Isabella comes into the closet and pulls the clipboard from me. “I not do the blue peel on you,” she says in an accent that makes me believe there’s torture involved in her services and she doesn’t necessarily hate it.
“What? Why not?” I want to shake her shoulders and scream that she has to do the blue peel on me. I want to look like I’m wearing Vaseline too!
“Yoshi will want you to work, and your skin—” She runs the backs of her fingers down my cheeks. “Your skin is so pure, so fresh. Yes, I believe a blue peel would make you look better. But I’m estimating it would be nine days or so before you looked better and you’ve already got that hairstyle to deal with.”
I touch my hair. “I fixed it. It’s growing out.”
“Yes, of course. Who did that to you? Johnny?”
I nod. The infamous Johnny.
“Yoshi will want you back to work regardless, and I cannot have you going out ugly. That haircut—” She waves her arms around. “—is bad enough. It’s nothing less than hazing, what goes on in that salon, and you can tell him I said so. You don’t need a medium peel; the most I’d give you is a light peel.”
“Will I look like Barbie?”
Isabella looks confused. “Do you want to look like Barbie?”
“I want that plastic skin.”
“It is not plastic, no? It is poreless. It is . . . pure.”
“It’s a little freakish, but I totally want it. As long as it doesn’t hurt.” I clasp my eyes shut. “No, even if it hurts I want it.”
“I can do a light peel and have you back at the salon in ninety minutes. My assistant can do that for you, but you can tell Yoshi from me that I will not do the blue peel on such innocent skin.”
“I can wear makeup when I’m done?”
“You won’t need to wear makeup. Your skin will be perfect.”
“Perfect.” I let the word play on my tongue. There’s no such thing as perfect, I tell myself, but who am I kidding? I so want to try for perfect. “How much?”
“Four hundred fifty.”
“Sold!” My eyes go wide. “I mean, yeah, that’s okay.”
“I give you discount. You’re a working girl.”
I’m hoping it doesn’t mean the same thing in her native tongue. Going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this.
“If Yoshi give you any trouble, you tell him he shouldn’t be worrying about your skin when your hair looks like that.”
My hair is not that bad anymore. She’s making me want to hang myself.
“Beauty has its price, dahlink, but you’re beautiful enough naturally.” Then she cackles. “As if that could be true in Hollywood. Run along with you and I’ll get Millicent to help you.”
I scamper out of the white closet and into a smaller white closet where I’m told in badly written English to undress and put on a white smock. I do and am taken into the “inner room,” to use a phrase from my Bible study. Only there are no priests with pomegranates on their robes, just more white and a pristine terry cloth-covered dentist chair. At least, that’s what it looks like to me. I climb into it, wondering if wearing nothing but a smock is necessary.
There’s a small knock at the door. Don’t hurt me!
Millicent’s arms are like ham hocks, her hands big and beefy. Her skin and teeth are flawless, though. It’s like someone took a Barbie head, ripped it off, and plopped it on their brother’s GI Joe doll.
“I’m Millicent.” She looks over my clipboard information and mumbles to herself like a doctor. “Very well, then, lay back. Here’s a personal fan. If your face starts to burn, you just hold it up and cool your skin down.”
I sit upright. “I’m only getting a light peel.”
“Yes, it says so right here. Lay down.”
“So do I still need the fan?”
She laughs. It’s not a soothing laugh. “Oh, yes, you’ll need the fan.”
“What do I do if I can’t take it?”
“You think about why you’re here. If it’s an engagement ring, you see the moment; an acting role, you see yourself in costume. You do what you have to do.”
I do not have $450—well, not to spend freely on a chemical peel. But worse yet, I do not have the guts to follow through with this.
“You don’t have any heart ailments, do you?”
That’s it. “Millicent, I’m not sure I can go through with this. I’m just getting over a haircut and—”
“There is no beauty without pain. Sit. You are young and strong. I’ve seen less whining through a tummy tuck.” She pushes me back down on the dentist chair, and I try to hum hymns as she cleans my skin with cotton pads and places a scalding washcloth on my face, followed by an ice-cold one.
