6. Olivia
OLIVIA
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
“You’ve got a longer torso and shorter legs, so you’re going to want to wear things at your natural waist rather than your literal waist,” Amanda said blithely, marching along in her platform heels almost faster than I could keep up with my flats.
“I have two types of waists?” I questioned, befuddled.
The entire day seemed a bit like a dream, which was the only way I could explain how I ended up at one of the few malls still alive in our area, following along behind Amanda like a lost, beige duckling.
“Oh, you have many! Natural waist, empire seam, side waist, dropped waist, basque waist, need I go on?”
Uh, yeah, she most definitely did.
“And to answer the question you haven’t asked yet, your natural waist is the narrowest part of your torso, wherever that may be, normally somewhere very different from where your pants’ waistline would sit.”
“Oh, uh, I see.”
“Do you? Good! Because that’ll make this next part much simpler.”
“Next part?”
The next part was us beelining to a dressing room and me being shoved into it while my blonde chaperone disappeared to find various garments for me to try on.
I was stronger than her. I should throw her into the closest wastebasket and make a run for it, but for some reason I stayed.
Maybe because, despite having two older sisters, I’d never had the classic shopping montage that every teenage girl craved.
It wasn’t like my family didn’t have money; we were very lucky to be well off with none of us worrying about bills or where the next meal was coming from.
We weren’t millionaires—at least not individually—but we were all financially comfortable.
It was just that… well, I was too damn shy or awkward growing up.
At first it was that I was a chubby girl in the aughts, which was a fate worse than death.
Then it was that my boobs came in and they made me feel so uncomfortable that I only wanted to cover up.
By the time I finally grew out of that phase and began to explore what it meant to be a grown woman, it was like I’d missed my chance to find my own style and kinda wore whatever felt appropriate for the office.
“Here you are!”
Amanda’s cheery voice cut through the dismal line of thinking brewing within my mind, and even if I did want to linger in the misery, I couldn’t. Mostly because I was suddenly caught in a deluge of garment after garment.
“I’m pretty sure you’re a deep autumn or a deep winter based on your tan overtone and yellowish undertones,” she said while a blouse, a skirt, and a pantsuit joined the growing pile. “I’m leaning more toward autumn, but I played all over the spectrum at first for us to really hone it down.”
“Uh… sure?” I had no idea what she was talking about. Autumn? Was this a horoscope thing? Last thing I checked, I was born in July.
“I also figured by your style that you’re more of a comfort-casual kind of girl, so I made sure to get some basics that you can play around with for different occasions.”
Cue two pairs of trousers, some jeans, and another skirt flopping down.
“You know, there’s a sign in here that says the limit is ten items per customer.”
Suddenly, the door to my changing room was opening despite it being locked, and Amanda peeked her head in, all smiles.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’re with me.”
“How did you get in here?”
She held up her hand where a bit of metal hung on a ring from one of her fingers. “I have the key, of course!”
Right. Of course.
“So, I’m guessing you come here often?”
“You could say that,” she said before looking over the puddle of clothing that was both around and on top of me. “Hmm… we need a few co-ords!”
“Amanda!”
But she was already gone.
Clearly, I was in the deep end, and I wasn’t getting out without trying on more clothes than I had in the past few years.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, methodically hanging the clothes on the hooks along the wall. I was finished by the time that Amanda returned, only to have her throw over at least a dozen more items.
“Okay, I think that’s a good start.”
“A start?” I objected, and sure enough, the lock clicked then her face appeared again, looking mildly surprised.
“Why do you say it like that? Do you need me to get more?”
More? “Uh, no. Thanks. This will be fine to begin with.” I didn’t know why I wasn’t telling her to shove it, but much like our instructor, her earnestness got to me.
Neither of these people were talking to me because I was their relative, or because I was pack.
They were talking to me just… well, just to talk to me. Like I was enough on my own.
Her smile was instantly back and she clapped again. “Fantastic! Why don’t you start with the jeans and casual tops first? I put several peasant tops in there because you’ve got some stunning décolletage there and need to be showin’ that off, girl!”
