Mom and Dad drove us to Cape Cod three days after our twelfth birthday. My sister Marnie did not want to get up at four-thirty in the morning to beat the rush hour traffic, but somehow our parents managed to get her out of bed and into the car, and still got to the motel on time.
On the second day, Dad woke me up and asked if we wanted to join him and Mom on an early morning walk on the beach. Marnie pinned my left arm to the bed and hissed in my ear, "Keep your mouth shut."
"No, Dad," she said, and with that, I heard the keys plink on the table. Marnie jumped out of bed as soon as she heard the door shut.
"Grab my purse," she called from the bathroom. I untangled myself from the sheets and stumbled over to the suitcase, groping inside for Marnie's hideous floral-print bag.
When I hung it on the doorknob, she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me into the bathroom with her. She rummaged through her bag and took out two small lipstick samples, a gift from our aunt who sold cosmetics door to door.
Holding one up to the light, she squinted and looked at my face.
"What do you think you're doing with that?" I backed away from her and nearly tumbled into the tub, getting a grip on the vinyl curtain. She uncapped the tube and pulled me up.
"What's your shade?" she said, holding it up to my face. Dabbing it on the back of my hand, she pushed me back down. "Perfect."
"What?"
Before I knew what hit me, she was drawing it across my mouth and pursing my lips with her fingers.
"Hold still!" she cried, as I squirmed to get away. When I managed to pull away from her, I looked into the mirror under the dim light. "What do you think?"
I stared at my reflection in horror as she applied her own lipstick slowly and carefully, smacking her lips together. My mouth was ringed with bright red, standing out against my pale face. Marnie's skin was darker, lessening the effect.
She smiled at her reflection and tossed the tubes back into the floral bag, pressing it against my chest. "Carry that."
We had slept in our bathing suits with the bleak hope of going for an early morning swim. Now that Mom and Dad were gone, we were forbidden to go in the pool without supervision. Marnie threw on a black T-shirt and tossed me one of her old bleach-stained ones. It nearly fell to my knees, making me look much smaller.
She shoved me out the door and slammed it as soon as she walked out. "Finally," she sighed, flipping her blonde bobbed hair up. I shook her purse from side to side, slyly attempting to whack her on the back of the leg.
We circled the parking lot five times before she got bored. "Let's walk to the beach," she said, looking across the street at the sand.
I heard laughing from the second floor of the motel as she rifled through her bag. Leaning against the railing were two boys in baseball caps chatting to each other. Marnie pulled me over to the steps and sat down.
"Mar?"
The laughter died down when they realized they'd been spotted. One of the boys looked down at me and smiled, pulling on his hat brim. I tugged at Marnie's sleeve, but she brushed me off.
"Hello," they called from the railing. Marnie shot up when she heard them.
"Hello," she purred, doing her best to sound sophisticated. I pressed her bag to my chest and looked away, thinking about how much trouble we'd get into if Mom and Dad found out we'd been talking to boys -- strange boys, at that -- and froze on the spot.
"Don't just stand there, Al. Say something!" Marnie chirped, pounding my back with her fist. I nearly hit the ground, but braced myself just in time. The boys laughed when they saw me, while Marnie lifted a hand to her lips to stifle a giggle.
I stomped my feet a couple times and threw the floral bag to the ground, hoping that anything delicate of hers would break. I was ready to head back to the room when I heard them.
"Wait...your name is Al?" one of the boys called to me, swinging his legs below the railing. I whirled around and looked at them, nearly tripping over the bag.
"Well, it's short for Allison," I wanted to bite my tongue, but somehow it had gotten ahead of me. Marnie stopped giggling long enough to smile in my direction.
"And what's your name, cutie?" the older boy asked her as he put a hand on her shoulder. Her hands were raised to her mouth again.
"Her name's 'Marnie, we are in so much trouble," I hissed, balling my hands into fists.
"Heh. I've never met a girl named Trouble before. That's pretty cool," the older one said, gently stroking her shoulder. "So we'll just have to call you Al and Trouble from now on."
