I So Don't Do Makeup (3 page)

As Junie, Brianna and I depart for the kitchen and a bizarro super-skin-repair brunch, I gaze longingly at my lovely bala sharks.

Cindy and Prince are zipping around their tank, little flecks of silver glinting off their tails. No
unsightly scales or unpleasant puffiness. Basically no fishy cares or worries other than deciding who's it for aquarium hide-and-seek and waiting for me to sprinkle down the next meal.

I wish I could dive in there and join them.

In the kitchen, my dad says, “Hi, girls,” from deep in his newspaper, then folds it up and shuffles out. His eyes are down the whole time, which makes me think The Ruler told him about our facial incident. Girl stuff embarrasses him to the max.

The Ruler emerges from the pantry, a stack of napkins in her hand. “Sherry, can you girls get your own breakfast? There are fresh bagels on the counter. Your dad and I are going over to your grandmother's to pick up Sam.”

“Sure thing.” I squeeze past her to nab pumpkin seeds and a can of salmon. Not a tasty combo, but it is skin-repair food.

“How does the zinc ointment feel?” she asks.

“Soothing,” Junie says. “I just hope it does the trick. Fast.”

Brianna's phone buzzes. She flips it open to read the text. “My dad's coming in five. I gotta babysit my sister.” She makes a face at the food choices piling up on the counter. “I'm okay with eating at home.” She races upstairs to grab her stuff. A few minutes later, she shouts, “Sherry, tell The Ruler thanks.” The front door slams.

Junie turns her reddish-whitish face to me. “We should text Amber. I wonder if this has happened before with Nite Sprite Creme.”

“Go ahead.”

Amber isn't always as nice to us as she could be. Let's just say she's four years older but light-years ahead of us in social stuff. We're like grit in her shoe.

“It should definitely be you.” Junie pushes her glasses up her ravaged nose. “This was
your
makeup party. And
you
bought the product off her. And
you're
the one she gave the instructions to. And I've used up all my texts for the month. And—”

I roll my eyes. “Fine.”

Junie scoots her barstool close to mine.

I pull out my cell.

Amber texts back,

Amber doesn't even dignify my last text with a response.

“No!” Junie says. “I can't go out in public.”

“Me either.”

“I
really
can't, Sherry.”

I type,

Junie and I both flop forward on the counter and blow out air.

“We're going to the mall,” we say at the exact same time.

P
lugging her nose, Junie downs the rest of her green tea. She scoops up a handful of pumpkin seeds. “Let's get this over with.”

I text The Ruler our plans. Then Junie and I each wrap a pastel-colored scarf around our head. I grab my insanely fashionable new denim purse and drop in the jar of Nite Sprite Creme. Next, we're hoofing it over to the mall. I love living close to shopping.

Without discussion, because that's how BFFs work, we circle around to the back of the building and sneak in via the least busy entrance. We barrel past the vacant, out-of-business shoe store and the under-construction vitamin store. It's easy to avoid eye contact with the guy at the hot-sauce kiosk because he's
all engrossed in scrubbing his counter. The scarves are our magic invisible cloaks, and we get all the way to the Naked Makeup kiosk without anyone noticing us.

The kiosk is next to the food court. Which means it's a bopping, bustling, happening kind of place. The beige awning is adorably decorated with pink and purple tissue butterflies. All sorts of containers are perfectly arranged on the counter and along shelves on both sides of the kiosk. At one end, there's a cash register with a vase of fresh-cut colorful flowers. The other end has nail polishes and lipsticks.

With a Q-tip, Amber's painting stripes of different lipstick colors on the back of an old lady's hand. It's one of the wrinkled, blue-haired women who ride the bus out to the Indian casino for bingo. She and her friends followed Amber to Naked Makeup from her previous part-time job at the cosmetics counter in the mall's department store.

Junie approaches her cousin. “Excuse me, Amber.”

Amber startles and squeals. She was so focused on her customer that an earthquake could've shaken open a big hole next to the kiosk, sucked her in and spat her out on the other side of the mall, and she wouldn't have noticed. Because that's how Amber does makeup. With all her heart and soul. Lacey, Amber's boss, is the same way.

