by Minka Kent
To call this expansive would be an understatement. By her standards, I’m sure this closet is considered small—most closets in older houses are—but she’s managed to make the most of the space she’s been given.
Jeans hang from wooden hangers, lined up in a row along the bottom. She must have at least twenty pairs, if not more. Above them are shirts, mostly blouses, with neutral shades like white and cream and grey and black, all color-coordinated. Next to those are the colorful tops. Breton stripes, cashmere sweaters, the works. A shoe rack sits along the bottom of the closet, all of her heels and wedges and pristine sneakers neatly organized. Scarves and jackets and bags fill the rest of the space. How she’s managed to make her closet look like a boutique display is beyond me. All I know is I can’t stop gawking as Lauren is pulling pants and shirts and sweaters, all of it for me.
A minute later we return to my room, her with an overflowing armful of clothes which she promptly deposits on my bed—burying my homework.
“Here,” she says. “Try these.”
She shoves a blouse at me first, her gaze fixated on the next item she’s about to pull from the pile. I take the top from her, not like I have a choice, and wait. Lauren drapes a pair of jeans over her shoulder before turning toward me. Apparently tonight she’s playing the role of my personal stylist.
“Try it on,” she says, waving her hand because I’m taking too long.
“Now?”
She laughs. “Don’t be shy.”
My face heats. This is taking me back to seventh grade gym class and the first time I had to change in front of other girls. I can still remember them standing in front of a mirror, comparing their non-existent boobs and pinching each other’s non-existent belly fat.
With my back toward Lauren, I tug my t-shirt over my head and replace it with her blouse in record time.
Oh my God.
It fits.
“Let me see,” she says, words rushed and impatient.
I tug at the hem, adjusting the top, and then I spin to face her.
“Ohhhh, yeah.” Lauren nods, handing off a pair of skintight jeans next. They’re tiny, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to squeeze my ass into them. “Okay, you need to try these now.”
“Maybe you could just leave them here?” I ask. “I really need to finish my paper. When I’m done, I’ll try everything on and keep the pieces that fit?”
Her expression fades. Clearly she was in a mood to play dress up tonight and I’ve ruined that for her.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really behind or else I’d—”
Lifting a palm, she silences me. “Has anyone ever told you, you look like J Law?”
“Who?”
“Jennifer Lawrence. The actress.” Lauren steps closer, her hand reaching toward my face as she tucks a strand of hair behind my left ear. I don’t believe her. If I looked like some Hollywood actress my life would be a million times easier. She’s just being kind. “Yes. I see it. Oh my God. You could be her twin. You just need some highlights and maybe chop off about five inches of your hair. Side part. Loose waves. Perfection.”
She makes it sound easy. Like poof and I’m pretty.
I can’t remember the last time I had a haircut—at least one I didn’t perform myself after watching a five-minute tutorial on YouTube. And I’ve never had highlights in my life. They seem like too much upkeep and way too expensive.
“I’m going to make you an appointment with my hair guy.” Her mouth draws up at the sides. She’s scheming, and I don’t know how I feel about this.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, hoping I can refuse her offer without having to bring my tight budget into this.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “If you’re freshening up your wardrobe, you should at least freshen up the rest of your look.”
“No, really. It’s … it’s okay,” I say. Doesn’t help that she’s being so generous with her clothes. Makes it that much harder to offer her a firm no.
“My treat.” Her manicured brows lift and her hands plead. “Meadow, I don’t think you realize how gorgeous you are. It would make me ridiculously happy to help you see that. You’re doing a disservice to yourself, hiding from the world. You should be out there, living your life, getting numbers and breaking hearts.”
I don’t believe her.
But God, do I sort of want to.
Glancing at the pile of beautiful clothes resting on my bed, I think about all those times I convinced myself I was content to do my own thing, to never fit in. Conforming has never appealed to me. But the idea of strutting around campus in $200 jeans and designer sweaters with a cute little haircut could be fun? Maybe?
Not to mention these clothes are a million times better than the ones I currently have. They don’t smell like a thrift shop. They’re not holey or faded.
“Fine,” I say. “You can make me over.”
Lauren runs toward me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. We’re the same height, the two of us, and she smells like sweet almonds and vanilla and the blossom of new friendship. All of it clings to me. To my skin. To my new shirt.
When she pulls away, she holds my gaze. “You’re going to love your new look. I promise.”
The instant she’s gone, I lock the door and rifle through the items on my bed. Five pairs of jeans. Eleven tops. Four pairs of shoes—all of which are in perfectly fine condition if not a hair too tight, but I can make them work.
Stepping into the next pair of jeans and slipping the next top over my head, I stop and gape at my reflection in the dresser mirror. I don’t recognize myself, at least not from the neck down, and I can’t stop staring. Angling my body, I check out my ass. These jeans were cut to flatter and lift and nowhere do they sag or bunch. Even the length is perfect.
Unreal.
Over the course of a half hour, I try on everything—some things more than once just for fun—and when I’m done, I collapse on the heap of clothing covering my bed. Arms folded across my chest, I stare at the ceiling and just breathe.
