At Face Value (20 page)

The racks of gloss and eyeliner, eye pencils and complexion corrector are off to one side. Even though I’m not a makeup person (I hardly need to draw more attention to my face), I go and investigate. Halfheartedly, I hold a foundation up to my arm, testing the color in the light.

“You’re more of an ivory.”

I turn and see Wendy Von Schmedler, complete with her trendy boots and straightened hair, her face made up so perfectly she looks as though she has no makeup on.

“If I need your help, I’ll ask for it.” I’m not in the mood for one of Wendy’s fights. She picks them for the sake of hearing herself talk, and I’m too lonely, too forlorn, too everything to deal with her. A clerk passes by; he eyes both of us and gives me a smile. I put the cover-up back.

“You know, if you’d let go of the nose thing, you could actually be pretty.”

I stare at her. “What?” Venom rises in me. “If you were any more shallow you’d be a puddle.” I want to crack up, to tell someone my latest line, but I have no one to tell. Even Linus has been steering clear, saying he’ll give me space until he calls in the auction item he bid on—otherwise known as Me.

Wendy looks at me with contempt, but then her mouth crumples. “I didn’t say it to be mean. I meant it as …”

“Oh, a compliment? That’s like me saying your bathroom has more beauty associated with it than you do—does that feel complimentary?” I say this and then, even though it’s Wendy—mean Wendy, Wendy who has used every opportunity since fifth grade to torment, mock, and verbally mutilate me—I feel bad.

Instead of offering a retort, she slides her back down the cosmetics shelf and sits on the gray rug, looking up at me. Then she puts her head in her hands. “You’re right.”

“I’m—” I stop myself. I’m right? As in correct? As in—she’s not going to pound me back? I look down at her creaseless outfit, her ironed hair, and wonder how long it took her to get ready this morning in that cavernous bathroom of hers. I picture her surrounded by her lotions and potions, peering into the mirror, wondering if the mirror really reflects who she is.

“Ugghh.” A groan escapes from my mouth as I slide down next to her. Lipsticks tower over us, bottles of perfumes and products that promise to deliver but usually don’t. “I’m sorry, Wendy. That was mean.”

Wendy’s face remains poised, but her eyes give away more. Then she speaks. “I always come here when I feel …” She looks around to make sure no one we know is watching.

“When you feel …” I raise my eyebrows but keep my voice soft.

“You know what’s funny?” She looks over her shoulder. “Everyone would die hearing me say this, but—you and I? We’re not that different.”

True horror shows on my face. “I beg to differ.”

Wendy fiddles with a bottle of foundation, turning it this way and that as she talks. “No. We’re not. Maybe it comes from different places—like, you’re this way because of …” She dips her head, casting her sorrowful eyes down toward the rug.

“Fine—because of the unnamed thing. The elephant in the room, AKA my nose.” I sigh, wrapping and unwrapping my scarf around my hands. Wendy and I haven’t spoken civilly in so many years it feels as though we’re speaking some very foreign language—not French or Spanish, one not even offered at Weston High. “And just why are you the way you are?

“Wendy opens the bottle and tests the beige liquid on her wrist. “Mean, you mean?”

“Nice sentence.” The words fly out and I flick myself as punishment. “Ignore that.”

“See? That’s something I would do.” Wendy puts the bottle of foundation back on the rack, crosses her legs, and explains. “My mother is responsible for ninety percent of the makeup and other products I own, okay? She buys them and—” Wendy does air quotes here “—‘gives’ them to me as ‘treats.’ But the reality is, she’s obsessed with crafting me into this persona. I need to be perfect to make her happy.”

“And …” I study the bottle of makeup she just put back. “‘Clarifying clean complexion foundation’ is going to do that?”

She shrugs. Up close, through the blended blush, the expertly applied mascara, I see Wendy for who she really is: a girl who can’t possibly be what other people want her to be. A girl who disappoints herself by trying. Ahem.

“All the makeup in the world, the scrubs and liquid-gold soap—two hundred bucks for point-four ounces, by the way—it’s not going to make my mother happy. Because she’s miserable. You’ve met her.”

I think back to Mrs. Von Schmedler’s appearance, her incarnations as a blonde, a redhead, the streaks careful and perfect. All her attempts at morphing into someone else. Someone younger. “You’re not your mother,” I say.

“And you’re not your nose.” She looks at me head-on, waiting for the fallout.

