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eyes. Precious came bouncing over to me. I swooped down and picked her up.

“All right, I’ll do it,” I said. “As long as you and Todd are available to babysit.”

“Bella, it’s a
dog
. You can leave it alone for a few hours.” I started to take out Precious’s foils. “Nonnegotiable,” I said.

I WAS PISSED. LEAVE IT TO SOPHIA
to get in there first and spread out her stuff all over the place and completely take over the real makeup room. It was only about the size of a medium walk-in closet, but it was connected to the green room at the public television station that produced
Beantown
.

It had a long rectangular vanity that took up the entire length of one wall. The vanity had a strip of fairly decent lighting up near the ceiling, and there was even a hydraulic chair, plus an extra regular chair in the corner to put stuff on. The doorway was positioned in such a way that you could watch TV at the same time you were doing makeup, and there was even a coffeemaker.

I, on the other hand, had been shuttled down the hall to a makeshift green room. And not only that, but it was in the men’s bathroom, or at least almost in the men’s bathroom. It was actually a small room that was a walk-through to the men’s bathroom. It was about half the size of the real makeup room, with a row of small school-like lockers on one wall and a short counter with a dirty mirror over it on the opposite wall.

Lousy lighting. No television. No coffeemaker. Mario would be hearing about this, that was for sure.

I went stomping back down the hall to get a chair, because of course it didn’t even have one of those. If Sophia hadn’t Summer Blowout

67

been sitting in the hydraulic chair, staking her claim, I would have just commandeered that and dragged it down the hallway, but I couldn’t be bothered dumping her out of it first. I grabbed the chair in the corner.

“Do you need help?” she asked.

“Not from you,” I said.

I carried the chair back to my makeshift dungeon. I waited.

I waited some more. Finally, the senator-running-for-reelection came walking down the hallway with his people. My dungeon door was open, of course, because I probably would have suffocated to death in there if I tried closing it.

I stuck my head through the doorway and gave them my most dazzling smile. “Hi,” I said. “I’m all set for you in here.” The senator-running-for-reelection just kept walking. His people kept walking, too. One of them, possibly the body-guard, looked over at me briefly. It was hard to tell if he was checking me out because I looked good or because I was a potential security threat.

I leaned sideways against the doorframe and watched them head for the real green room, the real makeup room, and Sophia. She always got everything. It was completely unfair.

And the most awful part about it was that I was probably the one responsible for it. I was pretty sure I had turned Sophia into the person she’d become.

I was twelve, right in the midst of that quick little window of time that’s the golden age for babysitters, when Sophia was born. A few years earlier and I would still have been too much of a kid myself. A couple years later and I would have moved on to chasing boys.

I was obsessed with her. I changed her, bathed her, fed her, dressed her up like a doll, pushed her all over the neighbor-hood in her stroller. I ignored her mother, my father’s new 68

C L A I R E C O O K

wife. I might have even seen myself as Sophia’s real mother, or at least her minimom.

Sophia’s eyes lit up every time I walked in the door to my father’s house from school. Divorce wasn’t yet the norm back then, and my mother had taken the even more unusual step of moving out of the family home. She bought a small house in a neighboring town, closer to college for her, but in a lesser school district.

Mario, Angela, and I spent most nights at her house. Angela and I were jammed into one tiny bedroom in bunk beds, and Mario had an even tinier room all to himself. Dinner, homework, bed, then breakfast. Then she drove us to school in Marshbury. After school, we took the school bus home to our old rooms and old father, his latest new wife, and eventually, Sophia. I gladly gave up half my room, and at least half my life, to her.

Mario was eleven months older than I was, and Angela thir-teen months younger. Either Mario and I or Angela and I would have been considered Irish twins. Put us all together, and I guess we were pseudo Italian Irish triplets. Mario spent most of his time ignoring me, and I spent most of my time ignoring Angela, who spent most of her time ignoring our younger half sister, Tulia.

So Sophia, the youngest, got all my attention. I put ribbons in her hair, nail polish on her toes, taught her to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and to play “Trot Trot to Boston.” And when I outgrew the babysitting years, my friends and I still let her go everywhere with us. Shopping, football games, at least the first few hours of every sleepover.

Somewhere along the line, I think I ruined her. She looked like me, she dressed like me, she acted like me. I went to UMass to major in art, and then twelve years later, so did she.

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I circled back to work for my father after a brief stop at Blaine Beauty School. Eventually, so did she.

I don’t think she ever learned to think for herself. I should have insisted, instead of letting her follow me through life like a little human chameleon who changed her colors to match mine. I couldn’t even enjoy hating her guts without feeling guilty, because I had to be at least partly responsible for the fact that she needed to have everything that I had, including my husband. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, I really missed her.

• 10 •

A FEW MINUTES BEFORE SEVEN, AFTER THE PROducer had trotted back to my dungeon at least three times looking for him, a little more frantically each time, the governor-running-for-senator and his people finally showed.

I jumped up from the uncomfortable little chair and grabbed my airbrush gun. The governor’s people stayed in the hallway.

The governor walked right by me without saying anything. A moment later I heard him peeing in the next room.