Then I see her stirring a fan brush in a concoction. It makes me want to run, but I think about Cary. I think about how Vivien Leigh didn’t give up on being a part of Gone with the Wind. She knew she was Scarlett. I know I’m Yoshi’s girl.
She starts to paint on the chemicals, which has an orange acidic scent. “This isn’t bad,” I say bravely.
“It won’t start to work for two minutes. Brace yourself.”
“Brace yourself? I’m glad you’re not a surgeon with that kind of bedside manner.”
It starts to tingle. It starts to sting. It starts to . . . “Get it off, get it off!”
“Three more minutes. Count sheep if you must.”
“Scarlett only had to put on that corset!” I call out. I start to count, and finally, as I get to the point of what feels like third-degree burns, she drops a cold cotton pad on my face and starts to streak off the acid. “Thank heavens!” I say viciously.
“Great. You’re done with step one.”
There are two more medieval torture rounds before I’m finished, and I limp back into the dressing chamber to get my clothes. I move vaguely, hoping to not upset the angry pores any more than they already are. All I can say is if this is the light peel, strike me dead before I go medium.
But then I look into the full-length mirror at my skin, and there it is. Results. Already. I’m plastic! I’m Barbie's brunette friend: Malibu Sarah.
“Do not go anywhere without this sunscreen.” I’m handed a small tube and sent packing, a naked mole rat, blinking miserably in the bright sunshine.
I walk into the salon with my shoulders back. I am plastic! I want to shout, but sadly no one seems to notice a thing. Jenna doesn’t even blink when I walk back in; she just comes behind me and starts pushing me toward the classroom. “You’re here. Good, you’ll get some hours in class. Hurry up.”
“I got a peel,” I tell her.
Jenna looks up at me and her eyes pop. “Sarah, what did you do?”
“I got a peel with Isabella.”
She grabs me by the arm and yanks me to the product closet where she takes a mirror off the hook. “Look.”
I gasp. Every single flaw, every single skin imperfection I’ve had since I was thirteen is apparent. Enhanced. “I had plastic skin! What happened?”
“It looks like you’ve had some type of reaction. I've seen this before.”
I exhale, exhausted. “Why is it that every human being on the planet can get a skin peel, but I do it and I'm suddenly every adolescent’s nightmare?”
Jenna shrugs. “Sometimes it happens. Everyone’s not the same.”
“No, no, in Hollywood everyone is the same. I was plastic five minutes ago, I swear it.”
“Well, you’re not now. I have some stage makeup under my desk. Wait here.”
I lean up against the wall of soy shampoo and try to breathe deeply.
The door opens abruptly, and it’s not Jenna, it’s Yoshi. “This is how you keep yourself busy? Standing in my supply closet?”
“No, Yoshi, I—”
“I’m starting class. You’re too good for class?”
“No, Yoshi, I—”
“Get out here.”
I shake my head.
“I said, get out here.”
�
�I can’t—”
“Those words are never spoken in my salon. What are you doing in here?” He flicks on the light, gets a good look at me, and quickly shuts it off. “Oh.”
“I’ve got pancake makeup,” Jenna says as she rushes past him.
“You might want to check out the auto shop. She needs bondo.” He closes the door and I hear his voice change to customer-friendly. “Mrs. Spelling, how are you, dear?” He sticks his head back in. “Sarah!”
I nearly jump out of my skin. “Yes, Yoshi.”
“We’re practicing thinning on the models for the reality show Supermodel today. I specifically want you to sit in.”
“Yes, Yoshi, I’ve watched you in your videos with the razor cuts and the six-shear scissors. Amazing. I bought myself a pair after teaching myself on my best friend, Kate.”
“Did I ask you to blather on?”
“No.”
“Get a smock on and come into the classroom.”
