*15*

So it's Wednesday. You could say I'm confused.

In three days, a bottle will be pointing at me.

Only, I don't know this yet.

Right now, what's pointing at me is a wand of mascara.

And if my eyes don't start looking bigger soon, I won't be able to blink.

Do you know what happens when you don't blink?

Your eyes dry out and fall right out of your head. I think.

It's Wednesday morning, hours before school, way too early in my opinion. And to add to the utter perfectness of the situation, Tess invited Max over.

They're pretending that nothing happened.

So am I.

"We need to reinvent ourselves," Tess says.

I agree with her, but this is not what I had in mind.

"Tess," I say, trying to keep my eyes open, "My eyelashes are already black."

She retracts the menacing mascara wand and frowns, "Don't blink."

I blink.

"Urgh!" She says.

Believe me, I wouldn't be doing this if I hadn't convinced Tess to wear some of my clothes.

In my clothes, I look normal, but Tess looks like she joined a grunge band. I'm a little taller than her so my pants hang below her shoes, also mine. Tess not wearing platforms, you gotta see this. She's got a T-shirt on with a thermal shirt underneath. Grunge, she's only mildly complaining.

Max is more than amused, at both of us.

"It's not even black," Tess says, "It's clear mascara."

"What's the point of that?" Max asks.

"I'll tell you what the point is," I say, "It's a ploy, a marketing scam, they sell you cheap clear gel in a bottle and charge you five bucks a pop. The promise of invisible beauty."

Max says, "Oh."

Tess says, "The point is, it flips your eyelashes up and keeps them in place, and it's cheaper when you don't need the color."

Max nods in confusion and says, "Oh."

"Beauty," I say, "Is an institution."

"Liz," Tess says, "I just wanna make your eyes look bigger."

Max laughs, "You read too much, both of you."

I say, "No such animal."

This is why I'm relying this morning to you: I want you to know that this isn't one of those stories where the girl gets all done up and pretty and the guy realizes he's loved her the whole time, just because this one night she happened to be prettier than usual. That's bullshit, that's not love, that's department store advertisement.

This is the kind of random stuff I think about when I'm not thinking about Max, wondering if he'd like me if I was as pretty as Tess. Wondering if he notices my eyes look bigger or my nails are lavender.

I know, you could choke on the hypocrisy.

Talk about social commentary. I need to stop thinking.

Apparently, my enlarged eyes can only hold Tess's attention for so long. Now she's sitting next to Max, holding onto his arm.

She says, "Do you go to the gym?"

He says, "No, I do pull ups in my room every once in a while."

She rests her head on his shoulder.

Max smiles at me like all his dreams are coming true.

The thing is: he knows it's not real. I just don't get him.

And Tess, she really does like him. You know, she said to me something about if she wasn't in love with Kyle she would really really like Max.

After the crying episode, me and Tess talked here and there about her wanting to kill her dad and her getting the crap beaten out of her like it was no big thing.

Another defense mechanism, Dr. Amos would say.

Rationalization: You come up with various explanations to justify the situation, while denying your feelings.

So yea, we sit here and crack jokes and pretend nothings happening. This is just stuff that we're not ready to deal with. Our unconscious minds are hating us right about now. All three of us.

In two days, I'm gonna wish I wasn't pretending that nothing was happening.

Only, I don't know this yet.

This is what else is going on in my head: Me and Max are going out on our first date. He's taking me to this little independent movie theater to see a movie adapted from a Crater Leviathan book. He buys me a candy bar. I buy him popcorn. When we're sitting down, our arms brush against each other, we both turn bright red and....

"We should get to school," Max says.

Little do I know, this is the day that Max takes over my head, completely. This is what we call obsession. I'm admitting all of this right now: I hate him, I love him, I know him, I don't understand him, but that doesn't matter. I just wanna sit here and think about him, there's not enough time to just think. If I just sit here and think about him enough, maybe it won't matter what's going on in the outside world.

Obsession.

If that's not unhealthy, then I don't know what is.

But at least it makes it easier to convince myself that I'm happy for him. And it makes it easier to focus on what really matters here: Tess.

So yea, I'm confused, you could say.

When we go to school, me and Tess and Max walk through the double doors together. Were reinventing ourselves, so all the high school politics don't matter to us anymore, and nothing matters much to Tess anymore.

I see Maria in the hall, she's not giving me her death glare anymore, she just looks sad. I should apologize right now, but I don't.

In two days I'm really gonna be wishing that I apologized to her.

See:

In three days, a bottle will be pointing at me.

In two days, my face will be slammed up against a refrigerator, a gun will be pointing at me, I'll be thinking about blood and snot mixed with Ketchup and Mustard.

In two days, I'm gonna realize just how many things I should have done differently.

Only, I don't know this yet.