14
Maddy Gets a Makeover

“CAN YOU HELP me?” I ask, showing up at Hazel’s door 15 minutes before we usually leave for school.

She takes one look at my face and says, “Jesus, what happened to you? And where the hell did you get that god-awful beret?”

I clutch the beret tightly and say, “It was in the back of my closet. I thought, you know, it would detract from my face.” In reality, of course, I need it to cover the lightning hole in my head (but that info’s strictly on a need-to-know basis).

“It’s not working,” Hazel says, dragging me toward her room.

We wave to Hazel’s parents as they argue over the last piece of toast in the kitchen.

“Hey, Maddy,” they shout before just as enthusiastically going back to arguing.

Hazel’s mom pauses from the argument as we disappear up the stairs. “Nice beret,” she calls.

“Bon appétit,” Hazel’s dad says.

Upstairs I sit at Hazel’s vanity (yes, not only is Hazel the one girl on the planet with an actual vanity in her room; she actually uses it regularly). Staring at my pale face in the mirror, I say with panic in my voice, “I tried doing something myself, Hazel, but then I gave up, wiped it off, and came over here.”

“Well”—Hazel pats my shoulder and then opens up a tackle box full of makeup on either side of the vanity mirror—”you’ve come to the right place.”

“I just—”

She stands there, hands on hips, gawking at me staring at myself in the mirror. “What …is …going on here? Are you sick? You didn’t look this bad when I saw you last night. What gives?”

(I nearly gasp. Was it really only last night? With all that’s happened, it feels like a lifetime ago that I stood in my driveway waving Hazel off yesterday.)

She pinches my cheek and yanks her hand away as if she’s touched a hot iron. “Yikes, Maddy, you’re cold. I mean, ice-cold. Are you sure you feel up to school today?”

“I feel fine, Hazel. I just, I dunno, maybe I’m allergic to my new face cream or something. Can you just make me look less …less …”

“Dead?” She smirks.

I avoid her eyes and nod as she gets to work. I watch in amazement as she brings color to my cheeks, shades over the dark circles under my eyes, and fills out my thinning lips with color, but not too much. I’m so dumbfounded by the before-and-after transformation that I don’t even protest as she goes to take off my beret. That is, until I hear a gasp and look away from my reflection to see hers in the mirror. She’s staring at the top of my head. My spot!

“What is this?”

I stand abruptly, grabbing a fresh barrette off her vanity and working speedily to cover the spot back up. “Nothing, just …I don’t know, actually. I woke up this morning and …there it was; I must have fallen out of bed and hit my head on the nightstand or something. If I did, I don’t remember.”

She cocks her head in that “I don’t believe you” way. “I think you’d remember hitting your head that hard, Maddy. I mean, you have a huge, black bruise on the top of your head. I touched it. It’s not even a bruise; it’s like a …scab.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” At least that’s not a lie.

She makes her “just saw a spider” face. “It sure looks like it hurts. It hurts me to look at it; I can tell you that much.”

“That’s why I covered it up,” I say, not addressing her insensitive dig.

We’re getting late for school now, and she follows me back down the stairs. Her parents have gone off to work, leaving the kitchen a mess, but Hazel barely looks at it as we traipse out the door. She gets in my passenger seat and, before she can protest, I yank on the steering wheel and turn back toward my house.

“Hey,” she shouts, “you’re going the wrong way.”

“I forgot something.” I’m scoping the driveway for signs of Stamp. I’ve been thinking, you know, when I didn’t show up at the party last night, he’d at least come looking for me this morning. I mean, it’s the gentlemanly thing to do, is it not? Make sure the girl you asked to Aaron’s party who never showed up is still alive? (Or undead, whatevs.)

Unless, of course, he asked every girl he bumped into yesterday to the party and can’t keep track of them all by the next morning. Is that it, Stamp? Are you a serial-bumper-turned-party-inviter? (Please, oh please, don’t let him be a jerk. Not after the night I’ve had; the night I’m still having.) I cruise by the empty driveway, see nothing there, not even Dad’s coroner’s wagon, and swiftly step on the gas.

“I thought you said you forgot something,” Hazel says as we speed toward school.

I shrug, cursing her stupid photographic memory. “I just suddenly remembered I didn’t forget.”

“Okay”—she turns in her seat to face me—”what’s the deal with you? I leave your house last night, you’re Maddy. Young, pretty, warm skin, tan skin. You show up on my doorstep this morning, and everything—I mean everything—has changed. Suddenly your skin is white, your body’s cold, you look like death warmed over, with enormous circles under your eyes, you’ve got a huge black …hole, scab, circle thingy in the middle of your head, you’re wearing a beret, for Pete’s sake, and now you say you’re remembering not forgetting things you thought you forgot in the first place. So …what gives?”

“Hazel, I don’t know. The spot, the skin, the cold—the beret—I can’t explain it.”

“You’re lying to me.” She sits back in a huff, arms folded, as we inch up the long line toward the junior/senior parking lot. “You’re hiding something.”

“I’m not.”

“You are, Maddy. It started yesterday with this Stamp character. I mean, first you bump into him in the halls; next thing I know you’re walking back from the cemetery with him, and you tell me last night nothing happened? Then today you show up like this? Something’s not adding up, Maddy.”

“Hazel, honestly, I’m not—”

“You remember what I said to you 11 years ago when I made you my best friend?”

“How could I forget?” I sigh, miserably, staring at the steering wheel since we’re only going less than zero miles per hour.

“What’d I say to you, Maddy?”

“You said if I ever lied to you, if I ever hid anything from you, we wouldn’t be friends anymore.”

“That’s right, Maddy. I don’t take this friendship crap lightly; you know that about me. I don’t know if you caught some virus you don’t want anybody to know about, if you’re pregnant or hung over or strung out or dying or what, but if you can’t tell your best friend about it, well, then maybe you’re not best friend material after all.”

We’re parked now, but I have the feeling that, even if we were still three blocks from school, Hazel would have stomped off and slammed the door on me, if only to have the final word, like she does right now. I sit there alone in my car, engine ticking, second bell ringing, kids streaming past, alone, and burst into tears.

Only …no tears. No water, no snot, no …nothing.

“Oh, great,” I say to I-don’t-know-who. “Now I can’t even cry. “