Beauty (34 page)

“But I didn’t get—”

“I know.” Kemper waved me off. “But
she
doesn’t. And I bet that even after everything, she agrees to go see him.”

I sighed. “And you’ll forgive me after this? Promise?”

Kemper reached over and gave my hand a quick squeeze. “Promise.”

“Okay … I need to use your land line, though. She’ll recognize my cell number.” Kemper tossed me a cordless phone. I took my time dialing. “Ashley Coolidge?” I said when she answered, lowering my voice to disguise it. “I’m Doctor …” My eyes landed on Kemper’s knitting needles. “Needle. Doctor Needle. I did the work on your friend Molly Davis’s face.”

Ashley let out a gasp. “I knew it,” she murmured excitedly. “I knew it was true!”

“Oh yes, it’s true,” I said, rolling my eyes at Kemper. “Miss Davis told me all about you. She said you might be interested in getting some work done on your nose? Get rid of that, well, unseemly little bump?”

“Bump?” A note of panic crept into Ashley’s voice. “What bump?”

“I provide a great friends-of-clients discount,” I went on. “I could smooth out your nose, maybe lift your brows a bit, make you look absolutely perfect.”

Ashley was quiet for a second. “Like Molly?”

“Just like Molly,” I said, trying to keep my voice as professional as possible. “So what do you think? Would you like to come in for a consultation? I’m sure Molly would highly recommend me—”

“Yes!” Ashley interrupted. “I’ll come in.”

“You’ll come in? Great!” I gave Kemper a thumbs-up.

“Yes,” Ashley said impatiently. “When can I come?”

I paused, pretending to look at my schedule. “Oh, look at that. It seems like we’re actually all booked up. Sorry for the mix-up, Miss Coolidge.”

“Wait, but—”

I hung up the phone with a click.

“I knew it,” Kemper said.

“After everything she said to me …” I shook my head. “I can’t believe she agreed to do it.”

“Think about how quickly she adopted your blue Keds that first day,” Kemper said. “That girl does not think for herself. So.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “What do you think? Do we tell everyone at school? I mean, she does kind of have it coming… .”

I fiddled with the phone, thinking about how awful it felt to have everyone laughing at me last night. I never wanted to do that to anyone again. “No,” I said. “Not even Ashley deserves that. Not even
Hayley
deserves that.”

“All riiiight!” Kemper cheered. She dropped her knitting needles and scooted down to the foot of the bed, throwing her arm around my shoulders. “My Molly really is back!”

“Wait.” I pulled away to look at her. “Was this some kind of screwed up test, Kemp?”

Kemper smirked proudly. “Maybe.”

I sighed. “Of course it was. You’re nuts, you know that?” Kemper grinned, like I’d just paid her a compliment. “Well,” I said. “Did I pass?”

“With flying colors. I’m glad you’re back, Mol.”

“Me too.” I nudged her playfully in the side. “Now I just need to get my old looks back.”

Kemper looked stunned. “Wait,
what
?”

“I meant it when I said I wanted to be the old me again, Kemp. All of me.” I quickly told her about the fair and the portrait and Dharma. Kemper’s face grew more and more stunned as my story unfolded. “Now I have to go back at nightfall to find her,” I finished.

“Wow.” Kemper blinked several times, like she was trying to get over her shock. “I can’t believe it.” Clearing her throat, she reached over and squeezed my arm. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I think this is something I have to do myself, you know?” It was the same thing I told my mom and, somehow, I knew it was true. “
But
I do have a couple hours to kill. You have plans?”

Kemper jumped off the bed, pulling me with her. A smile spread across her face. “I do now.”

We went to the one place we knew we wouldn’t see anyone from school: Kid’s Korner, a playroom down the block from Kemper’s house. We used to go there every weekend when we were younger. We were a little big for the miniature-sized tables now, but the ice cream sundaes still rivaled any in town, including Scoop’s.

