9781422288177

C HAPTER 1

14

makeup to look natural. It was always uneven and pasty, and by the end of the day it became dry and cracked. By the time she got home from school, the makeup looked like a parched desert landscape spread across her skin. Kayla’s hand paused and hovered above the makeup tubes. Is it better to have a rash or to have makeup caked on like a clown? she pon- dered. Her hand passed over the tubes to the ibuprofen her mother had left on the counter. While Kayla swallowed the four pills (twice as much as she was supposed to take), she considered going without the makeup for the day. Maybe it would be a freeing feeling , she thought, to not hide behind a mask . Then she thought about Jackie and Bryn, the beautifully evil twins who roamed the ninth-grade hallways as if they were queens. Like spiders in webs glistening with morning dew, they reeled admirers in with the sparkle of their per- fect skin and the silkiness of their blonde hair. They were as snotty as they were beautiful, yet everyone, even the senior girls, seemed to adore them, vie for their attention, and give them anything they asked for. Kayla reached for the dreaded cosmetics. Beauty must give you some sort of supernatural power , Kayla thought bitterly and spread the thick makeup across her red, puckered face. She in- spected the cream and powder masquerading as unblemished skin. Not very believable, she admitted, but there was no time now for her to do anything but go to school. Kayla creaked her way down the stairs and into the kitchen. Her mother’s briefcase was already gone. Her little brother Brian sat shoveling oatmeal into his mouth, while her father read the newspa- per beside him. “You look nice this morning,” her father offered as Kayla searched the refrigerator for something to eat. She shrugged but did not lift her head from the refrigerator doorway. “I heard a boy on the bus say Kayla looks like a toad,” Brian whispered to his father. Kayla rattled the juice bottle in the refriger- ator door and pretended not to hear. Her father whispered urgently behind the rustling newspaper. Head down, Brian returned to his oatmeal. His spoon clicked loudly in the uncomfortable pause.