I gave Katie the flowery skirt she loved and Nicole the lace dress, and I donated most of the makeup to our local shelter. But the truth is, I kept a few of the cool lip glosses. And the brown eye pencil that made my eyes look bigger and smoky when I smudged it. And I didn’t give all the clothes away. I kept the awesome leather jacket and a funky pair of boots.
I tried to figure out which parts of Phillipe’s makeover made me feel good but still like me. Real Rosie me, not Mirror Girl. I kept those parts and threw the rest away, like a crab abandoning a shell or a snake shedding unwanted skin.
Now I’ve got to find my new skin, which is why I’m at the thrift store with Nicole and Katie, looking for a dress for the Fall Festive.
“What about this?” Katie says, holding up a gold sequined sheath. “I love it!”
Mirror Girl would love it too. It’s eye-catching. It’s a center of attention dress.
But I’ve had enough of that in the last week or two. I want something more low-key. A little more . . . me.
I shake my head.
“Ooh, what about this one?” Nicole says, pulling a black flapper dress with a gold fringed hemline off the rack.
I hold it up to me and look in the mirror. It’s cool and different, but it’s just not singing my song.
“I like it, but . . . I don’t know. Let’s keep looking,” I say.
We keep sifting through the racks, dress by dress, until I see it. The perfect one.
“This is it!” I say.
It’s a strapless ’50s number with a white chiffon skirt with wide petticoats and a blue lace fitted top. I’m in love. Praying that it fits, I go into the changing room to try it on.
As I zip it up, I close my eyes, afraid to look in the mirror, afraid that I’ll hear someone else’s voice in my head.
It fits.
I open my eyes and look in the mirror. I feel like a princess. I feel like the Fairest in the Land, even though I’m in a thrift store changing room in a party dress and Converse. But best of all, I still feel like me.
I let Mom take me for a mani-pedi the day of the Fall Festive but draw the line at getting my hair done.
“I still don’t understand why you had to ruin perfectly good professional highlights with a ten-dollar box color job,” Mom grumbles.
“I wanted to be normal again,” I explain for the umpteenth time.
“But why does that involve using a home hair color kit?” Mom asks. “You can still be yourself with professional highlights.”
“Being the Fairest in the Land is your thing, Mom. You’re really good at it. Maybe I’m just cut out for other things.”
“You’re beautiful, Rosie,” Mom says. “And beauty is power. Don’t you see? It’s not fair, but that’s why you have to make the best of yourself. CharmingLifestyles.com has been successful because we help people do that.”
It’s like I’m hearing the voice of Mirror Girl speaking to me through my mother’s mouth. Does Mom have her own Mirror Girl? Maybe everyone does.
“I’m trying to be beautiful in my own way, Mom, okay? What’s the matter with that?”
Mom, who always seems to have an answer to everything, can’t seem to find the words to answer that question.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” she sighs, finally. “Life isn’t as simple as you think it is when you’re a kid. Society has rules. Expectations.”
“So, why can’t we change them?” I ask. “If they’re wrong, I mean.”
Mom looks at me, and for the first time, I notice the fine lines around her eyes. But I also notice the deep love for me there.
“Rosie, you keep on being you, honey. Because you are beautiful, no matter what you see in the mirror.”
I hug my mother, careful not to ruin either of our manicures, and feel closer to her than I have in a long time.
As I’m getting dressed for the Fall Festive, I feel like a princess in a fairy tale. Yeah, I know. With my parentage it’s even more cliché, but when I put on the dress, it makes me feel like anything is possible. I bought some blue silk ribbon to match the lace on the bodice, and I tie it like a headband, leaving the rest of my hair falling straight down my back. Slipping on the new pair of white Converse I bought to match it, I twirl in front of the mirror, and the chiffon skirt floats in a wide circle around me, drifting against my legs like a soft cloud when I stop.
The doorbell rings. Mystery Shakespeare Boy—I mean, Ben—is here. Dad is answering the door. I better go rescue Ben from the Charming Inquisition. I finally had to fess up to him who my parents are.
“So, Ben, tell me. What are your plans for this evening?” I hear my father asking from down the hall.
I walk faster.
“Uh . . . well, um . . . Mr. Charming, er . . . Prince . . . sir, my plan is to take Rosie to her school dance.”
“And . . . ?”