“Edna and I are busy,” Amber says with only a
cursory glance at us. “I'll check with you two when we're done.”

Edna holds up her hand, turning it this way and that. “I don't know, dear, what do you think?”

Amber touches the second stripe. “Rose. Definitely. Totally complements your complexion.”

Finally, Edna wanders off, clutching a paper shopping bag filled with Naked Makeup merchandise.

“Take off the scarves,” Amber says. She never wastes too much time on niceties with Junie and me. Actually, she never wastes any time on them with us.

Hands on hips, Amber gets up close and personal, all the while frowning at our faces, but especially at Junie's. This says something because Amber is usually very aware of potential frown lines. Generally, she keeps her face smooth like Saran Wrap.

From a pocket in her pink + purple butterfly smock, Amber pulls out a magnifying glass. Her eyeball practically glued to it and her head twisting off to the side, she examines Junie's forehead. “What else did you use on her besides Nite Sprite Creme?” she asks me.

“Just that freckle-fading stuff,” I say, “which you said was safe.”

“It is.” Amber slides the magnifying glass back in her pocket. “The fading ingredient is from the root of the paper mulberry tree. It's not at all irritating to the skin.”

“I slathered the Nite Sprite Creme on really thick,” Junie says. And she's such a good friend that she doesn't mention how that was my idea.

Amber nods and taps a finger on her chin. “Lacey'll be back from her break in a few. I want to check with her before recommending anything.” She points a long varnished nail to a nearby bench. “Wait over there.”

Junie's been kicking it down low, staying out of sight at the back of the kiosk. At Amber's orders, her eyes open wide and panicked. “The bench's right in the path of the American Potato Company. Where every kid from school goes. Someone I know will see me.”

“Get a grip, Junie.” Amber fluffs her hair. “It's only a matter of time before that happens. We're cosmeticians, not magicians.”

Junie stares at the linoleum, her toe grazing the surface. A tear pools in the corner of her eye.

“I'll stand in front of you,” I say, taking her arm.

She sniffs. “Thanks, Sherry.”

Amber switches on her salesgirl charm and sashays to the other side of the kiosk to help a couple of girls who are oohing and aahing over lip gloss.

Arm in arm, Junie and I shuffle to the bench. She plops down and slouches. I stay on my feet, shielding her from the passersby. We each drape a scarf loosely around our head.

“Lacey's gotta have a magic fix.” Junie's voice is all choked up. “I can't go to school tomorrow looking like a freak. But I can't
not
go to school.”

Maintaining a 4.0 can really complicate your life. Personally, I'm fine with missing school. Except for not seeing my friends. Although with The Ruler, to stay home you have to prove you're practically dead.

I've been hiding Junie from public view for about five minutes when I see Lacey leaving the food court in teeny-tiny steps. She's wearing the cutest open-toed high heels in history. She's got on the same smock as Amber, and the shoes match the lavender perfectly.

At twenty-four, Lacey's an older, plumper, shorter version of Amber. They both have straight, shoulder-length blond hair and large sparkly eyes fringed with long, curlable lashes.

She spots Junie and me and gives a friendly wave. How very cool that she recognizes us.

It's another twenty minutes before Lacey and Amber have a lull in customers and beckon us over. As we approach, Amber's filling Lacey in on the Nite Sprite Creme fiasco.

First Lacey checks me out. I catch a flowery whiff as she leans in close. “You're in pretty good shape, Sherry.” With the pad of a finger, she gently prods my chin. “You look like you just spent too much time in
the sun. Which I know you didn't, but that's as bad as it looks. You'll clear up quickly.”

“Thanks,” I say. Yay for me. But I feel for Junie. I open my purse and start rooting around in it for the jar of cream. This is the biggest purse I've ever owned, and I could probably lose my brother in it.

In the meantime, Lacey's examining Junie, gingerly touching her cheeks, then her nose. Lacey straightens. “Looks like a chemical peel gone bad. As in, too much acid.” She turns to Amber.

“That's exactly what I was thinking.” Amber shakes her head and her hair tiptoes across her shoulders.

