we were in the tub but I didn't tell Val.
    When she was done shaving I helped her clean up the bathroom. She took big handfuls of the suds that were left in the tub and threw them into the toilet. They made a sizzling sound. And even after she flushed three times there were still suds floating around. "I think I used a little too much bubble bath tonight," Val said. By then it was almost ten o'clock.
    We went into Val's room. She has a trundle bed. It looks like just one bed, but underneath there's another one. It was already pulled out for me. I asked Val where she got the rug that's shaped like a foot
    and she said she saw an ad for it in The New York Times and cut it out to show her mother. Then she got it for her birthday.
    "I put my new sheets on your bed," Val said. "Do you like them?"
    They were pink-and-orange