Jenna uses an oval-shaped sponge to pound makeup onto my face. “Look up,” she says. She pounds more under my eyes. Then she gets a tub of powder. Industrial sized. “It’s mineral powder. No one’s going to know you’re under there.”
“She told me to wear sunscreen at all times.” I roll my eyes.
“Girl, the sun is not going to find you under all this makeup, trust me.” She holds up a mirror.
I’m orange. “I’m an Oompa Loompa.”
“You have a different tone than me. You’re more olive than I am.”
“Not anymore.”
“It’s the best I can do, all right? Get into Yoshi’s class. He’s anxious to show off his skills.”
“Jenna?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“De nada. You’ll be beautiful tomorrow. It’s only a day.”
“But I’m orange.”
She wrinkles her face. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
I walk into the classroom and find a group of lanky, emaciated teenagers with good bone structure and a dream. Their fearless leader, who I assume is the producer of the show, is consulting with Jaime about what type of hairstyles they will have. I can only assume from what Yoshi’s teaching today they will be thinned and shorn like sheep. I try to sneak into the back and be as nondescript as possible. For an orange. Sarah Claire, the new OC.
All of the girls are seated in chairs. “You are?” Yoshi asks.
A shaking Chihuahua of a girl says, “Minasa.”
“Minasa, you will be shaved bald today. It will make a bold statement, and the camera will love to have full access to your bone structure.”
Minasa starts to weep, fingering her full head of dark hair, complete with what I can only suppose are expensive weaves. They look good on her, and though she does have fabulous bone structure, she doesn’t want to be bald. I don’t care what kind of genius Yoshi is. That’s cruel.
“You are?”
“Kreata.”
There’s one thing about Wyoming: no one names their kids things that look like a menu item. Maybe you get a Cheyenne here and again, but Kreata?
“Sarah, come here.”
I walk toward Kreata—pronounced create-ah—like she's some type of building toy, and I look into her wet eyes. She’s terrified of what we’ll do to her, and I wish I could offer her solace. But this is Hollywood, and making a statement is how she’ll get remembered. And I’m orange; it's not like I’m going to give her a lot of solace.
“Sarah, I want you to thin her hair out here on top using the thinning shears.”
I open my mouth to remind Yoshi he said on his videos never to use the thinning shears, that they were for amateurs, but I can’t find the words. “You’re going to let me cut?”
This makes Kreata burst into tears. It’s sort of like hearing you’re getting the intern in surgery.
Yoshi ignores the emotion. He’s quite good at that. “If I were to hold her hair up here—” Yoshi takes a long, blonde strand and holds it straight up about eighteen inches above her head. “If I were to ask you to thin her hair, where would you start with the thinning shears?”
“I wouldn’t use the thinning shears. I would—”
“Who is teaching the class here, Sarah?”
“I would cut right here.” I point to about two inches off the model’s crown of her head.
He hands me the scissors. “Do so.”
I snip . . . and all the hair Yoshi is holding comes free in his hand. My jaw drops and the room gasps.
“Kreata! Your hair!”
Yoshi’s face gets red. “I told you we were cutting with thinning shears. Why do you have scissors?”
“That’s what you handed me.”
“How dare you blame your incompetence on me!”
The model has a tuft of hair sticking straight up like Alfalfa, and I don’t remotely know how to comfort her. “I’m so sorry. I thought I had the thinning shears.”
She buries her hands in her face. “Just fix it. Please fix it!”
I look at the tools gathered on the rolling table, and Yoshi pulls it away on its castors. “After you did this to her, you think I’m going to let you touch her again? Get the girls some coffee!”
“But I—”
“Now!” Yoshi bellows.
I can tell by his reaction that he didn’t mean to do it; he screwed up. But he’s definitely not going to admit it. It's my shame to bear, and it’s a hard lesson learned about trusting. I walk out of the classroom unsure of what just happened but thoroughly convinced my job is over before it's begun. He hasn’t even let me wash a real person; I should have known he wasn’t really going to let me cut.
