How to Rock Braces and Glasses

by Meg Haston

  “I’m so sorry, Kacey.”

  “Pleath.” The sound of my lisp made my hands start to tremble. I hated myself for that stupid lisp. Sean was right: I didn’t deserve the lead. Didn’t deserve Quinn, or my friends. Pretty soon, he’d take away Simon Says, too. Not that I’d ever go on the air sounding like this.

  “Listen, Kacey.” Sean leaned forward earnestly, rubbing the dark chin scruff he’d been trying to grow all semester. “You have an incredible voice. Everybody knows it.”

  I shook my head. The day’s humiliation welled up inside of me, hardening into anger. I stared at a tiny blue ink stain on Sean’s shirt pocket.

  “Under any other circumstances, I’d love to have you star in the show,” Sean continued. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, leaving sweat stains on the fabric. “But… I’m thinking I should recast Molly as the lead.”

  “Molly?” I exploded, releasing the sequined pillow to the floor. Now he’d gone too far. Maybe I couldn’t stop him from taking everything away from me, but handing it all over to Molly? Could. Not. Happen.

  “She is your understudy,” Sean reminded me.

  “You can’t! It’th not fair!”

  “Kacey, I absolutely want you onstage,” Sean insisted. “You know that.”

  I shook my head furiously, the frizzed ends of my loose bun whipping me in the face. Until five minutes ago, I’d known a lot of things. That I was the lead. The one and only girl in the seventh grade who could say she’d kissed Quinn Wilder. Rumor had it there was a girl in eighth who could make that claim. But real journalists don’t deal in rumors.

  “I’ve recast you in another role, if you’re up for it,” Sean offered weakly.

  “Up for it?” Now he wanted me to watch Molly take over my life? I jumped to my feet, but was suddenly lightheaded. The candles, and the humiliation, and the fact that I hadn’t eaten solid food in days must have been catching up to me.

  “Careful.” Sean gripped my arm, guiding me back to the couch. “Listen. How about Dancing Die Number Three?” He said it brightly, like he was offering me the lead all over again. “I’m sure the other two would be happy to get you up to speed on choreography.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “OVERTHITHED DANTHING DIE NUMBER THREE?” I shrieked. “You want me to hop around in a giant foam rubber die cothtume in the background?” I’d transfer first. Seriously. Switzerland. Or maybe a country that didn’t start with the letter s. “Doeth Molly know yet?”

  “She does,” Sean admitted. “I told her this morning.”

  Suddenly, it all made sense. How Molly had gotten the courage to convince the other girls to defect. How she’d suddenly become so strong. She’d known she was about to be cast in the lead. She’d known the whole time.

  “Kacey.” Phil’s voice dropped an octave. “Could I ask you to sit down, please?”

  “Do I have a choith?” I wailed. I hadn’t even realized I was standing.

  Phil nodded. “Always.”

  Fuming, I dropped to the couch and stared at my bug-eyed reflection in the Buddha’s bald, brass head.

  “Have you ever heard the saying ‘There are no small parts, only small actors?’ ” Sean asked me after a long pause. “You know who said that?”

  “An underthtudy?”

  “Konstantin Stanislavksy,” Sean corrected me. “A pretty awesome director. His point is that every role is important. Think about that while you decide whether to take me up on the offer.”

  “Do you think you could do that, Kacey?” Phil leaned forward and caught my eye. Hers were a deep blue-green color, almost the color of mine when I wasn’t wearing contacts. “Why don’t you take some time to sit with this? Let Sean know in a couple days?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” I choked, standing up. “And my anther ith NO.”

  Without looking at Sean or Phil, I found my way to the door and stormed out. My head was throbbing; my eyes were dry. There were no more tears. I had nothing left.

  TOGETHER AGAIN, FOR A LIMITED TIME…

  Tuesday, 5:37 P.M.

  At the Fullerton stop, I dragged my El card through the scanner and bumped my way through the turnstile. Rush hour had just started, so the stairs and icy platform were packed with commuters wearing dark overcoats and carrying shiny leather briefcases. I nudged my way through the crowd to the edge of the platform and checked my watch. If I didn’t make it home in time to watch Ella so Mom could get to the studio, she’d kill me. Maybe that would be the easiest way out.

