Raw Deal (Beauty for Ashes: Book One) (7 page)

“Hey,” my mom returned.

My eyes were drawn to the tub of ice cream Aunt Milly was holding. She bared her teeth. “Toffee and pecan.”

I tutted. She was trying to lose weight, and she’d been clearing her house of all guilty pleasures.

She handed the tub to me and sighed. “I just found it at the back of the freezer. Thought I’d bring it over before it starts calling my name.” She sat at the table and tucked a handful of tatty gray curls behind her ear. She was my mom’s younger sister, but my mom looked decades younger. “How’s school, Lexi?”

I flopped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I’m being forced to go to the Christmas dance.”

“By that boy you were talking about on the phone the other day?” my mom asked.

I glared at her, although I didn’t know why I was surprised. My mom was an eavesdropper. I knew that. “No.”

“His name is Jace Washington, right? Is he Cuban? Your grandmother will be disappointed if he isn’t.”

My grandmother had never married, and my mom and Aunt Milly had never met their father. All they knew was that he was white, from Atlanta. Grandma had made it her life’s mission to raise awareness about non-Cuban males who possessed none of the Cuban family values and had no desire to settle down, lest any of her fellow Cubans should fall prey to their charms. How my mom had managed to marry a black man from England, I’ll never know. “No, he’s not Cuban, and it’s Monica not Jace that’s trying to get me to go to the dance.”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t. Plus, I have a fashion show that night.”

My mom switched the burner off and started serving our lunch. “I think it’ll be good for you to go, Lexi. It’ll take your mind off things.”

“Well, I might go. I dunno.”

“How’s the skin, Rachel?” Aunt Milly asked my mom.

My mom pulled a face. “It’s fine.”

She’d had a chemical peel two weeks ago, and being a cosmetic dermatologist, she’d known exactly what she was doing. She’d been prepared for it to hurt, but she had come home early from work fanning her face with her business card and screaming that her skin was burning. She’d popped painbusters for two days, and then returned to work. Now, her skin looked great, but it always had anyway. Her experience had taught me that no matter what, I was sticking to plain old makeup. Between my mom and Monica, I was getting steadily turned off all the contemporary beauty breakthroughs out there.

My mom said grace before we ate. It was something she’d started doing since we moved back to LA and born again Aunt Milly got a hold of us with her loud laugh and big leather Bible.

“How’s your new job going?” Aunt Milly asked my mom.

“Milly, I work as a consultant in a beauty salon in Beverley Hills. The clientele are rich snobs and stuck-up celebrities. How do you think the job is going?”

I faked a yawn as my mom warmed up for a good rant.

“I’ve been battered to breaking point this week,” my mom moaned. “I’ve never seen so many fussy women together in one place before. Honestly, it’s so annoying that the only worries they seem to have are about what shade of mahogany to tint their eyelashes, and whether they should wax their eyebrows or thread them.”

“I think we’re getting bitter, mom.”

“Maybe.” My mom forked a couple tubes of pasta into her mouth. “It’s hard, though.”

My dad’s death made a whole lot of things seem so trivial to us. I wondered if we would ever move on.

“I didn’t have many appointments booked on Thursday afternoon, so I got roped into helping out on the ‘do my makeup’ counter.” My mom sighed, “I want to get back into the lab, but I know I won’t be able to concentrate. I just can’t seem to keep my mind from wandering all the time.”

“I thought you’d like that job,” Aunt Milly said. She’d helped my mom get it. “I thought you liked makeup and beauty.”

“Milly, I’m not a beautician. I’m a beauty
scientist
and a qualified dermatologist…” My mom’s tone went all snooty and self-important. I switched off. She’d worked for a beauty corporation in England, developing cosmetics and beauty products. She’d done a lot of traveling and speaking at seminars, and my dad and I used to watch her on the
True Beauty
show every Saturday morning, where she had been Jan Taylor’s expert dermatologist for six months prior to my dad’s accident. She was an intellectual; I could see how she would find just putting makeup on people’s faces rather annoying. I tuned back into the conversation.