“There's only two percent papaya acid in Nite Sprite Creme, but this looks like you've been exposed to way more than that.” Lacey picks up a bottle of water and unscrews the cap. “How did it feel during the night?”

“Tingly,” Junie says. “But then I fell asleep. I woke up this morning because my face was on fire.”

“I do throw a pretty intense slumber party,” I say. “So once we crash, we're totally out of it.”

“The combo of Freckle Fade and the small amount of papaya acid in Nite Sprite could cause a tingling sensation.” Lacey squints, thinking. “But I don't see how it would cause burning.”

“Should we give them Chockfull O' Nutrients?”

Amber holds up a purple jar.

“Definitely.” Lacey sips some water. “Chockfull's got organic jojoba oil, which is like sebum, the oil your own skin produces,” she says to Junie and me. “It's also got ground-up carob seeds to exfoliate the damaged skin and help with skin repair.”

“We better take some for our friend Brianna,” I say. “She was at my party too, and her skin looks like mine.”

Lacey tips Junie's chin and frowns. “Junie, I guess somehow the combo of Nite Sprite Creme and Freckle Fade and the fact that you put the Nite Sprite Creme on super thick …” She screws the cap back on her water. “I don't get it, though. I only opened Naked Makeup a few months ago, but we haven't had problems with any of our products. And we sell a ton of Nite Sprite.”

Amber flips through a little calendar next to the cash register. “I sold to Sherry on Thursday. That same day I filled a few individual bottles with Nite Sprite Creme to finish off the batch.”

“We haven't had any complaints about the other bottles from that batch,” Lacey says.

“And I followed our protocol and didn't add a fragrance,” Amber says.

Lacey opens a cupboard at the bottom of the kiosk and pulls out a white plastic container the size of a gallon jug of milk. She twists off the top and scoops out lotion with her baby finger. She sniffs it, then
smears a little on the inside of her wrist. “This is the new batch of Nite Sprite Creme. I'll leave it on to see if I get a reaction. I can tell you right now, I'm feeling nothing.”

Finally, my fingers bump up against the Nite Sprite Creme at the bottom of my purse. I set it on the counter. “Here's my jar.”

Lacey opens it, smells the contents, then dabs some on her wrist. “Smells like Nite Sprite.” She passes the jar to Amber, who glances in it, then shrugs.

“How long will I look like this?” Junie's scaly forehead is etched with worry lines.

“A few days, I'm guessing,” Lacey says. “However, along with the Chockfull O' Nutrients cream, I'll give you this superhydrating spray. It's mostly for elderly skin, but it'll help so you don't feel so tight and dry.”

“I don't care how I feel,” Junie says, “I care how I look.”

Wow. Junie has come a long way socially. I give her a hug.

Lacey busies herself with pulling out papers and reading about Nite Sprite and Chockfull O' Nutrients.

“Lacey, your wrist!” Amber says.

Sure enough, there's an angry red circle where she applied my cream.

“I'm sending this in to corporate for testing.” Lacey yanks a wipe from a dispenser on the counter.

“Customers.” Amber gestures with her head to a group of older teens who're congregating on the other side of the kiosk. She hands us the samples Lacey mentioned, then sends us her patented “get lost” look. It's true that we're not very good advertising.

“Amber, you handle the customers.” Lacey rolls the stool by the register and motions to Junie to sit. “I wanna work with Junie for a minute.”

Flicking her hair over a shoulder, Amber flounces off.

Junie sinks onto the stool. “Thank you.”

I'm staring into a magnifying mirror hanging on the kiosk, massaging in Chockfull O' Nutrients and commenting to Junie and Lacey on the silkiness of the cream and how I can practically see an immediate improvement. Seriously, I'm looking ready for some prime time with Josh.

When coincidence of coincidences, my phone sings out “You're the One,” by the Boyfriends.

It's my boy!

I
flip open my phone.

“Hey, Sherry.”

At the sound of my cute, wonderful eighth-grade boyfriend's perfect voice, a shiver skitters up and down my spine. I could melt at the way he shushes out the
sh
, glides over the
e
, whirs over the r's, then hangs out on the
y
.