“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” I concede. “But if I don’t try harder, then it will be.” If, then, just the way I like it. I reach for Serena’s hand and hold it with both of my own. I squeeze tight, and the skin of my left hand barely even aches in protest. Marnie would be thrilled.
“You can tell me,” I say, “I can take it.”
Serena stops and looks up. She smiles, but her eyes are bright with almost-tears. “Okay,” she begins. “You were a crappy friend. For months.”
I nod. “I know.”
“You never asked how I was doing, and you never let me ask how you were doing—”
“I know.”
“And now you’re not even excited about Berkeley, and I’ve been looking forward to this for my whole life, so can’t you at least be excited for me?”
“You’re right,” I agree. “And,” I add slowly, “I have to tell you something. I might not be going to Berkeley.” I pull her to sit beside me on a nearby bench. I tell her about Barnard. I explain that I wanted it more than I wanted anything else since my accident, but now I’m not so sure. I apologize for keeping this from her. Say that I’m sorry for keeping so much from her: that my parents are fighting again, that I go to a support group on Wednesdays, that I tried to kiss a twenty-five-year-old boy named Adam—
“What?!” she squeals. “That sounds like something I would do. Way to go, May-Day!”
And I tell her that it hurts so much that Chirag is going to prom with Alexis Smith, and I don’t know what to do about it. I want him to get to be with a pretty, normal girl like Alexis, and I want to move on, too. But it also aches that he’s with someone else.
“And,” I say finally, “I’ve missed you.”
“You’ve seen me almost every day.”
“That’s not what I mean. I miss hearing your stories. I miss being your friend. You’ve been my friend, but I haven’t been yours for a long time.”
Serena’s tears finally overflow and there’s a lump in my throat when I pull her into a tight hug. The string between us loosens gently, resuming its easy residence on my rib cage, so that once more, I can’t even feel it.
But I know it’s there.
“Come on,” Serena says, wiping her eyes when we finally let go of each other. “I’ve got an idea.”
“This is your idea?” I ask twenty minutes later, when Serena has planted me into one of the tall chairs at the makeup counter on the ground floor of the department store.
“You said you wanted to be a good friend to me again. And, as a good friend, you have to do whatever I say.”
“I don’t think that’s what being a good friend means.”
“Today it does.”
A makeup artist is brushing tinted moisturizer all over my face. The liquid feels slick and rich soaking into my skin—the old parts and the new. It smells good.
Serena decided that I needed a total makeover. She didn’t tell the makeup artist that I’d been in an accident or had a face transplant. Surely the woman can see the scars on my cheeks, can see that my forehead is dotted with freckles while the rest of my skin is clear, but she’s too polite to ask questions.
The old Maisie never really wore much makeup and I almost say so out loud, but I remember what Adam said and keep my mouth shut. This Maisie, this girl, is getting a makeover with her best friend.
“What gave you this idea?” I ask Serena finally. The makeup artist tells me to look at the ceiling while she brushes on eyeliner. It tickles the delicate skin beneath my eyelashes and I concentrate to keep from sneezing.
“Promise you won’t get mad?” Serena sounds more shy and tentative than I’ve ever heard her before.
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ve been reading a lot about recovery. You know, from surgeries where you look different from the way you looked before.”
“You have?” It’s not a very Serena-like thing to do. Maybe what happened to me changed her, too. It changed Ellen, and she and I weren’t nearly as close.
Serena nods. “Ever since Halloween. You didn’t just look different. You were different. Things were never going to be the way they used to be. But even if you were different, I still wanted you to be my best friend.” Her voice is quiet and serious. I pull away from the makeup artist and hug her again.
“I’ll always be your best friend,” I whisper fiercely. I mean it. I thought I wanted distance from everyone who knew my old face, but that’s not worth losing Serena.
“What if you go to Barnard?”
“Wherever I go. No matter what. No matter how many new noses and cheeks I go through.”
Serena laughs. Serena always laughs at my jokes, even the ones I make about my injuries, the ones I thought no one outside of Group could possibly find funny. Maybe Adam was right; maybe I really am funny and anyone who doesn’t laugh—like Chirag—just doesn’t get my sense of humor.
“Don’t start crying. You’ll mess up your makeup before it’s even finished,” Serena says finally, pushing me back into my chair. “So anyway, on one of the websites, someone had posted a story about taking her sister to get her makeup done after her surgery.”
“Did she have a face transplant, too?”
Serena nods. “Partial. Nose and mouth. The sister said that it really seemed to help.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get,” I say, but Serena doesn’t answer. She looks like there’s something she wants to ask me, but she doesn’t know how.
“It’s okay,” I offer quietly. “You can ask me anything.”
“What’s it like?” she asks finally.
I shrug, cocking my head to the side so that the makeup artist brushes bronzer onto my ear instead of my cheek. She clucks her tongue at me and I straighten my neck. She corrects her work carefully, her face as close to mine as Adam’s was the other night.
