Free Lilac Mines by Cheryl Klein

hands him her money and silently says goodbye to her trip home.
    â€œYou gotta tip, honey,” Imogen whispers.
    The bar is dark with low ceilings. But the people: Anna Lisa’s entire body tingles like a sleeping limb awakening. There are more women like Jody. They prop elbows on the bar, extend booted feet into walkways, emit low whistles at pretty girls. Upon seeing these women who act like men, Anna Lisa is startled by just how differently the sexes carry themselves. The women who look like Imogen—except white—slide into the gazes of the Jodies. They figure-eight around tables and pull their limbs inward in a way that somehow exposes as it conceals: crossed legs revealing a sliver of thigh, crossed arms summoning cleavage. None of them look like the girls of 3-B, but Anna Lisa realizes this bar is nevertheless her book. The black ink has lifted; she’s been invited to look and look.

LILAC
Felix: Lilac Mines, 2002
    When Felix wakes up, her side hurts so badly she can barely sit up. Last night she ordered pizza and ate it alone in her room. Her dreams were threaded with Eva and hot-breathed men who looked like Eva. Both seemed out to get her. It’s late morning now, and she’s thankful that Anna Lisa is already at work.
    She rises slowly, swallows a handful of Advil, and takes her sketchpad out to the deck. She tries to draw the mountains. But what appears green-brown and majestic in person becomes gray and lumpy on paper, and soon all she has to show for her efforts is a pile of eraser crumbs. Nature is the opposite of fashion, which always looks sleeker and funkier before it’s translated into cloth and thread.
    Her pencil moves clumsily and her head pounds with questions. Where is Eva right now? Where is she, really? What is this nearly vertical town—will the thick-trunked trees and rows of cabins protect her? Anna Lisa won’t, that much is clear. But what other choice does she have? An art student named Genevieve Barilla has sublet her room in L.A. through October. She doesn’t want to live with her parents. She can’t afford to move to New York.
    Felix gives up on the mountains, goes back inside and takes a shower. She puts on a pair of knee-length cargo shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that says, “Dump Him.” But when she studies herself in the guest room mirror, she decides against the outfit. She doesn’t want to encourage anyone to dump anyone right now, she tells herself. There’s nothing funny about getting dumped. That’s what it is.
    But the ensemble she settles on is decidedly less dykey: a royal blue secondhand cheerleading skirt, an asymmetrical tank top and tall reddish-purple legwarmers. She poses, tugging at her top to make sure it covers her bandage. She feels a little better, although she is now officially all dressed up with no place to go.
    So she goes to Kate’s Kappuccino, even though it reminds her of Kate Mendoza-Lishman, even though she hates dorky misspellings. There’s only one woman working at the small shop, so there’s a line. Felix waits behind a chubby man wearing overalls and a bowl cut. What self-respecting hairstylist would agree to give him that awful cut? she wonders.
    The bell dings and two teenage girls enter. They’re 14 or 15, an age when girls dress alike without even knowing it: flared jeans with faux fade marks bleached across the hips, ponytails, baby tees in bright colors. The air conditioning is blasting. Felix wraps her arms around her bandaged body and wonders if she should order a hot drink instead of an iced “frappukato.” As she studies the menu, she hears the girls giggling.
    â€œWhat is she wearing?” one of them whispers. At first Felix thinks they’re talking about the man in the overalls, but no, she definitely heard “she.”
    â€œHello, Flashdance!” the other one giggles.
    â€œWhat’s Flashdance?”
    â€œRemember I told you—that