She lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t we going for inconspicuous here?”
“No way. Justunrecognizable.” I pulled the blue wig on and looked at her. She grinned and gave me two thumbs up.
Rose picked a long, wavy, blond-streaked wig with bangs. She looked amazing in it and I made her take a billion photos. As we sorted through the racks for clothes, she got more and more into it. Clothes were definitely her forte.
When we left the store, I was wearing a short polyester shiftdress with geometric patterns. Very 1960s go-go girl. Rose was decked out in a long white caftan with little laced-up booties straight out ofLittle House on the Prairie.We both wore large sunglasses that obscured our faces.
Rose couldn’t stop giggling, self-conscious as she drove us to the first stop: No Pain No Grain, a grain-bowl truck in Hollywood. Rose parked her car at a metered spot, and the sun beat down relentlessly on the tops of our wigged heads when we stepped out.
I tugged at my dress. “Ugh, should have considered the weather before choosing this piece o’ crap unbreathable fabric!”
Rose was scrolling through an iPad. She had, of course, mapped out all the trucks and made a very thorough checklist. “Okay, so their specialty is making healthy, ‘clean’ bowls full of obscure veggies and various free-range or grass-fed meats.”
“Sounds like the worst.” I peered at the truck through my sunglasses. Their line was minuscule, and it was full of Hollywood’s finest clean-eaters—mostly thin and most likely wealthy as well, judging from the menu pricing. Before Rose could protest, I jumped into line and targeted a young white woman with wavy red hair who was wearing a crop top and loose linen pants. “What’s your favorite thing here?” I asked with a heavy vocal fry.
She glanced at my hair and then my outfit, visibly startled. Probably not the usual clientele she found at her ol’ reliable grain truck. “Well, I usually go for farro topped with okra, black beans, and a sprinkling of gomasio.”
“Interesting. Are you a vegetarian?” I asked.
Glancing around quickly, she leaned in a bit and whispered, “No. Between you and me, I don’t actually think their chicken is free-range.” Her eyebrows lifted.
I raised my own. Quelle horreur.“Are you for real?”
“For real.” A firm, knowing nod. “But their veggies are grown in their own garden, and they’re heavenly.” I stored that fact away. Strengths: veggies. Weaknesses: chicken. We bailed before it was our turn to order, already moving on to our next destination, the Frank ’n’ Frank truck, which served, you guessed it, fancy hot dogs. My dad and I both loved this truck, so I braced myself for some stiff competition. We surveyed the long line before us. It was peak lunch hour, so that wasn’t surprising.
“Hm… this truck doesn’t even give you options,” Rose pondered as she glanced at the menu scrawled on the side of the shiny white truck in neon green. “There’s, like, one hot dog, and you get grilled onions on it with various condiments.”
I nodded. “Their hot dogs are freaking delicious, that’s why. Why dilute the product?”
Rose stood there looking like a serious cult leader in her caftan. “Not too different from the KoBra, we keep it minimal, too.”
“My dad knows his strengths,” I said. Because we were both hungry, we grabbed a couple of hot dogs (Rose discovered she could actually get a vegan one, bleh) and sat down at a nearby bus stop bench shaded by a large magnolia tree.
“This is fun,” Rose said between bites.
“You sound surprised.”
She shrugged. “I never know what I’m getting into with you. And… I still don’t get why we need to wear costumes, but whatever.”
I pointed my hot dog at her. “Aha! You say ‘whatever’ because you know the costumes are purely for fun. And could it be that you’re embracinghijinksright now?”
“Calm down, Clara,” she said. “You’re so annoying.”
“I know,” I said with a laugh. A bus pulled up, and we watched some people unload before it drove off, the exhaust fumes spewing some debris up into the air. I waved it away from my face. “Thanks for hanging out with me today.” It was getting easier and easier to say things like that to Rose without having to crack a joke, too.
“Of course.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I know what it’s like to need a distraction when you’re worried about stuff.”
I was hesitant before I asked, “So, is that how you cope with your anxiety?”
And to my surprise, Rose didn’t shut it down. She fiddled with her straw. “Kind of. Sometimes I think it’s just me being a worrywart? I’ve always been this way. I worry abouteverything. And sometimes the dumbest stuff keeps worrying me, days and weeks after.” A breeze hit us then, and it felt so good. She lifted her face up to it. “It’s like this pitch-black field where I’m forced to walk, and I know there’s a giant hole somewhere waiting for me. So I’m constantly thinking about it, when I’m going to drop into this pit.”
That sounded like a literal nightmare, and it hit me then how seemingly perfect people were just as messed up as everyone else. I stayed quiet so she would keep talking.
“Sometimes, I can’t… live in the moment. I’m always thinking of what-ifs and the terrible things people could be thinking about me.” She looked up at me. “I always think everyone’s mad at me. All the time. And it’s like, I don’t really care? But I do. It’s hard to explain.”
“You mean, like your parents?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I mean, yeah, of course I worry about what they think. But literallyeveryone. Like a stranger on the street. If I say something dumb to a barista, it bothers me for weeks. If someone doesn’t respond to a text or e-mail right away, I’m convinced I did something wrong. I feel as if my brain’strollingme.”