“I do?” I repeated, turning to look at the mirror behind me. Whatever Amanda was seeing was invisible to me, because all I saw was a slightly below-average thirty-year-old woman who’d made some big steps but now felt lost more than anything else.
“Girl, yes. And when you pair that with that impressive cleavage, that’s a combination you don’t wanna waste!”
“Pfftt, I will pay you to never say the word cleavage again.”
“Okay, what do you want me to say? Titty crack? Knocker canyon? Bosom fault-line? Chesticle crestical? Booby raveen? Swea—”
I had a feeling she was going to continue with just as much vigor as she started with, and honestly, the depth of vocabulary she had for breasts was borderline impressive. “How about we avoid the topic entirely?”
Like one of those drama masks that rapidly swung between expressions, that confused look was back on her face. “We’re shopping. Why wouldn’t we talk about something we should be celebrating?”
“Oh, I uh…” For some reason, her word choice threw me through a loop. When had humans become so out of pocket? “Celebrating?”
“Yeah, I mean that’s what shopping for yourself is all about, right? It’s not like you’re doing this for a job, or like a performance. You said you were feeling too schlubby to feel confident enough to approach a guy, right?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“So what better way to feel confident than to wear a killer outfit that makes you feel like the badass, beautiful bitch that you are?”
Oh. “So… this isn’t to make Keith think I’m sexy, it’s for me to think I’m sexy?”
“Of course! Well, and to not get caught in the lathe. I read those things can scalp you.”
I grinned despite myself, and suddenly the overwhelming deluge of fabric around me was a bit more exciting. I wasn’t trying to find a miracle outfit that would make some random human instructor think I was hot to trot. I was searching for something that would make me love what I saw in the mirror.
“We wouldn’t want that,” I murmured, picking up the closest pair of jeans.
“Exactly. So, buckle up, partner! You’ve got a shopping montage to survive!”
***
“And then you wanna scrunch, scrunch, scrunch to really encourage your curls to keep their form.”
I stared at the row of haircare products Amanda had set out in front of me.
If she wasn’t currently holding a perfectly coiled lock of my hair, I would have thought she was a covert salesperson trying to make a banger of a commission off me.
But no, apparently my frizzy, static-filled hair had been curly this whole time.
I simply never knew how to take care of it.
Why had no one in my family ever taken me aside and told me I wasn’t supposed to brush my hair when it was dry?
There were so many curly heads in the pack, surely someone should have recognized it, right?
“How come no one else has ever told me this?” I asked Amanda instead of keeping the question in my head, like she could have any clue.
“Probably because you have a very fine hair strand with low porosity, which is very different from many people who have thick hair strands with high porosity. It tends to translate into frizzier hair without more specific care rather than the ringlets that you’re probably used to seeing on any relatives. ”
Oh. Apparently she didn’t just have a clue, she had already puzzled out the whole damn mystery.
“Where did you learn all this?”
“You know, here and there. I imagine during your time it was a bit harder because you had to look for fashion magazines or what few runways made it onto TV, but with the dawn of the internet, everything is just a few image searches away.”
“Excuse you! During my time?”
“Yeah, like the nineties. And even the early two-thousands. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong decade.”
Was I suddenly an episode of The Twilight Zone? Amanda was growing on me, but some of the things she said made me feel like it.
“I was born in nineteen-ninety-six,” I said with finality. The last thing I expected was for Amanda to literally hit me with a woooooow!
“I think it’s so cool that you were born in a previous century! Like, how many people can say that?”
I was going to kill someone.
“You were mentioning something about scrunch, scrunch, scrunch?” I chose to say instead, for the sake of both of our sanity.
“Oh! Right! Then you want to wash the ends of your hair after you’ve applied the conditioner. Remember, try not to get any on your roots, because it’s going to weigh your hair down!”
Cheerily, she continued to explain why I needed a clarifying curl shampoo, a scalp cleansing shampoo, and curl conditioner.
And then curl cream, styling gel, and mousse.
Then, not to forget, hair oil, an anti-frizz serum, and these strange comb-like things I was supposed to stick into my roots so my curls would stick flat to my scalp from the weight of my hair.