“It’s like … you know when you get a new haircut? Like maybe the stylist cut your hair four inches shorter than you asked her to, and every time you look in the mirror, the new cut kind of takes you by surprise. ’Cause when you weren’t looking in the mirror you’d managed to forget how short your hair was, and that you’d never wanted it to look like that? And then when you’re in the shower, you still pour enough shampoo for your long hair even though you don’t need nearly that much anymore?”
Serena nods.
“But eventually it surprises you less, and then less, and then less. Until sometimes—not always, but sometimes—when you look in the mirror, it’s what you expect to see. It’s like that, only, I don’t know. That times a million, I guess.”
“But with a haircut, you can tell yourself that it’ll grow back.”
I nod, and the makeup artist sighs heavily. I bet she can’t even imagine what it’s like to have your head completely immobilized.
“At first, I think part of me did think it would grow back. I mean, not actually grow back, but sometimes it was hard to believe that this wasn’t temporary, that I wouldn’t go back to the old me eventually. I knew what had happened, but I just couldn’t quite believe that it was forever.”
Maybe Chirag couldn’t believe it either. Maybe that’s what he meant, deep down, when I heard him say that he couldn’t break up with me until I was better.
“But you don’t believe that anymore?” Serena asks as the makeup artist coats my lashes with mascara; I wonder how closely she’s following our conversation.
Before I can answer Serena’s question, the makeup artist says, “Never use black mascara.” She explains that gray is better for me since I’m so fair. She rubs concealer onto the pink scars on my cheeks, and finally finishes by brushing blush across my cheeks, my forehead, the bridge of my nose. I like the feel of the brush against my skin, as soft as rabbit fur.
“There you are,” she says, holding a mirror up in front of me.
I never knew makeup could make such a difference. There is purple powder on my eyelids and along my lashes; my cheeks are rosy, the way the
y look after a run. And my skin—it’s not flawless, but it’s smoother somehow. You can still see where my old skin stops and my new skin starts, but the transition is fuzzy, blurred. My scars look lighter. I trace them gently, the same way I do when I’m alone in my room at night.
“I’m sorry,” the makeup artist says softly. “I just couldn’t cover them up completely.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “You did a beautiful job.”
“You look so pretty, Maisie,” Serena says, and I shake my head. Pretty is beside the point, and it’s not the right word for how I look anyway. Right now, I look normal. I don’t look like the old Maisie, but like Adam said, the old Maisie has been gone for a long time now. She died, along with my nose, my cheeks, my chin. I spin the ribbon around my wrist, fingering the knot that keeps it tied tight.
I look away from the mirror and lock eyes with my best friend. “No,” I say firmly, answering the question she asked a few minutes ago, “I don’t believe that anymore—I know there’s no going back.”
Finally, officially, I know I’ve reached the final stage: acceptance.
In her car later, Serena says, “There’s something I really want to tell you.”
“Tell me.”
She shakes her head. “Not here.” She changes lanes, pulling onto the freeway. “Let’s go for a drive.”
Twenty-five minutes later, we’re hiking through the tawny hills behind the Golden Gate Bridge, the ground so dry that it’s hard to believe we ever had a rainy season at all. It’s dusk and the fog is rolling in, bringing the temperature down at least ten degrees, but I’m sweating from the effort of climbing. This definitely qualifies as rigorous exercise.
“Will you please tell me what we’re doing here?” I pant at Serena’s back. She hasn’t turned around since we got out of the car. Just led the way up the hills and expected me to follow. “This is ruining my makeup!” I shout, even though that’s the kind of thing Serena would say, not me.
Serena finally stops walking. “I guess this is close enough,” she says. “I don’t know exactly where he did it.”
Catching my breath, I ask, “Exactly where who did what?”
“Chirag. He didn’t want me to tell you, but I think you should know.”
“Know what?”
“About junior prom.”
“Look, if this is going to be a story about how he danced with other girls all night, I’d rather not hear it. Or is that why you dragged me up here? So I could fling myself from the cliffs when I heard it?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Maisie, jeez,” Serena says, but she doesn’t laugh. In fact, maybe I’ve never seen her looking so serious.
“Serena,” I say softly, “what are we doing here?”
“Chirag didn’t go to prom last year.”
“He didn’t?”
“Of course not. Seriously, did you really think he was going to go when you were in the hospital, in a coma they’d put you in because you were in too much pain to wake up?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I press my fingers to my mouth, blowing on them to keep warm. “Maybe I just didn’t want to think about him all alone at home, waiting for me. Waiting for the phone to ring so that my parents could tell him whether I was going to wake up again or not.”
“He wasn’t home.”
“Where was he?”
“He was here.”
“Here?”
“Well not exactly here, here,” Serena shrugs, stomping her feet. “But around here somewhere.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he got arrested.”
“What?” I’m as shocked by this as I was when I first heard that there was such a thing as a face transplant. It sounds just as impossible. Just as much something that happens in movies, but not in real life.
Serena sits cross-legged on the ground and pulls me down to join her.
“After the fire, that branch that ripped up the wires on your street was chopped down by some city workers, along with the rest of the tree. They said it wasn’t stable or something. They dragged the wood to the side of the road and told your parents that in a few days it would be hauled away by the sanitation department to be turned into mulch or whatever. And that drove Chirag crazy. That this branch had changed everything, but it was just being treated like regular garbage.”