I bite the middle of my upper lip. “But I feel like I am.” The clerk goes by again, sweeping up a few stray leaves, smiling at us. “Rude,” I say under my breath. I look away.

“You’re so quick to glare at people!” Wendy laughs. I want to punch her, but she’s got a point.

“It’s just defensiveness. Makes me good at sports.”

“And bad at people.” She looks over at the clerk. He’s our age, probably a senior from nearby Guilford High. “Did it ever occur to you that everyone stares at everyone all the time? Not
just
at you—but
also
at you?”

I let her words sink in. “I guess not.” Inside, I feel something stirring—not a comeback, not anything cruel, just a space. “Since we’re sitting here, on the floor of the Apothecary, talking as though we don’t despise each other, can I ask you something?”

Wendy tests another shade of foundation. “Go for it.”

“What would happen if we weren’t mean? It’s not like I want to be, you know? It just happens.”

“So it’s out of your control?” She looks at me quizzically. “I don’t buy that. You’re the editor of the paper—you rocked varsity tennis, you do all this stuff. All this stuff that requires discipline and control.” She screws the top back on the makeup. “I’m buying this one.” She stands up. “See? I feel better already.” She holds the product as though it’s a key, ready to open doors and change things for her.

I stand up and follow her, feeling oddly serene. Maybe taking away meanness opens up room for something else. But what?

“That’s it? We’re done? All this psycho-drama-intense conversation, and now you’re buying makeup?”

Wendy turns to me, her mouth placid, her eyes working on converting from sad to steely. “Every now and again I have a maternal meltdown. This one was caused by my mother’s insistence that I ‘get my skin in shape’ before my New Year’s party.”

“Your skin’s fine,” I tell her, feeling sorrier for her than ever.

“Yeah, it’s my attitude I have to work on!” She cracks us both up. I reach out to touch her arm—or, not hug her, but something—and she shakes her head. “Don’t waste the effort on me, okay? I’m kind of on automatic, at least until I get the hell away from home and head out west for college.” She grabs a handful of other items—tweezers, eye shadow, a glittery powder. “But you have potential, you know?” She grins. “Even if you have the biggest damn nose in the history of the world.”

Our eyes lock. I could—I have—I should—douse her with words, with vengeance. But I don’t. I let a half-grin appear, and nod. “I do,” I tell her without letting anger and meanness enter into it. “So what?”

And just like that, I know exactly what to say in my last college essay: “My Greatest Flaw and How It Helps Me.”

“You’re finished?” Dad asks when we’re gathered in the kitchen for a celebratory breakfast of crepes and strawberries—my birthday meal when I was a kid.

“Just in the nick of time.” My mother folds a crepe and hands me orange juice mixed with ginger ale, a faux mimosa. “A faux-mosa, if you will.”

“I will,” I say and sip. “It’s the last time I have to write these kinds of ridiculous essays …”

“What was the one that was tripping you up, anyway?” Dad asks with his mouth full.

I tell them, and help myself to seconds before I head to school. “I gotta go,” I say, remembering that today’s the day Wendy’s handing out the invites to her New Year’s bash. I’m guessing that after our semi-bonding, she’ll deposit one in my locker.

All along, I thought it was my nose that was the flaw. Turns out I was wrong.

In the hallway, seniors and juniors alike flock to their lockers and search for the thick, silvery invitations. I watch the usual suspects—Jill and her social group—hold theirs in excitement as I slowly turn the lock on my locker. A few lockers away, Leyla reads hers, refusing to look at me while Eddie snags his invitation. He reads it with a shrug and goes over to Leyla. I wonder what they’re talking about, but don’t have a chance of finding out. Eddie looks over at me. I give him a small wave and he holds up his invite, gesturing to see if I’m heading to the lake, too. I want so much to be able to hang out with him—go running, laugh over tea and crumpets, talk about anything and everything—but it’s too hard now. The emails are gone, and so is any hope I had. Leyla was totally correct when she said I had a fantasy life with Eddie—and without it, I’m not sure how to proceed.

The yellow metal clangs open, revealing the few books I have inside my locker. Notebooks, pens, the latest copy of the
Word,
but no silvery envelope. No rectangle of inclusivity. I don’t bother looking at Eddie or Leyla or anyone else. I just close the door and head to study hall.

