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Tiffany Doggett rose from her bed and stumbled into the shower, letting the water run over her and wash the sleep from her eyes, her face, her arms.
She yawned; she’d had the dream again, and she didn’t want to think about it anymore. What did dreams mean, anyway? Wasn’t there some idea that they meant something? Was it something was going to happen, or something somebody wanted? She couldn’t remember.
Maybe it didn’t really matter. There were a lot of things that didn’t matter much anymore.
She stepped out and toweled off, not bothering to blow-dry her hair before pulling it into an orange hair tie and tightening the pony tail.
It had been a long time since she had done these things. It had been a long time since she had remembered how to do these things.
What was that saying about not knowing what you have until it’s gone?
She thought about that, now.
But she didn’t need her mind to go dance off thinking right now. She had to get ready, and everything needed to be perfect. Time was a-wasting and she was on a strict, clear schedule.
That part she was used to, at least. Bells to tell you where to go, guards to tell you what to do (or, more often, what not to do).
Being out in the “real world”? It was too much, sometimes. This tiny little apartment? Sometimes it felt so big it was as if she could fall into a black hole if she stared at the wall for too long.
But maybe today… maybe today something good would happen.
If it hadn’t all changed, that was.
***
She took a bus downtown and nearly giggled – these people didn’t know, they didn’t know her. Why would they?
Her case had been a big deal, once upon a time, lifetimes ago. The bad thing about ending up in prison is, even if you were some kind of big deal, there’s no one around to tell you about it.
Maybe that was a good thing. Tiffany couldn’t really get much behind her original audience these days. She felt like a different person. Not a better person necessarily – just different.
The next stop was the bus station; a downtown shithole that spelled like a mix of bleach and RC Cola. Tiffany found herself sprawled in a bucket seat and staring at her watch.
It could be that she wouldn’t come at all. She wouldn’t be the first person to have disappointed Tiffany, and she wouldn’t be the last, either. Maybe it had been silly to get her hopes up.
She could remember being in school and looking at the prettier girls, the smarter girls, and wondering what it would be like to wake up like one of them. To have hair that seemed to flow down to her back from everywhere, to have skin that was always crystal clear and perfect and soft.
And then there was Boo. Boo wasn’t pretty, not in the way Tiffany had always thought it to mean. She didn’t have fancy clothes or wear her hair long or laugh all the time at things that weren’t funny. Tiffany had never wanted to be a girl like Boo when she grew up.
But that had changed; now, she was all that she wanted to be like, though finding that within herself had proven a challenge. When Tiffany looked in the mirror, she saw a list of flaws staring back at her – oh, there was her too-crooked chin, oh, there was her grimy hair, oh she was short and couldn’t even reach up above that mirror.
Wrong, wrong, and still wrong.
Boo would tell her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t say it in a mean way. Or maybe it was a mean way, but it was a way that Tiffany didn’t mind hearing it.
She had to come. She just had to. Tiffany had been waiting for it all week.
***
She had slumped over in the bucket seat, an RC Cola close enough to her head to leave an ident when she had basically fallen asleep. But there it was – the sound of the bus pulling up in front of the station.
Tiffany bolted upright, nearly running over a lady with a stroller in her quest to get up to the bus. Boo had to be there, she had to be!
If she wasn’t…
She did not get a chance to finish the thought before Carrie “Big Boo” Black had stepped off the bus with a triumphant stomp and wrapped her arms around Tiffany, squeezing her and lifting her up in the air slightly.
Tiffany never thought she would like getting picked up and moved around, being squeezed.
But this was different. This was… like being a treasured porcelain doll, one that is carried around everywhere by a child who loves it… Tiffany had always wanted one of those dolls, and then when she had outgrown that silly desired she had wanted to be one.
Never finding it until now. She had thought that she might not come, and she felt a twinge of guilt for thinking that. Boo would always come through for her even when she wouldn’t come through for herself.
“I’m bringing you home,” she said to Boo, the happiness swelling from her chest, “I mean, it’s not much really, but it’ll be like a sleepover.” Tiffany smiled shyly, not ready to share that she had never had one of those but had always, always wanted one. She had read a few Babysitters Club books when she was little – before they got tossed in some yard sale or another – and they were always having sleepovers, and making extra money babysitting.
You didn’t get paid when the only people you were babysitting were all of your younger siblings, and the end of the night usually ended up with melted Tootsie Pops all over the wall. No one even ever said thank you, and you didn’t get sleepovers. You didn’t get friends, not real friends. You got keg parties on people’s lawns where you didn’t really know anybody’s name and someone’s mom usually got punched in the face by the end of the night for one reason or another.
“A sleepover, Penn?” Boo replied. “Sure, I’d love to.”
