Eye of the Beholder (Stone Springs Book 1)

by Gracie Ruth Mitchell

“It is,” she says quickly, looking like she’s worried about offending me. “It’s just so…clean. I thought you’d be a slob. Aren’t guys slobs?”

  I shrug. “Some of them, I guess.”

  “I thought it would sort of stink.”

  “It doesn’t stink!” I say.

  “No, it doesn’t,” she says, only half paying attention to me now. “It smells like you. Like your cologne. And I thought there would be football stuff everywhere,” she says, still looking vaguely around.

  “There was when I was five. Do you always give this much thought to my bedroom?” I say, grinning.

  Her face turns bright red in an impressively short amount of time, and her eyes snap back to mine. “Of course not. I’m tempted to throw something at you for saying that.”

  I snort. “You wouldn’t throw something at me.”

  “No,” she says, smiling slightly. “Probably not. I’m too nice.”

  “You are,” I say, nodding. “Now”—I gesture at her bag—“what did you bring?” I hesitate and then say, “It looks clunky.”

  She picks up her bag and upends it, and the contents spill onto my soft carpet. Two big paperback books, a legal pad, a few pencils, and…a shirt?

  I lean down and pick up the shirt. A glass bottle rolls out of it, and Mina’s face goes red again. She snatches the shirt from me, and I pick the bottle up instead.

  “In case Lydia said something about my t-shirt,” she says, shoving the shirt back in her bag.

  “And this?” I say, raising one brow as I hold out the purple bottle. “What is it? Perfume?”

  She shrugs, her face still red. “Lydia texted me earlier and asked me to bring it.” She pulls it out of my hand before I can smell it.

  “You don’t strike me as a perfume person,” I say, considering her.

  “I used to be,” she says, slipping the bottle back in her bag. Then she picks up the rest of the items from her bag and stacks them neatly on the desk in front of her. I’m glad I cleaned it before she came. “I love perfume. It makes me feel put together. I just haven’t worn it in a long time.”

  Since seventh grade, I’m willing to bet.

  “Now, let’s focus,” she says. She taps the larger of the two books and stands up. She points to the desk chair. “Sit,” she says, and the bed sinks slightly as she sits next to me.

  I look over at her. “You’re bossy.”

  “So are you,” she says. “Sit at the desk.”

  I sigh, resigning myself to my fate.

  Mina spreads the book open to a bookmarked page as I sit. “I want you to do the first fifteen questions in each section. We’ll skip the essay portion.”

  “Fine,” I say. “And Lydia wants you to go to her room while I’m taking this.”

  “No cheating,” Mina says, and she stands.

  As she leaves the room, she looks just as apprehensive as I know I do. When she’s gone and the door is closed behind her, I take a deep breath, pull out a pencil, and start the test.

  10

  Mina

  I enter the den of uncertainty.

  I mean, I like Lydia. I actually really like her. She’s always been nice to me, even though we don’t hang out or anything, and she’s just a likeable person. But I do have reservations about this part of the afternoon.

  The colors in Lydia’s room are similar to the colors in mine—yellow and pink—and somehow that makes me feel slightly less nervous. Yellow is just a happy color, like sunshine. It’s hard to be nervous when sunshine is shining in your face.

  Or so I think right now. I’m sure the nervousness will return.

  “Hi,” Lydia says when she looks up at me from one of the chairs she’s placed in front of her vanity. “How was the tutoring?”

  I shrug, playing absently with the necklace I’m wearing. It’s a little flower pendant; I wear it most days, and when I’m nervous, I have the bad habit of fiddling with it.

  “He’s taking a practice test so I can see where he needs the most work,” I say in response to Lydia’s question.

  Lydia pretends to shudder. “Better him than me,” she says, and I smile.

  “What are you doing for college?” I say. “Where are you applying?”

  Lydia blushes slightly—a look I’m surprised to see on her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve applied to a few of the in-state universities, but…well, I’d kind of like to work for one of those match-making companies. Online dating and stuff. Or I could travel—visit my pen pal in France. Or maybe be a beautician. Those are my current thoughts.”

