BRENDA'S POV
It was the summer of 1983.
I didn’t know it then, but that would be the best summer of my life. Britpop would hit the German radio stations and give us the feeling that we could be just as rebellious and quixotic as we imagined our parents had been when the Beatles were young. Bitten by the soccer bug, we would cheer our national team on all the way to the quarterfinals. “Beverly Hills 90210” would still be fresh and Madonna would educate us about sensuality. We were sweet sixteen and could officially order alcohol. The days were long, bright and full of promise.
Tesy and I were spending the summer vacation house-sitting her mom’s four-bedroom crib while she was out of the country working on location. The house was decorated exactly as one would expect of a well-paid TV actress in her late thirties with an only child and no distinct taste of her own: its fashionable elegance was straight out of a design catalogue and always presentable in case a magazine asked to do a home story.
Tesy’s mom was away a lot, so I stayed over a lot - so often, in fact, that I knew my way around the house in the dark and almost considered it a second home. At Tesy’s place, we did all the things we usually weren’t allowed to do, at least not at my parents’ house. It was a different world.
The July days were hot, and we were lazy. In a mere two days, we had transformed the picture-perfect space into a sight that could be no longer considered home story material. That second night, after we had tried on all of her mom’s fancy heels, the extravagant, expensive ones that you only eye longingly in a*****e window, Tesy suggested we do makeovers.
“My mom got this kit from Helena Rubinstein to try out, you know, since they’re using it on her show and she might do commercials." Tesy said.
After my embarrassing performance trying to walk in a woman’s shoes, I wasn’t very keen on further attempts to look glamorous. In fact, all I wanted was to slump on that huge sofa in the living room, order takeout and watch TV. “I don’t know,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“Brendy, come on, it’ll be fun!” said Tesy, reaching for one of the perfume bottles on her mom’s vanity table and spritzing something on me that smelled like Christmas in an Oriental bazaar. “We’ll backcomb and make our hair big, like they had in the sixties! Or we’ll do curls."
“I already have curls,” I said dryly, but she ran into the bath-room and returned with a box.
“Real curls,” she stated, taking out a set of curlers. I had doubts they would even stick in my shoulder-length hair, but Tesy insisted. Soon we looked like two quintessential suburban housewives getting ready to hit the town.
“How long do they need to stay in?” I asked, already loathing the scratchy things that tweaked my hairline.
“Until the hair is dry." Tesy fixed the curlers with a hair spray whose scent made me feel as though I’d just walked out of a hair salon. I watched her face in the bathroom mirror. Whereas my reflection made it clear that I was only experimenting with lipstick and eye shadow, Tesy looked truly alluring. She was beautiful anyway, but the soft pink lip gloss and thick mascara that made her big eyes look even bigger added to the natural glow I’d always envied.
“You look really good,” I said.
She tilted her head and grinned. “We’re two hotties,” she said, giving me a short squeeze and miming a kiss toward the mirror. “Come on, let’s order pizza and see what’s on TV."
“Get us some wine!” said Tesy, flashing a mischievous glance at me before answering the doorbell. I picked a bottle of white wine that had a golden castle drawn on its label. It looked nice to me, but I had no clue if it was wine you could get in a super-market or an expensive bottle from some noble winery that Tesy’s mom had gotten from an admirer. I opened it anyway. I never got the feeling that she cared much about what went on in her house.
“Do you feel as hot as I do?” Tesy asked, picking pieces of salami off the last slice of pizza. I threw a glance at her flushed cheeks and nodded. She opened the French door to the garden, and even though the air that breezed into the living room now was lukewarm, it felt like a cool draft to me. A half glass of wine had been enough to make me dizzy. From her spot at the garden door, Tesy watched me zap through the TV channels.
“Uh, stay there!” she ordered when I landed on the opening credits of a thriller.
I don’t remember what the movie was about, only that it's horror was more psychological than gory - so much so that we were already creeped out a mere thirty minutes in.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Tesy shrieked when a pitch-black shadow appeared out of nowhere on screen.
I pushed the button, and darkness fell over the living room. “I will never leave this chair again,” she said, and pulled her knees up to her chin.
Both of us turned to look at the half-opened garden door. “Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested, and lost. When I returned, Tesy had snuggled into my seat on the sofa.
I raised an eyebrow. “And I thought you were going to live in the armchair from now on."
“Very funny,” she said, making a face. “You’re scared too."
“At least I went to shut the doors."
“Only because you lost!”
“Chicken."
“Takes one to know one."
I laughed. “You don’t even dare sit on the dark side of the living room!”