“So,” I said as we squeezed ourselves into the too-small chairs, massive sundaes in front of us. “You? Josh? I want details, Kemp.” Kemper blushed a little, which made me squirm excitedly in my seat. “Ooh, this must be good.”

“He likes me,” Kemper admitted. “Like really likes me.” She couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. “I was so sure I had no chance when Ashley started flirting with him. But he chose me. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Well I can,” I said between bites of chocolate sprinkle–covered coffee ice cream. “It’s like I said. Ashley’s got nothing on you.”

“Especially with that unseemly bump …” Kemper giggled. “You should have seen her at the game, Mol. When you didn’t show, she tried to step in and take the crown as the ‘unofficial but obvious’—her exact words—runner-up.”

“Did they let her?” I asked. “And more importantly,
you
went to the game?” Kemper had never been much for the viewing of organized sports.

“Don’t worry, your crown is safe.” She smirked. I groaned, pretending to hit her. “They kind of just laughed at her and made her sit down. And,” she added, sounding a little sheepish, “Josh was playing, so …”

“And back to Josh.” I looked Kemper squarely in the eyes. “Did I hear something about a kiss? A
public
kiss?” Kemper had also never been much for PDA.

Kemper spooned up a bite of ice cream, taking her time swallowing it down. “Yeah,” she said at last. “You might have. It just, I don’t know … happened.”

“My little Kemper is all grown up,” I sighed.

Kemper stuck her tongue out at me. “Not
that
grown up.”

For the next few hours, Kemper and I sat there, nursing our sundaes and talking. I told her about kissing Hudson and my run-in with Hayley at the fair, and how I’d managed to keep my mom from seeing my face lately. She told me more about Josh, about how apparently he’d liked her since the first day of school, and how, after they kissed, he’d asked her to the prom. All around us parents yelled and kids shrieked and everyone was chasing everyone else, but I barely noticed any of it. I was just so happy to be sitting across from my best friend again.

At one point, Nat, the owner, came over to say hi. “Look at you two,” he said, shaking his head in amazement. “All grown up. And knockouts at that. Someone tell me, when did that
happen
?”

“Last Sunday,” I answered honestly.

Nat laughed. “Hey,” he said, “where’s Thing Three?” It was what he used to call us when we were little: Thing One, Thing Two, and Thing Three. I smiled at the memory. Hayley used to hate that she got stuck as number three.
Why am I always last?
she’d whine. “I’m not used to seeing you guys apart,” Nat added.

I exchanged a look with Kemper. “Neither are we,” she said quietly.

“Nat!” Nat’s wife called out from the ball pit. “Need you over here ASAP!”

“Duty calls.” Nat patted us both on our heads. “Just so you know, you girls can grow up all you want, but you’ll always be little Things to me.”

“Nat!”

“Coming! Don’t be strangers, okay?” We nodded, watching as he hurried back to the ball pit to help calm down two fighting boys.

“Remember how simple life used to be back then?” Kemper asked. She scraped the bottom of her bowl, finishing off the last of her ice cream. “Everything was so black and white. We were just Thing One, Thing Two, and Thing Three, you know? Nothing else mattered.”

I nodded. “Do you ever want to go back there? Be those little girls again?”

“Sometimes,” Kemper said. “Yeah, sometimes I really do.”

“But,” I pointed out. “Then there would be no Josh.”

Kemper smiled. “Or Hudson.”

My heart clenched up in my chest. “Well, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be no Hudson anyway, once I change back.” I looked away, watching the two boys who’d been fighting only a minute ago happily tossing balls at each other now. I was thrilled for Kemper about Josh, I really was. But I hated that just as she and Josh started, Hudson and I would have to end.

“You don’t know that,” Kemper said.

I forced a smile onto my face. “I guess we’ll just have to see.”

Wish I May, Wish I Might,
Be (Plain Old) Me Again Tonight

NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time I returned to the fair. I locked my bike up, watching the Ferris wheel spin through the sky like a shooting star, lighting up the night. Standing there, with the world lit up above me, I felt like I was that eight-year-old girl again, the one who believed the fair was magic.

