In this teaser from 13 on Halloween, Roxie is getting ready for her first birthday party ever. Her thirteenth birthday. On Halloween.
I sit in front of the magic mirror my grandpa gave me and want to watch Ally work her magic but she tells me to close my eyes.
“So it’s like this. The dark color always goes in the crease.” She brushes over my eyelid and it feels good and weird all at the same time. She’s got a soft touch but I blink like a maniac anyway. It kills me to keep my eyes shut. I want to see. “The highlight is the lightest shade and you always put that at your brow line.” She say’s brow line like she’s some great make-up artist. “Ok, open,” she says.
When I do, Ally’s sort of dipping into color and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, super into the whole eye-shadow thing.
And my eyes don’t look like my eyes anymore. But when it comes to the mascara she says, “Here, you do it. It’s hard for me to do it on you. Just remember slow and straight.”
I grab the wand, and try to work the brush over my lashes without poking out my eyeball. But I’m all over the place, and my hand slips. I paint a big, freakish black streak across my cheek mid-hiccup.I hate, absolutely hate hiccups and if I have them when the party starts I’ll have to hide in the bathroom until they’re gone because I can’t let anyone hear the I sound I make when I hiccup. It’s not natural.
“Here,” Ally takes back the mascara brush and grabs a Q-tip out of her makeup bag. She uses it to swipe away the black smudges I made under my eyes. Then she dabs the cotton tip with water and pats the spot where I hiccupped my face black. She tells me to look up and my eye burns when she swipes under the bottom lashes with a pencil.
“Ta-DA!”
Wow. I don’t look like me.
“What do you think?”
I am a peacock. “I, uh,“ can’t speak.
“I like that jade eyeliner on you, it brings out your eyes. They look so, I don’t know, different,” Ally says.
“I know, right? Mom would die. Dad would keel over.”
“Well, they aren’t here are they?” Ally says, giving me a look like I’m a genius and proud of me for pulling off my first birthday party while my parents are away. “You do lip gloss and I’ll do my eye shadow.”
And then the doorbell rings. It rings again.
I can’t move from the magic mirror. I always thought what a nightmare it would be to throw a party and have no one show up. That would be peacock-killing. Peacocks always have people come to their parties. And then I wonder why all those peacocks said yes. I have a hard time breathing. I can’t budge from my spot on the floor. Why do they all want to come? The makeup on my face melts a little more with every one of my heart beats.
“Earth to Roxie? Come on!” Ally says. She grabs my hand and we fly downstairs and stop so fast we almost trip and fall into the front door.
The bell rings again, this time it isn’t trick-or-treaters. I can tell from the wiggly windows we have on either side of the front door. They are too big for trick-or-treaters.
“Do I look ok?” I ask Ally right after the bell rings again.
“You look great.” She smiles, proud of her handiwork.
Ally nods and bites her lip. I put my hand on the doorknob and open the door. In walks Adrianne and Hayden and their entire flock. All twelve of them.
Adrianne is everything I’m not. Cool. Blonde. All Skipper about everything. Super tall. Even though right then when they walk through my front door I can sort of tell that Hayden and I make a better couple. He’s the perfect height. I could wear heels and he’d still be taller. Our hair’s almost the same color, only his brown hair has this sort of just-got-back-from-Florida shine to it. But, everyone knows peacocks only like peacocks.