The Drowning Girls. Paula Treick DeBoard

worn it long—ponytails, a braid, a dark waterfall down the middle of her back. I’d shampooed it for her, picked carefully through the wet knots, brushed it in the mornings, snapped it into place with an elastic band. Sure, she hadn’t needed that help for years—but now that her hair was gone, I was sharply nostalgic for those mother-daughter tasks. Danielle’s hair hadn’t just been cut, it was cropped short, ending above her ears, fitting her head like a dark skullcap.

      Next to me, Aaron whistled. “You know who you look like? Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.”

      Danielle laughed. “Is that good?”

      “Absolutely,” he said, leaning across the table to give her a quick hug. “Ready for high school?”

      She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Do you like it, Mom?”

      I touched her hair tentatively, trying to find a piece long enough to tuck behind her ears. She looked lovely, striking—but in a surreal way, as if this wasn’t my fourteen-year-old daughter in front of me, but a grown, postcollege version of herself, home for a visit. I tried to keep my tone light, tried not to let the hurt seep through. “You didn’t tell me you wanted a haircut.”

      “Well, Kelsey was getting hers cut anyway, and Mrs. Jorgensen offered...”

      “Kelsey’s mom paid for this?”

      “I know. I told her I had money, but she insisted...”

      “How much are we talking?”

      Danielle bit her lip. “Seventy-eight dollars.”

      “Seventy-eight dollars!” I hissed.

      Next to me, Aaron whistled.

      Then Sonia was there, oohing and aahing over the cut, offering a faux apology as if she simply couldn’t help herself. “I mean, with these cheekbones,” she gushed, “she was practically a diamond in the rough.”

      She was a diamond already, I seethed.

      “You know what we should do tonight?” Kelsey asked. “We should try on all our clothes, and I could do your makeup.”

      Danielle laughed. “I don’t know. I look funny with makeup.”

      “Seriously, I’ll give you a whole new look.”

      I had a sick feeling, as if I were on a roller coaster and the momentum was building and building, and the whole thing might just go off the tracks.

      “Let me get you girls your class schedules,” Aaron said, bustling behind me, saving me from whatever ugly thing was going to come out of my mouth. He found Danielle’s schedule under the M’s, and then hesitated, looking at Kelsey. “What’s your last name?”

      “Jorgensen,” Sonia said. “Kelsey.”

      Aaron thumbed through a stack and handed Kelsey her schedule. She glanced at it, then asked, “So which of you is going to be my counselor?”

      “Oh,” I said, realizing. “You’ll be mine. I have H through M.”

      She smiled. “Cool.”

      Danielle held up both papers, looking back and forth between them. I couldn’t stop staring at her, as if she were some kind of mythical creature, half girl, half woman. “Hey,” she said. “We have a class together! Geometry.”

      “Oh, my God, you would be in advanced math,” Kelsey teased, and Danielle blushed.

      Sonia glanced at her cell phone, noting the time. “What’s next here? Why don’t we get in line for ID photos while we can.”

      Danielle gave me an uncertain wave. “Bye.”

      “Yes, bye,” Kelsey chorused.

      I slumped back into the plastic cafeteria chair, watching them walk away from me. The crowd seemed to part at Sonia’s approach, and more than a few heads turned. They were looking at Danielle, too, I realized.

      Aaron helped the next people in line and then took a seat beside me. “She does look great, you know.”

      “Of course she does,” I breathed.

      “But that friend. Whew.” He shook his head. “I’m glad she’s one of yours. She looks like a pack of trouble.”

      * * *

      “She might have asked me,” I huffed to Phil that night. “I have a phone. Would it have been too difficult for her to call me, to at least mention the idea? Oh, by the way, Liz, we’re going to stop by a salon. Would you mind if I had Danielle’s hair hacked all the way back to her scalp?”

      “You did say you liked it.”

      I sighed. “That’s not the point.”

      The girls were upstairs, in the beginning stages of what promised to be a marathon clothes-trying-on session. They were using the mirror in our walk-in closet, so Phil and I were banished to the back deck, where we were slowly working our way through a forty-four-dollar bottle of wine from Victor Mesbah, a just-because gift he’d dropped by the office. I was slowly burning through my anger, too.

      Phil sighed. “It’s hair, Liz. It’s not like it’s a neck tattoo. And she does look cute.”

      “Of course she looks cute,” I bristled. “She couldn’t not look cute.” But she’d been cute before, when she’d been so patently herself.

      Phil’s voice was calm, his words nearly lapped up by the pool. “You’re probably going to have to let this go.” He was distancing himself, I thought, playing the role of the disengaged stepfather.

      Earlier, driving home, the blades of the wind generators on the Altamont rotated so slowly, they might have been giant house fans, barely displacing the warm air. Now the grass by the fourteenth hole was fading into a purplish blue, and sunset had brought with it a slight chill. I pulled my knees to my chest. “She’s becoming one of them.”

      Phil laughed. “Who?”

      “You know. The pretty girls.”

      He leaned over, emptying the bottle between our glasses. “What pretty girls?”

      “Please. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Look at Deanna Sievert. Look at Sonia Jorgensen. Look at Kelsey, for goodness’ sake. Those pretty girls, the ones the world smiles on, the ones who get everything they want without even trying for it.”

      “I haven’t noticed, particularly.” But his voice was distant, his gaze far away.

      Liar. I took a large gulp, savoring the slow trickle of wine down my throat, and set the half-empty glass at my feet.

      The night had been so quiet that the sound of a car starting still registered a few minutes later, an echoic memory. Out of the darkness came another sound, a strangled cry.

      “What was that?” I sat up, thinking the worst—the girls upstairs, Fran Blevins home alone with Elijah.

      He held up a hand, shushing me. We waited, and the sound came again—clearly a scream this time, its shrill edge piercing the night. Phil didn’t have to think, he was on his feet, heading for the door. I stood, toppling my glass, which shattered on the concrete.

      “Shit.” I stooped to gather the shards.

      “Leave it,” Phil called over his shoulder. “We’ll get it later.”

      Inside, Danielle and Kelsey were at the top of the stairs, looking down on us. From this angle I could see straight up Danielle’s skirt, a tiny white thing that was a waste of money, no matter what she’d spent.

      Phil charged through the kitchen to the garage.

      “What’s going on?” Danielle demanded.

      The garage door slammed and Phil was back, flicking a flashlight on-off, on-off to test the battery.

      “We heard a noise,”