  I look at her room, at the excess of cosmetics and hair-styling tools laid meticulously on her vanity. “That looks like it might suit you,” I say, smiling. She smiles back.

  “Let’s start!” she says.

  I can’t help but feel a little bit bad. Cohen is at least getting help on his ACT, but I’m doing nothing for Lydia. What is she getting out of this?

  I look to her. “Lydia, this is really sweet, but you don’t have to do this. I don’t want to inconvenience—”

  “Oh, no! No! Don’t back out now!” she says, and amazingly, she actually looks crestfallen. She stands up and comes to me. “This is one of my favorite things to do! I mean, obviously if you really don’t want to do any of this stuff”—she gestures to her vanity—“no one is going to make you. But if it’s me you’re worrying about, don’t. I love doing makeup and hair!” She hesitates and then goes on. “And you’re lovely, but I think I could help you feel more confident. When you like how you look, your confidence increases. Do you like how you look?” she asks, and coming from anyone else, that questions might be offensive, but Lydia somehow delivers it in a way that conveys nothing but true curiosity.

  “I don’t know,” I say, but it’s a lie. I sigh. I’m doing a lot of that today. “No,” I say. “Not really.”

  “Then please let me do this for you,” she says. “If you hate it, we’ll get rid of it and you never have to touch beauty products again.”

  Her voice is so pleading, her words so similar to what Cohen said about trying on new clothes, that I nod. I am curious, if nothing else. I pause for a second, and then I say, “What about my eyes?”

  She beams at me. “I’m thinking some subtle eyeshadow—nothing gaudy, because that’s so not you—and then some—”

  “No,” I say, cutting her off. “I meant the colors. The brown and blue.”

  She tilts her head, looking incredibly like Cohen when she does. “What about them?”

  I shrug, feeling self-conscious. “They look weird.”

  “No, they don’t,” she says. “I would kill to have eyes like that. It’s like those huskies.”

  Excellent. I’ve always wanted to be compared to a dog.

  But I see where she’s going with it, so I nod. “If you think so,” I say.

  “I do,” she says, her voice firm. “No more about your eyes to me. They’re exotic and beautiful.”

  Huh. She sounds like she genuinely means it. I can’t help it; I smile slightly. “All right. Where do we start?”

  Her smile grows even happier. “We start with your shirt. From here on out, you wear t-shirts like this”—she tugs on my sleeve—“only for sleeping and manual labor. Are you okay with that?”

  To my surprise, I find that I am. “That’s fine with me.”

  “Good,” Lydia says. “I’d recommend getting rid of most of them. That way you’re not tempted.” She goes to her closet and pulls the doors open, revealing a wardrobe organized by color.

  I can’t help it; I smile. I sort of love that.

  “Let’s see,” she says, taking a step back and considering her clothes. “I have a blue one that would look good on you—”

  “Oh, I brought my own shirt with me,” I say when I realize what she’s doing. I pull it out of my bag, and then I put my bag on her neatly made bed so I don’t have to keep carrying it. I hold up the shirt to show her. It’s a sort of purplish-blueish color with tiny pink flowers.r />
  “Cute! But you have a different shirt and you’re still wearing that one?” she says, gesturing at the t-shirt I have on. She shakes her head, smiling at me. “Well, get it off. I’ll turn around,” she says.

  When I have my new shirt on, Lydia leads me to the chairs she has set up in front of her mirrored vanity. “You sit here,” she says, pointing to one, “and I’ll sit here.” She points to the other.

  I sit…and the whirlwind begins.

  I have never heard anyone talk about makeup the way Lydia talks about it. She talks about it like she’s an artist and it’s her preferred medium. She knows the ins and outs of what every brush does, of where everything goes—I only grasp maybe half of what she’s saying. She should be a beautician.

  “I’m not a makeup person,” I say to her before we get too far in—she’s just primed my face, whatever that means. “Realistically, I will do a minimal amount of makeup. I can’t promise more than that.”