  A bright white spotlight swung across the platform when the train sped down the track, reflecting off my braces. Liv would say The Universe was spotlighting me in the crowd, singling me out. Showing everyone what a gigantic loser I’d become.

  The wind was brutal, sweeping through my sweat-matted hair and numbing my face. Even with the protection of my glasses, my eyes were starting to water. When the doors opened, I dove past a sour-looking woman in nude pantyhose to snag the first seat by the door.

  The lady huffed loudly, highlighting the frosted beige lipstick caked on her two front teeth. It was the kind you’d find in the bargain bin at the drugstore that probably had a name like Iced Mocha. It made her teeth look three shades yellower than they already were. The old Kacey Simon would have suggested a nice tooth-whitening treatment, or a sheer berry shade. But the old Kacey Simon was slipping away.

  “Hold the doors!” a frantic voice called from the platform. A few seconds later, a wobbly green foam board teetered into the car. The slogan GO GREENE: PAIGE GREENE FOR EIGHTH-GRADE PRESIDENT was printed neatly on the board with sweeping gold glitter. The board tilted to the left, then did a sweeping arc at the front of the car, backhanding Iced Mocha. “Oops! Sorry.”

  I cringed and sank low in my seat. I hadn’t seen Paige since the mock trial, and if she shot me one more pitying smile, I was going to lose it in public.

  “Kacey?” Paige dropped the giant poster and peered over the top. Her glasses were foggy from the heat of the car. “Hey!”

  “Oh, hey.” I pretended to read the backlit ads on the other side of the car. Mom’s new promo shots were up, because unlike me, she was getting more popular by the second. The caption under her headshot read Channel 5: The Station with the Sterling Reputation. It would have been perfect. Except… I cleaned my glasses on the hem of my coat and looked again. Someone had given Mom a mustache with a gold marker. And—

  “Is that a wart?” Paige wedged the campaign poster between the doors and my seat, gripping the nearest metal pole as the train lurched forward. Her glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose and settled at the tip. She shoved them into place again. “Because that qualifies as vandalism. Or, in Illinois, malicious mischief. Punishable by up to six years in prison.” In addition to her political ambitions, Paige also planned on going to law school.

  I didn’t even have the energy to blow her off.

  “Hey. Remember Benny Dorchester?” Paige waggled her scraggly brows.

  I nodded. Paige’s law school kick started back in kindergarten, when Benny D. vandalized her cubby with sidewalk chalk and Miss Elaine refused to do anything about it. Paige swore on the spot that the next time Benny felt like “expressing himself” on her property, she’d sue the sidewalk chalk right out of his chubby little fist.

  “He still lives down the street, you know. He’s actually kinda cute now.”

  “No way.” I snorted. “He dyed hith hair with red Kool Aid and tattooed hith neck!”

  “I have eccentric taste. Sue me!” She grinned, then reached into the sagging canvas tote hanging from the crook of her arm. She pulled out a plastic button with her face and campaign slogan printed on it. “What do you think?” She lobbed the button in my direction.

  I surveyed Paige’s photo-op smile, which was almost as crooked as her bangs. The button reminded me of the ones she’d made in fifth, right before I ditched her. Just like… Molly was ditching me now. I swallowed.

  “Cool,” I said, quickly tuck
ing it in my bag. Back in fifth, I had worn Paige’s pin. This was seventh. Things were different now.

  “Kacey?” Paige nestled the tote bag between her sneakers and leaned toward me. “Are you… is something up? How come you’re heading home so late?”

  My cheeks flamed and I averted my eyes. “Meeting for the play.”

  “Oh. I thought I heard that you… had to leave the cast,” she said carefully. The softer her voice got, the more it sounded like she was feeling sorry for me.

  I clenched my jaw. News traveled fast—and wrong, when I wasn’t the one to spread it. “I wath offered a new role. Temporarily. But I turned it down.”

