My Life in Black and White

M
Y
L
IFE IN
B
LACK AND
W
HITE

MY LIFE IN
BLACK AND WHITE

by
NATASHA FRIEND

Viking

An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Viking

Published by Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2012 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Copyright © Natasha Friend, 2012

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Friend, Natasha, date–

My life in black and white / by Natasha Friend.

p. cm.

Summary: When beautiful high school student Lexi is involved in an automobile accident that leaves her disfigured, she must learn who she really is beyond a pretty face, and she must also learn to forgive.

ISBN: 978-1-101-57210-8

[1. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 2. Beauty, Personal—Fiction. 3. Peer pressure—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 6. Boxing—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.F91535My 2012        [Fic]—dc23         2011021436

Printed in USA        Set in Dante        Book design by Nancy Brennan

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For my mom and dad,

who knew me when I was fifteen

and loved me anyway.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Two Things

It’s Not What You Think

Pussy Galore

Talk to Me

How Do You Make a Venetian Blind?

A Lifetime Supplyof Antimicrobial Soap

Bogus, Bulimic, Smack Shooters

Make Yourself Comfortable

Burnt Toast

Just Shoot Me Now

You Don’t Mean That

Delinquent

Ifonlyifonlyifonly

The Point of Baked Chicken

There Must be a Reason You’re Dressed that Way

Specks of Dust, Atoms

Meow

Petty Little Problems

I’d Rather Be Cleaning Litter Boxes

The First Breath Is the Worst

Kissing the Canvas

It Doesn’t Take Nancy Drew to Figure It Out

So Unbelievable

Never Is a Strong Word

Peace Offerings

Just Happy Not to Be Barfing My Guts Out

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Prologue

HERE IS A
picture. I am three years old, and I am perched on a stool in front of a dressing table, sweeping blush over my cheeks with a feathery wand. In the background, my mother hovers. Her hair is a waterfall of gold, her waist the circumference of a cantaloupe. She is wearing a sheath dress, pearls, and crocodile pumps with sensible heels. The image is so clear I can actually smell her Shalimar perfume. I can hear her voice—smooth, with the hint of a Carolina accent. “You,” she says, “are my beautiful girl.”

Ha!

It is unavoidable. Wherever you go in my house, there I am. Hanging in the alcove over the stairs, propped on the mantel, stuck to the refrigerator door with alphabet magnets. After what happened, you would think that someone would tear down every photo in the universe so I wouldn’t have to look at myself. But no one has.

This used to bother me. I used to skulk around my house, staring at all the shiny, happy Alexas and imagining the ways I could destroy her. Knock her off the wall and watch the glass shatter. Hole-punch her face. Microwave her into oblivion.

In the end, though, I didn’t remove a single photo. I left that girl exactly where she was, suspended.

Poised in time.

Waiting to become me.

Two Things

WHEN I WAS in fourth grade, my best friend, Taylor LeFevre, and I would ask each other these crazy questions: “Would you rather be burned alive or frozen to death?” “Would you rather be deaf or blind?” “Would you rather have a genius IQ and a butt the size of Texas or be model thin and dumb as a box of rocks?” While other girls were skipping rope and scaling the monkey bars, we were pondering worst-case scenarios. Like, what if tomorrow you got leukemia like Jenny Albee’s brother? Would you take the chemo that makes you bald or hold on to your hair so you’d look good at your own funeral? “Hair,” Taylor said at the time. “Definitely hair.” A tragic choice, but classic Tay. She had the best hair in fourth grade, the bi-level cut—short on one side, long on the other—which my mother would not allow me to get. She also had the best clothes—Juicy Couture hoodies in every color and jeans with a rip in the thigh—which my mother would not allow me to buy. Taylor’s mother, Bree, let Taylor wear whatever she wanted, unlike mine, who insisted on “classic lines” and “quality fabrics” whenever we went shopping.

But at least I had one thing going for me that Taylor didn’t. The one thing that drew her to me on my first day of kindergarten, my first week in Connecticut, when she marched over to the dress-up corner where I was trying on shoes and poked me in the arm. “Hey,” she said in her low, gravelly voice. “You’re pretty.”

“I know,” I told her. Because by the age of five, I had already heard it a million times. Not just from my parents, either. From total strangers. Every morning, I would sit at the kitchen counter while my mother brushed out my long, butter-colored hair until it shone. I stood patiently while she fussed over the pleats in my smocked dresses. It didn’t matter where she took me that day—the park or the mall or the grocery store—someone would always comment. “What an enchanting little girl. Look at that skin. Those eyelashes.”

“You can play with me,” Taylor said, holding out her hand, as if there were a direct connection between my appearance and her willingness to be my friend. Which, of course, there was. But so what? I, too, was awed. Taylor was the only girl in kindergarten wearing earrings. Real ones. Tiny glass orbs that shimmered like disco balls. I thought of my own ears—bare and boring, because my mother didn’t believe in piercing. She wore earrings herself, but they were the clip-on variety. I shared this information with Taylor as the two of us tied aprons around our waists, preparing to flip plastic burgers in the kid-sized kitchen.

“Clip-ons?” Taylor raised a doubtful eyebrow. “That’s what grandmas wear. Real pierces are better.”

She was right, of course. Real pierces were better. Everything, I would learn, was better in Taylor’s world.

Two weeks later, she invited me over for a playdate. I walked into the LeFevres’ foyer, gaping like a fish at the splendor before me. It was nothing like our old condo in Charlottesville, or the Connecticut cape we’d just moved into. This was a McMansion—the type of dwelling my mother considered tacky—but I loved it, anyway. I loved the sky-high ceilings and the chandeliers. I loved the sleek, leather couches and Taylor’s canopy bed and the kidney-shaped pool in the backyard. I remember thinking to myself that
this
was a house,
this
was living.