“Everything is going to be fine,” Linnie said, like she was trying to convince herself, and I nodded.
“Nothing else,” I promised, “is going to go wrong.” Just as I said this, there was a faint pop and then the room was thrown into darkness.
CHAPTER 20
Or, Just Roll with It
* * *
OKAY, IF EVERYONE COULD JUST stay calm!” Bill yelled from where he was standing on one of the kitchen chairs, in the dark.
It was still the afternoon, but the fact that it had gotten so dark out meant that I’d had to make my way downstairs using my phone flashlight, trying to reassure people I met on the way—Aunt Liz, Max, the Jennys—that I would try to find out what was going on. Linnie had come down with me, and I’d found a huge group gathered in the kitchen, most of whom were trying to figure out what was happening. There was a little more light in the kitchen, thanks to the picture windows, but it was still fairly dark, and my mother was lighting the candles, long tapers that we normally only used for fancy dinners, and placing them on the table and countertops.
“How are we supposed to cook?” one of the caterers said, her voice rising. “We have a fridge full of perishables—”
“Who cares about the food?” This was Glen, who’d come into the kitchen, along with the tent guys. “If we don’t have power, we’re going to have to do an acoustic set, and that’s not the Journey way.”
My dad frowned at him. “Who are you again?”
“He’s with the band,” I explained.
“We need to be taking pictures in ten minutes,” the photographer said, looking at her watch. “And if I don’t have power—”
“You think I don’t have the same problem?” the videographer interrupted. “Everyone cares more about the video than the pictures anyway.”
“Oh, do they, Fred?” she snapped.
“Yes, they do!”
“I was in the middle of taking a shower!” my uncle Stu sputtered. He was in his Westin robe, soap bubbles gently popping on his bald head. “And the lights go out, just like that.” He snapped his fingers, apparently to illustrate this. “I should have gone to a hotel.” I saw my mother take a deep breath, like she was physically trying to restrain herself from killing my uncle.
“What does this mean?” Linnie asked, twisting her hands together. I saw her look around for Rodney, but he wasn’t there—as soon as he’d started to come into the kitchen, his sister Elizabeth had screamed that it was beyond bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other and had marched Rodney back upstairs. Both he and Linnie had tried to point out that they’d been seeing each other all morning so far, but she was clearly not hearing this.
“It’ll be fine,” I said automatically, even though I wasn’t sure how, exactly. We needed power to put on a wedding—of this I was sure.
“This is just like when the Royals played the Mets, game one of the World Series,” J.J. said.
“It’s really not,” I said, shaking my head.
“It is!” J.J. insisted. “The game was delayed because of a power issue, but—”
“My uncle is on the way over with a generator,” Bill said, speaking loudly to talk over everyone else. “It looks like we just overloaded the power in the house, trying to plug in too many things.”
“It was the band,” one of the tent guys said. “Did you see how many amps they had?”
“Oh, sure, blame the rock stars,” Glen said, shaking his head.
“So!” Bill said, speaking up again. “The power outside will be restored as soon as he arrives with a generator. But as for the power in the house . . .” Bill hesitated, his voice trailing off.
“We need power,” the caterer said again, her voice rising. “Otherwise, this food is going to spoil and we’re not going to be able to cook anything.”
“It’s probably just the fuse box that got overloaded,” my dad said, taking his own phone out and turning on the flashlight on it. “I’m going to go down to the basement and see what I can do.” He turned to Danny, who’d been standing next to me, and raised his eyebrows. “You helped me do this before once, didn’t you, son?”
“Absolutely. Not sure I remember anything, but I’m happy to take a look.”
“I’ll help,” the General added, and my dad nodded his thanks.
“Me too,” said J.J., falling into step behind them. I had a feeling things might actually go better if J.J. weren’t there, but he left with them before I could say anything.
“Linnie?” My sister turned around, and I did as well, to see Shawn and Cameron—whichever one was which—standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Hey, you guys,” she said, crossing over to them. “Sorry about that. We should have this fixed soon.”