  “So now Molly Knight’s the lead?”

  “Temporarily,” I repeated, a little louder this time.

  “Okay.” Silence. Specifically, judgmental silence.

  “But I’m getting even with Molly,” I said, suddenly desperate to make Paige stop looking at me like I was a stray puppy with a raging case of fleas. “Liv, too. All of them.” I forced my mouth to close. Why did I suddenly care what Paige thought about me?

  “How?” Paige’s eyes narrowed skeptically behind her lenses.

  “Um, by getting back the lead?” Why did that sound like a question?

  “And then…” Paige prompted.

  I stared out the window. City lights swam by in a liquid gold blur. I didn’t remember the train ride ever taking this long. Not even the time I downed a sixty-four ounce Big Gulp after school and the train stalled on the tracks for twenty minutes. “What do you mean?”

  “And then… what’s your strategy?” she pressed. “Like, are you gonna sue them?”

  “For what? Defamation of lithp?” The train finally slowed at Armitage, and I jumped up.

  “A good campaign is all about strategy,” Paige prattled on as the train stopped and the doors opened. “You have to know exactly what you want, and what steps you’re gonna take to get there. Plus, you have to have people you can trust in your corner. And it doesn’t hurt if you can call in a few favors, either. You, especially. Your rep’s taken a major hit, if you hadn’t noticed.” At the top of the stairs, she stopped to adjust her gloved grip on the poster. “Hold these,” she ordered, extending the bag of buttons in my direction.

  I took the bag with a sigh.

  “So what is it you really want?” she asked in a clipped tone as we hustled outside.

  “I told you. I want my part back.” I braced myself against the cold.

  “Wrong.” Paige shook her head, her frayed ends flying around her face like one of those car wash mops. “You have to think big picture.” She switched the poster board to her other arm and picked up the pace. “Like, you want your part back, but you probably also want your reputation back the way it was. Basically, you want your old life back. Am I right?”

  I frowned. When she put it that way, it seemed a lot more complicated than just trading in my tortoiseshell frames for new contacts and learning how to pronounce the letter s again.

  We rounded the corner onto Clark. “Don’t feel bad. Not everybody can think like a politician,” Paige assured me. “It’s just because I’m used to it. Example: It’s like, yeah, I want to get reelected for next year. But big picture? I want to be the first female president of the United States. See the difference?”

  I didn’t answer, but fell into step with the rhythmic jangling of the buttons at my side. For once, Paige was right. This was about way more than getting my part back. It was like Sean had said last week in rehearsal: Life imitates art. Meaning, if I was strong enough to reclaim my place as the lead in the play, I was definitely strong enough to take back the lead in life. I could get my friends back, my crush back, and best of all, my audience back.

  When we reached our block, Paige gasped. “I just had,” she announced, “a brilliant idea.” She smacked the fence outside of her townhouse. The fence in front of our homes was still missing the third and fourth pickets from the time in fifth grade we knocked them out so we wouldn’t have to mess with the finicky gate when we just had to see each other right away. “I could be your political strategist! Help you out of this rut!”

  I opened my mouth to object.

  “I could get you back to the top of the popularity food chain before opening night! It would be the biggest accomplishment of my political career.” Her eyes shone with wild excitement.

  “Paige,” I scoffed. “You teaching me how to be popular again? Are you altho gonna teach me how to win a fifth-grade election?”

  Paige recoiled.

  It was a low blow. I knew it the second the words left my mouth.

  “You don’t have to get mad.” I searched her face, but the glare from her porch light on her glasses made it impossible for me to see her expression.

  “This,” she said slowly, looking down at her scuffed black snow boots. “This is exactly why I decided… why we’re not friends anymore.” She didn’t say it in a snarky way, like Molly would have. Instead, her voice just got soft. She sounded so small. Which somehow made me feel even worse. Still…

  “You dethided?” I raised my left eyebrow. So I’d hurt her feelings. She didn’t have to revise history.

  Next door, light flooded the front stoop of my townhouse, and Ella flounced through the doorway, wearing oven mitts on both hands. The tinfoil was gone, but Mom’s old reading glasses were still propped on her nose, this time with masking tape wound around the bridge.