“Oh, boy,” I said out loud. I took what might well have been the fastest three steps I’ve ever taken in my life out to the hallway.

“Where did you come from?” a woman asked. It was the same woman who’d been with him at the governor’s mansion, so I guessed she wasn’t the housekeeper after all. Maybe she was the governorkeeper. She reached past me to shut the door. She was wearing a black skirt tonight, and I was happy that I’d at least been right about that. The black made her look like she had perfectly balanced buttocks, with barely a hint of visible panty line anywhere.

“Um,” I said. “Actually, they’ve made that a makeup room.

My stuff is already in there.”

The man next to her pushed the door back open. “Well, I’d sure like to know where the other candidate is being made up,” he said. “And don’t think I won’t find out.” Summer Blowout

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The producer came jogging down the hallway. “Ten minutes,” she yelled.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “He only needs four.” We all walked back in when we heard the toilet flush. Perhaps the governor got nervous before televised debates.

Maybe his dinner hadn’t agreed with him. In any case, I held my breath as best I could as I airbrushed him.

“Jesus,” one of his people said. “I’ll meet you out in the hallway.”

“Mirror,” the governor said four minutes later, after I’d dusted him quickly with some extra powder. Nothing looks worse on HDTV than shine.

“He wants a mirror,” the governorkeeper said.

I angled the mirror up at him. He nodded, then finally looked at me. “I’d appreciate your vote in November,” he said as he reached his hand out to me.

I picked up my airbrush gun again fast and just nodded. I hadn’t heard the sink turn on in there. Governor or no governor, there was no way I was shaking that hand.

There were two chairs waiting for the candidates on the
Beantown
set. The
Beantown
host and two reporters holding notepads sat directly across from them. They were already in full television makeup. I wondered if Sophia had done it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d probably hogged them all.

After a brief fight by the candidates’ people about which candidate got which chair, there was barely time to attach the microphones and do a quick sound check.

Sophia leaped forward and gave her candidate a quick, and totally unnecessary, I thought, pat on his forehead with a makeup sponge. I ran up there, too, just so I wouldn’t look like a slacker, and flicked a bit of lint off my candidate’s suit jacket.

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C L A I R E C O O K

“Clear the set,” some guy said to me in a really mean voice.

“Sor-ry,” I said.

“We’re live in three, two, one,” he said, and then the goofy
Beantown
theme music came on, and the
Beantown
host started smiling her big, toothy smile. I was standing right next to Sophia, which wasn’t exactly the most comfortable place I could imagine being. I also couldn’t think of a less interesting thing to do than listen to two politicians debate.

When I was married to Craig, he used to rant and rave a lot about politics. I might have even faked political passion a few times, the way some women fake orgasm. But the truth was, I’d never really bought into the whole thing.

The way it looked to me was that they were all basically liars, so what was even the point? Why not simply outlaw having political parties and just make everybody work together, sort of like when I was back in elementary school and dodgeball was briefly replaced by team-building New Games.

Instead of fighting for office, the candidates could simply join hands and say, “We
both
win.” Then they could donate the money they would have spent on ads and fancy dinners and use it to go stop global warming or fill some potholes or something. Cooperation, not competition, was what we needed in the world today.

At the commercial break, I broke into a sprint so I could get to my candidate before Sophia got to hers. I fluffed him up fast, then headed over with my Angel blush to one of the reporters. If Sophia thought she was getting all of them, she had another thing coming.

The reporter covered up his notebook as I approached him.

Like I’d bother to copy his work. “That’s not blush, is it?” he asked.

“Don’t worry,” I lied. “It’s only bronzer.” Summer Blowout

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“I’ll take some of that,” the guy next to him said. “I had a great tan at the beginning of the summer, but it sure doesn’t take long to fade, does it?”

“Clear the set,” the same mean guy said. “We’re live in three, two, one. . . .”

I found a place a bit farther away from Sophia this time. I crossed my arms and leaned back against a wall. I also didn’t quite get the whole U.S. senator thing. I mean, why should Massachusetts pay to send somebody all the way to Washing-ton, instead of keeping him here, where it seemed to me there was more than enough work to be done? Fixing the tunnels and bridges alone could take a term or two.

These guys were particularly boring, even for politicians. If you smooshed them both together into one person, they still wouldn’t have enough combined charisma to get elected to anything, if you asked me. As soon as I glanced up at the mon-itors I could see that neither of them was all that photogenic on television either. Makeup could help, but life was tough—

the camera either loved you or it didn’t. Some cultures thought a camera could steal your soul. I knew for sure it could steal your beauty.

They kept droning on and on until eventually
Beantown
was over. I headed back to the men’s bathroom to pack up my kit. I couldn’t wait to get to Mario and Todd’s to see how Precious was doing. They were responsible enough, but she was probably really missing me by now.

“Bella,” I heard Sophia say behind me just as I was entering my dungeon.

I turned. “What?” I said.

Sophia took a few more steps toward me. She looked like she was wading through knee-high water. Then she just stood there, giving me her sad sack look, as if she were still in fourth