I can just imagine the intimidating look on Dad’s face right now. I run, reaching the doorway before Ben can answer.
“Don’t worry, Dad, Ben isn’t going to kiss me while I’m sleeping or anything,” I say. “Right, Ben?”
My father gives me a stern frown. Ben, on the other hand, is looking at me like he’s never seen me before. Like everyone always looked at Mirror Girl. Like I’m really beautiful.
“Wow, Rosie. You look really . . . Wow. Love the dress.”
For some reason, this causes Dad to frown even more.
Ben holds out a bunch of blush tea roses, which is appropriate since he is blushing pretty hard himself. “I . . . uh . . . got these for you. Hope the rose thing isn’t too cliché, but they reminded me of you.”
“No, they’re beautiful,” I tell him.
Just then Mom sweeps out from the kitchen.
“Ben—wonderful to meet you,” she says, holding out her soft, white hand.
Ben looks like he isn’t sure if he should shake it or kiss it. Fortunately, he decides to shake it.
“Y-you t-too Mrs. White—er, Charming.”
People often start stuttering in Mom’s presence. I’m used to her face, but other people find it intimidating—too beautiful to be real.
“Ivan, can you please stop glowering at Ben and do something useful like take pictures?” Mom says pointedly to Dad, who is indeed a standing column of granite, giving Ben his full range of Intimidating Princely Looks.
Dad harrumphs and goes off in search of his camera—or at least I hope it’s his camera and not his CharmingMaster 15 Recurve Bow.
“Don’t mind him,” Mom says to Ben. “He can be a little overprotective.”
“A little?” I snort.
“Why don’t you go put those lovely roses in water?” Mom suggests. “I’ll keep Ben company.”
She’s clearly trying to get Ben alone so she can ask him twenty questions, but I can’t say “Not on your life, Mom” without making a scene.
So, I race into the kitchen, find a plastic water jug, and stuff the roses in without even taking the plastic off.
“Sorry, flowers,” I whisper. “I promise to sort you out after the dance. Right now I have to rescue Ben.”
“So, you met Rosie at Starcups, you say?” Mom’s asking Ben as I walk back in from the kitchen.
“Yes, and we were both awake at the time—discussing Shakespeare, as a matter of fact,” I point out, quite pointedly, if you must know.
“Er, yes. . . . It was Romeo and Juliet,” Ben says. He sounds odd, like he has a cough lozenge stuck in his throat.
Luckily, Dad comes back just then with his camera, rather than hunting or siege equipment. Mom fusses about where we should stand to get the right lighting.
“Mom, it would be great if we could actually leave for the Fall Festive before it’s over,” I grumble.
“You’ll thank me for this in twenty years when you have a great picture to share with your children,” Mom says.
She didn’t just say that.
I can’t even look at Ben, but he’s got to be blushing just like I am. Our hypo
thetical children are going to see a picture of two tomato-faced people who are, like, Please just take the picture and let us get to the dance already!
Dad takes a bunch of pictures, and I’ve finally had enough.
“Okay, time to go!” I declare.
“Just one more,” Dad says.
“No! No more!” I say. “Paparazzi hour is over.”
“You two have a lovely evening,” Mom says.
“We will,” I say, anxious to get Ben away from Dad’s less than Charming glare and Mom’s apparent matrimonial plans soon as as possible.
“Wait, Rosie—” Mom says as Ben and I are walking out the door. “You can’t possibly be thinking of wearing those sneakers to the dance with that dress. . . .”
“Yeah, Mom, I can,” I reply, blowing her and Dad a kiss and closing the door behind us.
Ben and I don’t say a word to each other until we get into the elevator and the door closes. And then we just start cracking up. Laughing and laughing so hard my eyes start watering and I’m afraid the brown eye pencil is going to go from artfully smudged to tackily smeared.
“When you said the thing about kissing your mom while she was sleeping . . . ,” Ben gasped. “I almost lost it.”
“You looked terrified,” I said. “I figured it would lighten the mood.”
“I was terrified,” Ben admits. “Your dad scares the heck out of me.”
“He’s actually quite Charming when you get to know him,” I say, which cracks Ben up even more.
Victor is on doorman duty.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Miss Rosie,” he says. “If I were fifty years younger, I’d take you to the dance myself.”
“Thanks, Victor,” I say.
