Let's Face It

by Jodi R. Moore

  The camera was zoomed in on us as we looked through all the different products and a microphone must’ve been right over where we were standing because it was picking up every word.

  Group after group of girls, and then guys, showed the same thing. Just when you thought someone might take a mask or one of the spot treatments, they’d eventually come back to the SKIN CARE DEVICES table and leave with one in their hand.

  Now I wish I had tried the zit zapper before I went to bed—but I hadn’t wanted to mess up my lettuce experiment. And I still couldn’t figure out what lettuce had to do with all the devices around the room—even some that looked like they were from different countries with languages I didn’t recognize on their boxes.

  Jayla showed a few more clips. Every time she clicked a key on her computer to show a new one, I cringed inside at how I might look on the screen or what I might be saying. A part of me wanted everyone around that table to hear my passionate plea for a cure—just maybe not while I was in the room with them.

  “Let’s get into the brainstorm.” Jayla stood up next to a white board. “Inflammation is the problem. And we’ve got the solution. Our anti-inflammatory device is going to get rid of their bumps using our patented cooling tip technology. But the problem is,” she made quote marks with her fingers, “an ‘anti-inflammatory device’ will never sell. We’ve got to come up with a better name and messaging. We need the wigy!”

  She wrote on the board: WGHI (apparently pronounced “wigy” as she said again). Everyone around the table seemed to know what she was talking about.

  Charlie leaned over towards me and wrote on the top of my project timeline.

  WOW GOTTA HAVE IT

  “You’ll get used to the acronyms,” he whispered.

  “Let’s put some names up here,” she said. “Look around the room. This is what we’re up against.”

  The walls were lined with poster-sized blow-ups of the packaging for other skin care devices. Tacked underneath were examples of their advertising, in-store displays, and websites.

  “What’s our wigy?” she asked. “We need a name and our messaging has to really connect. We need those pizza faces to see this and think ‘Wow, gotta have it!’”

  I sat back in my chair. I couldn’t believe she just said pizza face. Acne was bad enough without having to conjure up images of grease oozing out of red pepperonis.

  The only thing that would make me think I gotta have it—or WGHI-whatever—was if it actually worked. And according to the timeline, they wouldn’t even have preliminary test results for two weeks.

  But that didn’t stop people from coming up with names.

  INFLAME-OUT

  INFLAMOUT

  BYE BYE BUMP STICK

  CLEAR STICK

  “It’s really about the tip,” someone said. He was the guy who had mentioned the design improvements earlier. He read from his notepad, “It has targeted cooling action that penetrates deep into the skin to reduce inflammation.”

  More names filled the board. I couldn’t really think of anything and Charlie hadn’t suggested any either, until—

  “Clearagel Cool,” he blurted out.

  Why did he want to name it after another product that clearly didn’t work?

  “Interesting,” Jayla said, adding it to the list. “We’d always thought of launching this as a totally new brand, but everyone knows the name Clearagel. I suppose there could be some benefit to having this be a Clearagel brand extension.”

  The red-headed woman who mentioned earlier they still needed to work the name into the design looked over at Charlie. “I like ‘Cool’—it’s like it makes you cool. Isn’t that what everyone wants to be at your age?”

  Not me. I just wanted smooth skin. A cure—that would be cool.

  But everyone was already getting excited about the name and suggesting ideas for the packaging and advertising.

  As they talked over each other it got louder, but not loud enough to drown out an unfortunate interruption.

  Ooh Oohy-Ooh Yeaaaaah . . .

  Suki5 sang from my purse that a new text message had arrived. I had meant to turn off my phone when I was in the lobby, but I had kept it on just in case Charlie texted me when I was waiting for him.

  It happened once in biology, and Mrs. Diaz kept my phone for the rest of the day. But this was so much worse. I didn’t think Jayla would take my phone, but everyone couldn’t help but look over at me.