“That’s the thing,” the hair guy said, grimacing. “We’re only booked for ten more minutes. And if we go over that, we’re going to have to charge you our day rate again.”
Even in the kitchen that was practically dark, and lit only by flickering candles, I could see my sister’s face go pale. Which told me that these people had been really expensive. Though seeing how lovely Linnie looked, they were clearly worth every penny. “But . . . ,” Linnie said, looking over at me like she was taking in my still-wet hair and my face, which was completely bare. “You didn’t get to Charlie.”
“And we could stay,” the makeup artist said, pulling out her phone and looking at the time. “But we just would need to charge you again. That’s all.”
“It’s fine,” I said quickly, taking a step closer to them. Linnie shook her head, like she was going to argue, and I kept going before she could. “I can do my hair and makeup on my own. I promise it’ll be fine.”
“But . . .” Linnie looked at me, biting her lip. “You’re so bad at it, Charlie.”
I was feeling a little too panicky to be insulted by this. And I also didn’t want to stress my sister out any further—or have her pay some exorbitant rate just because I was incompetent at doing my own hair and makeup. “I promise it’s fine,” I said, even as a piece of me was wondering what I was saying, since I had no idea how it was going to be fine, exactly. “I’ll just . . . go upstairs and get ready, then. Okay.” Linnie was still looking at me, her expression worried, and I gave her a big smile and a thumbs-up before turning on my phone flashlight again and heading up the stairs, leaning on the banister for support. I tried to tell myself that it would be okay. That somehow I could figure out something to do with my hair, even though I couldn’t use a blow-dryer or a curling iron and I would have to basically put my makeup on in the dark. If Siobhan was here, I realized, she could have helped me. She was good with hair, but she was great with makeup, which was the main reason I’d never gotten skilled at doing it myself. But this just made me remember the fight we’d had all over again, and I increased my pace up the stairs, like I was trying to outrun these thoughts.
I crossed to my bedroom door and pulled it open, and it wasn’t until I stepped over the threshold that reality hit me once again—this room wasn’t mine. Brooke was sitting on my bed with Waffles, who was lying on his back in front of her, getting a belly scratch, his left leg twitching.
“Oh,” I said, taking a step back immediately. Brooke had been so unhappy to see me here before, I didn’t want to think what she was going to say about me showing up now. “Sorry. It’s habit. I—forgot.”
“Charlie?” she asked, squinting at me slightly. There was a little bit of light coming in through my window, and she’d lit two of the half-melted candles that were on my dresser—as a result, there was both a little bit more light in the room and it smelled like vanilla and pine trees. I could see that Brooke was now ready for the wedding—she was in a gorgeous purple one-shouldered dress, and there were black patent stilettos lined up on the floor by the foot of my bed. Her hair was pulled up in a twist and her makeup looked perfect—she was doing the smoky-eyeliner thing I’d seen in tutorial videos but that always made me look like I either had a black eye or some kind of
vein disorder. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Is the power coming back?”
“Hopefully soon,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and positive about this, even though this was getting harder by the second. “I just . . . I’m sorry to do this to you again, but I have to get my makeup because the hair and makeup people are leaving and I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”
I tried to fight it, to keep the emotions at bay, but it was like everything was starting to pile up—everything going wrong with the wedding, my failed attempts to make it perfect, my fight with Siobhan—it was all hitting me at once.
I was horrified to realize that my lip had started to tremble and my face was getting the hot, tight feeling that meant I was about to start crying any second now. I closed my eyes hard, trying to keep the tears back, but to my horror, they leaked out anyway. “Sorry,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Sorry! I’m not—I just . . .” I couldn’t believe I was crying in front of Brooke, of all people. “I’ll go,” I said, taking another step back. Then, when I realized I had nowhere to go, I started crying harder. “God,” I said angrily, swiping my hand in front of my eyes. “I don’t mean to do this. I just . . .”