Tiffany turned her face away to not let on how happy those words had made her. She would be so lame if she let on.
***
“Never have I ever…” Tiffany paused, running her fingers over the sleek head of the beer bottle. It was getting harder to think of things she hadn’t done.
“Oh, come on, Penn. There has to be something that comes to mind! You’re taking forever, here.” Boo reached out and gently poked at Tiffany’s shoulder. Tiffany liked that, the way that Boo made her feel like she really liked her, actually liked her.
Made her feel warm and safe, even in the place she had been least safe in her life. What could she even open her mouth and say about that that wasn’t steeped in gut-wrenching corniness? No wonder she was getting drunk as quickly as she could, this was depressing.
“Boo,” she said, at last.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Boo teased, but there was a touch of seriousness in it, a seeing – Tiffany couldn’t think of any better name for it – that she hadn’t been prepared for.
“Why do you like me?” Tiffany blurted, finally, wanting to kick herself. She had never let herself sound that whiny before – or maybe she had. She could remember “Safe Place”, where she had been so damned relieved that Healy had wanted to be something close to her friend, that she had ignored all the signs that he was manipulating her for whatever ends and just dove right on it.
When had been the last time there hadn’t been an ulterior motive lurking beneath the surface? Even in school… Even with her mother, even…
“You’re not going to start that kind of stuff again, are you?” Boo asked, pretending that she was brushing it all away. “Let’s just accept the fact that I like you – or else I wouldn’t be here. Why would I – out of prison, thank baby Jesus, no less – choose to take a bus out here just to spend time with someone I hated? If I wanted to do that, I have a cell phone full of ex-girlfriends I could go hang out with.”
Tiffany put the beer bottle down and flopped back on the couch.
“What you wanna watch?”
“Well, what do you have? I’m almost afraid to even ask.”
“My uncle TiVo-ed a bunch of episodes of Steve Wilkos for when I got out.” She picked up the remote and Boo laughed, but shook her head.
“As compelling as that sounds… no. Do you have cable?”
It was Tiffany’s turn to chuckle.
“No. Do I look like I have cable in this dump?”
“You had TiVo.”
“Doesn’t work anymore.”
Boo chuckled, pulling Tiffany into a hug.
“How many channels do you have, then?”
“3, 6, 10 and UHF… So like five.” Tiffany grinned.
“We’ll find something to watch on one of them. And we can heat up some popcorn.”
“Microwave caught on fire a few days ago, but…”
“Let’s keep life interesting.”
***
Tiffany opened her eyes to find herself cuddled in against Boo’s shoulder, with the older woman still fast asleep. She wondered, in her sleepy haze, what kinds of things Boo thought about. Or in her dreams, is she called Carrie still? Like that movie with the girl and all the blood? Weird movie…
She ran her hand over her face and brushed the hair out of her eyes. She was still here – she hadn’t left. She was still here after sitting through seven hours of infomercials and eating burnt popcorn mixed in with peach rings. The four basic food groups, Boo had told her.
There was still a sense of surreality about all of it, about being out of Litchfield at last. It was as if she had been in an airplane for hours and had just stepped off, ears still pressurized and ground still hovering beneath her.
Boo was the only solid ground.
Tiffany found herself waking up crying, sometimes, and she wasn’t even sure what she was crying about. Maybe it was all of the things she thought she should have had that she didn’t, or maybe it was something else entirely, some fear that she had been wrong about so many things all along and that she couldn’t catch up with any of it in time to fix any of it. That she would just fade away into nothingness and the world would fade too because no one had ever really known her at all.
But now Boo seemed to, if not know her, seemed to want to.
Friendship could never be rated highly enough, Tiffany thought with a small smile on her face. It had taken her years to look for it but here, now, she had it within her grasp at last. It felt sweet, and carefree, in a way that she had never known before.
She slipped away, careful not to awaken the other woman, and walked into her tiny bedroom. This was hers – finally, she had things to call her own. There wasn’t much decorating the room, that was true, but soon there would be.
Maybe Boo could help. She hadn’t asked her friend how long she was staying, and it probably wasn’t a good idea to do so. In that question was the implication that she would want her to leave – and she didn’t. She didn’t know a whole lot about what she wanted, that much might be true, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that when she closed her eyes and picture a future, she saw Boo there beside her.
Beside her how, exactly?
Tiffany shook her head and looked around the room again. She could picture the little touches Boo would bring to it – maybe a picture of the two of them up on a bookcase filled with Boo’s weird books, like that Freakonomics one or whatever it was.
“Hey… Up and about and pondering?” she heard Boo ask behind her.
Tiffany threaded her hands together and turned her head, smiling.
“Yeah… Just ponderin’.”