“How do I use this?”
Ishmael shrugged. “How should I know?”
I opened the bottle and poured some into my palm, then smeared it across my forehead.
“It’s kinda unfair,” Ishmael pondered out loud. “Why should girls get to use makeup to cover their flaws and guys just have to deal with it? I mean, I could wear it, but people would give me shit. Wouldn’t it be nice to normalize men wearing makeup?”
I spread more makeup over my chin and nose, then my cheeks, which were more inflamed than the rest of my face.
“Don’t you think, Gideon?”
I rubbed the makeup in, expecting it to absorb into my skin like lotion. It didn’t. It was a different consistency—thicker and goopier—and it only smeared. I began to rub more frantically at my face, which had become messy streaks of red and tan.
I looked worse than before I started.
“What are you doing in my room?” came a voice from the doorway.
I spun around to find Maggie with her hands on her hips, nothing remaining of her Zen master attitude.
“What happened to your face?” she gasped. Then, after a pause: “Are you using my foundation?”
“Please help me fix this,” I said in response.
She stalked over to the dresser and grabbed the makeup. “You wasted half the bottle!”
“I didn’t know how much I was supposed to use.”
“None,” Maggie snapped. “Because it didn’t belong to you.”
“I take full responsibility for the idea,” Ishmael said, holding a hand up.
“What do I do?” I asked Maggie.
She studied my face closely and cringed. “The color doesn’t even match your skin tone.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Yeah, after you wash your face.”
I moved toward the hallway quickly, heading back into the bathroom. And that’s when the doorbell rang.
Interview
Subject #7, Jane Hofstadt (Mother): I don’t think it’s fair to blame myTality Clear-It-Up for Gideon’s rash. Plenty of people used that product without incident. I suppose sitting in the hot barn all summer might have caused some chemical change? But Gideon shouldn’t have applied so much at once. It says right there on the label to do a spot test to make sure you don’t have an allergic reaction. You can’t blame myTality for user error.
Event: The Date (Cont.)
Some people don’t realize being early is as much of an inconvenience as being late. Alex Spiros was one of those people. I hadn’t changed my clothes. I hadn’t combed my hair. I hadn’t brushed my teeth. And my face was covered in a paste of makeup.
I ran to the bathroom and washed as quickly as possible. But when I dried my face, streaks of tan still appeared on the white towel. I glanced in the mirror, knowing I hadn’t gotten all the color off, but checking for any obvious spots. Naturally, scrubbing my face had made the redness even worse.
“Gideon,” Father called from downstairs. From his irritated tone, I assumed it wasn’t the first time he tried to get my attention.
There was nothing to be done about my appearance. I took a deep breath and steeled myself. It didn’t matter how strange I looked. I wasn’t interested in Alex Spiros anyway. After the date, I never had to see him again. Besides, I had more to offer than looks. I was clever. I was talented. I was going to be something one day.
I made my way downstairs, my siblings following behind me, eager to watch the train wreck.
In the living room, Alex sat on the couch, talking to Father.
“So,” Father was saying. “How about the Pirates missing out on the playoffs this year?”
“I don’t follow baseball,” Alex replied. “It’s kind of an antiquated sport, isn’t it?”
Father tried to hide his distress.
And, to his credit, Alex tried to hide his own distress at the sight of me.
When he heard us enter the room, Alex turned, and his eyes landed on Ishmael first. He looked pleasantly surprised. Then his gaze skipped to me, and he seemed to instantly realize I was his date. Distress flashed across his face, but he quickly recovered.
Alex was just as attractive as his photos. He was tall and broad, expertly groomed, and wore a tight shirt that showed off his build. I’d never felt less desirable in my life.
“Hi. I’m Gideon,” I said.
“Alex.”
He shook my hand politely. We stood awkwardly in the living room.
“You met my father, I see,” I said eventually. “This is my sister and brother—”
“Call me Ishmael,” my brother broke in.
I rolled my eyes.
“So, uh, you want to head out?” Alex asked.
I nodded. We said goodbye to my family and made our way to Alex’s car. I slid into the passenger’s seat and tried to ignore the overwhelming odor of cologne.
Once we were on the road, Alex broke the silence by saying, “I heard there’s a decent pizza place in town. I thought we could eat there.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to keep the dread from my voice. I didn’t hate pizza, but it was on my list of overly messy foods.
Alex and I drove quietly for a while. Too long of a while. I needed to say something. I needed to somehow let him know the entire date wasn’t going to be as torturous as the start of it.
“Just so you know,” I said. “My face doesn’t always look like this.”
Alex glanced at me. “Oh. Um, okay. Cool.”
Or maybe silence was the better option after all.
Interview
Subject #4, Victor Hofstadt (Father): As a parent, you want what’s best for your kids. And I try to be optimistic, I do. But anyone could’ve seen Gideon’s date wasn’t exactly going to be a home run.
Event: The Date (Cont.)