I stomped my feet again as a warning. When I didn't see Marnie making a move, I walked away by myself.
I'd walked around the parking lot alone for well over an hour by the time I'd heard Marnie's voice again. She was curling her finger back and forth to get me to come back to the steps where she and the two troublemakers seemed to have gotten real cozy.
"So what have you been telling these guys, Mar?" I asked her, looking warily away from the boys in case they weren't taking the hint. She fluttered her eyelids coyly and embraced my shoulders.
"Well, Al, we're both sixteen and going to be juniors next year, right?" she looked at them and squeezed me tight, making me squeal. "We can't wait to go to the prom together, right?"
"That's cool. Maybe we could go together," the older one chimed in. "That is, unless you two don't already have dates by then..." Marnie's vice grip tightened on my shoulders again and I squeaked.
"No, of course we won't. That would be fun..." she purred, looking into his eyes. "That is, of course, if you ever tell us your names."
They smacked each other on the back and bowed to us. "I'm Jack, and this is my younger brother, Ed."
"Charmed, I'm sure," Marnie offered her hand to Jack, who quickly seized and kissed it.
I trailed behind them to a building attached to the main office with a wooden sign over the entrance that read "Clubhouse" in faded white letters. The sliding door opened to a large room with pink sofas, a sink, and a TV set, with tables covered in stacks of magazines.
As we sat down at a white plastic table, a woman with a floppy hat peered in the door.
"What do you kids think you're doing?!" she rasped, sliding the door to let herself in. She was about five feet tall, with a mop of bleached-blonde hair. Jack and Ed chattered on as if nothing had happened, but I cowered behind Marnie in her chair. "I thought I told you no kids under thirteen in this clubhouse?!"
Grabbing each of us by the collars of our T-shirts, she dragged us out of the building and into the parking lot, then stormed back into the clubhouse and shut the door in our faces.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Marnie hissed, slapping me on the shoulder.
"Me?! You're the one who kept insisting we were sixteen!"
Before I could get her back, she had stormed off to the outdoor pool, sitting against the fence. There were small children playing in the water, with their parents watching them. Marnie hooked her fingers in the chain link fence and stared at them.
"Doesn't that look nice?" I asked her, losing myself in the sight of the cool blue chlorine. I heard her cussing under her breath. "Mar?"
"How did that witch know we were under thirteen? It's not as if Mom and Dad told her to keep an eye on us!" she turned to me with hatred in her eyes. "Did you blab to her?!"
"Mom and Dad had to say how old we were to get a discount on the room. If they said we were adults, they would have had to pay more."
"Great. Just great. Not only are we banned from the clubhouse, but the pool as well," she said, pointing to a sign that said "ALL CHILDREN UNDER 14 MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A PARENT IN THE POOL AREA."
Not wanting to resign ourselves to an afternoon of circling the parking lot, we headed back to the hotel room. At the door, I dug through the bag for the keys.
"Uh, Mar...bad news."
She appeared ready to throttle me when I came up empty.
We sat at the door for three hours, quickly falling asleep in the heat. When I heard something jangling, I looked up, only to see the old witch standing over us with a ring of keys.
"I thought I told you--"
Before she could say any more, Mom took hold of the doorknob and gently rapped me on the head, smiling when I looked up.
"Well, well, sleepyheads. Have you been here the whole day?"
Dad took the old lady aside once she'd gotten the door open and whispered something in her ear, and she slunk off, scrunching her face up when I looked at her.
"You two must have had quite a boring day being locked out. Why didn't you stay in here?" Dad ushered us into the cool, dark room where he flipped the light on. Marnie flopped on the bed and spread her arms out, taking up most of the room. I crawled into the space between her and the wall and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
By the time we woke up, it was after dark, and Mom and Dad had ordered Chinese take-away. Marnie looked out the window to see what was going on. At the sight of glowing embers in front of the clubhouse, she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me out the door.
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