“Well,” she says, “the next summer I was home from college, I went back to the mall.”
She gives me a mischievous look.
“Back then, we didn’t call it a glow-up. But that’s what I wanted. I had a crush on this boy who played soccer. Thought maybe if I got a new foundation and a better haircut, I’d stop looking like an extra from a John Hughes movie.”
Aunt Susan snorts. “You always looked cute.”
“Cute wasn’t the assignment,” Irene says. “Hot was the assignment.”
They both laugh.
I almost smile.
“So I went back to the makeup counter,” Irene continues, “and who do you think was standing there?”
I already know.
But I whisper, “Alexis?”
“Yup.”
She shakes her head, almost tenderly.
“She was still there. Same counter. Same little black blazer. Except she looked… tired. Sad. Like the spotlight she’d lived under finally burned out.”
My chest tightens.
“She told me she was dating some guy,” Irene says. “Said she’d probably marry him because, quote, ‘at least he has money. I don’t love him. Or even like him that much.’ No dreams except staying afloat.”
Aunt Susan’s jaw tightens.
Irene continues, her eyes catching mine in the glow of the fire.
“She asked me about college. About my friends. My classes. The city. My plans. And the whole time, her eyes were getting wider and wider. And I realized?—”
She pauses.
“She was jealous of me.”
I swallow.
“She had everything,” I whisper.
“No,” Irene says. “She only had everything in that tiny little town bubble. Outside it? She had nothing to fall back on. No grit. No confidence. No identity outside being pretty and popular.”
I look down at my hands.
“And then she told me something I’ll never forget,” Irene says. “She said she was never actually smart. Teachers favored her because she was beautiful. Not because she earned it. Not because she worked.”
Silence settles over the room.
A raw kind of truth.
Irene leans forward, elbows on her knees, and fixes me with a look that feels like a spotlight.
“There is a sad truth in life,” she says. “We don’t say it out loud because it sounds cruel, and people will cancel you for it today, but I’m old and I’m allowed to be honest.”
She gestures toward me.