  Lydia waves her hand dismissively. “You do however much you want. But if you have to pick and choose, always choose mascara. Always. It is your best friend. As is…” she says, trailing off as she scans the mess of products in front of us. “This,” she says, her voice triumphant. “Let’s go ahead and fill in your brows so you can see what they look like. We’ll do your eyes in a minute.”

  I gesture to my glasses, folded neatly in my lap. “I’ve tried contacts. They irritate my eyes.”

  With another wave of her hand, Lydia says, “Your glasses are cute. Don’t worry about that.”

  It’s an odd sensation to have someone doing my makeup; Lydia’s face, full of concentration, is so close to mine that I’m afraid to breathe, just in case I have bad breath. I feel her using a little brush on my eyebrows, and a second later, she leans back.

  “Okay. Do you want me to pluck them, or do you want to leave them as is?”

  Huh. I didn’t think about that.

  “Here,” she says, moving out of my way. “Look at them and see what you think.”

  I stand and lean closer to the mirror until I can see my eyebrows. They’re maybe not perfect, but they don’t look too bad, do they? They don’t need to be perfect.

  “How much would you do?” I say, looking at her.

  She shrugs. “Not much. They don’t need reshaping. I would just clean up the edges, really.”

  I shrug too, sitting down. “Then let’s skip it.”

  She nods. “Sounds good. They’re so light anyway; just don’t fill in what you don’t want to show up.” She holds up a little silver box. “Speaking of which. This is your eyebrow powder. It’s just a shade or two darker than your hair; just dark enough to be visible. You don’t want to go too dark.”

  Just then there’s a knock at the door, and Cohen’s voice comes from outside. “Mina?”

  “That was fast,” Lydia says to me.

  “It was an abbreviated version of the test,” I explain.

  “Go away,” Lydia says over her shoulder. “We’re busy.”

  I hear Cohen muttering something, and then I hear the door to his room shut again.

  Lydia shows me how to fill my brows in, having me do the right brow myself.

  “Perfect,” she says, smiling, and I look at myself.

  Eyebrows. I have eyebrows. Eyebrows that show up. And as I look at myself, I realize that I look a lot more like my sisters than I did a minute ago; they must all have known about the eyebrow thing. It looks nice.

  “Now,” Lydia says, interrupting my thoughts. “Here are your staples. Mascara”—she holds up a black tube of mascara—“eyeliner”—she holds up a brown pencil—“and eyeshadow.” As she holds up an eyeshadow palette, she says, “And honestly, you can skip the eyeshadow if you want. You can even skip the eyeliner, although it does add a lot. I’d use it when you can. And I’d recommend dark brown for you. Black might be a bit harsh.”

  Having her do my eyeliner is even more uncomfortable than having her do my eyebrows. I feel like I’m being stabbed.

  As if she can read my thoughts, Lydia says, “I know this isn’t pleasant. I promise it’s not as uncomfortable when you’re doing it yourself.”

  I smile, slightly relieved. Because I can see the eye she’s already put liner on, and I like it.

  “All right,” she says, holding up the tube of mascara with a flourish when she’s finished with the eyeliner. “Your magic wand. Here.” She hands it to me, and I unscrew the top a little nervously. I tried to put on mascara a few times when I was in sixth grade, but I just stabbed myself in the eye, and I never tried again.

  I don’t stab myself this time. I coat my eyelashes and watch them appear, almost magically, where before it looked like I had none.

  “They’re long,” I say, and Lydia nods.

  “They are,” she says, grinning. “I’m sort of jealous. Okay, last thing—your hair.”

  Right. My hair. My neon hair.

  “The hair is easy,” Lydia says. “Do you own a curling iron or a straightener?” she says, and I shake my head.

  “Now you do.” She plops them down in front of me.

  “I can’t take these!” I say. “These are yours.”

  “I can’t begin to tell you how many I have. It’s a problem. I’m not sad to part with them. Please, take them.”

  I hesitate, looking at her, but she seems sincere. “Are you sure?” I say.

  “Yes!” she says with a smile, rolling her eyes. “Now, if you’re like me, you don’t want to curl or straighten your hair every morning.”

  “You are correct,” I say with a small smile.

