He continued, “We don’t even have to tell your family what I’m doing. In fact, their behavior would probably be more natural if they didn’t know why I was there. You can always tell them we’re dating.”
“I can’t tell them that, because they know that I’m already dating Clay.”
The confident nonchalance he’d been using melted away, and he seemed honestly bewildered for a moment. “You were serious about that? I thought you were just trying to put me off at the clinic.”
“I was trying to put you off at the clinic with information that’s true. We’ve been out a few times,” I said, shrugging. “He’s a nice guy, a member of the pack. And that’s important.”
“Why?”
I looked down the corridor to make sure none of the other guests was within earshot. But given the head-splitting volume at which the band was playing, it wouldn’t matter if they were. “Fewer and fewer of us are mating with werewolves. We’re basically breeding ourselves out of existence. There are more dead-liners—that’s what we call our relatives who can’t phase—living in the village than pack members.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Nick muttered, patting his pockets for his little notebook. He settled his glasses on his nose and found a pen. He took a deep breath and smiled at me. “Explain.”>“Owowowow!” I yelled, my eye watering as she pulled the lid away from my eyeball and crimped the hairs. “You’re a damned liar, Kara Reynolds.”
“Beauty is pain, babe,” Mo advised me. I snaked my hand around Kara and took a swipe at my sister-in-law. Since she could freaking move, she just danced out of the way.
“Well, just focus on your breathing, and you should be fine,” Kara said wryly as she went for the other eye.
“You stay away from me, you psycho.”
“You can’t just walk around with one set curled. It looks weird,” Mo protested.
“It can’t make that much of a difference,” I shot back. Mo rolled her eyes and thrust a hand mirror in front of my face. “Oh, I guess it does.”
Since the lift and curve of my newly pressed eyelashes really did make them look bigger, I dutifully sat still while they put three shades of gray eye shadow on my eyelids, followed by eyeliner . . . then they wiped the whole thing off and started from scratch because it was “too much.”
“What’s that called?” I asked as Mo painted a bright, bold red across my lips.
She checked the little label on the end of the lip-gloss tube. “Cabaret.” I frowned, so Mo added, “As in, ‘life is a’?”
“When you wonder why we don’t always understand each other, it’s because of jokes like that,” I told her. Mo huffed and slicked my lips with gloss.
I wasn’t allowed to see a mirror. Kara kept muttering under her breath about killer cheekbones and “lucky bitch who doesn’t even appreciate her teeny-tiny pores.” Finally, they stood staring at me, trying to figure out what to do next.
“Maybe we could. . .” Kara trailed off.
“No, she’s perfect,” Mo said, stopping Kara’s hand as she reached toward me with the powder brush. “Doing anything else would make her overdone.”
“I think I hate her,” Kara said. Mo shrugged.
They turned me around to face the mirror.
I was me but different. My hair looked as if I actually planned for it to fall around my face in dark waves, instead of all messy and wind-blown. My eyelashes felt all stiff and goopy, but they looked damn good. The cinched-up dress showed off the few curves I had, and the satiny red scarf Mo had tied around my dress made my waist look tiny. Don’t get me wrong, I like me. But seeing this hotter, femme incarnation of myself was very cool.
“Let me get this straight. You guys spend an hour scrubbing and polishing your faces, putting on three layers of makeup, and fiddling with your hair so you can like me after I take most of the makeup off ?” I asked, grinning at them.
“Yep, definitely hate her,” Kara decided.
Mom gasped and scrambled for a camera when I emerged from Barbieville, USA.
“Mom,” I moaned.
“Oh, hush, you’re gorgeous. And it’s not like you went to your senior prom. Give me a chance to fuss.”
“This is why I didn’t go to my senior prom!”
Mom snapped picture after picture, from every angle conceivable. Only Eva’s spitting up in my mother’s hair persuaded her to stop. I mentally doubled the amount I’d budgeted for Eva’s first Christmas present.
“Mom, it’s just a party. There’s no reason to make a big deal out of it,” I told her. “It’s just another Friday night at the Glacier.”