Alex finally spoke as we drove down Main Street. By the time we reached Pizza Haus, he’d proclaimed our lava lamp “weird,” the Seekers “creepy,” and Lansburg as a whole “sadly nostalgic.”
While I didn’t entirely disagree with those assessments, I didn’t like hearing them from a stranger’s mouth.
Being that it was Saturday night, Pizza Haus was packed with people from school. They all stared. I didn’t know whether they were surprised to see me on a date, or if they couldn’t look away from my blotchy complexion.
“You like green peppers?” Alex asked, scanning the menu. “What about sausage and onion?”
I didn’t have time to voice my opinion before he gestured a waiter over to take our order.
“So,” I said in the following silence. “You go to culinary school.”
He nodded. “I want to have my own show one day.”
“Like a cooking show?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you need to be an established chef before you get your own show?”
Alex shrugged. “Things don’t work like that anymore. They want you for your personality, not your skills.”
“I see.” I balled up a napkin tightly in my fist.
“What about you?”
“I plan to study at MIT, then work for NASA as an engineer.”
“Isn’t NASA kind of dead?” Alex asked. “Triple i is where it’s at these days. I mean, how many useless probes is NASA going to send into space? Private space travel, now that’s interesting.”
I gritted my teeth. “Well, I don’t quite agree with that. Obviously.”
“To each his own.”
Another painful silence. Alex pulled out his phone and checked a message. I wondered if we could agree to spend the rest of the date like that, each buried in our respective devices.
“So,” I said. “Your mom is a myTality distributor.”
“Yeah. She does okay for herself.”
“It’s pretty absurd, isn’t it? The whole
myTality thing.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked, a blank look on his face.
I tried to make my expression neutral. “Never mind.”
“I drink one of those shakes every morning. I get a lot of energy from them.”
“How nice.”
Conversation proceeded in uncomfortable starts, stops, and missteps until our pizza came. And then an entirely new challenge was in front of me.
I despised eating pizza with my hands. Grease would drip down my chin and toppings would slide off and sauce would seep out, until I was covered in pizza goop. Luckily, there was a solution—I ate pizza with a fork and knife. It earned me strange looks, though.
“Are you going to eat the whole slice like that?” Alex asked, watching me struggle to saw through a piece of pizza with a look of fascinated horror on his face.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like messy food.”
“I get it,” Alex said, though from his expression he clearly didn’t. “I can be a little OCD too.”
I opened my mouth to tell Alex the following three things:
1. I did not have obsessive compulsive disorder.
2. Even if I did, he wouldn’t be able to tell based on the way I ate food.
3. He was, in all likelihood, not “a little OCD too.”
But before I could speak, I heard a devastating sound: Owen’s voice. Saying my name.
I looked up and saw him approaching my table. In my surprise, I managed to finally cut through the crust, while at the same time inadvertently using my knife as a lever. A chunk of pizza launched from my plate and into the air before landing right in front of Owen.
I wanted to be put on a rocket and shot into the farthest, darkest corner of the galaxy where no one would be witness to my humiliation.
Rather than comment on the pizza I’d catapulted at him, Owen said, “What happened to your face?”
“I had a mishap,” I mumbled.
Then Owen looked over and registered who I was with. His expression turned guarded. “I’m interrupting.”
“No,” I replied. “We were just… This is Alex.”
“Nice to meet you,” Alex said.
“You too,” Owen replied. He nodded toward a group of other theater kids streaming through the door. “I have to go. See you later.”
Before he could move away, Sofia Russo bounced up to us. “Gideon! I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“He has several, actually,” Owen said bitterly.
Yes, I definitely would’ve welcomed the opportunity to free float in space. I finally saw the appeal of being an astronaut. Maybe it wasn’t the daredevil nature of it that drew in people. Maybe it was just nice to know you couldn’t embarrass yourself when Earth was 500 kilometers away.
Alex and Sofia glanced between Owen and me. With every passing second I felt more uncomfortable. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood.
“Look,” I babbled to Alex, “this date was a mistake. I shouldn’t have agreed to it. And clearly we’re not… We don’t have much in common. I’m sorry, but I need to go. Okay? Sorry. Really.”
I reached for my wallet to throw some money on the table. But in my haste to leave the house, apparently I’d left it behind. My night couldn’t possibly get worse.
I didn’t know what to do—would apologizing for not having money make the situation more or less awkward? Could anything make it more awkward?
“Sorry,” I mumbled again.
Then I hurried out of Pizza Haus, shame making my myTality™ rash burn even brighter.
Interviews
Subject #3, Cassidy (Cass) Robinson: I wasn’t surprised Gideon called and asked me to pick him up from Pizza Haus. I knew the date was going to be a total tragedy. Not because he wasn’t “good enough” for Alex. But because he went into it with a bad attitude. I’ll tell you what did surprise me though: when I showed up and saw what he’d done to his face.
Subject #5, Owen Campbell: I actually felt bad for Gideon. He looked awful, and obviously the date wasn’t going well. But I was still pissed off too. And it was really uncool to leave Alex sitting there alone. So I asked if he wanted to join me and my friends. What else was I supposed to do?
