ALL THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW     1,137 words

   Sonja Bell has one of those new electric steam roller sets. She got it a couple of days ago and that’s all anyone wants to talk about now.

   ‘It doesn’t damage the hair, that’s the thing. The foam ones, they dry it out. It was in my sister’s magazine.’

   ‘You need to put conditioner on first, though. Not too much, just enough. And you rinse it out really well, of course.’

   ‘When you put on too much, it goes all lank, that’s the problem.’

   Diane and Marsha, they’re up on all that stuff. So is Donna. But Sonja has the rollers, she reigns supreme.

   I try to get a word in edgewise. ‘Look at this bruise I got yesterday!’ I say, pulling my skirt up over my left knee. I’ve got a doozy of a bruise there, three square inches, day glo colors. ‘Blue and purple and pink and yellow’ I point out –  all the colors of the rainbow!’

   Diane gives me a look of vague disgust and says ‘Ick.’

   ‘I was up in our loquat tree,’ I say, even though I know they’re not paying attention. ‘I was lucky I didn’t get killed!’

   ‘Mmmm’ says Diane in her new fake voice.

   Diane’s my best friend.  Up until a couple of months ago she’d have thought my bruise was pretty cool. I try again.

   ‘Anybody going over to H & W’s after school?’

   H & W is where you go in this town if you’re a kid. They have these wooden benches out back and you can order a hamburger and a coke and sit there just about forever.

   Marsha laughs and says ‘H & W’s’ like it’s just too pathetic for words.

   Diane glances up at me for a second and looks like she’s going to say something when Sonja puts in quickly ‘Want to come over to my place and do each other’s hair on my new rollers?’

   Everybody does. Everybody but me that is, but I go with them anyway.

   Sonja’s house is past the orange groves, in a ritzy new neighborhood. We’re half the way there when we meet her: Crazy Lorna. She’s got on this skirt with a hem that’s half out, trailing iron-on hemming tape and threads. A woollen fisherman’s cap messing up her straggly lettuce-colored hair. Old, yellowing tennis shoes with the heels tramped down, and rising up out of them, these long, bony stick legs.

   ‘Hello my fine young ladies,’ she says now, towering over us.

   ‘Excuse me,’ says Sonja, the leader, all prim and polite. ‘We need to get past.’

   ‘Oh by all means pass,’ says Crazy Lorna hurriedly, fluttering her hands. Then her eye fixes on me.

   ‘Carry on, young woman! Fight the good fight!’ she advises.

   The others think this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. I give Lorna a cold stare. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, making my voice hard.

   ‘Oh, you’re excused!’ she says airily. But – but – you just remember, now, you just –’  A bony finger comes out and wags itself in my face, her fingernail like a broken sea shell edged in dirt. Momentarily Lorna looks like she may have forgotten what she wants to say. I can see the expressions on the faces around me; Marsha nudges Diane, and Diane turns away. But not before I see the smile.

    I want to die. Or vaporize Crazy Lorna. But she finally gets it out.

  ‘Say not the struggle not availeth!’ she cries, grabbing me by the shoulders with those bony hands. ‘You just remember that, okay? Say not the struggle not availeth! Go on! Say it!’

   And I want her to let go of me so badly that I actually do.

   Diane and Marsha, they’re the worst. Tittering and clutching each other. Weak from laughing. Donna’s a satellite, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but she’s smiling too, enjoying herself.  Sonja’s full of phony concern at first: ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ And she shudders, like, thank God it wasn’t me.

   Sonja’s mother acts all concerned too, when they tell her. ‘You poor thing!’ she says. ‘That woman is a menace. Now why would she say that, and to you of all people?’ But I can see in her eyes what she’s really thinking.

   ‘One thing you and Lorna have in common,’ says Diane, ‘is you both wear the exact same clothes practically every day!’ The others titter.

   ‘And you do talk to yourself sometimes, Tina. Admit it, you do!’ That’s Donna. Getting bolder now. More sure of herself.

   ‘When it comes down to it,’ says Sonja, ‘you and Crazy Lorna do have a few things in common, I suppose. Like, maybe, your dress sense.’

    The rest of them laugh so hard they almost wet the bed.

    Diane lives near me, we usually walk home together. Today she says her mother’s going to be picking her up, though. I walk home on my own.

   Crazy Lorna, stupid Crazy Lorna. With her long stalky legs and her greasy cap and her long muttering discussions with her crazy self.

   My mother hears me out, but she’s busy, rattling around in the kitchen. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Crazy Lorna is – well, crazy. But she takes in stray cats, she picks up rubbish people throw on the highway. She may be crazy, but at least she’s a useful kind of crazy. Okay, she could use a bath, but since when is it so horrible to wear the same clothes everyday? Where’s the crime? Compare someone who wears the same clothes everyday to someone who lives and breathes clothes and fashion and make-up. They’re just two extremes. Why is one crazy and the other not?’

   Okay, I say. But what I’m thinking is, I’ve still got to be with these kids every day. I’ve still got to get through another three years of high school.

   That night I dream about Crazy Lorna. We’re sitting together in the loquat tree in my front yard and she’s admiring my bruise. ‘That’s a good one!’ she crows over and over. ‘How’d you get it?’ I won’t tell her, but she knows anyway, somehow.

   ‘How about that?’ she croons, nodding like an idiot. ‘Fell out of this very tree.’  I’m angry at her and I give her a shove and try to move away, but she just takes my hands in her own and squeezes them. ‘But it’ll heal up good,’ she reassures me. ‘Don’t you worry! Bruises like that – they heal up so good, they make you tough, you know. Oh, yeah. You just give it time, give it a few years and you’ll heal up good.’