Chloe didn’t have any curl in her hair—again,silk—but she followed several hair blogs on socials, and she was pretty sure that Julia was a 2B—“wavy, fine, and prone to frizz.” Julia just needed aroutine, she said. She needed to invest in qualityproduct. She for sure needed to see a curl specialist.
Julia’s mother didn’t fully agree. But for Julia’s eighteenth birthday in July, her mom had taken her to a real salon and dropped $150 on a curly cut. It was like buyingmagic. The stylist snipped away at Julia’s dull, ropy hair and revealed amopof shiny curls.
The haircut made Julia look like an indie folk singer. It was like someone had hung a scalloped frame around her face. Her cheeks looked rounder. Her neck looked longer. Even her thick glasses had been improved by the change—they suddenly looked more quirky than medically necessary.
“Wow,” her mom said when she saw Julia’s hair. And then, “I’m not spending forty-five dollars on ‘styling milk,’ but you can use the money Grandma sent you.”
“Amazing,” Chloe said when she saw her. And, “I knew it.”
Two weeks after that, when Julia had her eyes checked, the optometrist noticed that her glasses were leaving deep impressions on the bridge of her nose and suggested special contacts. Julia had always thought her prescription was too complicated for contacts.
Her mom felt permanently guilty about Julia’s bad eyes; she thought she might have taken a dangerous prescription when she was pregnant. She said yes to the contacts right away.
“Your eyes are much smaller than I expected,” Chloe said when she saw Julia without glasses, “but we can correct that with mascara and white liner.”
The haircut had made Julia feel for the first time like her appearance was something that could be tweaked and improved, that the way she looked wasn’t fixed.
But the contacts were a deeper transformation. It was like Julia had removed a piece of her actual face. She didn’t like it. Chloe was right—her eyesweresmall. And her face wasbig.
Julia’s face looked like a blank screen without her glasses. Like an empty sky.
“Who’s that girl?” her dad said when she came down for dinner for the first time wearing contacts.
Julia still wasn’t sure.
She tucked the lip tint back into her pocket and headed out of the drive-in bathroom, avoiding the rest of the mirrors.
There was a long line inside the snack bar, even though the movie was already running. A big group of kids from Julia’s school was crowded around the register. Popular kids.
Actually, maybe “popular” wasn’t the right word ...
These were the kids that everybody knew from student council and spirit club and show choir. Kids who played sports like golf and track and tennis, not football or baseball or soccer. The kind of people who wore their letterman jackets to school every day but still managed to look cool about it.
Julia knew all their names.
They were being loud and silly. Shoving each other. Picking up packages of candy and setting them back down. Not worried at all about bothering anyone. One of the boys was saying something to make the other boys laugh. He laughed, too. His cheeks wrinkled, and his head tipped up.
Wyatt Hardy.
Julia had practice watching Wyatt Hardy. They’d had a few classes together.
Wyatt was the sort of boy that everyone liked. Teachers and students. He had wavy brown hair—cut shorter and cleaner than most boys wore it—and a big, easy smile. Everything about Wyatt Hardy seemed easy. His grades. His forensics speeches. His shoulders. A person couldhaveeasy shoulders, Julia thought; she herself did not. Julia walked around with her shoulders hunched up to her ears, and thenher mother had to take her to the chiropractor, even though it wasn’t covered by insurance.
Wyatt Hardy’s shoulders were positively nonchalant. He was on the swim team. He was a class officer. He told jokes that even the macho tough-guy teachers laughed at.
He wasn’texcessivelyattractive ... Like, he didn’t look like a boy in a Disney teen show. His cheekbones weren’t discernible. He wasn’t all teeth and angles, like Aiden. But Julia had always thought that Wyatt Hardy’s face was wonderful. Handsome like a photo of someone’s dad when he was young. Or like a U.S. president before he served in World War II. (Google Gerald Ford.) (Or even George H. W. Bush.)
His smile was the best. Wyatt laughed at his own jokes, and it wasn’t irritating—it was contagious. It made Julia smile just thinking about it.
Wyatt and his friends paid for their pop and popcorn and Nerds Rope. They moved along the counter in a big restless clump, bumping into each other and leaning on each other. A girl leaned on Wyatt, and he bumped her away with his hip. It was all friendly. It was all light.
They got their food and headed for the door in a loose pack. Wyatt was still smiling. His head turned toward the line at the register, and his eyes caught Julia’s. Before she could look away, he smiled wider. He nodded at her. He nodded—and winked.
Julia certainly didn’t wink back.
She didn’t even smile.
Wyatt and his friends were out the door, and she was still standing there, fully in shock.