“I’ll do my best to fill in for you, sir,” Ben says.
“You do that, young man,” Victor says. “Dance a cha-cha for me.”
When we get out on the sidewalk, Ben admits he doesn’t know what the cha-cha entails, but he’s happy to google it if I want to try it.
“That’s okay,” I tell him. “I’ll settle for something you don’t have to google.”
The cafeteria is decked out in fall colors—leaf cutouts in red, orange, gold, and brown adorn tree trunks that have been taped to the walls, and there are hay bales and corn sheaves and huge pumpkins arranged artfully around the room to complete the Fall Festive motif. There’s hot apple cider and every kind of pumpkin and apple flavored baked treat you could possibly imagine.
Katie is already there with Jackson Greenleaf, whom she asked to go with her after learning that Quinn had asked me. They live in the same building and have been friends since nursery school, when her mother almost had heart failure from finding little Jackson on the ledge outside their apartment, ten stories up. He’d climbed out of his window on the fifth floor, up the fire escape, and along the ledge.
Besides being a friend, Jackson fits Katie’s qualifications—he’s cute and they’ll look good in pictures together. Plus, he can dance, she says.
My date meets those qualifications too. Okay, I haven’t seen him dance yet. But he looks great in his suit, tie, and Converse, and he’s a lot of fun to be with.
The DJ starts playing “Happy,” and Ben says, “They’re playing our song.”
I didn’t know it was our song, but as of right now, it is.
We head out onto the dance floor, and Ben starts moving in what is a hilarious approximation of dancing. His long, lanky body seems to move in every direction at once in a way that is disjointed, but somehow matches the beat of the music perfectly. He looks like . . .
“OMG, you really are a funky chicken!” I laugh.
“I told you!” he says, smiling from ear to ear. “With me, there is complete truth in advertising.”
Ben’s the opposite of a CynCorp ad. What you see really is what you get.
Maybe that’s why I like him. And I do. Like him, that is.
Although right now, I’m being careful to stay out of the way of his flailing arms and legs as he dances.
Is he my Prince Charming? It’s too early to tell. Besides, it’s only our first date, I’m in eighth grade, and I never bought into the love at first sight thing.
For now it’s enough that he’s honest, he likes me the way I am, he’s fun to be with—and he does a mean funky chicken.
Acknowledgments
THE BEST TEACHERS DON’T TELL you what to do; they ask you the right questions so you figure it out yourself. This book is dedicated to Cindy Minnich because she did just that: Her question gave me the flash of insight that finally let me tell a story I’d first conceived of over ten years ago, and tried writing (unsuccessfully) several different ways. Morals of this story: 1) Surround yourself with smart people who ask good questions, and 2) If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And again. And again.
I am so incredibly grateful to have the support and friendship of superagent Jennifer Laughran, the Sisterhood of the Brass Necklace, and my fellow retreaters at Kindling Words East and Swinger of Birches. Without you I would collapse into a reclusive pile of insecure goop. Also, my life would be considerably less fun.
Thank you to the wonderful team at Simon & Schuster/Aladdin for seeing the possibilities in this book: my lovely editor, Alyson Heller; production editor, Mandy Veloso; designer, Laura Lyn DiSiena; and illustrator, Angela Navarra, for the gorgeous cover art.
Most of all, thank you to my beloved family, especially my older female relatives, who taught me what it means to be a strong woman. Also to my greatest loves, Hank, Josh, and Amie, to whom I hope I give the benefit of this knowledge.
This is the last book of mine that my mother, Susan Darer, read in manuscript form before she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in March 2015. I still hear her voice in my head every day. It is a much better influence than the Mirror.
SARAH DARER LITTMAN is a critically acclaimed author of middle-grade and young-adult novels, including Backlash and Confessions of a Closet Catholic, winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award. When she’s not writing novels, Sarah is an award-winning columnist for the online news site CTNewsJunkie, and she teaches creative writing as an adjunct professor in the MFA program at Western Connecticut State University. Sarah lives in Connecticut. You can find her online at sarahdarerlittman.com and @sarahdarerlitt.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Aladdin hardcover edition September 2016
Text copyright © 2016 by Sarah Darer Littman
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The text of this book was set in Bembo Infant.
Library of Congress Control Number 2015956906
ISBN 978-1-
4814-5127-7 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-5128-4 (eBook)
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