This is a lot to take in.
In many ways, it’s like I’ve won the lottery.
The lottery of clothing. Of friendships. Of roommates.
For the first time in my life, the Gods are smiling down on me, giving me all the things I never knew I wanted.
Sliding my phone off my nightstand, I do a quick search for Jennifer Lawrence. I’ve heard of the name before and I know she was in those Hunger Games movies, but I refused to watch them out of principle. I didn’t want to follow the crowd. Same with Twilight. Fifty Shades of Grey. But I digress.
I hit the motherlode with Google Images, and I click on the third image in the top row. Pinching my fingers, I zoom in, examining her typical white girl features. And then I see it. Full, youthful face. High cheekbones. Sandy hair. Hooded sapphire eyes. Maybe Lauren wasn’t blowing smoke. We kind of do look like twins. But only if I squint hard.
Crazy.
Curious still, I go back to the results and look for the shoulder-length hairstyle Lauren was raving about, and I come upon an image of Jennifer, hair painted in shimmery blonde highlights, parted deep on one side, strands tucked behind one ear.
I could try this.
It’s not like she’s suggesting I chop off my hair and dye it blue.
Sitting my phone aside, I gather the clothes and hang them neatly in my closet and trying to put some order to them, the way Lauren did. When I’m finished, I stop to admire them.
A wicked smirk claims my lips when I imagine going back to my hometown, running into a local coffee shop where all the bitches from high school hang out during the summer, the ones who ditched college to marry their high school sweethearts and pop out their first babies before they were old enough to buy liquor. In my mind, I’m strutting past them with my trendy haircut and the kind of jeans that turn heads, brands that the girls in small-town Winterset have never so much as heard of because they’re too stuck in their own bubble to ope
n a fashion magazine or drive farther than an hour to go shopping.
They won’t recognize me, and they sure as hell won’t know what to think.
And I’ll pretend like I don’t even see them because they’re beneath me. We’ll come full circle.
Shaking my head, I rattle that silly little daydream away. Getting caught up in petty revenge fantasies when I have a ten-page paper due next week probably isn’t the brightest idea. Flipping my textbook open, I try to focus on the paragraphs that fill the pages, but it’s as if my mind doesn’t comprehend them no matter how many times I read the same line.
All I can think about is me—the new me.
Five
Lauren’s phone keeps going off as we walk to World Lit Wednesday afternoon, matching almond milk green tea lattes (add two Splendas and a splash of sugar free caramel syrup) in hand. I’m dressed in one of her outfits, sipping a disgusting beverage I only ordered because she wouldn’t stop insisting, and listening to her prattle on about a guy by the name of Thayer Montgomery.
Her boyfriend.
I didn’t know she had a boyfriend until a half hour ago, which says a lot about her. She isn’t one of those women that define their self-worth based on whether or not they have a significant other. And she isn’t one of those attached-at-the-hip-do-everything-together types either.
My respect for her has inched up another notch.
The tea tastes like a bunch of things that don’t belong together, but I refuse to let five dollars go to waste so I try to distract myself by focusing on her mini rant. A moment ago when we were in line, he was blowing up her phone while she was trying to order. Instead of silencing it, she shoved it toward me, rattled off her passcode (771562), and told me to text him and tell him she’d call him later.
“He’s possessive and he doesn’t even see it,” she says, free hand slashing the air as she talks. “I can’t even look at another guy without him getting all worked up. He’s afraid he’s going to lose me, but if he keeps acting like this, he is going to lose me.”
“How long have you been together?”
Lauren glances up at the gray February sky. Her perfume is crisp and light in the cool air, wrapping around the two of us. I need to get perfume.
“Little over a year,” she says.
“And has he always been this way?” I ask.
She exhales, her breath like clouds. “Always. That’s why I told him we need a break. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the constant jealousy.”
“Sounds insecure,” I say.
Lauren is quiet for a second, and my heart trips in my chest when I worry I’ve offended her.
“He’s extremely insecure,” she finally responds. “And he has no reason to be. He’s gorgeous and intelligent and he’s perfect. Just wish he could see that.”
We arrive at Patterson Hall and file inside, finding two seats side-by-side in the front row of the auditorium, directly in front of the podium. Lauren sips her tea, her matte magenta lipstick miraculously staying in place, and scans the room.
A few students pass, one of them giving me a double take, like I’m familiar but they can’t place me. Or maybe … maybe they think I’m really something to look at? In a good way?
I don’t want to get my hopes up.
Earlier today, I stopped at Target and splurged on new makeup. Thirty-two dollars later, I was the proud new owner of things like contour cream, dark circle corrector, liquid blush, extreme lengthening mascara, and 16-hour lipstick.
Thank God for YouTube tutorials or I’d probably resemble Ronald McDonald right now.
“There he is,” Lauren says under her breath as she leans close. A waft of her expensive shampoo passes between us and she taps her taupe nails on my knee.
“Who?”
“Bristowe.” She nudges me and I catch the Cheshire grin plastering her pretty face from the corner of my eye. “God, he’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Yep,” I say. “And married.”
