by Robin Palmer
Lana looked at the tube. This one wasn’t all natural like the other ones, but the lady who owned the place had sworn that it made your hair as soft as velvet. “Avery, you shouldn’t have spent your money on this.”
“Oh, I didn’t,” I replied.
Lana looked alarmed.
“I didn’t steal it or anything like that,” I assured her. “I traded it for a bracelet I made.” Which was a good thing, because the hair mask was expensive. Like, twenty bucks.
She looked impressed. “Wow. It must have been a nice bracelet.” She hugged me. “Thank you. We really appreciate this. Don’t we, girls?”
They all nodded.
“Now let’s get this party started,” she said with a smile.
* * *
The night was awesome. I had such a good time that I almost felt guilty. Especially when I texted Mom at eight thirty to ask how her date was going and she told me she was already home in bed with Netflix on. At nine o’clock we all put facial masks on, and Lana also put her hair mask on, wrapping her hair up in a towel as it soaked in.
“You should try it too,” I said to Cassie. “They say that it also helps to make wavy hair straighter.” I knew that she was already planning on using the straightening iron on her hair the next day, so maybe this would take away the need for that.
“Cool,” she said as she picked up the tube and walked toward the bathroom. She came out with her hair up in a towel like Lana.
After that we decided to present Lana with her something new/old/blue gifts. She loved the blue turtle that Sammi had picked out, and when we gave her the charm bracelet, she actually started crying. (Not the best thing to do when you have a facial mask on, because it makes the mask get all goopy and fall off your face in big drops onto your clothes.)
“I don’t know what to say,” she said as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “This might be the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten.”
“It was all Avery’s idea,” Cassie said.
I looked at her, surprised. Really? She was going to give me credit for this?
“It was,” she insisted.
“Well, it’s very creative,” Lana said.
I felt my face turn red. “Thanks,” I mumbled. You would’ve thought that I’d be happy to have her acknowledge the fact that I came up with it, but it was super awkward. Now that we weren’t fighting anymore, I wanted us to be seen as a team.
“Sammi, honey, what’s the matter?” Lana said. “You keep swiping at your face.”
“This stuff is making it really itchy,” she whined as she scratched some off.
Kayley cringed as she started patting her own face. “Mine too.”
I realized that the warmth I had been feeling on my face wasn’t just from embarrassment, but from the mask as well.
Cassie grabbed a napkin and started swiping at her cheeks. “What did you put in this thing?” she demanded.
“I just followed the recipe!” I said as I started scratching at my own. They weren’t just warm now—they were stinging.
Lana ran into the kitchen and came back with a roll of paper towels. “Here. Everyone wipe it off,” she ordered as she took her own mask off.
Once I saw her skin, I gasped.
“What is it?!” she asked, panicked.
“Your skin . . . it’s kind of red,” I replied nervously.
“Kind of red?!” Cassie cried. “It’s like a giant sunburn with tomato juice squeezed on top of it!”
I don’t know if I would have gone as far as the tomato juice, but it did look like a sunburn. Like the kind you’d have if you were, I don’t know, very close to the sun.
Lana took a deep breath. “Avery. What exactly was in that recipe?” She was trying to sound calm, but I could hear the panic seeping through.
I finished wiping off the mask and grabbed my cell phone. “It’s right here,” I said. I was on the verge of tears by now. “It’s just eggs and honey and avocado and a little bit of apple cider vinegar—”
Lana grabbed my phone and looked at the screen. “The recipe calls for apple cider—not apple cider vinegar.” She threw the phone on the couch in frustration.
“Uh-oh,” I mumbled. “It was the last one I made last night . . . . I was already so tired . . . ,” I sputtered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Vinegar?! On our faces?!” Cassie cried. “You might as well have put acid in it!”
“I said I was sorry!” I cried. My eyes were stinging, but it wasn’t from the mask. It was from the tears that were streaming down my face. I was so freaked out I wasn’t even trying to hide them. I turned to Lana. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I know you didn’t mean it, but maybe next time you’ll be more careful when reading directions,” she snapped, while trying to calm down Sammi, who by now was also crying and demanding to know if her skin was going to be scarred for life.
I picked up my phone and opened up Google. “Maybe I can find something about what to do when you put apple cider vinegar on your face.” I scrolled down the screen. “Wait a minute—this says that it’s actually good for your skin.”
“It’s probably the reaction it’s having with the other ingredients that’s causing the stinging,” Kayley said.
If anyone would know, she would. Cassie had mentioned to me the other day that Kayley had won first prize at the school science fair last year but didn’t like to talk about it because she thought it made her look like a geek. If I had won it, I wouldn’t stop talking about it. I thought it was really cool when girls were good at science. Unfortunately, that was never going to happen to me because I was not one of those girls who fell into that category.
“Well, whatever it is, the sting is going away a bit,” Lana said. She picked up a mirror. “And the redness is going down too.” She looked at us. “How about everyone else?”
“It’s stinging less,” Kayley said.
“Mine too,” Sammi agreed.
Lana looked at Cassie. “Cass? What about yours?”
“I guess it’s not burning as much,” she admitted as she gently placed her hand on her cheek.