“Um,” Brooke said, taking a step closer to me, then one away, twisting her hands together, clearly as thrown by my tears as I was. “Are you . . . ? I mean . . .” She bit her lip, and the fact that I was making her so clearly uncomfortable wasn’t helping me pull myself together.
“I’m just supposed to have my hair done,” I said, raking my hands through it. “And my makeup, but they can’t wait until the power comes back on, and I’m going to ruin all of Linnie’s pictures, and I don’t know what to do. . . .” Saying this out loud made me feel worse than ever, because there was the situation, laid out, with no solution in sight.
“It’s okay,” Brooke said, sounding much less uncomfortable than she had a moment ago. I just looked at her. “It’ll be okay. Go wash your face, all right? Then come back here.”
I stared at her for a moment, wondering what she was even talking about, but she just nodded toward the bathroom across the landing. “Go on,” she said, her voice totally assured, like there was not even a question in there anywhere, like this was the only thing to do in this situation.
And so, feeling like I was glad to have someone telling me what to do, I crossed the landing to the bathroom. I washed my face twice, splashing it with cold water, and when I dried it and looked in the mirror, it seemed like maybe the puffiness around my eyes had subsided somewhat.
I walked back to my room, and Brooke was pulling out my desk chair. “Close the door,” she said, and I did, feeling more confused than ever. “Sit.” It was only when I crossed over to my chair that I saw she had laid out a set of rollers, along with a comb and a series of brushes.
“We don’t have any power,” I pointed out, even as I sat down. I was facing the door, and Brooke was behind me, which was making this situation that much stranger. “So I’m not sure what . . .” I tried to look at her, but she turned it so that I was looking straight forward, and I felt a mist on the back of my head as she sprayed something on my hair, then started combing it through. “But . . .”
“I always like to have rollers on hand,” she said, and as I turned my head as much as I could to look at the dresser, I saw that they were foam rollers, the kind my mom had sometimes used when I was little. “They don’t need any kind of power, and with your hair type”—I could feel her picking up sections of it with her hands, like she was assessing it—“I think it’ll look great.”
“And you don’t need any kind of heat?”
“Well,” she said, and I felt the mist and then the comb again, “ideally, you’d hit them with some heat from a blow-dryer, just to set the curls, but they’re fine without it. I promise.”
I opened my mouth to protest, or say that she didn’t really need to do this, but then closed it again when I realized I didn’t have any other solutions. She set her comb on my dresser, then picked up her brush and started combing through my hair with quick, efficient strokes. “Thank you,” I finally said quietly, looking straight ahead at my door.
“Sure,” Brooke said a moment later, going back to work with the brush again, her voice also quiet. “It’s the least I can do.”
* * *
“I don’t know,” I said, glancing at my flickering reflection in the mirror.
“I do,” Brooke said, wielding her tiny gold can of hair spray. “These are air-drying, but we have to do everything we can to hold the curl for when we take them out. And that means hair spray.”
I hesitated, then nodded and closed my eyes as Brooke started spraying my head, which was now totally covered in foam rollers. When she seemed to have stopped, I opened my eyes again and tried not to cough, then ran my hand over Waffles’s head. At some point during this makeover, he’d clambered up onto my lap, where he’d stayed ever since, dozing off occasionally, his twitching paws letting me know that he was dreaming.
Brooke and I hadn’t talked much as she’d twisted my hair around the rollers, then pinned them with bobby pins, beyond her telling me to keep my head still, or turn it this way or that. And I was glad about that, since the silence—and the comfort of a sleeping beagle on my lap—had let me pull myself together a little bit more, and I no longer felt like I was on the verge of panicking or bursting into tears, or both simultaneously.
“I think you got the dog,” I said, realizing that I could turn the hair on the top of Waffles’s head into tiny spikes and they stayed that way.
“It’s not a bad look on him,” she said, and I smiled.
“He sure likes you,” I said as Brooke crossed back to the dresser and started going through a gigantic makeup bag.