To an equally beautiful woman. A woman who is very near and dear to me. An intelligent, talented writer. A thoughtful human being. The kind of person Lauren could never compete with.
Lauren shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to her that he’s a married man. My grip tightens around my pen and my breath quickens, but before I have a chance to say anything more, the lights flicker, Bristowe’s signal for the class to be quiet.
I like Lauren, but this is just disrespectful.
I don’t like the way she’s looking at him.
Not at all.
Six
Wellman’s is packed Friday evening. Dollar wells tend to draw college students like flies to shit, which I think is a fair comparison. It isn’t even five o’clock and half of these people are drunk off their asses on cheap beer, knocking into each other as they make their way around the room, screaming along word-for-word to the Imagine Dragons song blaring from the speakers.
It’s pure chaos.
My shoes stick to the floor when I walk.
And I’m trying not to panic.
Instead I’m convincing myself that this is going to be fun, that I fit in more now than ever before. Lauren’s guy cut and colored my hair today, Tessa picked out my outfit, and Lauren let me borrow a pair of sexy kitten heels that pinch my toes but add a boost of confidence to my walk.
We find an abandoned booth and steal it before anyone comes back to claim it. Squished between Lauren and Thayer and Tessa and a few other girls whose names I’ve yet to learn, I’m taking it all in. My hands are wrapped around a frosty beer stein and I’m choking it down, despite the fact that it tastes like bitter vomit and reminds me of one of my mom’s exes who wore his perpetual beer breath like a medal of honor.
“Meadow, you want another?” Thayer asks, pointing to my drink an hour later. I’ve barely made a dent, but the beer is room temperature now, becoming harder to choke down by the second.
Tessa lifts a martini glass to her mouth, some kind of fruity concoction that’s blue on top, orange on the bottom, rimmed in sugar, and garnished with a cherry.
“What are you drinking?” I ask her.
“A blue raspberry sunrise,” she says. It’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard and exactly the kind of thing a new-moneyed college coed would drink. “Want to try it?”
I point at her drink and yell across the table to Thayer. “I’ll take one of those.”
Anything would be better than lukewarm beer at this point.
Yanking a wrinkled ten-dollar bill from my wallet—a tip from yesterday’s last client of the day—I hand it over. It kills me—kills me—to spend this kind of money partaking in an activity that makes me want to claw my eyes out, but if I’m forced to finish this warm beer, I’m going to be sick, I’m sure of it.
Thayer leaves, squeezing through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd until he reaches the bar. Every so often, he glances back at Lauren, watching her. Or maybe watching to make sure she isn’t talking to any other guys. Since the moment we arrived, she’s been devoting her full attention to him. For someone who complains about his possessiveness, she caters to him like an exhausted mother to a petulant child.
I suppose she just wants to have fun tonight.
But Thayer seems polite, at least. He opened the car door for me when he picked us up an hour and a half ago. And he let me pick the radio station in the car, complimenting my taste when I went with the eighties underground channel.
When Thayer returns with my drink, I push my tepid beer aside and welcome the saccharin blue concoction with open arms. There’s sugar on the rim. So. Much. Sugar. And there’s no way this color of blue is found in nature, but I’m going to try to focus on the positives tonight.
These girls invited me here for a good time. They’ve slipped me a VIP, all-access pass into their world. And I’m not going to piss it away. I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to plaster a smile on my face and force myself to be social even if it physically pains me.
It’s the least I can do
after all the nice things Lauren’s done for me this week.
“It’s our song!” Tessa squeals a moment later, her hand reaching across the table toward Lauren’s. “We have to dance!”
The two of them shimmy out of our booth, not a care in the world. Within seconds, their arms are in the air, their hair bouncing on their shoulders, and they’re laughing and dancing and living completely in the moment. They aren’t concerned about how much money is in their checking account. Where their next meal is coming from. They aren’t concerned about how they’re going to pay rent or how the hell they’re going to pay back a mountain of student loans after graduation.
Lauren and Tessa are one-hundred percent free.
And I want that. At least, as much of that as I can realistically have.
I don’t want to care anymore.
I don’t want to care about a damn thing.
Taking a generous gulp of my blue raspberry sunrise, and then another and another, I wait for the liquor to course my veins and bring me to where they are. That state of unadulterated freedom.
By the time the song ends and the two of them return, their faces flushed and glowing, my body is blanketed in warmth.
That was fast.
Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. My tolerance is extremely low, given the fact that I never drink.
“Meadow, you doing okay?” Lauren asks. “You’re so quiet.”
I hate being called quiet, even if I am. It suggests there’s something wrong with me. And there isn’t. Not everyone feels the need to hear the sound of their own voice twenty-four seven.
“I’m fine,” I yell. It’s perfectly okay to keep your opinions to yourself, to sit back and observe.
Everyone’s eyes are on me, and everything seems to move in slow motion and everything sounds far away. It’s almost as if my cares are slipping away in real time, drifting off one by one.
I need another drink, but the thought of squeezing through a hundred pushy drunks makes my stomach twist. All I can picture is getting shoved and trampled and ignored at the bar because I’m used to being invisible.