Sara doesn’t look up from the bottle she’s decanting. “I take power naps. Like a shark.” She glances at me, catching my expression in the mirror. “You ready, Spence?”
My mouth opens. No sound comes out. Sara’s wearing her Sephora uniform shirt and paint-flecked leggings, and somehow her own makeup is both impeccable and undetectable, which feels like a magic trick. “I, uh—”
She sees the tremor in my hands and softens her voice. “Don’t worry. This is just practice. And when I’m done, you’ll be unrecognizable.”
Hunter drops onto Sara’s bed, stretching out with a showy yawn, scrolling through his phone. “Spence is worried he’ll look too hot and get kidnapped by frat guys.”
Sara snorts. “Not with those cuticles.”
“Hey,” I mutter. “I’ve been busy.”
She tilts my chin up with a finger, her touch gentle but precise. “If you want this to look real, you have to trust me. Okay?”
I nod. I do not trust her. Or rather, I trust her artistry. I do not trust my friends to leave my soul intact.
“And I know it’s not much on you, but make sure you shave right before next time.”
Pinching near my temples, Sara removes my glasses, and the world blurs a little.
She starts with primer, the smell citrusy and sharp, then foundation, cool against my jaw. Every stroke is calculated—press, blend, feather. I wonder if this is what being dissected feels like: not pain, just the sense of being inspected, improved.
“So, explain to me,” she says, working the brush in circles, “how exactly did you lose this bet?”
I glare at Hunter’s fuzzy reflection in the mirror. “Someone told me Professor McHugh was too nice to give a quiz the week before Halloween.”
Hunter grins, unrepentant. “It was a fifty-fifty shot.”
Sara arches a brow. “Should’ve asked me. McHugh is a control freak.”
“Could we maybe not talk about the academic tragedy unfolding on my face?” I mumble.
She laughs. “Fine, fine. Let’s talk about your cheekbones instead.” She pivots to contouring, sweeping brown shadow beneath my bones with alarming intensity. “You ever wear makeup before?”
I shake my head, instantly regretting the motion as powder puffs into my nose. “No.”
Sara keeps a running commentary as she works, usually addressed to herself. “Okay, we’re going for a full reshape… I need more light… Stay still…” She paints my lids with something sticky, metallic. My lashes are attacked by a curler that looks like a medieval torture device.
Through it all, Hunter offers nothing but peanut gallery wisdom.
“Damn, look at that bone structure. Montgomery, you could have a whole second life.”
“Can we please not talk about having a second life while you’re transforming me into a cartoon sex symbol?”
Sara smirks, dotting something cold and wet along my upper lip. “This isn’t even the hard part.”
I try to breathe through my mouth as she glues on the false lashes—feathery, inky, weightless and yet somehow huge. My vision warps at the corners, everything becoming dreamlike, exaggerated, things in the distance still blurred. It occurs to me now that I should have worn my backup contacts for this.
Hunter’s phone makes a soft snap as he takes a photo. I flinch. “Don’t you dare—”
He shows me the screen. My eyes are enormous, my mouth tiny. I look nothing like myself.
“Relax,” he says. “I’m documenting your metamorphosis for posterity.”
I want to punch him.
Sara attacks my brows with a small comb, then fills them in. She turns to the vanity, plucks out a tube of lipstick—a red so vivid it hurts to look at. “You ready?”
“Not now, not ever.”
