Read Online North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley - Free Book Online Page A

prom.”
    “Technically I am a senior.”
    “It’s not the same.”
    “Mom, I’ll probably be going with Erik to his senior prom.”
    “It’s not the same.”
    I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Unbidden, my hot, swollen cheek throbbed uncomfortably, the way I’d imagine guilt would, laid open. I should have taken the doctor’s advice, been knocked out for this treatment, but then who would have driven us home? Not Erik. The way things were going between him and me, even being his date to the senior prom was hardly a given. Yesterday, when I was supposed to get together with Erik for a quote-unquote study session in his pickup truck, I had outright lied: “Sorry, I’m starting to come down with something.”
    “With what?” he asked.
    I didn’t answer right away. I just didn’t want to get into the whole fixing-my-face conversation again, which only made me uncomfortably suspicious that Erik would never be with me if I hadn’t mastered the Art of the Makeup Mask.
    “Look, I gotta run,” he said abruptly, and hung up before I could make amends.
    Two hours after navigating our way out of Seattle, we drove into the pseudo-Bavarian town of Leavenworth, marking the halfway point home. Mom pointed to King Wilhelm, one of those awful touristy joints that served a healthy portion of oompah-pah accordion music with their sauerkraut. “There,” she said, “just what I need.”
    As surreptitious as any look that had been leveled at me, I glanced at Mom’s hands locked together in a permanent state of worry. Her fingers were so bloated she didn’t wear jewelry anymore — not her wedding band, not a bracelet, not even a watch.
    “Maybe we should just go home,” I said. I couldn’t bear hearing one more of Dad’s comments about her weight.
    The traffic light shifted from red to green, and suddenly Mom said, “You’d be able to come home for the weekends if you went to Western Washington.”
    “But I don’t want to come home!” There it was: the truth leaping off the edge of my thoughts where it had been balancing precariously since forever. I didn’t know if Mom recoiled or if I jerked away, but we both scooted to the edges of our seats.
    Mom’s hurt swelled in the car, her feelings banged up by my one unguarded comment. Softly, she sniffled. “It’s just that it feels like yesterday when you were born. You know, I always wanted a girl.”
    The topography of guilt must be made up of hidden crevasses and needle-sharp spires, because I felt sliced up as I bumbled my way to common ground. I knew that she had pushed for another try at a girl when Dad was completely done with having kids. Even as I stared resolutely out the window — I can’t back down now, I have to go, I have to get away from Dad — I knew Mom was blinking back tears. God, why did I say these things to her, of all people?
    It was freezing outside, and the heater was pumping but not warming up this old Nissan. Still, I cracked my window open and breathed. My first whiff of rain-wet air was mixed with exhaust.
    “Once your birthmark is gone, everything is going to be better,” Mom promised. “Everything. See, we really do need to celebrate.”
    “What?”
    “Progress! Your face!”
    Stick to the agenda; don’t stop until she acknowledges college, I commanded myself. But I couldn’t. Her insistence about my beautification rubbed me raw in a way that my father’s comments about my ugliness did not.
    The traffic light turned green, and I hit the gas, wanting nothing more than to go go go. And we were still only halfway home.
    “Pull over there.” Mom pointed to an empty spot behind a so-shiny-it-looked-new Range Rover. A boy my age dressed head to toe in black was pulling something out of its back. “I need coffee.”
    Coffee meant scone, which meant needless calories.
    “Are you sure?” I asked.
    “I really could use some. But if it’s too much trouble . . .”
    Which was Mom’s way of saying “yes, now.” So I slowed