Rivals

Maggie turned on her iTunes and sank down into the chair in front of her makeup table. The music throbbed through the room like fingers massaging her neck, but that just made her jumpier, like someone kept touching her on the shoulder telling her to turn around and look when she knew there was nothing there. She couldn't seem to relax, couldn't seem to think straight.

She stared in the mirror and grabbed a mascara and started doing her lashes. She'd read an article in Cosmo about how to give yourself a smoky eye and she'd been wanting to try it out. Applying makeup was still a relatively new thing for Maggie. She'd been a tomboy and a jock for most of high school, and it was only when she started her senior year that she started really taking care of her appearance. It was right after Mom died, in fact. She'd figured out that it took total concentration to do your makeup effectively, and that while you were busy applying just the right amount of blush and eyeliner, you couldn't think about -

I killed Dad.

- anything else. Well. That didn't work. She threw the mascara down in disgust and started crying into her hands, big noisy sobs that no one would hear over the music.

I could have gone back, like Brent wanted.

Maybe Dad was still alive.

"I didn't know that we were okay!" she told the mirror. "I thought Brent was still on fire. I thought we had to get to a doctor ourselves. I thought - "

She rubbed away her tears with the balls of her thumbs and grabbed for a tissue. When she looked back in the mirror she got a shock. She had managed to rub mascara all over her cheeks and temples and up onto her forehead. It was like she had taken a paintbrush full of black paint and swiped it just right across her face at eye level. It looked...

Well, it looked like she was wearing a mask.

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry so she did both and she must have made a lot of noise because eventually there was a knock on her door and then Grandma came in. "I didn't give you permission to enter my room," Maggie said, rubbing at her face with the tissue. Where was the cold cream? She couldn't let Grandma see her like that. The old biddy would think she was playing dress-up or something.

"Young lady, turn off this music right now," Grandma said, loud enough to be heard.

Maggie reached over to her computer and turned it up, slightly.

"You're certainly your father's daughter," Grandma said. "Wild."

"Dad was a good man," Maggie insisted.

"He was a hellion. Never worked an honest day in his life. All he wanted to do was traipse about in the desert all the time, probably half-naked like a little boy!"

Maggie spun around in her chair. She couldn't believe this. "He was an engineer! He worked harder than you ever did."

"He ruined my little girl. Your mother. Made her crazy, too. Neither of them ever understood what family really means. Well, I'm not going to let that happen to you. Now you and I have had our differences over the years - "

Maggie snorted.

" - but that ends now. You kids need a parent around here. The Lord knows I'm too old for the job. And He also knows I don't want it. But I am going to keep you on the straight and narrow. Something happened out there in the desert and now you've got the papers calling, and the government watching you. That is not acceptable. Not at a time when you need to focus on your studies. I am going to make sure that you both get off to college, where you'll study nice, respectable subjects. And if I have to tan both of your hides to get you there, I will."

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Why are you always such a hardass, huh? My father just died. I just got out of the hospital. Be nice to me!"

"Nice," Grandma said. She brought her hands up where Maggie could see them. She showed her the engagement ring on her finger, with its tiny little diamond. That ring was one of her favorite threats. Always, when she slapped Maggie, she turned the diamond around so that it was inside her palm, and then she would hit Maggie with the back of her hand. She had threatened many times to hit her with an open palm - which would rake that diamond across Maggie's cheek and cut her, maybe even leave a scar.

"Before she died, your mother told me about you," Grandma said, when they were both clear that niceness was not going to be part of their relationship. "She told me about your little problem. About your sticky fingers."

Maggie blushed despite herself. "She didn't. Mom would never do that."

"She told me how worried she was about you. She told me you had stolen a bag full of makeup from a store downtown. Or at least, that you tried. She told me she had to go down there and talk your way out of the store, had to grovel in front of a security guard to keep the store from pressing charges. Do you know what I told her?"

"No," Maggie said. "I'm not psychic."

Grandma leaned forward. Her eyes were very large and very bright behind her glasses. "I told her she should have let you rot in jail. But since that's not an option this time, I need to make sure nothing like that every happens again. I came in here to lay down some ground rules. First off, no boys."

"Excuse me?"

Grandma scowled at Maggie. Nobody could scowl like Grandma. "I called the school and I know what kind of grades you're getting. You can go to one movie with a boy of your choice the day they tell me you're working on straight As. Rule two is, no friends."

"What?"

"I know what kind of friends a girl like you is likely to have. Smokers. Giggling little no-brains. Probably a couple of drug users. That ends now. After school, you'll come straight home and do your chores and your homework. Then you and I are going to watch television every night from eight until nine thirty."

Maggie's lips pressed together. "What happens at nine thirty?" she asked.

"Bedtime," Grandma said.

Rule three was no allowance. What would Maggie need money for, anyway, since she wasn't going to be hanging out with her friends and would have all her meals at home?

Rule four was no talking back.

It went on from there for a while. Maggie stopped listening. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them there. She closed her eyes and just let the words wash over her, mixing with the music until it all just felt like wind in her hair.

"Which brings us to rule seventeen," Grandma said.