  I shut it off and pretended like nothing happened, while everyone went back to talking about ideas for the advertising campaign.

  Jayla stopped mid-sentence and looked at me. “Wait—was that Suki5?”

  “Yes. I’m so sorry. I turned it off.” I mouthed “sorry” to Charlie.

  “Well, they’re pretty cool, aren’t they? Suki5?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “They’re popular.”

  A few other people said they liked them or their kids liked them.

  “Maybe we could get them to be in a commercial for Clearagel Cool,” she said. “We could have a song. They could sing it. Like a music video.”

  “Celebrity endorsements do seem to work,” someone said.

  “But they have perfect skin,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Jayla said. “They’ll look great in the ad. It’s aspirational. The pizza faces don’t want to see themselves in an ad.”

  I couldn’t believe she said it again! And worse, everyone was looking right at me when she said it. Because she was talking to me . . . and about me. Except she didn’t know me, or anyone like me, at all. If she did, she’d have known how frustrating and hurtful it was to be called a name that you can’t do anything about. She didn’t know what I really cared about—finding a solution for acne that really worked.

  “We’re just trying to get girls excited about this,” Jayla said. “And Kaylin, you know how excited girls get about Suki5.”

  “For me, I’d be the most excited about something that could really help my skin,” I said, still feeling the eyes of the room on me—but I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “It’s so frustrating, when you buy something and you think it’s going to help you—and it doesn’t.”

  “Good point, Kaylin,” Jayla said. “It’ll work. It has to. And who better to promote such a cool device than Suki5!”

  Everyone was back to getting excited about a Suki5 campaign. They were even saying for enough money Suki5 would probably come to the conference.

  By the end of the meeting, all I could think of was how un-cool it all was. Nobody even knew if Clearagel Cool really worked, but they already had a plan to make everyone think, Wow—gotta have it!

  “So, that was pretty cool, huh?” Charlie said after we left the room.

  How was I supposed to answer that? It was nice of him to help me get an internship, but now I wasn’t even sure I wanted to work on Project Lettuce.

  “I don’t get it. Why’s it called Project Lettuce?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Jayla told me they were going to call it Project Ice, but they thought it was too obvious and it’s supposed to be a secret until the conference. So someone said Iceberg, and then it just became Project Lettuce.”

  To think I had actually spread lettuce goo on my face! I was glad I didn’t tell Charlie about my experiment. He would’ve totally made fun of me.

  “You know what I don’t get,” he said. “Why you have that lame Suki5 song as a ringtone. We’re gonna have to do something about that. I can’t be friends with someone who has such bad taste in music.”

  “Well everyone else seems to like Suki5,” I reminded him. Although, I wished they didn’t. The idea of Suki5 endorsing a product they had never even used just seemed so wrong.

  I wanted to tell my friends about the meeting, but I knew I couldn’t.

  “You’ve gotta tell us something,” Jenna said. “Did Charlie wear khakis again?”

  “And glasses,” I said.

  “He wears glasses?” Jenna said. “I bet he looks cute in
them.”

  “Oh, I thought of something I can tell you. I forgot to turn off my phone and my text message alert sounded in the middle of a meeting.”

  “Suki5?” Rachel asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “More like Ooh Oohy-Ooh Yeaaaaah. It was so embarrassing.” Speaking of which, I had been so busy with Charlie the rest of the day finding out who was who and then we had to label like a hundred boxes so we’d be ready to ship the devices to the testers—I never even checked who the message was from. (Nor did I get to go to the lab, but Charlie said maybe tomorrow.)

  I got my phone out of my purse and turned it back on.

  2 NEW TEXT MESSAGES

  5:10 p.m. FROM CHARLIE

  New ringtone for you

  Charlie_jam.mp3

  I was going to listen to the ringtone he sent me but I couldn’t wait to get to my next message—the earlier one from the meeting.

  10:05 a.m. FROM SEAN

  I know why the judges picked Courtney.