Gripping my portrait tightly in my hand, I walked over to the ticket booth. There was a new guy behind the counter. He looked to be college-aged, and had a skinny tattoo of a snake running up his right arm. SPIKE, his nametag read. “One ticket,” I said for the second day in a row. Spike let his eyes run over me, traveling from my hair to my face and all the way down my torso. “What’s your name, beautiful?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my spot. “Molly.”

“Well, Molly, your ticket’s on me. And if you get bored in there, I’m here all night.” He winked at me, and I tried not to cringe.

“Thanks,” I muttered, passing him to enter the fair.

I didn’t run this time. I walked, fast but steady, watching the fair fill up around me, loud and bright and buzzing. There are some things about your childhood that you never forget, and as I breathed in the smell of fried food and sugar and felt the warmth of neon lights burning down on my shoulders, I knew this fair would be one of them. I would probably always get the same feeling when I walked into it: the rush of freedom and excitement that came from knowing that, when I was there, anything was possible. But after tonight, I knew I wouldn’t look for the fishpond again. I used to feel transformed when I won those Yellow Tang fishes, like in that moment, I went from duckling to swan. But I knew what it was like to become a swan now. And the truth was, some things just weren’t what they seemed.

“Hey.” A tall guy with a buzzed haircut and a Miracle Prep shirt fell into step next to me. He was cute, in a quarterback kind of way, and looked to be about my age. “What would you say to letting me win you a prize?” He grinned at me. He really was cute. And by the end of the night, I probably wouldn’t have Hudson anymore. But still, I shook my head no. When it came down to it, it wasn’t me he wanted.

“Come on,” he coaxed. We were walking by the Sharp Shooter game. “What about if I won you that?” He pointed to the huge stuffed monkey with the top hat and glasses. “That’s got to be, like, the best prize here, right?”

I burst out laughing. “Yeah, probably so.”

“What? What’s so funny?”

I glanced back at the monkey. That night felt like it was a lifetime ago. But it had only been two weeks. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“So … is that a no?” He gave me one last-ditch-attempt grin.

“Yeah. Sorry.” I picked up my pace. “I have somewhere I have to be.”

I felt calm by the time I reached the bushes by the fishpond, calmer than I’d felt in a long time. I took one last look at the fair twinkling behind me. Tomorrow, it would just be an empty parking lot again, and it would be like these past two weeks had never happened. I took a long, deep breath, then slipped through the bushes to the pond.

Dharma was sitting beneath the flowering tree, her easel set up in front of her. The single lantern shone above her. She nodded, as if she’d been expecting me. “Hello, Molly.”

“You remember my name,” I said.

“I remember everyone I draw.” Dharma took the portrait tube out of my hand, pulling the drawing out. She unrolled it and it hung in the air between us, my sadness pouring off it in waves. “Did you like my portrait?”

“I … well …” I fidgeted in my spot, running a hand through my smooth hair. It was time. “What did you do to me?”

Dharma examined the portrait, tracing her finger along the edge of my image. “I took away your sadness.” She looked up. Her eyes met mine and I felt a jolt of heat run through me. “I granted your wish, Molly. Are you happy now?”

“I was,” I said quietly. “I really was. But …” I sighed, not sure how to say what I needed to say.

Dharma nodded knowingly. “Often what we want in the end is what we’ve always had.”

I held a hand up to my face, feeling its smooth skin and high cheekbones. “I just wish I could be me again.”

Dharma looked at me closely. A breeze lifted the branches above her, sending several flower petals fluttering down. “Are you sure about that?”

“Yes,” I said softly. And then again, louder: “Yes.” And I was. I had never been more sure about anything.

Dharma revealed a sliver of a smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.” She gestured to a soft spot in the grass, littered with pink petals. “Why don’t you take a seat?” She waited as I got settled in the grass, then made herself comfortable in her chair, adjusting her easel in front of her. “Now, just relax,” she said, picking up her charcoal. Her voice was soft and soothing. “Just relax and let me draw you.”