The Next Seven Days
You could say that over the next week, I had a bit of a crisis—or a breakthrough, depending on how you looked at it.
On Sunday, while I lay in bed running every detail of the Worst Date Ever through my mind, I concluded that I needed to get my life together. I decided to do the following:
1. Complete all schoolwork, including my paper on “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” I’d put it off, mainly because I did not think it was about abortion, like Mr. Fiore insisted, and rather that the author—who had served in the Army Air Corps during World War II—meant it to be taken literally.
2. Ask teachers for makeup work to improve my less-than-stellar grades.
3. Attend my extracurriculars again.
4. Begin compiling and analyzing data I’d collected from the hoax so I could move forward with the actual report.
5. Download the MIT application forms and begin filling them out—it was never too early to start.
6. Avoid thinking about my blind date or Owen or J. Quincy Oswald or anything unrelated to my future goals.
I’d allowed myself to get distracted by pride and feelings. I’d also gotten foolishly caught up in the hoax itself—as if it were the end goal, not my sociological study. I needed to get back on track, remember what mattered, work hard to secure myself the best possible future.
And for the most part, my efforts were successful. I made progress. I felt good. I felt like the kind of person MIT would accept with open arms.
Right up until I let Cass talk me into attending the homecoming dance.
Event: The Homecoming Dance
Date: Oct. 21 (Sat.)
I’d been to a total of one high school dance. It was homecoming freshman year, which Cass also convinced me to attend. She spent the evening frustrated because I wouldn’t do any actual dancing (I don’t dance), wouldn’t take a million pictures with her (I was having an especially bad breakout), and hardly interacted with her new theater friends (they were loud and overwhelming and I didn’t know what to say to them). It surprised me that Cass wanted a repeat of that night.
The only reason I agreed was because I was attempting to act…normal. Like a high school student on track for a bright future, not a teenager who spent hours researching aliens and feeling resentful of the leader of an MLM.
Cass and Arden got ready at Cass’s house—I opted to skip that particular pre-dance ritual—then picked me up. We weren’t able to leave for thirty minutes due to Mother fawning over us.
Admittedly, Cass and Arden looked excellent. Arden wore a tasteful black dress and she’d let Cass do her makeup, which was subtle and elegant. Having had my own makeup experience recently, I understood how difficult subtle makeup could be. Cass, on the other hand, did not go for an understated look. She’d found a flapper dress and was a whirlwind of fringe and beads. She looked straight from a 1920s speakeasy.
I’d only put 14 percent as much effort into my own appearance. I was just happy my skin had returned to its normal color.
When we arrived at Irving High School, it wasn’t the crush of students in their homecoming finest that immediately vexed me.
It was the decorations.
I’d forgotten the dance was “space” themed. Foil stars hung from the ceiling, illuminated by Christmas lights. Off to one side, a punch bowl held a toxic, bright green concoction. From the middle of the ceiling, where a disco ball would normally go, a giant papier-mâché UFO was suspended.
“Look at that,” I said to Cass and Arden with a scowl. I pointed to a booth where groups were getting photos taken.
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“What?” Cass asked.
“That backdrop. I assume it’s meant to be the surface of Venus, but the idea of us being on Venus is ridiculous.” (For starters, the surface of Venus was roughly 864°F.)
Then I saw something even more egregious. Someone had made cardboard cutouts of the solar system and hung them on the far wall. I pointed it out to Cass and Arden.
“Why are Neptune and Uranus the same size? Why is Pluto there, but not Ceres? Why is Saturn pink?”
“Not everything has to be literal,” Arden said.
“But whoever made those planets wasn’t even trying.”
Cass laughed. “Maybe they had more important things to think about. Like, you know, basically anything.”
We moved through the dance, stopping to talk to people along the way. Rather, Cass stopped to talk to people while Arden and I held back. I did my best to avoid looking at the solar system wall. If I pretended it wasn’t there, maybe it would stop bothering me.
After an hour, I started to relax. Even when Cass was off socializing, Arden stuck by me. The punch, despite the slimy green color, tasted good enough. And Ishmael’s over-the-top antics on the dance floor were entertaining. My brother wore sunglasses and a blazer over his signature Hawaiian shirt. Though he was perfectly capable of dancing well, he chose not to, instead trying—and succeeding—to get laughs from everyone in the vicinity.
To my surprise, my mood steadily improved.
Until I saw Owen.
It wasn’t the fact of his presence that bothered me. I’d actually tried to get ahold of him all week. The problem was, he wasn’t alone. He had none other than Alex Spiros with him.
I reached out and grabbed Cass’s arm.
“Ow, what?” she asked. She followed my gaze and I felt her body stiffen. “Oh. Damn.”
“Who’s with Owen?” Arden asked. “Wait, is that…”
“It’s your blind date, isn’t it?” Cass said.
I nodded because I didn’t trust myself to speak.
It Came from the Sky Page 24