  “KAYYYYCEEEEEE,” she bellowed. “If you don’t come in right now, Mom’s tightening your braces with the caaaaaan ooooopennnnnnnner!”

  “COMING!” I yelled back.

  “Heeeeey, Paige!” Ella waved, then slammed the front door.

  “I’m doing it,” Paige said sharply. “I’m getting you your part back.”

  I stared at her. “What? Why?”

  “You’d have to do something for me, too. Quid pro quo. Once you’re back in power, you have to use your popularity to make sure I get reelected. It’s strictly business.”

  “Paige. You can’t be theriouth.” Not that it couldn’t be done. It was just… me? And Paige? Did I really want to relive my elementary school years? Then again, if things kept getting worse, my elementary school years might start to look like the good old days. And peaking in elementary school would be million times worse than peaking in middle school.

  “Quid pro quo.” Paige shrugged matter-of-factly. “And then we go our separate ways for good.” She stretched out her hand and leveled her eyes at me. “We’ll meet at my house tomorrow night to plan. Do we have a deal?”

  “Fine,” I said, reluctantly shaking her outstretched palm. “Deal.”

  SAVING KACEY SIMON

  Friday, 4:19 P.M.

  Even with my eyes closed, I could feel Paige hovering approximately six inches from my chair. She smelled disgustingly sweet, which was what happened when you tried twelve different mall perfume samples at the same time.

  “Okayokay,” she breathed. “Opennnnn… NOW!”

  I opened.

  “Lemme thee.” I grabbed the square handheld mirror Paige had swiped from the Sephora salesgirl at Water Tower Place, where we were in the early stages of executing Operation: Saving Kacey Simon. We’d spent hours in Paige’s room the past few nights, crafting the perfect foolproof plan to get my popularity back. According to Paige, today was the day to strike.

  I blinked at my hazy reflection. “I can’t thee.” Tiny drops of spit showered the glass.

  “You need these.” Paige rammed my glasses onto my face and my image sharpened.

  I took a cautious second look. My auburn waves were perfectly smooth, thanks to the flyaway serum the salesgirl had recommended before she realized we weren’t going to buy anything. Paige had dabbed dark chocolate eye shadow on the outer corners of my lids. It made the green in my eyes glow, so my glasses weren’t even the first thing I saw.

  “Well?” Paige leaned closer. Her black crocheted scarf smelled like a combination of honeysuckle, vanilla, and amb
er. My stomach turned. “Whaddya think?”

  “I’m gonna need you to back up,” I instructed my reflection. My cheeks were flushed from the cold, and I’d coated my lips with a sample of shimmery sugar gloss they were giving out at the front of the store.

  If Mom had seen me, she would have killed me. In related news, I looked leading lady amazing.

  I cracked a smile, but the reflection from my braces almost blinded me all over again. I groaned and closed my eyes.

  “Would you stop? You look like a model.” Paige’s voice got a little louder, like it always did when she got excited about something. “A LensCrafters model, maybe.”

  I whacked her with the mirror.

  “Listen, girls.” The sleepy-eyed Sephora girl whose mirror we’d taken circled my chair for the fiftieth time. “Are you gonna buy anything, or…”

  Paige jumped between us. “She’s considering it. But just so you know? High-pressure sales situations don’t work on us. I’m in politics, and she’s in broadcasting. We thrive under pressure.”

  The salesgirl sighed and headed for the perfume wall.

  I cracked up, showering everything within a six-inch radius.

  “Ewwwww! Kacey!” Giggling, Paige leapt back, narrowly missing my spit shower.

  I settled into the black vinyl makeup chair and kneaded the knot in my left shoulder, trying not to think about the last time I’d come to Water Tower Place. I’d been with Liv, raiding the sale section at Williams-Sonoma. The next day, she’d given me a gorgeous hammered-silver disc pendant made out of an antique-looking teaspoon. I only wore it on special occasions.

  “Okay.” Paige yanked up the sleeves of her black trench. “It’s time for Phase One.”