Birthday(29)

“Yup!” she says, somehow interpreting me. “And I’ve got another present when you’re done.”

“Susan,” I say as I remove the candle, lick it clean, and shove it in my pocket; I’m not going to just throw it away in front of her. “This is crazy.” We have geometry, chemistry, and English together, and we sit by each other in all of them. She helps me with science and math, and I help her with English. Susan makes me laugh all the time, and football and cheerleading are kind of adjacent, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that we’ve gotten this close, but I am.

“Ready for your next present?”

“Sure,” I say. I lean with one hand on the wall in a way I hope looks cool. Then she takes a step forward, leans in, and kisses me on the cheek.

Susan’s blushing crimson as she steps back, but her voice is bold as she says, “Maybe I’ll see you at Connor’s?”

I watch, feeling distant, as she brushes a strand of hair out of her face and chews her lip. Tonight’s nebulous plans with Morgan evaporate in an instant.

“Definitely,” I reply. “See you there.”





MORGAN



I pat my face dry like the girl in the YouTube video told me to and stand before the bathroom mirror with my eyes closed.

I admit to myself that my plan terrifies me. What if I see myself and I like it? What if it makes me happy? But … what if I put on the makeup and everything stays the same and I keep wanting to disappear? What if there’s no way out of this and there never will be? What happens if when I die they bury me in a suit and tie?

In order to do this properly, I’m going to have to look at myself, but my hair’s up in a ponytail and that means I have to see my face without anything to hide its shape. I take one breath, then another, and open my eyes.

A sad-looking boy stares back at me. I try to be objective about his appearance, because I want this whole exercise to be as scientific as possible. He has good cheekbones, full lips, big eyes, and nice olive skin without too many blemishes, but his nose is too big and round at the tip, there’s a faint shadow of hair growing on his upper lip and along the edges of his jaw. Dark circles have formed under his eyes from never sleeping, and his forehead is too high, the brown hair already receding the littlest bit—or is that just in my head? His eyebrows are way too thick. It could be worse. The boy staring back at me only barely qualifies as a boy. He’s pretty androgynous. Scarily thin, if his grandma is to be believed, and his collarbones do poke out pretty far. Who knows how long before puberty ruins everything, though? The thought makes my stomach lurch again.

Okay, step one of the experiment—the inspection—is done. I breathe. My shoulders rise and fall. I’ve got time to do this without freaking out. Dad should be at practice for another hour, and then he’ll probably hang out for a while afterward with the assistant coach.

My phone buzzes and I see a new text from Eric—a sort of wishy-washy abandonment of our plans, but it’s fine because I was going to cancel anyway. I need to do this.

I read back over my handwritten notes that I took down as I secretly watched a few YouTube makeup videos at school. Step 1: Wash your face and pat dry. Check. Step 2: Apply primer. I rummage in the Kmart bag and groan when I realize I forgot to get primer. It’ll probably be okay though, right? Step 3: Apply foundation. It takes a minute to get the plastic off, and then I accidentally squirt foundation on my shirt, but after a minute or two I’ve got a nice little glob on the back of my left hand and I’m ready to go. I follow the movements of the girl from the YouTube video as best as I remember, dabbing foundation on first and then blending out from the center of my face in big, round motions. I look silly at first and there’s a moment I wonder if I’m doing it wrong, but then it all smooths out and my breath catches.

I look like a girl. Or, I mean, I’m starting to. Mostly right now I look like a girl ghost, but even that’s enough to make my neck tingle and my muscles relax in a way that’s mostly foreign. I take a step back and look at myself. The faint shadow of facial hair is gone. The harsh angles around my nose are softened. The dark circles around my eyes are still there but a little brighter. I smile and realize that I haven’t done so in probably months and that my smile is pretty in a timid, nervous way. Next comes eyeshadow, which I copy from the pattern on the back of the little plastic case. Nothing fancy, just tan and brown and an understated gold shimmer—I want to look like a girl my age, not a prostitute or a drag queen. Not that there’s anything wrong with being those things, I guess, just … that doesn’t feel like me.

Part of me starts planning for my next trip to the store, for buying black lipstick and gray eyeshadow and pulling off a real goth look, and I get so excited I don’t even really notice how uncomfortable it feels jamming these brushes all over my eyelids. Eyeliner is even less comfortable. My lines are messy and there’s no way I can pull off wings yet, but it makes my eyes look bigger all the same and that’s nice.

The YouTube girl said to use an eyelash curler, which I chose not to get because they looked like medieval torture devices. I’ve got thick eyelashes anyway. I try to stop myself from blinking as I brush mascara on. Next is blush, which is a little tricky because this girl said to smile and trace a “U” under the apple of my cheek, but other things I’ve watched have said to stick to the top of my cheekbone. I just sort of rub it on and hope for the best—it’s subtle enough that the end result looks okay.