Aunt Milly was smiling patiently. “Well, we’ll keep looking for a job for you then.”

The afternoon followed the usual Saturday afternoon pattern. After Aunt Milly left, my mom and I watched TV in the den, with my mom on the phone most of the time. Aunt Milly had spared us her usual sermon about the cross of Christ and man’s need to repent, which meant that I was in a relatively good mood. I went through half the tub of toffee and pecan ice cream while I watched supermodel Shola Cardoso strutting up and down a runway in Paris with a mixture of complete envy and starry-eyed awe. She was amazing.

My mom was in a weird mood, and I wasn’t so upbeat myself. I went upstairs around eight and changed into my PJ’s and sat on my bed with my favorite photo album. My cell phoned beeped, announcing a text from Aunt Milly. She sent them quite regularly, encouraging me to keep holding on and trusting God. It was like what you told a two year old when their dad died, and they asked ‘where’s daddy?’
He’s up in the sky, in heaven, and we’re going to see him again.

My eyes stung with tears as I fingered the cover of the photo album. Whenever Aunt Milly said we’d see my dad again in heaven, it annoyed me. In fact, one day after we’d been back in LA for about three weeks, Aunt Milly was over visiting and throwing out her born again lyrics, and I’d almost screamed. “How do you know there’s a heaven?” I’d asked. My mom had glared at me, but I’d ignored her. “There’s no proof that there’s a heaven or any kind of afterlife.”

Aunt Milly had looked incredulous. But, as suspected, she had no proof. All she could say was, “Don’t you read your Bible? Didn’t you listen at all in Sunday school?” And I’d totally switched off. I was a realist not a fantasist, and I didn’t believe in things that had not been proven true. Besides, I didn’t go to Sunday school. I didn’t have a Bible either, but I didn’t tell her in case she decided to remedy the situation and give me one.

I read Aunt Milly’s predictable text and threw the phone aside. I stared at the brown leather cover of my photo album for a while and willed myself to open it. So far, I’d been too scared. Pictures of my dad still made me cry. I shut my eyes. If there was a God, could he see how my mom and I were hurting? If so, why had he let my dad die in the first place?

“Answer me that, Aunt Milly,” I muttered under my breath. “Answer me that.”

Chapter 6

It was Monday morning, and the last place I wanted to be was school. I hated that I went to a school where everyone was so image conscious, and I hated that I felt like I was trapped in an episode of some teen TV drama.

I want Saturday and Sunday back
, I thought dismally as I trudged down the hallway to my locker. The hallway was swarming with kids, but I felt alone. Nobody knew me, and I knew nobody. It sounded like the hook of a really sad country western song. I pulled a face, and then quickly dropped the expression when a wannabe rapper (I could tell by his clothes) gave me a curious look.

I surveyed my peers as I walked. The majority of them were pretty stylish. They got all dressed up just for school. The sad thing was, this morning I’d dressed up too. Like they say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I only had to endure this for about another seven months. So why not?

There had also been the thought at the back of my mind that I’d probably see Jace, since I had economics this morning. Therefore, I didn’t know which was my main motive for dressing up: fitting in or Jace Washington?

I opened my locker and looked at my miserable books. Weekends always flew by. Why did they do that? It was so annoying. But Monday to Friday took their time! I took my economics textbook out of my locker and slammed it shut.

“Hey, what’s up with you today?”

I turned. It was Carl Layton, one of the most notorious guys in the school. The fact that I had to look up was surprising. I was wearing four-inch Louboutins, acquired from a legs-only parts shoot in Milan. I added Carl to my mental list of ‘tall enough’ guys.

Carl was smiling, and I realized that I was frowning. We had never spoken before but I knew who he was, only because he moved in the same group as Jace sometimes. I quickly smiled. “Nothing.”