Slamming the door behind me, I leave the familiarity of Yoshi torture for dinner with my cousin’s ex-girlfriend, Alexa. I don’t know why I agreed to this. I imagine it has something to do with Mrs. Simmons’ face that night when she confronted my mother at the front door. Guilt is never a good motivator, but as it is, I’m a victim to it. Dinner with Alexa at seven-thirty and she’s picking me up in her Mercedes. Just like a last meal of steak and sweet-potato pie, I get to go to the gallows in style.
Her silver coupe is outside when I enter into the alley. I feel as if I should pull my trench coat collar up over my nose. Alas, I don’t have a trench coat. Or a collar, for that matter.
Alexa is propped up against her car, her long, lean legs crossed at the ankles and the familiar red sole of a Christian Louboutin heel facing me.
“Hi, Alexa.”
“Thanks for meeting me, Sarah.”
“No problem.” I’m scared, but that’s not your concern.
She wastes no time. “I knew you weren’t involved with Scott. Before you told me, I mean.” She opens my door.
“How did you know? Besides the fact that I look like a hillbilly next to you, I mean.” I slink into the car.
“Because no woman is this stupid, I don’t care where she’s from.” She slams the car door, shutting me into her vehicle. It echoes like a cell door.
I watch her walk around the front of the car, moving like a runway model with long, jolty coltlike steps. She doesn’t look comfortable with her beauty, like she was gawky as a teenager and has only recently grown into this beautiful butterfly. I see the uncertainty in her eyes, and I can’t help but feel for her. She’s only a woman fighting for the truth. She deserves that much, and I want to give it to her. But the fact is I don’t have it either. I can't imagine why Scott wouldn’t take five minutes to give her some closure.
I remember Mrs. Simmons knocking on our door once, rubbing her tear-stained cheeks with her fist. My mother opened the door wildly, without a touch of compassion.
“What do you want?” my mother barked.
“Where is he?” Mrs. Simmons answered.
“How would I know? Can’t you keep track of your own husband?”
“Not when there’s women like you around. It’s really easy to be the good-time girl, isn’t it? No dinners on the table, no laundry to do. One job on
ly, but he won’t marry you. No man ever will!”
My mother slammed the door in her face, but not before Mrs. Simmons looked me straight in the eye. I'll never forget the look of desperation mingled with hatred in her eyes. The next day everyone in school was told by Cindy that my mother was free for the taking. We never recovered from that night. Our reputation was sealed in stone.
Alexa puts her right leg into the car first. It goes on forever. It’s like she herself is never going to get into the car. Just her endless limb. While I wait, I ponder the fact I’m in her Mercedes with its supple gray leather interior and all the appointments. Just sitting in this car might be worth dying for. I mean, if you’re going to go, you don’t want to go in a Kia, know what I’m saying? At least Mom would think I’d made something of myself. “She died in a Mercedes” would be her mantra at the Hideaway. Who knows, maybe Mom has a secret insurance policy on me and her troubles would be over.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Alexa asks me. “ You don’t have to talk about Scott. I don’t want to hear it anyway.”
“I talk. I’m just not sure what to say to you.”
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here with Scott?”
“I’ve known him since I was a child. We grew up together in Wyoming.”
“I should have known he’d go back to his hick roots. Is that what he wants out of life?” She looks over at me with her icy blue eyes. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I answer uncertainly.
“Are you hungry?”
“I am. Haven’t eaten all day.”
“It will be nice to have some girl time over dinner.” Her tone is gentle and considerate, which both unnerves and relaxes me.
I meet her gaze. She is way too good for Scott. Although at this point my stomach is growling, and I would befriend Freddie Krueger if food was involved.
“Why are you following Scott?”
“You need to ask him that, Sarah. I wouldn’t be following him if he’d just tell me good-bye. It’s not too much to ask for the years I spent with him. I mean, sure I made a mistake, but it doesn’t mean—” She stops and looks at me. “Your outfit isn’t great for evening. You’ve got hair on you. I think we’ll go somewhere casual.”
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