The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(60)

I curled my hair and had my mom help me pull some of it back off my face. When it was done, I felt like I was wearing a crown of bobby pins and hairspray, but it looked nice; it looked like the hair of a girl who was about to go to a dance. And I wondered if Enzo would notice how much effort I put into my appearance, how much I wanted to be a different girl, one like Lizzie had been in high school, just for one night.

After securing the final bobby pin in my hair, my mom started getting sentimental. She said she’d be right back, and I was so caught up in my own thoughts, it didn’t even occur to me that she was getting the camera, which was exactly what I didn’t want her to do.

The next thing I knew, my mom was in my bedroom doorway, snapping pictures of me in front of the mirror. My hair looked ready for the dance, but that was it. I was wearing boxers and one of Rush’s old jerseys, and I hadn’t even begun the monumental task of putting on makeup.

“Mom! What are you doing?”

“This is a big moment, Hawthorn. You’ll want to remember it.”

She kept snapping photos, and the rest of my family heard the commotion and decided to see what it was all about, which is how my dad and Rush ended up in my doorway too. They all gushed about my hair and acted happy that I was participating in a school activity of my own free will, and I acted put out and embarrassed and tried to block myself from the camera, but the truth was that I was enjoying the whole thing.

I waited for Rush to make a comment about Enzo, about how he was a loser and didn’t deserve to take me to homecoming, but he kept his mouth shut, which I thought was really cool of him. I looked for signs of disapproval on my dad’s face, because I hadn’t forgotten his conversation with my mom that I’d overheard. But if he was unhappy, he hid it really well.

I swiped blush on my cheeks and applied mascara to my eyelashes and put on a peachy pink shade of lipstick. Yes, I was carefully putting on lipstick and blotting it, like a girl who went to dances on a regular basis. I was a girl who had exfoliated and plucked and perfumed and all the other things you were supposed to do before a date. I was a girl who was going to a dance, a girl who had a loving family that hovered, offering encouragement and good-natured teasing.

That wasn’t the girl I normally was. I liked it. I felt as if I’d slipped into someone else’s skin, and I wasn’t ready to go back to being me.

But I made my family leave the room while I changed into my dress because, you know, there’s such thing as being too close.

I put on my crazy eighties dress. Then came the shoes, silver heels that added at least three inches to my height and made my ability to walk questionable. Then I went to the full-length mirror, braced myself, and looked.

I was actually pleasantly surprised. The poofy dress was absurd. It fit me just right though, and that made it look less strange than it actually was. I didn’t look like Lizzie—I wasn’t golden and blond and curvy—but there are a bunch of girls at my school who are pretty even though they don’t have those qualities. Maybe I could be one of them or enough of one of them to get Enzo to notice me, like he had for that half second in his room while his hand was on my knee.

That’s when the enormity of the situation hit me. I sat down heavily on my desk chair. I’d just spent half the day getting ready to go to a high school dance, which was weird and unfamiliar in itself. And I was going to that dance with the boyfriend of a girl who was missing, probably a werewolf but possibly killed by said boyfriend. And the girl in question was none other than the cheerleader dream queen who I’d spent years resenting.

It was all bizarre and crazy, and I felt lost. What was I doing? What did I want?

I wanted Enzo to see me how he saw Lizzie. I wanted him to like me because I was different from Lizzie. I wanted Lizzie to be alive, but I also wanted her to stay away forever. I wanted my life to be interesting and complicated.

I could have sat at my desk thinking all night, but there was a knock on my door.

“Are you done yet? Mom wants more pictures before you go.”

“Just a second,” I shouted back at my brother.

I turned to the mirror and gazed at my reflection. I was a different person. Just for one night. That’s what I had been telling myself. Which meant I should try to shut off my mind. I needed to stop spurting out worries and questions. I needed to just be.

That was my goal on the night of the homecoming dance. For once, I was going to stop worrying about my motivations and just do what felt right.

? ? ?

There were so many pictures. Too many. My mom made me pose with my brother and my dad. Then the hippies saw what we were doing and wandered over, and Mom had me take a few photos with them. Sundog told me I looked beautiful and gave me some sort of blessing that was probably really nice but sounded like gibberish to me. The whole thing was super overwhelming, but I was trying not to be the kind of girl who got overwhelmed.

“I’ll want pictures of you and Enzo when he gets here,” my mom said after snapping a photo of me standing in front of the house.

“Mom, no. It’s not like that. We’re just friends.”

“You can’t take pictures with your friends?”

“How’s he getting here anyway?” Rush asked. “I thought he was too artistic to drive.”

There it was. I knew my brother couldn’t make it through the entire evening without taking a jab at Enzo.