“Bad weekend?”

More like not enough weekend. “No.”

“I guess you just don’t want to tell me, right?” He smiled wider.

I let my smile drop. Hey this wasn’t a ‘who can smile the widest’ competition. “Right.”

He shrugged a muscular shoulder. He was one of those cute guys with more muscles than brains. “What if we got to know each other better, would you tell me things then?”

I frowned slightly. Was Carl hitting on me? “Um, I’ll think about it.”

“I like your accent. You’re from England, aren’t you?”

“No, I just lived there for a couple years.” The bell rang and I shifted my economics book to my other arm.

“Well, I guess I should let you go,” Carl said. “But I just wanted to ask, have you got a date for the Christmas dance?”

“No. I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“I have other plans.”

“The dance finishes at midnight. How long do your plans last?”

I had to smile. “Probably till about eight.”

“Then, I don’t see the problem. Wanna be my date?”

I chuckled. It looked like I’d have to go straight from my fashion show to the dance like I had for the basketball after party. “Well, if you insist.”

“I do insist.” Carl grinned. “Give me your number.”

We exchanged numbers then I made my way to economics. The good thing about my lateness was that it didn’t seem weird when I just stayed at the back and sat at the table next to Jace. He nodded at me, and I gave him a quick smile.

“Why are you late?” Mr. McGee asked in his customary raspy, nasal, monotone. I wondered how he managed to sound like that. Monica could do a good imitation, but I just couldn’t.

“Leave her alone. She’s new,” someone at the front piped up. There was some laughter.

“Sorry,” I apologized as I opened my books.

McGee was going over last week’s homework. When he finished, I counted how many I’d got right. Only about half. I spied at Jace’s paper. He’d got most of his right. Economics was just not my subject. The class seemed to drag on forever. I expected Jace to speak to me. He didn’t.

At the end of the class, Michelle Carey, looking exceptionally blond, busty, and Barbie-ish today, hijacked him. They were talking about last Saturday like they’d had a date or something. Then they started discussing hiring a limo for the Christmas dance.

I checked her out in my peripheral vision as I packed my books into my purse. How could she be so skinny and still have beautiful curves like that? I swung my heavy purse over my shoulder, wondering why I’d worn heels today? The girl made me feel like a giant, which was not a good feeling.

“Hey, Lexi,” Jace called as I made my way out of the classroom. I turned, and he came over. “Can I borrow your notes from Friday’s class?”

“Sure.” I took my A4 notebook out of my purse and leafed through it until I found last Friday’s notes. I tore them out. “How’s your car?”

“Not good. We took it for an assessment, and it’s going to cost so much to repair it that I may as well get a new one.” He looked at my notes, “Thanks, I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I slipped the notebook back into my purse. “Were you in on Friday at all?”

“No, I had the man flu.” Jace grimaced. “It was bad. It’s all this training in the cold all the time.”

“Are you still contagious?” I asked with a grin, backing away from him slightly.

“Maybe.”

“Well, I don’t know what it’ll do for my reputation if I catch the man flu, being a woman.”

Jace grinned. “Thanks for the sympathy.” He went back to talk to Michelle, and I left the room.

I made my way to the humanities department where I had English Literature next. Monday was my busiest day. I had back-to-back classes. At lunchtime, I went to the library to do some Internet research for my English Literature poetry assignment. I didn’t bother looking for Monica. She had cheerleading.

I called her that evening to tell her about Carl. “You won’t believe who asked me to the dance.”

“Who?” she squealed. “Jace?”

“No, Carl Layton.”

“Really? Did you say yes?”

“I did.”

“But I thought you liked Jace.”

“Well, Carl asked. Jace is going to the dance with Michelle anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, he is.” I could hear Monica’s disgust. “If it’s any consolation to you, Michelle had to ask him. You should have seen her on Saturday when we all went bowling. She was all over him, and it ticks me off because she’s just a flirt.”