  “That’s where this comes in,” she says, setting a canister of dry shampoo in front of me. “Do you have dry shampoo?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I say.

  “Great. Use it. If you want to leave your hair down—which you should definitely do at least sometimes, because look at that color—then curl it or straighten it the night before. When you get up, spray in some shampoo if it needs it, and you’re good to go. If you want to do a ponytail or a bun, that’s fine, but”—she holds up her hand—“it needs some volume or some texture on the top and the sides. Don’t just slick it back tight to your head. That doesn’t look good on anyone. It’s nothing to do with you, I promise. It just isn’t a good look for anyone.”

  I smile reluctantly. “Understood.”

  “For our purposes right now, do you want it straight or curled?” she says, cocking her head to the side. “It’s pretty thick. Does it hold a curl?”

  I shrug. “Probably. My sisters all curl their hair just fine.”

  She nods. “Let’s curl it, then. Not a lot; just some loose curls. Shirley Temple isn’t what we’re going for, and we don’t have time for that, anyway.”

  She chatters away as she curls my hair with a curling wand, and I find myself smiling and laughing. She’s funny, and she has a way of putting me at ease. Fifteen minutes later, she steps back.

  “Done,” she says. “It’s subtle, but I like it.”

  I stand, wiggling my legs a little bit because I’ve been sitting for a while now. Then I look in the mirror, taking myself in. I almost can’t believe it.

  Lydia watches me, smiling, looking like she’s trying not to say something. Finally she blurts out, “You look so good!” She jumps up and down—she actually jumps—and squeals like a little girl. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being ridiculous. But you have no idea how much satisfaction this gives me. You look gorgeous. Cohen is going to die.”

  This isn’t about Cohen, but I don’t say that, because I’m busy realizing that she’s right—I look pretty. I really do. “I look good,” I whisper.

  “Yes! You do! Say it again,” she says with a smile.

  I feel a smile tugging at my lips, and I let it. “I look good.”

  “Again!” she says, her voice singsong. She’s positively beaming.

  I feel an unexpected rush of affection for her. Her smile and energy are infectious, and she’s done this just because she wants to,
not because she’s getting anything out of it.

  “I look good,” I say, finally smiling at her for real. “I look good. This is my year.”

  “Yes!” she says. “This is your year, Mina! Look,” she says, crouching next to me. “You are beautiful. But you are more than that. You have a ton to offer. We’re going to help you show the world who you are. Also. On Monday, you will sit with me at lunch. If you try to hide in the corner of the cafeteria, then I will sit with you. From now on you will not sit alone.”

  I take a deep breath. “I appreciate that. I really do. But I’m not a charity case.”

  Lydia studies me. “No, you’re not,” she says, her voice gentle. “But you are a human being. You’re nice, and you make me laugh. I like you. So you will sit with me. You will make friends, and I will benefit from the pleasantness of your company. Plus, people can be cruel,” she says, her voice blunt now. “There’s no use pretending otherwise. I don’t know how people will react when they see you like this. I really don’t. But whatever their reactions are, I don’t want you to go through them alone.”

  She is so sweet. I feel tears prick my eyes.

  “Thank you,” I say, finally giving in. “Thank you so much. I need to make friends.”

  “Don’t cry!” she says. “Your makeup will run. And you’re welcome. Now, did you bring your perfume?”

  I nod and grab it from my bag.

  “Great,” she says. “Spritz it a few times in the air and then walk through it. Ooh, it smells good!” she says as I spray some. It does smell good; floral but also fruity.

  “All right,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “Are you ready to go show off?”

  11

  Mina

  I am not ready to go show off. But I let Lydia tug me out of her room anyway. I can smell my perfume enveloping me as we walk, and I love it. I’d forgotten how much I love this scent.

  “Cohen!” Lydia calls from the top of the stairs. “Where are you?”

  We both spin around as Cohen’s bedroom door opens. “That took forever,” he says, and my heart picks up its pace a little. What is he going to think? Is he even going to notice a difference? I’m not an expert in guys, but I don’t think they pay attention to things like makeup and hair as much as girls do.