I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Talk about a drama queen.
“Mine feels a lot better,” I offered.
“I think we’re all going to live,” Lana said. “And I’ll go get some of my moisturizer out of my bathroom. That should help calm things down more.”
As she started toward the stairs, I put out my hand to stop her. “Lana, I’m really, really—”
“You’re really sorry. I know that, Avery,” she said.
I looked at the floor. Honestly, I would have felt better if she just went ahead and yelled at me.
I turned to see all three BBs glaring at me. “I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean to do it,” Cassie interrupted. “Yeah. You mentioned that.”
“You’re acting like I planned this!” I cried. Before I could say anything else—like how I had thought that we were now friends but I guess I had been wrong—there was a scream from the bathroom. We all looked at one another and bolted up the stairs.
“What’s wrong?!” Cassie said as we piled into Lana’s bathroom to find her furiously scrubbing her head with a towel.
As she let the towel fall to the floor, we saw for ourselves.
“Your hair is blue!” Kayley shrieked.
It was. Like, really blue.
“I like it,” Sammi piped up. “Mommy, can my hair be blue too?”
“Oh no. It must be from the mask,” I gasped.
Cassie’s eyes widened. “That means mine’s going to be blue too!” she wailed. “We don’t know that for sure,” Lana said. Although she was trying to keep her voice calm, I could still hear some panic.
“Mommy, can it? Can my hair be blue too?” Sammi asked again.
Lana got her hair colored. Maybe something in the mask had had a reaction with the color, and that’s why it had done that. But Cassie didn’t color hers. So hers would be fine. A girl could dream, rig
ht?
Cassie tore off her towel and turned to us.
A girl could dream, but that didn’t mean it was going to come true.
Hers was most definitely not fine. In fact, it was even more blue.
“Is it?” she asked anxiously.
“Is it what?” I asked, stalling.
“Blue!”
“Define ‘blue,’ ” I replied. “Like, do you mean navy blue . . . because it’s not that . . .”
She ran to the bathroom mirror and screamed. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US?!”
“Cassie, I swear I didn’t know this was going to happen!” I cried. I turned to Lana, who looked like she had just been run over by a truck and then dragged a couple hundred miles by it. “I swear I didn’t. The product must be defective—”
“I’ll tell you who’s defective. You are,” Cassie shot back.
I felt like I had been slapped.
“Cassie—” Lana warned.
But she was on a roll. “You act all sweet and stuff, but that was just so you could then do this! You knew there was no way we could fix this by tomorrow!”
“I told you I didn’t—”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to believe you the other day and give you a real chance. I should have just stayed with my original idea of who you were from the beginning.”
“And what was that?” I asked, my voice quivering. I knew that whatever the answer was would hurt, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Some lonely girl with just one friend who thinks she’s being all cool with her vintage stuff and DIY craft stuff but really is just a weirdo.”
She might as well have taken the nail scissors that were sitting on top of the bathroom counter and stabbed me with them.
“CASSIE!” Lana yelled. “That’s enough.”
Cassie glared at me and stomped off to her room.
I turned to Kayley and Sammi. “Is that what you guys think of me?” I said quietly.
Kayley opened her mouth to say something but closed it again, before going toward Cassie’s room. No surprise there.
“I think that her hair looks cool blue,” Sammi said.
I smiled through my tears. “Yeah, it kind of does, doesn’t it?”
She nodded and then looked torn. “I think I need to go and see if Cassie is okay.”
I nodded back. “Yeah. Sure.”
I slid down the wall and pulled myself into a ball. I knew that being able to make yourself disappear was something that happened only in books and movies, but I would’ve done anything to do that at that moment.
Lana came over and sat down with me. “Avery, I’m so sorry. She’s just really upset at the moment—”
I pulled away from her. “What? It’s true. I am weird.”
“You are not,” she said. “You’re wonderfully creative.” She patted my arm. “Don’t worry, she’ll calm down—”
“Yeah, and then something else will happen and she’ll hate me again,” I said. More tears streamed down my cheeks. “What’s the use? No matter how long you and my dad are married, they’re always going to be real sisters and I’ll just be the step.” I stood up and ran out of the room.
“Avery, wait!” Lana yelled. “Where are you going?”
I ran into my room and got my overnight bag and then ran downstairs and straight out the door. It was raining, but I didn’t care. I needed to get as far away from all of them as possible.
Twelve
I was halfway down the block before I realized that I had forgotten my phone. “Seriously?” I sighed as I turned around and made my way back to the house.
When I walked in, I heard Lana’s and Cassie’s raised voices coming from upstairs. Luckily, I had left my phone in the living room, so I wouldn’t have to see them. My plan was to call Mom and then go wait outside again. The only good thing about all this was that my dad wasn’t here to see it. It was already mortifying enough without him.
I heard the front door open. “Lana?” a voice said.
And there he was.
Okay, then. There was officially nothing good about all this.
She must have called him and told him what had happened. I started hunting around for my phone in the living room. Maybe I could get out without him seeing me.
“Avery?” he said a second later. “What’s going on?”
I turned around, still phoneless. “Hey, Dad,” I said, miserable.
