Read Online Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu - Free Book Online

symmetrical. Like Mona Lisa. “She’s special,” Dad goes on. “I promise. You’ll see. She’s not like any of . . . anyone else. Anyone else I’ve ever met.”
    â€œWhere’d you find her?” Arizona says. I laugh, because it’s the perfect word for what Dad does. He finds girlfriends and wives, he doesn’t really meet them.
    Dad doesn’t answer her question. He looks sheepish and puts his hands in his pockets, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen my father nervous before, but this is what it looks like on him.
    And without meaning to, I have hope again.
    â€œCell phones off tonight,” Dad says. “Even mine, okay? Everyone I want to hear from will be at that table.”
    The hope nudges forward. Dad never turns off his phone. Maybe the new woman will be different. I smooth down my flyaway hairs and ask Arizona for lip gloss. I don’t know exactly why, but if Dad can move a little in one direction, I guess I can too. Because who knows. Because maybe.
    Dad answers the door, and I hear the laugh.
    Her laugh.
    Shit.
    Arizona and I push our way onto the stoop.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” I say, even though I already know and definitely don’t want it confirmed.
    Karissa smiles and blushes. “You promised you’d be open-minded about my secret,” she says.
    â€œWhat the fuck are you doing here?” I say because the blush tells me everything.
    â€œHey now,” Dad says. My whole body is beating with anger. Like my heartbeat has taken up residence in every joint and bone and muscle.
    â€œI know how much you love Karissa,” he continues. “And I want youto know that I do too.” He’s nervous but measured, and it makes me even angrier.
    She is all legs and giggles and shakiness.
    â€œHi?” Arizona says, trying to navigate the moment without any sort of road map.
    â€œI’m Karissa.”
    â€œI’m Arizona.”
    â€œYou can probably tell I know your sister,” Karissa says, reaching for me and then changing her mind. Instead she hooks her hand into a tiny, nonfunctional, finger-size pocket right below her hip. “We were in acting class together. So.”
    â€œSo,” Arizona says. I’m unable to speak, and I have a feeling this is the last syllable Arizona will be able to get out for a while too. Karissa is only a few years older than us. She looks like she could still be in high school. She wears dresses with fake pockets and gives me cigarettes and wine and a special brand of attention. She’s mine. She cannot belong to my father.
    â€œAbsolutely one hundred percent no,” I say. I won’t look Karissa in the eye, but I have no trouble staring down my father.
    â€œI didn’t approach her until your class was over,” Dad says, like it’s a good enough excuse. My class with Karissa finished up two months ago. I wonder if he knows about the bars and the boys and the pickle- and-wine parties and the cigarettes and the way she tells me I’m adult and special and her best friend.
    â€œYou know I think you’re the greatest,” Karissa says. Her voice is low, as if it’s a private moment between her and me, but with all fourof us on the stoop, there’s no room for secrets. “And I honestly believe this could be something . . . magnificent.”
    Loneliness jabs at me. All the time I spent with her, I thought I was finding my Person. It’s unbearable. And embarrassing. And so terribly sad.
    â€œThis isn’t happening,” I say. If I could think of the right words to yell at her, I’d do that, but there’s a screeching in my mind, a banshee of fury, and it’s hard to think with that going on.
    â€œWe’re still best friends. I don’t want that to change,” she says, in the exact moment that everything is changing. I can’t stop thinking of her skinny friends and their bemused