Hard not to, when it’s the only damn thought that’s crossed my mind.
I keep waking up in the middle of the night, obsessing over his words, tearing them apart in my mind, attacking myself with the truth in them, unable to shield myself from my own thoughts, hardly sleeping for all the fretting.
“You good?” Lola peers over at me, brows quirked, tossing her yogurt container into the recycling bin and washing off her spoon.
“Yeah,” I offer, but it doesn’t even convince the construction worker on the OSHA poster on the wall. He looks at me skeptically, arm in a cast, like he knows I’m full of it.
“Just…” A big sigh comes out. “Working through some stuff. Realizing my shit might stink after all.”
Lola breaks out into a little shimmy, singing a riff of the Outkast song about shit and roses, and I smile at her.
“Sorry. Bad timing. But good fucking song, hey?”
We wander toward our rooms, which are next to one another in the hallway along the side of the building.
“Okay, bitch, slay the day,” I tell her in parting. She salutes me, and we’re both off.
All of my attention is focused hardcore on the child in front of me as I perfect her copper-toned look for her first Homecoming dance.
I distinctly recall looking like a scraggly fucking dandelion at my own freshman Homecoming. Misshapen head and face, not having grown into my looks yet, awkward as fuck with my overplucked brows and gangly frame, no curves yet. And don’t get me started on the hair, makeup, and—shudder—outfit I went with.
It’s honestly not fair that this generation justskipsthe awkward phase. This girl looks like a fucking model already, before I took a single brush to her face, and I don’t understand what happened in the twenty-ish years that separate us. It’s not like I’m fucking ninety, but I couldn’t feel further apart from these young’uns culturally. The experiences of our youths are just night and day.
Did the water supply in America get inundated with an overflow of beauty serums and fillers?
The kids these days, they havenoright to be as put together, as stunning, as they are. They come out looking like they’ve been going to a medical spa since middle school. Like if you slit a vein, Botox would come out.
Where’s the hard work? The dues you pay, the embarrassing memories you create at the school of hard knocks that result in character growth and personal development?
I’ll just have to take solace in the fact that none of them will develop a sense of humor from the trauma of being a total outcast based on nothing but your looks during your formative years.
Sucks for them, I tell myself, not at all sure about my deduction, but I need to feel better here, dammit, work with me.
And as I start combing out, shaping and sculpting this girl’s thick brows, I’m tempted to take a weed whacker to them. I know my generation overdid it, okay? I genuinely feel for all the other millennials and Xennials who are still struggling with growing their brows back after the insane tweezing we did back in the nineties and noughties, but there is such a thing asbalance, people.
This girl’s brows are wider than my landing strip, for crying out loud.
The friend who came with her, my next appointment, actually, has been keeping my client entertained the entire time, bless her. Most of what they’re saying is going in one ear and out the other, but when I step back to look over my work and make sure I don’t need to add anything else to complete her look, their words filter in.
“Gucci!”
My eyes are torn to my bag, hanging off the side of my table.
“Actually, it’s a Dior.”
The friend scoffs, rolling her eyes.
“Not your bag. Her makeup.”
I definitely didn’t use any Gucci products on her face today, but I don’t correct the girl. She isn’t fazed, and is now hyping her friend up, praising the glam look.
“It’s giving main character, babe.”
“You think?” Rosanna, the client in the chair, asks.
“Bet.”
What are we betting on? I got lost somehow, but I try to join the conversation anyway, pretend they don’t look at me as geriatric. My teen years feel like theyjusthappened, even if these girls look at me like I’m Julie Andrews, I’m still young, dammit!
