I try again. “I’m not comfortable—”
“What is this?” Mom interrupts. She pulls out something from the yearbook and holds it up. It’s the orange invitation to Lauren Finch’s party.
“It’s just a graduation thing. I already know I can’t go,” I say dismissively. I want to talk about Uncle Max—why won’t she let me?
Mom looks over the card. She takes her time, mulling it over like she’s considering something important. “Why can’t you go?” Her voice sounds distant. Timid even.
My face scrunches. “It’s a party,” I say, like this should answer everything. Mom has always been strict about letting any of us go anywhere. It took more than a year before she’d let me go to the movies with Emery. She never has a good reason—I think she just likes to be in control.
Mom shrugs. “A party could be fun. You are about to graduate. It might be a good opportunity to say good-bye to all your friends.”
I press my lips together. Mom clearly doesn’t know me very well.
But she is giving me permission to go to a party—maybe I don’t know her very well either.
And then something clicks together. I raise my eyebrows. “Are you doing this because you don’t want to talk about Uncle Max?”
Mom laughs and turns another page of the yearbook. “You think there’s an ulterior motive for everything nice I do.”
That’s because there is, I want to say. But I don’t, because I’m not an idiot. I’m about to get out of having to face Uncle Max tonight. I would literally spend the entire weekend with a house full of strangers if it meant not having to see him again.
“Okay. Well, thanks,” I say.
Mom looks back at the colorful pages in her lap. “Just gorgeous.”
I leave her alone on the couch.
? ? ?
When I’m upstairs getting ready for a party I never in a million years thought I’d be going to, I hear someone knock at the bathroom door. It’s Mom.
“Do you need help with your hair?” she asks.
I scrunch my face. “Mom, you haven’t touched my hair since, like, the third grade.”
She shrugs. “Can’t I help now? I’m good at hair.”
I let her in because I’m starved of motherly interest, and it feels nice that she wants to help.
She pulls and brushes and tugs at my hair, and when she’s finished, it’s pulled back in a bun so tightly my eyes look even smaller and I can barely see any hair at all.
“I look bald,” I say blankly.
Mom clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “It looks good. It shows off your face.”
“That’s the problem,” I reply under my breath.
“This is how the celebrities wear their hair on the red carpet,” she adds.
“They wouldn’t wear their hair like this if they weren’t wearing any makeup. Can I at least borrow some mascara or something?”
“Absolutely not.” Mom sniffs. “It’s way more impressive to be beautiful without makeup.”
I stiffen. She’s never called me beautiful before. Ever. I wonder when she—
“Girls were always jealous of me when I was in high school because I never wore makeup and I was the prettiest girl in the school.”
I sigh. She’s not talking about me—she’s talking about herself. Of course she is.
“I don’t look like you, Mom. This hairdo doesn’t look good on me. It makes my face look too round.”
I don’t know how Mom doesn’t see it, especially since she’s been talking about my big round circle face for as long as I can remember. The round face I got from Dad and not her. The face she’s constantly reminding me doesn’t look anything like hers.
Hair like this might be flattering on celebrities and Mom, but not on me.
“I’ll get some hair spray—don’t touch it.” She swats my hand away.
I start to tell her people stopped using this much hair spray in the nineties, but she doesn’t listen. She smothers me in a cloud of chemicals that makes me cough, and the next time I touch my hair it’s so stiff it feels like plastic.
? ? ?
I draw a girl without a face, drawing somebody else’s face onto her own reflection.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lauren’s house is beautiful. It’s three stories and made up of perfect red brick, and it’s surrounded by grass and hedges. A constant regurgitation of the top-twenty pop songs bursts from the open door, and a giant, inflatable unicorn is resting its plastic horn against the living room window.
Three girls about my age spill out of the front door, bright red cups in hand. A husky guy wearing a maroon college sweatshirt follows after them and tries to persuade them back inside. The girls giggle dizzily. I’m pretty sure they’ll go with him—I’ve been watching them do this weird dance of should-I-stay-or-shouldn’t-I for the past hour.
Because I am still in my car.
I’m creepily parked across the street behind a shiny white pickup truck, staring at Lauren’s house like I’m about to walk into a job interview.
Emery keeps texting to ask if I’m here yet, which is making me feel even more paranoid. I feel like someone is depending on me. It’s so much pressure.
My heart thuds. When I swallow, I feel my throat close up. I’m so jittery and squeamish and cold that I feel like I’m going to die. Literally, the best thing that could happen right now is that my body could just evaporate into the air and I would never have to face so many people.
I’m worried people are going to stare at me and I won’t know what to do or say.
The three girls disappear back into the house, and they are replaced by Adam Walker, a tall blond with questionable balance. I recognize him because he’s on the lacrosse team and looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. And also because we’ve averaged about two classes together every year since the sixth grade.
He stumbles across the driveway with a goofy half smirk frozen onto his face, and before long he’s joined by more people. Eddie Greene, Caitlyn Barrow, and Marc Sherwood, to be exact. They aren’t on the lacrosse team—they’re just popular.
They all laugh and nudge each other. They’re so comfortable in these situations. Not like me.
My phone rings. It’s Emery.
“Hey,” I say meekly.
“Why are you still in your car?”
“There’s a lot of people, and—”
“—I’m coming to get you.” She hangs up.
I sink into the driver’s seat and tell myself this is a good thing. Being around Emery will make all of this so much easier. I can fake being normal, as long as Emery doesn’t leave me alone.
She taps her fingers on the window and pulls the door open. She doesn’t hide her confusion when she sees my hair.
“My mom did it,” I say lamely.