“Lana called me all frantic and wouldn’t even tell me what was happening—just told me to come home right away. What happened?” He looked worried. And would probably be even more so once he found out that his daughter had ruined not just his wedding, but the lives of everyone involved.
Before I could open my mouth to explain, Lana ran down the stairs. “You’re home,” she said, relieved.
“Is someone going to tell me what happened?” he asked again. He had crossed over from worried to annoyed.
Lana sighed. “Well, it started with—”
“I’ve ruined everything,” I interrupted. “That’s what happened.”
My dad looked at me, confused. “What are you talking about?” He looked at Lana. “And why is your hair blue?”
Before Lana could step in and try to sugarcoat things (how a person could sugarcoat blue hair would have been interesting to hear), her phone rang, and from the look of relief on her face, I could tell it was her hairdresser friend. After she’d walked into the kitchen, I told my dad everything. About the face mask, and the hair mask, and how Cassie hated me. “I knew this was a mistake,” I said when I was done.
“What’s a mistake?” he asked.
“Thinking that this could work out!” I cried.
“Who says it’s not working out?” my dad said. “So you had a fight. Sisters fight.”
Was he insane?! “This isn’t a fight. Cassie hates me,” I said. “And we’re not sisters. We’re stepsisters. That’s the problem.” I shook my head. “You guys should just all go be a family. You don’t need me to screw it up.”
My dad started walking toward the stairs.
“What are you doing?” I asked, panicked.
“Calling the girls down here so that we can get this figured out once and for all.”
I had once heard my mom tell her friend Maggie that one of the things that had driven her crazy about my dad was that he was such a . . . guy . . . in the way that he always wanted to get things fixed and figured out right away. Mom, on the other hand, liked to talk things out forever before actually doing anything about them. Which, according to her, was a very female thing to do.
“No! Don’t!” I cried. “What I mean is . . . please just . . . don’t.”
He looked at me for a moment. “Would you rather I go up there and talk to them?”
I nodded, unable to trust my voice. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I’d just start crying again.
“Okay,” he said, nodding, as he came over and gave me a hug. “Avery, everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”
I shut my eyes, hoping he wouldn’t let go. I didn’t believe him, but I did feel pretty safe in his arms at the moment. Which was kind of a miracle, seeing that a month ago he could barely remember when my birthday was.
As he went up the stairs, I looked around for my phone. I probably couldn’t get away with hiding in the garage anymore, but at least I could call Mom and have her come get me as soon as possible.
I finally found it—stuck between the couch cushions. As I went to get it, I noticed something gift wrapped in pink tissue paper peeking out from under the couch. I pulled it out and saw that the card on top of it said “Avery.”
Surprised, I sat down on the couch and unwrapped it. It couldn’t be a birthday gift—that was still six months away. I opened up the box to find a scrapbook. On the front cover it said “A Little Bit About Us . . .” in glitter. (Lots and lots of glitter, which led me to suspect that it was Sammi’s doing.) Inside, the pages were filled with photos of Cassie, Kayle
y, and Sammi, along with postcards and pictures cut out from magazines, posted on pages that said “Things I Like” and “Things I Don’t Like.” It was like a combination of Facebook and Pinterest with a bit of Instagram thrown in.
Sammi’s pages had pictures of gymnasts from the Olympics, as well as photos of her from tumbling class when she was little. And dogs. There were lots of dogs. (She was already pushing for the family to get a dog. And not just any dog, but a Bernese mountain dog. They were huge—when I Googled them, it said that they could weigh up to 120 pounds!) Sammi’s pages were like her: bursting with color, and messy, and happy looking. It seemed weird to say that pages in a book could be happy, but that’s how it felt to me.
Kayley’s, on the other hand, were neat and orderly—just like her. The letters at the top were super straight, as if she had used a ruler underneath them. When I looked closer, I could see from the faint pencil line that had been erased that, actually, she had. Her pages had mostly pictures of dancers from the New York City Ballet. (One of her biggest freak-outs so far had been the fear that she wouldn’t find a place she liked as much as her dance place in California, until I told her about one two towns over where a bunch of famous ballerinas had trained. That definitely earned me some points.) The feel of the pages wasn’t so much happy looking as it was impressive. Impressive as in Wow, that person must have spent an awful lot of time plotting out how to color-coordinate everything. But in addition to that, there was something about seeing Kayley’s pages that also made me feel sorry for her. They were so neat, so orderly, so perfect, that they didn’t seem like a lot of fun. Not only that, but they seemed . . . lonely. I thought about the few times that I had been able to make her laugh, and what a sense of accomplishment I had felt. I guess because it didn’t happen very often.
Cassie’s pages were bold and sleek and sophisticated. Like looking at the pages of Vogue instead of Seventeen. There were pictures of Paris, and Rihanna, and fancy handbags, and high heels. The way everything was put together made it look like a magazine itself.
As I flipped the pages, I wondered why the girls were giving this to me. If anything, it made me feel even more separate and left out. Did I really need to be reminded that they were a trio and I was over in a corner by myself? It was like stabbing me with a knife and twisting it with a big smile. Here’s a gift . . . a gift that’s going to make you feel even more like a loser.