Read Online Things I Know About Love by Kate Le Vann - Free Book Online

Princeton, NJ, USA. Just a few weeks ago I was studying for my final exams with friends, passing round the popcorn while we asked one another test questions about parliamentary reform in the nineteenth century. Now my mum isn’t around to worry about me, and there’s only my brother keeping an eye on me. No one is going to talk me out of doing something by reminding me it isn’t the sort of thing I do—the way my friends might. No one here is going to be surprised or freaked out if I don’t seem myself because they don’t know what that is. There’s just a blank page for me to fill, every day.
    “Shiny!”
    Krystina’s stylist, Guy, had walked over to take a look at the job Paul was doing on my hair, and he paused behind me with his arms folded. I looked up. My hair looked like red metal, and as Paul dried it in soft sections, I could see how fabulous the cut was. It was just resting on my shoulders rather than hanging a little below them, the fringe seemed to have grown longer (?) and was gently swept to one side, and the rest was this amazing dense mass of blunt layers that melted into one another when I shook them, making it look as if my hair was made up of lots of different shades. But it felt so light, and when I shook my head, it flew up and then fell back exactly into place, deliberately imperfect, a little bit edgy.
    “What have you done?” I squeaked.
    “Don’t you think it’s pretty?” Paul said.
    “Oh my God, pretty? I love it!” I said. “I’ve never had good hair!”
    “Are you kidding? People would kill for your hair.”
    “Oh, it’s not the hair,” I said, feeling really shy. “It’s your cut. Thank you so much.”
    I had a quick reality check when Krystina came over to admire it, too. She was glowing somewhere inside a halo of long, golden, film-star tresses.
    “You look so beautiful,” I told her.
    “Yeah, yeah, we’re cute,” she said. “But we’re not finished yet.”
    We went to a shopping mall next, and I thought how horrible it would be to go into artificial light on such a fantastic sunny day, but as soon as the air-conditioning hit me, I changed my mind. Cold, cold, fabulous cold, and suddenly my clothes felt looser and my face felt less shiny than my hair. Our first stop there was a department store, where Krystina sat us down at a makeup counter and let the orange-faced ladies give us a new look with “this season’s summer palette.” This was slightly less successful than the haircuts. We were trying not to giggle as we compared our amazing pearly finishes: they were sort of lovely and fairylike but, on the other hand, a lot too much like the makeup I used to wear to ballet recitals when I was six years old. We both left with a sack of free samples, burst out laughing when we were well away from the makeup department, and dared each other to keep it on all day.
    Krystina was right, though. When you try clothes on and you feel a bit grubby and messy, everything looks wrong on you because you’re too busy looking at your own flaws—but you don’t want to look. When you’re perfectly groomed and posh and pretty, you just can’t stop looking at yourself, thinking, I don’t know if this can be true, but I look great. I bought as many clothes as I could afford in preparation for coming to Princeton, and I have to make the money my mum gave me last the whole three weeks, but I bought one more dress this morning. It’s black, with two-inch wide straps, but cut very high, almost like a slash-neck. It’s really fitted on the bodice, then at the waist there’s a fat gray bow and the skirt starts to stick out, just a bit wider than A-line. Very Audrey Hepburn. Not remotely old-me. But not so posh I couldn’t wear it in the daytime with a little cardigan knotted at the waist. I love this dress so much that I never want to take it off. I almost made the woman pack up my scruffy old denim skirt in the bag so I could leave in it, but I knew I should save the dress for