Free The Drowning Girls by Paula Treick Deboard

looking back and forth between them. I couldn’t stop staring at her, as if she were some kind of mythical creature, half girl, half woman. “Hey,” she said. “We have a class together! Geometry.”
    “Oh, my God, you would be in advanced math,” Kelsey teased, and Danielle blushed.
    Sonia glanced at her cell phone, noting the time. “What’s next here? Why don’t we get in line for ID photos while we can.”
    Danielle gave me an uncertain wave. “Bye.”
    “Yes, bye,” Kelsey chorused.
    I slumped back into the plastic cafeteria chair, watching them walk away from me. The crowd seemed to part at Sonia’s approach, and more than a few heads turned. They were looking at Danielle, too, I realized.
    Aaron helped the next people in line and then took a seat beside me. “She does look great, you know.”
    “Of course she does,” I breathed.
    “But that friend. Whew .” He shook his head. “I’m glad she’s one of yours. She looks like a pack of trouble.”
    * * *
    “She might have asked me,” I huffed to Phil that night. “I have a phone. Would it have been too difficult for her to call me, to at least mention the idea? Oh, by the way, Liz, we’re going to stop by a salon. Would you mind if I had Danielle’s hair hacked all the way back to her scalp? ”
    “You did say you liked it.”
    I sighed. “That’s not the point.”
    The girls were upstairs, in the beginning stages of what promised to be a marathon clothes-trying-on session. They were using the mirror in our walk-in closet, so Phil and I were banished to the back deck, where we were slowly working our way through a forty-four-dollar bottle of wine from Victor Mesbah, a just-because gift he’d dropped by the office. I was slowly burning through my anger, too.
    Phil sighed. “It’s hair, Liz. It’s not like it’s a neck tattoo. And she does look cute.”
    “Of course she looks cute,” I bristled. “She couldn’t not look cute.” But she’d been cute before, when she’d been so patently herself.
    Phil’s voice was calm, his words nearly lapped up by the pool. “You’re probably going to have to let this go.” He was distancing himself, I thought, playing the role of the disengaged stepfather.
    Earlier, driving home, the blades of the wind generators on the Altamont rotated so slowly, they might have been giant house fans, barely displacing the warm air. Now the grass by the fourteenth hole was fading into a purplish blue, and sunset had brought with it a slight chill. I pulled my knees to my chest. “She’s becoming one of them.”
    Phil laughed. “Who?”
    “You know. The pretty girls.”
    He leaned over, emptying the bottle between our glasses. “What pretty girls?”
    “Please. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Look at Deanna Sievert. Look at Sonia Jorgensen. Look at Kelsey, for goodness’ sake. Those pretty girls, the ones the world smiles on, the ones who get everything they want without even trying for it.”
    “I haven’t noticed, particularly.” But his voice was distant, his gaze far away.
    Liar . I took a large gulp, savoring the slow trickle of wine down my throat, and set the half-empty glass at my feet.
    The night had been so quiet that the sound of a car starting still registered a few minutes later, an echoic memory. Out of the darkness came another sound, a strangled cry.
    “What was that?” I sat up, thinking the worst—the girls upstairs, Fran Blevins home alone with Elijah.
    He held up a hand, shushing me. We waited, and the sound came again—clearly a scream this time, its shrill edge piercing the night. Phil didn’t have to think, he was on his feet, heading for the door. I stood, toppling my glass, which shattered on the concrete.
    “Shit.” I stooped to gather the shards.
    “Leave it,” Phil called over his shoulder. “We’ll get it later.”
    Inside, Danielle and Kelsey were at the top of the stairs, looking down on us. From this angle I could see straight up Danielle’s skirt, a