That compliment shouldn’t have made me so proud. I had probably seen a customer buy this outfit or something.

“Did I tell you that our business is up ten percent since we started stocking the makeup?”

“No, that’s great.” I folded the removed clothes and slid the shirt I had selected over the neck of the headless lady. Then I stared at the white, unbending arm, wondering how I was supposed to get that into the sleeve.

“It is great.” She put her purse back beneath the counter.

“Um . . .” I tried to twist the arm up and it popped off and clanked to the floor.

Linda looked up and laughed when she saw my face. “It pops right back on. You’ll get the hang of it. I’ll be right back.” And with that she disappeared into the back, leaving me with a one-armed mannequin.

I eventually realized the arms had to come off to fit the shirt on, but I had no idea how the skirt would fit over her wide stance. I laid her on her back and kneeled beside her, shimmying the lacy skirt up her legs.

This is how Skye found me when she walked into the store. “Hey, Charlie.”

“Hi. Linda’s in the back.”

We both looked at the half-dressed dummy on the floor then back at each other. Skye laughed.

“Any tips on mannequin dressing?”

“Surprisingly, I’ve never done it before.” She stepped forward and grabbed hold of the legs, trying to shove them together. “Oh. They don’t move.”

“Yeah.”

“Here. I’ll hold her neck and you shove her skirt on.”

“This feels so wrong,” I said as we both took our positions.

“She has no head, so she doesn’t know she’s being violated.”

I laughed and finally got the skirt to her waist. We hoisted her to her feet and both stared at her.

Skye tilted her head. “Are her arms lopsided?” She tried to move the right arm up and it popped off. “I broke her.”

“No, it goes back on.”

She swung the arm and smacked me on the butt with the mannequin’s hand.

“Hey, I have a head and am fully aware when I’ve been violated.”

Skye laughed, and I popped the arm back on and shoved the mannequin into the window before we messed her up even more.

“Thanks for rescuing me.”

“No problem.” Skye headed for the back and Linda, but stopped. “Oh, remember that band I was telling you about? My boyfriend, Henry’s?”

“Yes.”

She pulled a flyer out of her purse and pointed to a picture of a flattened toad on the front. “It’s this Friday. Right up the street. You should come.”

“Yeah. I’ll try. Thanks.”

“No problem.” I watched her walk into the back room. I wondered what she and Linda talked about. How did they have anything in common?

The sound of crinkling paper made me look down. I realized I had the flyer in a death grip. Maybe I should go to this concert. I was a sporting-event type of girl, not a loud-music event one. At least that’s what I had always thought. But here I was standing in this store, in these clothes, hearing the sound of laughter in the back room, and realizing that maybe there was more to me than I realized.

Chapter 18

Just because I decided I would go to the concert didn’t mean I had to go alone. I impulsively called Amber to go with me. I figured she was more the rock-concert type than anyone else I knew.

She was on her way to my house, but I was up in my bedroom, trapped by the sounds of my brothers downstairs. It should’ve been easy for me to march down there in these clothes that I’d been wearing at work for weeks and tell them I was going out. It wasn’t. They still hadn’t seen me like this. And I felt like a fraud. Like this was just me playing pretend. Like they’d call me out on that fact.

Their laughter carried into my bedroom even though I had the door tightly shut. They were loud. I looked at my outfit one more time—a pair of skinny jeans and a shirt that showed more of my chest than I was used to showing. My hair hung down my back and actually looked shiny and full today with the help of some tips I’d learned from Amber.

I threw my shoulders back and headed for the door. I could do this. The door handle felt like a weight in my hand, too heavy to turn. Defeat wasn’t usually a feeling I let myself live with, but this time I knew I was beat. I walked to my closet, retrieved an oversized sweatshirt, and threw it on. Then I grabbed an elastic band from my desk, pulled my hair back, and went downstairs.

“Charlie!” Gage said the minute I’d reached the landing. “Hurry, get over here. I just bet Braden I could throw five pieces of popcorn into your mouth in under thirty seconds.”

“What?”

“Stand over there.” He pointed to a spot ten feet in front of him.

I looked at Braden, who was sitting on the couch, his feet on the coffee table. One side of his mouth lifted into a smile. Why did his smile make me want to do this? “He can’t do it,” Braden said.

“Why am I the person who has to be on the receiving end in this bet?”

Gage shrugged. “I don’t know. Braden said it’d be harder or something so I should get you down here. I was just about to text you.”

Braden wanted me down here. I looked at him again.

“I didn’t want grease on my face,” he said, but his cheeks seemed to brighten with a tint of pink. “Just open your mouth. There’s money on the line here.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, I don’t have time for you dorks tonight. I’m going out.”

“Where are you going?” Gage asked.

I wanted to tell them where I was going, and if it were just Braden, I might’ve. But I wasn’t ready for questions from Gage. “Work. Inventory.” It hurt me to lie to him like that. We were close. I usually told him everything.

“Have fun.” I started to walk away, thinking I should just turn around and tell them I was going to a concert. Maybe they’d even want to go with me. But then Gage said, “Braden, go stand over there. I can make five pieces.”

“Are you sure you’re ready to lose five bucks?”

“Do it.”

I looked once over my shoulder as I headed for the door and saw Braden standing up to be the target for Gage’s popcorn. Our eyes met for a moment, and normally I would’ve said something like You shouldn’t have made a bet like that when your mouth is so big. Or Popcorn in the eye sounds fun. But instead I just stared until my foot caught on the edge of the carpet and I pitched forward, nearly falling flat on my face. The sound of laughter behind me propelled me right out the door.

When I jumped into the front seat of Amber’s car, I took the elastic band out of my hair, then peeled off my sweatshirt and threw it in the backseat. She pulled away from the curb.

“You’re not wearing much makeup.”

I usually wore none. But tonight I had applied a coat of mascara and my ChapStick. I never do is what I should’ve told her, but instead I said, “I didn’t have time to put a lot on.”

“There’s a purple case in my bag in the back. You can borrow some.” She reached over and flipped down the visor in front of me, revealing a mirror.

An image flashed through my mind of me sitting in the backseat of a car, watching my mom apply makeup. She looked back at me, sunlight turning the outline of her dark hair white, and smiled. Then she put a hand on my knee before going back to her task.

The memory was like a jolt to my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut and flipped the visor back up. “I think I’m okay.”

“Okay. Oh, I meant to ask you if you could be the canvas for Antonia. The girl she arranged with fell through, and this is her first class at this store.” She opened the center console and pulled out a flyer. “I told her you might do it. I’d do it, but I’m doing my cousin’s makeup for her wedding. It’s this Sunday.”

I took a deep breath, trying to forget the flash of memory, and stared at the flyer, not processing anything. “What time?”

“In the afternoon, I think. Doesn’t it say on there?”