  Check my science camp vlog tonight.

  eight

  The only other person I knew besides Sean who’d blog-vlog-whatever about Science Camp was me—if I was there. Getting Sean’s text made me wish I was. And now I’d finally find out why Courtney was there instead of me.

  As soon as I started playing his video, I was annoyed to see Courtney on the screen with him. So annoyed that I nearly turned it off, but instead I braced myself for her giggly ditziness. Sean knew me well enough to know that this must be something I’d want to see—otherwise he wouldn’t have texted me.

  In a way, I felt like he made this vlog just for me.

  Or was it just so he could spend time with Courtney?

  PLAY

  “It’s on?” Courtney said to Sean, but by the way she flicked her hair back behind her shoulders I knew she knew it was on. “Come on Sean, I thought we were going to Dupont Circle.”

  “We will,” he said. “But first just say what you told me after the lecture today about research—what the Science Camp judges told you about your experiment.”

  “Nobody cares—but fine. I’ll do it so we can go.” She stared straight at me through the screen. I wished we could trade places.

  And trade skin.

  Did the judges pick her because she was so pretty—just like Sean did?

  “So, one of the judges asked me about how I did my experiment. I told them how I had different types of self-tanner, but I also had just normal lotion so I’d be able to compare all the different self-tanner lotions versus doing nothing at all. Then I got all sneaky and taped over the packaging for each of the lotions so none of my friends knew which one they were getting. But then I had a little mix-up.”

  She twirled a piece of hair with her finger and then continued. “I told the judge how after my friends took the lotions off my dresser, I totally couldn’t remember who ended up with what. It was kind of frustrating because the whole time I was taking pictures of their legs and recording my observations, I didn’t even know who had my favorite self-tanner or who had the lotion that didn’t even have self-tanner in it.”

  “And you said one of the judges started laughing?” Sean said.

  “Yeah, well he was kind of like laughing quietly to himself and then whispered something to the other judge and they were both laughing. So I was like ‘Why are you laughing?’ and then they said a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand. But then they explained my experiment was . . . wait, let me remember it right . . . R-D-B-P-C . . . it was a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled experiment. What I just thought was an accident was what scientists intentionally try to do—just like we heard at the research lecture today. It was like this . . .”

  She held up her hand with two fingers crisscrossed, like she was signing the letter R.

  “Randomized—like the way my friends randomly got their lotions. I couldn’t give my favorite self-tanner to Diane who tans super easily.”

  D-B. “Double Blind—not only did my friends not know which lotion they got, even I didn’t know.”

  P-C. “Placebo Controlled—I told you that part already. Using just the normal lotion was like doing nothing at all—a placebo—so I could compare the results against that.”

  R-D-B-P-C, she signed. “I always remember things better when I do that.”

  “O-K,” Sean said as he signed the letters in her direction.

  “Okay, so can we go to Dupont Circle now?”

  “Yep. I’ll teach you how to play chess there.”

  “I thought we were going to a coffee house?”

  He smiled into the camera. “Signing off until tomorrow when Courtney will be teaching us the castling move in chess.”

  As he walked up to the camera to turn it off, I heard her saying, “You’re such a dork. I don’t even know what that is.”

  He was a total dork—but that was one of the things I liked about Sean. The dork and the ditz. He and Courtney definitely didn’t belong together. But in a way, I had to admit that she sort of deserved to be at Science Camp—even if she pretty much got there by accident.

  If I had recruited more people for my experiment and maybe tested some other products in addition to Clearagel, my science project would’ve been better, and I might’ve ended up at Science Camp.

  But maybe Tomlin & Tomlin was where I needed to be this summer if I really cared about getting rid of acne—not just for myself but for everyone . . . forever.

  I stared at myself in the mirrored closet door. Halfway across the room from my reflection, I could still see the newest pimple on my chin staring back at me. At least I thought it was the newest—until I got closer and noticed another one on the other side of my chin which must’ve sprung up since this morning. Smaller, but equally frustrating.

