Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu Read Free Book Online Page B

her big pink couches, and there are bottles of wine open on every spare surface. I try to look more like twenty and less like seventeen, and I don’t know if the hair is helping or hurting. I try not to care.
    â€œLook what you’ve done! You are hands down the coolest, least bullshit person I’ve ever met in my life.” Her hands go to my hair, twisting and pulling the strands. Her own hair is in messy waves that crash all the way down her back, practically to her butt.
    â€œI call it summer pink,” I say, which I only came up with this very moment. Five too-cool twentysomethings make noises that sound almost like laughter.
    â€œIf I could get cast in commercials with summer-pink hair, I’d absolutely join you,” she says. “But I don’t have the face to pull that off. Or the skin. Man, if I looked like you, my agent would like me about a billion times more.” She has this list of things she hates about herself and that agents and casting directors supposedly hate about her. It would sound negative and bitter coming out of my mouth,but Karissa makes insecurity look almost appealing. Open and comfortable and raw. “I look like ass today, compared to you,” she goes on. “You need to stop showing me up.” Karissa is approximately the greatest person I’ve ever met. It would be impossible to show her up. She pours me a plastic cup of wine. “This is Montana!” she announces to the room. I expect bored nods or total shunning, but with the mention of my name, they all brighten a little. Two of them actually smile.
    â€œMontana!” a girl with short dark hair says. She gets up and shakes my hand. She looks from me to Karissa and back again. “It is so nice to meet you finally.”
    â€œYep. At long last,” I say like it’s all a joke.
    â€œThey’re being weird,” Karissa says. “Don’t be weird, guys. Montana is my friend. From that acting class I did. She’s an old soul.” She overemphasizes the word friend , like they might think I’m something else, but I don’t know what that something else might be, so I’m sweating with nerves.
    â€œOh, okay. I see. Right,” a guy with shaggy blond hair says. “She drinks?”
    â€œI drink,” I say, and Karissa smiles. “I smoke too.” Karissa freaking beams. I’m as cool as she’d told them I would be.
    I pour a little more into my cup and wonder at a world where Karissa is bragging to her friends about me.
    â€œThese people are, like, my created family. Taking care of me ever since mine died,” Karissa says. I’m not used to people speaking at full volume about things like death, so my heart leaps a little at its mention.
    â€œThat’s awesome. I’m so sorry about your family, by the way. Idon’t know if I got that across the other night. But I’m so, so sorry,” I say. I hope it’s right. Her pain makes me feel a little panicked. Like I’m supposed to help but I have no idea how.
    â€œLady, I don’t even remember the end of the night, honestly. Which is the best, right? When it, like, fades? Little bits and pieces bubble up, but most of it exists in some, like, twilight zone?”
    â€œYou make blackout drunk sound beautiful,” I say, even though I’ve never actually been blackout drunk.
    â€œI have a secret,” Karissa says. She has three pickles and a glass of wine in her hand, and the smell is odd and perfect. I’m used to women who all look the same and smell the same and eat the same sad foods—nuts and berries and lean meats and so much spinach I sometimes wonder if it’s a requirement of being my dad’s wife. Karissa is someone else. She doesn’t remind me of anything or anyone.
    I think I could be unusual like her. An original.
    I steal one of the pickles from her and dig in like we do this all the time—share food and drinks and