It’s hard to imagine Chirag being driven crazy by anything at all. “What does this have to do with Chirag getting arrested?” I ask impatiently.
“I’m getting to it,” Serena says, squeezing my hand. “So the night of junior prom, Chirag loaded the wood into the back of his car and drove here.”
“Here? Why did he do that?”
“I asked him. He said something about the Fourth of July. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Slowly, my lips curl into a smile.
“What?” Serena asks. The sun is just beginning to set, casting pink light across my best friend’s face.
“We were going to watch the fireworks together. Up here in the mountains.”
Serena nods. “I guess that explains it. He brought the wood here and started a bonfire. Which is totally illegal up here, you know, because of the drought and the risk of forest fires. He said the branch had burned down to almost nothing when the rangers came for him.”
I nod, trying to imagine Chirag standing up here all by himself, building a fire and watching it burn until the branches that changed my life forever—and maybe his life, too—burned down to embers, to ash, to smoke. It’s difficult to imagine my rational, levelheaded ex-boyfriend doing something so over the top.
“His parents thought he was losing his mind or something,” Serena continues. I nod; I probably would have thought the same thing. “They were convinced that the arrest on his record would keep him out of Stanford. They wanted him to stop calling your parents, stop asking to visit you, and they certainly weren’t happy when you came home and he drove over to visit you the first chance he got. Like you were some kind of bad influence or something.”
I picture Chirag, patiently explaining that I could hardly have been a bad influence when I was in a coma at the time. Using logic even after the least logical thing he’d ever done. It makes me laugh out loud. But soon, I’m crying, too.
It wasn’t just a bonfire that Chirag built in these mountains. It was a funeral pyre.
Chirag understood, months before I did, that something—a part of me, a part of us—had died. He knew it was over, and he mourned in a big way. That’s why he could be so calm, talking about us at Halloween; why he could offer me a ride even after we’d broken up; why my touch startled him at the restaurant in Sausalito. He’d already been through the messy part: the nonscientific, somewhat irrational, and maybe even melodramatic work of breaking up.
Chirag understood, months before I did, that we had to say good-bye.
Serena hands me a tissue so I can blot my tears away before I totally destroy my makeover. I wish I could have been here when Chirag set the fire. I think I would have liked seeing that branch go up in smoke. Would have liked seeing Chirag’s less scientific side.
And I wish I could have figured out how to say good-bye to him sooner. Instead, I dragged it out until our beautiful relationship was messy and ugly, so that now I can’t even be civil when we see each other at school. I guess I’m more my parents’ daughter than I realized.
“The night we broke up, I said—” I take a deep breath. I’ve never told anyone exactly what I said, not even Adam. “I told him I never loved him.”
Serena whistles. “Why did you say that?”
“I thought I had to. I wanted him to hate me. So that he wouldn’t—I don’t know. So that he’d be able to move on. So that he wouldn’t feel guilty, going to prom with Alexis Smith. But now …” I pause.
“What now?” Serena prompts.
“Now it just feels like this terrible lie.” I sigh, twisting the black ribbon around my wrist until the threads that hold it together snap.
It falls to the ground and before I can pick it up, the wind blows it out of my reach, into the fog, where I can’t see it anymore.
“Maybe it’s time for me to tell him the truth,” I say finally.
When I get home, I head straight to my computer. I don’t even have to search; I remember exactly where I saw my dress. I don’t hesitate before clicking the purchase button; it’s so inexpensive now that my mother probably won’t even notice the charge on the credit card they gave me years ago for emergencies only.
I have a plan, and I need the dress to carry it out. So this is kind of an emergency.
I’m taking my evening dose when there’s a knock on my door. Mom never waits for a response before barging in (and Dad never really comes in here anymore), so there are a few seconds of silence before it occurs to me to shout, “Come in.”
“Your father and I need to talk to you,” Mom says solemnly. She looks shy, lingering in my doorway with one leg wrapped around the other, fidgeting like a nervous middle schooler. I’m taken aback by her quiet, polite approach, as though I’m a stranger and not the daughter she bosses around twenty-four hours a day. I follow her down the stairs and into the living room, the terra-cotta tiles cool beneath my bare feet. Dad is sitting on the couch facing the television, but the TV is muted. The images cast flickering shadows across his face.
He looks every bit as serious as my mother, who sits down beside him. I sit in the chair across from them, trying to remember the last time we all three sat in the room without someone fighting—either Mom and Dad, or Mom and me. The silence is strange after all that shouting; I’ve heard about the calm before the storm, but no one ever talks about the calm that comes after it.
“Your father and I have something to tell you,” Mom begins softly. Her voice sounds small, like we’re talking on the phone with a terrible connection. In fact, all of her seems small: She’s sitting with her legs folded beneath her body, curled away from my father like she wants to make sure there isn’t the slightest chance they might touch each other.
Mom opens her mouth to continue, but nothing comes out. She does this three times before my father finally says, “Your mother and I are separating.”
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