With everyone pretty much mentally on vacation already, the room is boisterous rather than studiously quiet. I take a seat off in the corner near Sarah Jensen, who is busy highlighting her science textbook. I nod hello.

“Cramming,” she says, as if I asked.

“For exams?” I slide my bag onto the floor and take out a book, so I can pretend to read while really trying to overhear Eddie’s conversation with his friends. Just hearing his voice sends ripples of longing through my body. Why can’t the people we are on the computer screen be the people we are in study hall? I think back to some of his letters, the ones I can recall. I wonder if he does the same, if my letters moved him the way his moved me.

“They’re not too far off,” Sarah says as she chews on her pen.

“Exams aren’t until after break!” I can’t believe she’s so insistent on this. “You’ve got to let go a little, Sarah,” I tell her while pining for Eddie. “Just learn to relax.”

Sarah smirks and gives me the same look she gives her opponents in debate. “For your information, I will be relaxing and enjoying myself—at least for part of break. New Year’s at Wendy’s house, right?” She goes back to studying, leaving me even more alone than I was before. How did Sarah Jensen score an invite when I didn’t?

Eddie laughs and claps his hands, a habit he’s always had—he does it even while jogging—and I think of telling him to wear mittens to muffle the sound. He catches me looking at him, but doesn’t do anything because right then he gets in trouble with the monitor (“Some people actually need to work, Mr. Roxanninoff”), and I have an encounter with Wendy Von Schmedler. She’s passing by me and I smell a whiff of a new perfume—probably a “treat” from her mother.

But I don’t say that. Instead, in a calm voice, I say, “Wendy?”

She turns around, flanked by her sidekicks and their air-brushed beauty. I could ask her why she didn’t invite me. Or I could berate her. But the newfound so-what-about-my-nose? feeling takes over. “Thanks for the invitation,” I tell her. “I’d love to come to your party.”

Jill Carnegie grimaces. Vienna Thompson actually sticks out her tongue. Wendy just flinches for a second, and we lock eyes like we did on the floor of the Apothecary. “Glad to hear it.”

Jill can’t take it anymore. “What’d you do, Wendy, send her two invitations? One for her, and one for her nose?”

The room quiets as people wait for my reaction. I can feel it brewing. How easy it would be to sting back as I’ve done so many times before. How simple. But how flawed. “Actually, I only got one.” I point to my face. “We go together—as a package.” I wait for Wendy’s response. In a movie, she’d be all smiles and hugs and people would cheer as the social barricades fall. But real life isn’t like that.

Wendy checks her watch as though she’s got somewhere better to be. She can’t be too nice or her friends will think she’s lost it, but if she’s too mean, I’ll know she was a fake during our moment of truth in the store. “Of course I invited you, Cyrie,” she says, her voice semi-soft. “I left the invite at the
Word
office.” Her eyes flick to mine. She really invited me? Jill still looks horrified, and when Wendy sees this she adds a definitive, “Of course, you’re only coming in an editorial capacity—I figure you can devote an entire front page to me and the most memorable night of the year.”

Jill looks satisfied. Wendy looks pleased. She has her cake and eats it, too. It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad. I nod to her and a few minutes later, after the bell, head to the office where—sure enough—taped to the door is a silvery envelope addressed to me.

“I’m invited,” I say aloud.

“So, I’ll see you there?” Linus taps my shoulder. “I heard there’s going to be mistletoe.”

Linus. Dependable, trustworthy Linus. Linus who wants to be more than friends. Linus who bought my writing help at the auction.

“Yeah—I guess so.”

“Did you finish your essays?” he asks, making small talk before our
Word
meeting. I notice that Leyla’s not here, nor is Eddie. With a wince, I wonder if they’re together, hunched over watery hot cocoa near the ugly sea mural in the cafeteria, or bonding over books. Maybe Leyla is with Josh. I feel reassured thinking this.

“Do you need a ride to Wendy’s party?” Linus asks. I shake my head.

“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

We wait for the others to arrive. Josh rushes in, alone, and all thoughts of Leyla being with him vanish. As if reading my mind, Linus asks, “Where’s Leyla?”

Josh shrugs and blows it off. “Who knows. Not like I’m her keeper or anything.”

Linus signs to me,
bored of Josh already.
“Did you finish your essays?”

I nod and sign back,
all done, so happy.
My signing is limited, so I can’t be super eloquent. “What did you write about?”