Free Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff Page B

and it occurs to me that maybe my mom has been after him too, reminding him to remind us of how the world is actually dangerous.
    Out in the hall, the doorbell rings, and Decker goes to let Pinky in.
    * * *
    “We should do some new portraits before school starts,” Kelly says when I come into work. “I could set up some really dramatic lighting, and maybe do some fun makeup.”
    “Yes, let’s,” I say, lacing my fingers together and propping my chin on my hands, elbows stuck out in imitation of a 1950s pinup pose.
    Over by the register, Lillian mimics me, flopping herself down on the counter with her arms splayed out, elbows jutting. I make sure to keep my eyes focused somewhere to the right of her, like I’m not looking at anything.
    Kelly loves high-concept shoots, but the truth is that it’s been a while since I’ve liked having my picture taken. It always makes me feel like I’m being magicked into someone else, and then I don’t even know how I look anymore.
    * * *
    Some days I’m pretty, and some days I’m not, and once, for three hours and forty-five minutes, I was beautiful. But that was a long time ago, at the eighth grade dance, and I wore a blue dress that I’d made from a McCall pattern after I fixed the serger, and Jason Forrester really, really liked me. I mean, he liked me so much that it wasn’t just hypothetical. I could actually tell.
    I let Ariel put my hair up in a fancy braided bun that she’d just invented, and I didn’t even mind that it was kind of lopsided or that the ends stuck out, because it looked almost intentionally messy. It looked the way girls’ hair looks in magazines sometimes—like their lives are so wild and glamorous that their hair is constantly getting tousled. I wore makeup, and everyone kept looking at me in this confused, startled way—like they’d never known before that I could surprise them.
    And I know it’s what you’re supposed to want, but it scared me.
    Lillian laughed because I was so awkward, and because usually she was the one who made people stare. She was the beauty, with her sweet fairy-tale face and her long black hair. And then, not.
    I was no one, barely even a real girl. I’d had to alter the pattern to make up for the fact that my waist was 22 inches and my bust was 26.
    Even shoes and blouses were a problem, and shopping for swimsuits was embarrassing, but Lillian never made fun of me. She already wore a real underwire bra and the kind of jeans that you don’t buy in the kids’ section. She said I was lucky. That I was so delicate and tiny.
Like a pixie
, she said, but I knew that 26 inches wasn’t something to want. That’s not even the size of a real person.
    The blue dress was the best thing I’d ever made, covered in pleats and flounces, with a tulle overskirt. My mom helped me with the flounces because the fabric was fragile and stretchy, which made measuring tricky, but I did everything else myself.
    Before the dance, we got ready at my house, but we went to Lillian’s to meet our dates. I never minded that. I knew it was because she didn’t have a sister to be loud and sticky and mess things up or a dog to shed all over everyone, and because my house wasn’t as nice as hers. And that was just how it was.
    “Lillian,” her mother said when we stood in front of the gas fireplace for pictures. “Honestly, honey. I don’t know if you should be wearing those kinds of dresses anymore. You’ve just got a little too much going on in the chest area to be wearing spaghetti straps. Don’t you want to wear your black one?”
    As if Lillian hadn’t just spent four hours trying on every single dress she owned, looking for the one that didn’t make her look fat. She was smart and stubborn, but her mother was the voice of authority. Mrs. Wald was so well-meaning and so picky, and she was always right.
    In her room, Lillian sat slumped at her ruffled vanity with the oval mirror in front of her and the black dress spread out on top of