Lipstick Apology (2 page)

“What's wrong with your toes?” a girl from my gym class asked while pulling herself onto the kitchen counter to join me.

“Her second toe curls over the third,” Georgia said, demonstrating with her fingers.

“Gross,” gym girl screamed.

“Georgia!” I exploded.

Just then the front door swung open and two shaky Jimmy Choos stepped onto the floor. My aunt Jolie took a couple more steps into the foyer and stood there frozen. Her makeup was smudged and her hair winged back behind her as if blowing in an unseen wind.

“Jolie?” I asked, stunned. Why was Aunt Jolie here?

Aunt Jolie was a celebrity makeup artist. She was always polished to perfection. Always.

Jolie lived in Manhattan. She wouldn't make the two-hour trip unless my parents asked her to check up on me while they were away. And they'd only left for San Francisco this afternoon!

Jolie weaved her way through the maze of people toward the kitchen, a weird, somewhat dazed look in her clear green eyes.

I eased myself off the counter. “What are you doing here, Jolie? How did you get here?”

“I borrowed Trent's car,” Jolie said, speaking of her business partner and hairstylist to the stars, Trent Mason. She ran her fingers through her knotty blond hair. “It's a convertible. I couldn't figure out how to get the, uh.” She stared at me for a second. “The, uh. The top up.”

Something was seriously wrong with this picture. “Um, did Mom ask you to check up on me, because that's supremely lame.”

“Your mom didn't ask me to come,” Jolie said, her face still expressionless. “I've been trying to call you.”

A breeze blew through the open door and I got goose bumps on my arms.

“I was in a cab,” Jolie continued. Was she blinking back tears? “And I saw the news.” She looked up at the five girls dancing on the counter as if suddenly noticing the ongoing party. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You don't know.”

“What? What don't I know?” My back stiffened.

Jolie turned toward Georgia. “You've got ten minutes to get everyone out of this house.”

Georgia's eyes bulged. She scrambled into the living room.

Without another word, Jolie took my hand and pulled me up the stairs away from the chaos. She opened my bedroom door and motioned for me to sit on the bed.

“What is going on?” I asked, releasing my hand from her grip.

“Emily.” Her voice shook. “Emily, I. They. The news. Your parents. I saw.” She gulped, tears sliding down her face. “I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry.”

I was in a cab and I saw the news. Your parents
. Her words didn't make any sense, but they made my spine tingle and my mouth go dry. I grabbed the remote control off the nightstand, my heart pounding wildly in my chest. The back of my neck felt liquid-hot. I clicked the power button and found a news channel, my fingers fumbling on the remote. And there, scrawling across the bottom of the TV screen in ticker tape, was the answer. The words Jolie couldn't say.

I stood there, remote in my hand, and stared at the screen.
No survivors have been found.

I grabbed my cell phone off the charger. Twenty-six missed calls. I scrolled through, seeing unrecognizable numbers, my stomach clenching as I saw on the caller ID list
Provo, UT.

Nothing made sense. I dropped the cell phone on the floor somewhere and then sank down to the carpet, resting my head against the yellow bedspread. Jolie sat next to me, wrapping her arm around my waist as the barrage of news stories flashed endlessly on the screen.

The house quieted and eventually, the noise from the street quieted, leaving just the sound of the cherry blossom branches tapping against my window screen in the warm June breeze. I watched the red electric numbers slowly change on my alarm clock from 10:35 p.m. up and up to 11:43 p..m, just me and Jolie sitting on my bedroom floor, holding each other, silently staring at the TV. When my lids got heavy, I let them fall, sinking into a restless sleep.

A cramp in my neck woke me several hours later. Jolie was still pressed up against my shoulder, her head leaning on the edge of the bed, but her eyes were red-rimmed and open. The TV was still on. We stared at each other, uncertain what to do. Should I get up and take a shower? Should Jolie make some phone calls? Should we go downstairs and eat breakfast? But neither of us moved. Suddenly, the news anchor's voice seemed to rise an octave, catching our attention.

