Keeping The Moon(25)

folded and sorted by category and color. The other was covered, from the floor to the bed, with stuff. Clothes and CDs and socks

and magazines and bras and empty cigarette packs, all burying and supporting each other. But the thing I noticed most was the

mirror.

It was over a dressing table, and all around it, stretching out at least a foot from each side, were hundreds of faces cut from

magazines. Blonde girls, brunettes, redheads, all staring out hollow-cheeked and seductive. There were girls with drastic makeup,

girls with no makeup, all of them skinny, some of them smiling. They were taped up kind of slapdash, overlapping each other,

spreading out like a cloud from the mirror’s edges. Here and there, mixed in, you could see pictures of real people: some of

Isabel and Morgan, family pictures, a couple of babies and several of smiling, good-looking boys. Next to the models, they seemed

smaller, and you noticed every imperfection.

“Sit down,” Isabel said, kicking aside one white sandal and a pair of shorts to pull out the chair. The dressing table itself was

a sea of little bottles and containers, so covered with cosmetics that you couldn’t even see the surface. I looked at myself in

the mirror, surrounded by all those beautiful girls, and wondered what I was doing there.

Isabel pushed some more stuff aside and leaned against the dressing table, taking another swig of her beer. “Look, Colie. I have

something to say to you, and I’m just gonna shoot it straight. Okay?”

I considered this. It couldn’t be any worse than what had already happened. “Okay.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear, took a deep breath and let it out. Then she said, “I really think you should pluck your

eyebrows.”

This hadn’t been exactly what I was expecting.

“What?” I said.

“You heard me,” she said, coming to stand behind me and turning my head to face my reflection. “And it wouldn’t hurt to do

something about that hair, either.”

“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly as she went to the closet and yanked the door open, pulling out a large box of hair coloring

kits. And here I’d thought she was a natural blonde.

“That black is just too uneven,” she said. “You can’t dye over it, but at least we could try to do it again and get it all. It

won’t fix it totally, but—” She dropped the box on the floor and abruptly left the room, still talking to herself. I listened to

her open and shut cabinets in the kitchen.

I looked back up at the pictures, taking in each of the faces. And then I saw it; one, stuck at the top, that I hadn’t noticed

before. It looked like a yearbook picture. The girl in it was fat, with glasses. She had a pudgy face and limp brown hair, and she

was wearing a thick turtleneck sweater that looked really uncomfortable and itchy. She had a necklace with a little gold frog on

it, something her mother or grandmother must have given her. She was the kind of girl that Caroline Dawes would have made

miserable. A girl like me.

I leaned closer, wondering why she was there. Even with the pictures of the babies and Morgan and all those boys, she didn’t fit

in.

“Here,” Isabel said, coming back into the room suddenly and dropping a box in my lap. The model on the front had dark brown hair,

almost black, with a tinge of red in it, and she smiled up at me. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

I didn’t know what Caroline Dawes had triggered in Isabel but I wasn’t about to question it. After the day I’d had, any change

seemed like a good idea.

“Okay,” I said. And behind me, reflected in the mirror among all those other beauties, Isabel’s pretty face almost, just almost,

smiled.

“Ouch.”

“Hush.”

“Ouch!”

“Shut up.”

“Ouch!”

“Will you please be quiet?” Isabel snapped, yanking what had to be a fair amount of skin with another pluck.

“It hurts,” I said. She’d searched for some ice cubes, but no luck: she’d forgotten to fill the tray the night before.

“Of course it hurts,” she grumbled, tipping my head further back. “Life sucks. Get over it.”

Obviously, we wouldn’t be best friends immediately.

To distract myself, I looked over at the mirror. “Who’s that girl?”

“What girl.” Another yank.

I had tears in my eyes. “That one,” I said, pointing toward the chubby girl in the turtleneck. “In the yearbook picture.”

She gave another good yank, then looked where I was pointing. “My cousin,” she said distractedly.

“Oh.”

“She’s a real looker, huh.” She switched the tweezers to the other hand, flexing her cramped fingers.

“Well, she’s,” I said, “I mean, she’s very …”

“She’s a dog,” she said, settling in to start on my other brow. “It’s no secret.”

It was always so easy for beautiful girls. They never could understand how lucky they were. But I knew her cousin, knew what she

was going through. And I couldn’t take my eyes off her, even as Isabel worked to transform me.