Chapter 2
Waldo—spending the night at Tony’s. There’s lasagna in the freezer. Have a great first day tomorrow. Senior year, baby! So proud! Xxoo, Ma
I don’t know why she still bothers with the sticky notes when she could just text—she must think they give a personal touch—or why I keep them all. I must think so too.
I head into my room with my lasagna and my sticky note, tuck the sticky note in the jewelry box overstuffed with them, and burn my tongue on the lasagna.
I watch ten-step curly hair tutorials on YouTube that seem so complicated that I figure I’ll just go back to frying it with a blow-dryer and straightening iron every day and deal with the self-acceptance later.
I switch to a video of a girl my age thrifting, then JFK getting his brains blown out in the back of that convertible, then a beauty guru’s seven-hundred-dollar Sephora haul.
I follow the links in her description box to the items from her haul as she tells me that she seriously has a problem and needs to delete her Sephora app so that she doesn’t keep purchasing multiple shades of products that she hasn’t even tried.
I order the same shades of cream blush stick that she did, except for Venetian Rose, which is sold out and would’ve looked too harsh on my pale skin anyway.
I know that a blush isn’t gonna transform my life, but it’s still nice to believe during the three-day shipping time that it could.
It’s nice to believe that the only difference between me and Margot Robbie is a stick of blush.
It’s nice to believe promises, even empty ones in cute typefaces on the backs of little cardboard packages.
Especially those ones. There’s something about how assured they are in those pretty little fonts that feels more credible than the ones coming out of people’s mouths.
I fill out the delivery page and the payment page, then my heart races as I scroll down to that bold, red, looming Place Order button.
I click it and a combination of regret and excitement flushes through my body.
A combination so potent that it leaves no space for whatever feeling lurks underneath it.
I polish off my lasagna with whatever taste buds survived that first bite, then wash my face, brush my teeth, and pick my zits even though I know I shouldn’t. I get in bed but can’t sleep so instead I scroll.
I end my night by loading up a cart on Shein despite the damning ethics of fast fashion, because it’s the only place you can get a pair of pants for twelve bucks.
The cancer warning comes up on all the items, which I appreciate because it helps me prioritize my cart.
Velvet trousers? Not worth the cancer. Crop top? It stays.