Who is Emily?
she asked. Words scrolled across the top of the screen in bold capital letters: WHO IS EMILY?

My mouth was parched. My throat ached with an intense pain I'd never felt before.

The camera zoomed in on the news anchor. She was standing next to a fireman who was holding a large mangled piece of plastic in his hands.

We're here among the wreckage from Flight 565, which made a crash landing earlier this evening. As the emergency medical help searched for any survivors and crews combed the rubble for the black box, there's been an interesting find . . .
The camera zoomed in on the plastic slab in the fireman's char-covered hands.

I breathed in, out, in again. This was not happening. I saw coral lipstick. God-awful, unforgettable, coral lipstick. We begged my mother to stop wearing that lipstick.

This is a tray table,
the news anchor explained.
Written across this tray table in what appears to be lipstick is the desperate plea of a passenger who perhaps knew she would not make it off this flight ...

The camera zoomed in even closer on the coral lipstick writing. It was smudged, but, unbelievably, the message was still clear. It read: EMILY PLEASE FOR GIVE ME.

 

 

“You're sitting there like a human-size packet of Sweet'n Low.” I stared at Jolie as she parked the Lexus.

She propped her Versace sunglasses on top of her blond hair and looked at me, a horrible fake smile plastered on her face. “What, babe?”

I gestured to her neatly pressed white pants and bubble-g um-colored silk halter. “You're all pink and artificially sweet.”

Her smile faltered. “I'm just trying to make this easier on you.”

“Don't bother.” I rebuckled my seat belt. “I'm not going in there.” I nodded toward the sixteen-story glass and aluminum tower across the street. The early September sun bounced off the reflective building, shining more light than I had seen all summer. Well, except for the paparazzi flashbulbs that c aptured my grief-stricken hideousness and shared it with the tabloid reading world.

I shook my head and pushed my sunglasses closer to my eyes. “I can't do this. I can't go in there.” I gestured with my chin across the street toward the entrance to her apartment. “Where's the front lawn? The driveway? That thing doesn't even have a stoop. It just has . . . rotating doors. And a doorman!” I reached over and tried to restart the car, but Jolie grabbed my hand.

“I can't live in
New York City
.” I concentrated on not hyper-ventilating. “I need to go back to Pennsylvania, where things are normal. People live in houses with NORMAL DOORS! What do you say we just hook a U-ie and head back home. I need to go home.”

“Honey,” Jolie said in that sugary voice again. “This
is
your home now.”

I looked at the contemporary building with its hard edges. It was even more formal than my father's engineering firm in Philadelphia. Just behind us a parking spot feud was erupting between a Mercedes and an Escalade. Across the busy street, bikers sped along a harsh, wide river, the Hudson.

“Can't you just let me finish high school with Georgia in Pennsylvania?” I begged, knowing I'd be terrified to enter those halls again, but anything seemed better than this loud, unfamiliar place. “It's only a couple years before I go off to college. I need her. We were going to be on the prom committee this year,” I said, my voice breaking slightly. I knew it sounded stupid, that I was rambling.

Jolie gripped the steering wheel. “My job is here, Emily. My apartment is here. My life is here.”

I wanted to say,
What about my life?
But that was the point, wasn't it. I didn't have a life anymore. Life as I had always known it was over.

I was silent as we retrieved our bags from the trunk.

We walked through the cold lobby and onto an elevator, which dinged several times, then spit us back out. Jolie walked at lightning speed down a long, doorless and windowless corridor and swung open the door at its end. “Welcome home,” she said.

I remembered my mom telling me that Jolie's apartment was amazing. Her makeup line, Jolie Jane Cosmetics, had really taken off, especially amongst the celebrities, allowing Jolie to live like her pampered clientele. As I stared into the immense apartment, I thought,
Man, she must sell a lot of lipstick
.

