Free Three Quarters Dead by Richard Peck Page A

to look good, and a little older than we were. Because getting dressed together is the best part of going out. “Like who doesn’t know that?” as Tanya always said.
    Hair, of course, was major. Makenzie’s haystack with her glasses embedded in it had to be jelled into semispikes with a subtle swirl of color not from nature. Nothing pink, nothing punk. Just a nod in the direction of pastel punkery to go with Aunt Lily’s waspwaisted lace dress Makenzie wore over leg warmers. It was hard to get Makenzie out of her favorite fringed suede boots. But tonight below lace and leg warmers she wore spike-heeled pumps. Patent leather. She had to pad the toes with tissue paper because her feet were so tiny.
    “I feel reasonably sure I won’t be able to walk a step in these shoes,” she remarked. “I should think I will sit down suddenly on the pavement and break my little—”
    “Mirror here,
Mirror there,
Mirror, mirror everywhere,”
    Natalie chanted, turning in the dressing space, seeing several thousand of herself merry-go-rounding around. She’d found shoes like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, but with platforms. They turned and turned and pointed in every direction on the snow-white rug. Aunt Lily’s underwear department was itself the size of Switzerland. Natalie had raided it for a totally crazed strapless black bra to wear under a 1950s off-the-shoulder red satin number. And long black satin gloves that reached up her arms, over her elbows. Her hair was perfect as it was. It was never not perfect, and blue-black in this light. She pinned a jewel or two in it, out of the plush drawer.
    My hair was a toxic area. “You have so let yourself go lately, Kerry. Honestly, you look like you teach math,” Tanya said, and everybody agreed, even me. What my hair needed was blow-drying and styling and anything to give it some life, some light, some lift. They did what they could. They performed an intervention. I wanted mine exactly like Natalie’s, absolutely as smooth as falling water. Though my hair wasn’t blue-black. My hair never could decide what color it was.
    We were all in the bathroom now, the one off the dressing area. Kind of a 1920s bathroom with a tub up on claw feet. They’d spent the afternoon, maybe longer, making themselves up. Now they started over. Tanya was working foundation or something into her face. “Botox and soon now,” she said.
    “So soon?” Natalie murmured behind her. “When?” This apartment was a house of mirrors, but we all four were bunched before this one, over the marble sink.
    Botox? I barely knew what it was. Wasn’t it needles full of stuff old ladies shoot into their foreheads to smooth out the lines? And into their withered old cheeks? Maybe even into their—
    “And how would we pay for Botox?” Tanya was saying. “Stick it on Aunt Lily’s bill? I don’t think so. There are limits. I suppose you still don’t have a credit card, Kerry? A debit card?”
    I didn’t, of course. Somehow I wasn’t ready for a world of charge-it and Botox. I didn’t know the difference between credit and debit. The only card in my backpack was a discount card from CVS Pharmacy. I was always a step behind. I lived back here.
    “See right there?” Tanya was showing Natalie a place on her forehead. “I don’t know if I can go another day.” She’d already worked wrinkle cream over all her skin that showed, and pancake makeup.
    Makenzie and Natalie both examined whatever was happening to Tanya’s skin. She was showing a certain amount because she’d found a vintage black leotard with scoop neck. Over this she’d added two flouncy short skirts that clashed with each other perfectly. And patterned stockings with strappy shoes. It didn’t matter what she wore. She was Tanya. You saw her first, whoever else was there.
    Then they turned back to me, remembered me. “Kerry’s the real problem,” they agreed. “She’s got to look eighteen at least, or we can’t take her anywhere.”
    I