  In the mirror, I noticed the zit zapper on my desk—still in its box. I didn’t really believe it would do anything, but I figured I should try it. What could it hurt?

  While it was heating up, I took a photo of my face so I could record my observations. I digitally circled the pimples I was going to zap and saved the picture in my experiments folder on the computer.

  I wasn’t going to zap all of my acne—my arm would get tired holding the zapper up for three minutes on every single pimple. I decided to just do the biggest ones—like the one on my chin and the ones that take forever to go away on my temples.

  By the time I finished reading the instructions, the zapper was ready.

  I pressed it on top of my chin pimple and felt the heat seep through my skin. It was like that feeling at the beach when the sand is really hot, but not quite as hot as when you’ve realized you’ll burn your feet if you don’t keep moving. It was that pre-feet-burning feeling. Definitely bearable. Especially if it could actually work.

  I moved onto the next one on my temple. As many pimples as I had since I started getting acne, each one seemed unique. There were tiny bumps with no heads and more massive bumps—some poppable and others not. Some healed quickly and others lingered for more than a month. They sprung up in different places with their own personalities. Some liked to be the center of attention, while others came and went a bit more peacefully as if they were sorry for their visit. And why they visited me, and not someone like Courtney, my dermatologist never gave me a good explanation for that. Or why some people grew out of their acne, like my mom did, and others, like Mrs. Diaz, still had it.

  The zapping was over. My face now had five pinkish blotches where I had held the device. The instructions said the redness was normal, and the heat was supposedly killing off the bacteria. But it also seemed like the heat could be sending blood to the very spot that was already inflamed. Icing seemed like it could be better.

  But better still seemed pointless.

  Better wasn’t why I was working at Tomlin & Tomlin for the summer.

  Project Lettuce was not going to cure my acne. But maybe a cure could be found somewhere else—like in the lab.

  nine

  “Jenna, that’s enough
with the texting,” her mom said. “The tapping really bothers me when I’m driving.”

  “I just want to hear it one more time.”

  Jenna snapped her phone shut, and then turned in her seat toward me, waiting for my new Charlie ringtone to play.

  She smiled during his drum solo until I opened up my phone.

  8:50 a.m. FROM JENNA

  Charlie rocks. Literally.

  “You know what would really rock,” I said, “is if he finally showed me the lab.”

  Charlie and I spent the morning getting the devices ready to be mailed out to the testers. He said he’d walk me over to the lab as soon as we were finished.

  I wanted to try one out, just to see what it felt like, but that would have to wait until we were done. Jayla had checked on our progress twice already.

  While I was waiting for Charlie to tape up the last boxes, I read through the instructions and held one of the devices in my hand. It looked sort of like an electric toothbrush, but without the brush part. The pointed end looked more like a pen—the kind where you can click the back—pen out, pen in, pen out, pen in. It sounded like Courtney taking a test in science class. She always did that when she was stuck—which was often.

  “Just think,” Charlie said, “when they’re all done with the design it will say Clearagel Cool on it somewhere. Whoever thought of that was a genius.”

  “Oh, you think so?” I said. I was still annoyed by the whole idea.

  “Maybe you should be in the ad,” I said. “You’ve probably never had a pimple in your life. So you’d obviously be perfect for it.”

  “I can’t believe Suki5’s biggest fan wouldn’t want them in an ad. You know you might get to meet them if they come to the conference.”

  As awesome as that would’ve been, I hoped they wouldn’t want to make a video for something they had no need for, that probably didn’t work anyway, just so other people would think it was cool.

  “I’m not sure I’m their biggest fan anymore. I already got rid of my ringtone that played during the meeting,” I said putting the last device and instructions in the remaining box. “I like the one you sent me. My friend Jenna kept texting me so she could hear it.”