Earth to Skye

3

3“What did you buy?” Mom asked, when she picked us up.

Skye had finally met me at Victoria’s Secret. They were having a sale, two for the price of one. Skye desperately wanted new lingerie, I guessed for Max.

I only showed Mom the little girl panties, pink, with hearts on them. I had also bought a black lace thong. Not that I had a boyfriend yet, or was ready to be half naked in front of a guy. No one was ever going to see me wearing it, except maybe Skye.

The moment we got into my room Skye tore off her Black Flag T-shirt and tossed it on my mile-high stack of thrift-store clothes. She stood naked, except for her necklaces, ripping the tags off of her new black camisole with the matching lace thong.

Skye’s body was different than mine. Her breasts were larger and her n*****s darker, peeking out through her long blue hair. Her thick black eye lashes didn’t even need the mascara she used and her eyebrows arched like a model’s.

“You’re so pretty,” Skye would say to me. But she was much prettier and way more exotic. She always wore tons of necklaces, colored beads and chains with hearts and daggers and crosses. And elephants. Ever since she was a little girl, she collected elephants, some of which I’d given her through the years. Stuffed elephants, crystal, plastic and metal elephants and the ivory one she wore on a chain.

“Do you realize what they do to get that ivory?” I asked.

“It’s old. It happened a long time ago,” she said. “What am I going to do about it now?”

Skye put on the corset-like camisole and I took photos of her, wearing tons of make up, lying on my bed with its ancient Hello Kitty comforter, looking longingly into the camera, her bright red lips glistening and gently parted.

“Look at this one,” I said. “You look like a rock star.”

“Wait until Max sees this! I bet I could even make some money if I posted it on the Internet and gave out my number.”

I laughed nervously, hoping she wasn’t serious. What a weird thing to think about. It gave me the creeps. The fact that she was sleeping with Max was bad enough. I didn’t even ask her where they “did it.” He was homeless after all. I wondered if they were having s*x while she was babysitting with her sisters. We used to talk about everything, but there were details of her life that I didn’t even want to know about anymore.

Mom walked in without knocking, startling both of us.

“What on earth are you doing?” she said, taking in the situation. “You’ve got to be kidding.”