“I love dogs,” she said as she crossed in front of me. “And this guy . . . I feel like he knows he’s not really wanted this weekend. That he’s a little in the way. So I wanted to give him some extra attention.” I looked down at Waffles and felt a pang of guilt—after all, it wasn’t the dog’s fault that he’d been dropped off here. He’d had no say in the matter. She bent down so that she was almost level with me, studying my face, eyes narrowed in concentration. “Now,” she said. “What did Linnea want for makeup?”
“Oh,” I said, blinking at her. “Um . . . you don’t have to . . .”
Brooke just shook her head. “No offense, Charlie, but I’ve seen the way you’ve done your makeup this weekend. What did she want?”
“She didn’t say. She looks great, though—really natural but still somehow made-up?” I hesitated, wishing I was better at describing this.
Brooke continued to study my face. “We can do that.” She nodded like she’d decided something, then crossed back to the dresser and brought over her makeup bag, standing in front of me again. “Close your eyes.”
I tried to sit as still as possible as Brooke smoothed primer, then foundation, on my face, neither of which I’d worn since the prom. Even though she’d never done my makeup before, Brooke wasn’t hesitating or needing to try out lots of colors before applying anything. She was working with remarkable efficiency, like in addition to being a doctor, she also dabbled as a makeup artist.
“Okay,” Brooke said after a moment, and I opened my eyes. “We can do a more natural look since it seems like that’s what Linnie wants.” She sounded almost resigned. “But just so you know, for the future, you should lean more toward blue eye shadow. It’ll make your eyes pop.”
“Blue?” I’d usually gravitated toward greens and purples, but I was realizing now that was just because that’s what Linnie always wore, and I’d just copied her.
“Blue,” she confirmed. “A cool blue. Trust me.” She leaned toward me, and I closed my eyes automatically, feeling the featherlight brush as it passed over my eyelids. “This is going to look good,” she said, but softly enough that I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to herself. “Just try and sit still.”
“Okay,” I said, concentratin
g on not moving as I felt slight pressure on my eyelid—probably eyeliner being applied. The longer I sat there, trying not to even breathe too much, the worse I started to feel. Brooke did not need to be doing this for me. It wasn’t like I’d been particularly nice to her since she arrived. It wasn’t that I’d been mean—at least, I hoped not—but I hadn’t welcomed her in. I’d resented that she was here—messing up my plans and taking away Danny’s attention. She had been nothing but sweet and kind to me, and in return, I had treated her shabbily.
“Open,” Brooke said, and I opened my eyes to see she was leaning forward, uncapped mascara wand in hand. “Now look over my left shoulder and try not to blink.” I stared ahead at the wallpaper by my door as Brooke leaned closer to me, carefully applying mascara to my eyelashes.
“Um,” I started, running my fingers through Waffles’s fur. I wasn’t sure what I even wanted to tell her, but I knew I had to at least try. The longer I sat here, with Brooke helping me when I didn’t deserve to be helped, I was feeling like I had to say something, even if it didn’t come out right.
“Look up,” she murmured.
“I just,” I started, then tried again. “I wanted to say—”
“Right shoulder,” she said, switching to my other side.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, and Brooke lowered the mascara wand and straightened up, taking a step back. “I’m sorry if I’ve been—if I wasn’t—” I realized I wasn’t making any sense, so I took a breath and started over. “Thank you for doing this for me. I’m sorry if I haven’t made you feel welcome.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking. She looked down at the black tube in her hands and turned it between her fingers for just a moment, then took a slightly shaky breath, the mascara spinning faster. “I should have known, I guess. But I just thought . . .”
She uncapped the mascara and leaned forward again, and I looked over Brooke’s right shoulder, trying to stay still, knowing somehow that there was more she wanted to say and that it would be easier for her if she didn’t have to look right at me. “Danny and I had been dating for a few months, and we talked about me coming to the wedding. But then we broke up . . .”
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