The living room had soaring ceilings and an entire glass wall of windows that framed the Hudson River. A white leather couch and chair surrounded a plasma TV. There was a scattering of photographs: Jolie and a man standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Jolie and a different man skiing. Jolie and a group of women singing into a microphone, cocktail glasses in their hands. Stacks of fashion and celebrity magazines filled baskets next to the fireplace, and a few wilting plants hung near the windows.

I followed Jolie down a hallway as she rambled about asking Trent to fix the bedroom for me. She opened the door and sighed.

“Jeez,” Jolie said, looking at the pink and purple bedspread covered with dragonflies and ladybugs. “Trent is obviously under the impression that you're nine years old.”

The room was long and rectangular with a cold, dark wood floor and wall panels of elaborate moldings. The room was even nicer than the one in the Hilton we'd stayed at two summers ago. I dropped my duffel bag by the bed.

“Jolie,” I said, recognizing the cream upholstered head-board from photos, “is this
your
bedroom?”

“Nah,” she said, “it's your room now. I had Trent move my stuff into the office.”

My throat constricted. “You didn't have to do that.”

She ignored me. “Don't worry.” She tapped the bedspread. “This pink nightmare will be gone by tomorrow.”

We heard a quick knock at the front door followed by shuffling feet.

I had seen pictures of Jolie's best friend, Trent, and had heard countless stories of his escapades, but I could honestly say that nothing prepared me for our first actual encounter. He was tall and sculpted, dressed head to toe in black, with spiky hair and kind, gray eyes. He paused at the bedroom door, and for a second, pain—or maybe pity—flickered over his face like a shadow when he looked at me. Then his eyes slowly moved upward and he whispered, “Virgin.” He inched toward me, hands outstretched, aimed at my head. “Vir-gin.”

Jolie smacked him on the arm. “Leave her alone!”

Oh my God.
My face flamed with humiliation.

“Never processed.” He inched closer. “Never colored.”

Huh?

He inched closer. “Never flat-ironed. Oh my God, do you not even blow-dry?” His voice was shrill.

He was about to caress my head when Jolie pushed him away. “Don't molest my niece's hair!” She turned to me. “Ignore him; he's over-caffeinated.”

Trent backed away, mocked insult, and sat down on the bed. “It's just so rare. You practically have to find an infant to get virgin hair around here.”

Jolie rolled her eyes. “Emily, this nutcase is Trent. Unfortunately, you'll be seeing a lot of him.”

Trent stared at me again with his warm, gray eyes and shook his head as he pushed my half grown-out bangs out of my face. “Listen, honey. Trent doesn't do trauma. Trend doesn't do
sad
. Trent does hair. So when you need me,” he announced, standing up, “you'll tell me, right, Goldilocks?”

Jolie sighed. “Okay, that's enough out of you. Let's let Emily unpack and relax.”

They walked out. And that, right there, summed up the vast difference between Jolie and my mother. My mother would never have left me alone.

 

THE ROOM LOOKED SO BARREN.
There were no knickknacks or photos on top of the dresser. The bookshelves just had a few artfully placed faux books with names of the classics printed on the front. The walls were empty. At first I thought Trent might have taken down decorations to allow me to put up my own things, but I didn't see any nail holes. I sat on the rectangular Persian rug and unzipped my duffel bag. It felt odd, like I was unpacking at a hotel. I glanced up at the vast beige walls and hoped that when the movers brought the rest of my things, it would feel more like home.

A few minutes later I heard laughter and followed the voices down the hall. The door was open, so I peered in. This room was slightly smaller than my bedroom but much more cluttered. A glass-shelved rolling cart was filled with black jars emblazed with a gold
JJ
logo. There was a full-length framed mirror in the corner. Atop a kidney-shaped desk was a pile of mail. Propped up behind the stack of envelopes was a document with a boldfaced heading that read: LEGAL GUARDIANSHIP. In all the empty slots my full name had been typed.