A Different Me Read online

Kirk Morrison. A star football player who’s academically challenged and views school as an annoyance that gets in the way of kickoffs. Every girl in the school would like to dropkick him because of the slimy way he treats them.

  I’m so busy casing the room that I don’t hear Mrs. M.

  “Alexandra,” she says impatiently, even though everyone else calls me Allie. Before she utters another word, I know exactly who I’m not getting because I see her piercing eyes zero in on the last row, and that is not where Josh Ryan is sitting. “You work with Amber.”

  Amber?

  I look at Mrs. M. and shrug. “Sure.” I turn to look at Amber, who squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head slightly.

  FIVE

  I’m edgy and uncomfortable about meeting Amber in the school library at five o’clock and spending an entire hour going over vocab words with her.

  It’s only sixty pathetic minutes of mentoring, but I’m still intimidated. I’m good in English, so I shouldn’t be, but this isn’t about English. It’s about me. It’s about worthiness. How pathetic is that?

  “I totally dread the thought of mentoring Amber,” I tell Jen.

  “She’s the one who should be embarrassed.”

  “It’s not …”

  “I get it,” she says. “How long have I known you?”

  To buck myself up, I try to convince myself that at some level, Amber is probably just as nervous about working with me. She might feel completely dumb because she repeatedly fails the vocab tests and can’t even fill in the blanks to show she knows the tenses. Maybe needing extra help bothers her and she dreads coming face to face with someone in her class who knows she’s never pulled more than a C.

  Those thoughts flit around in my head as I sit and wait.

  And wait.

  Because even though we’re supposed to meet at five, it is now ten after on my Swatch watch, eleven after on my phone, eight after on the library clock, and Amber is nowhere to be seen.

  Just as I’m making an annoyed face, click. I look up. David Craig has taken my picture.

  “What the hell?” But by then he’s gone, probably off trying to catch somebody else looking pissed off or whatever his pictures are trying to show.

  I text Jen. (Can you believe Amber? She’s still not here.) I start my homework, lecturing myself on being too anal.

  Maybe:

  She had to go home after school and got stuck waiting for the bus to take her back.

  She went home sick. She didn’t have my cell, so how could she reach me?

  She was run down by a cab and went to the ER where a trauma team tried to jump-start her heart. How could she possibly get word to me?

  I hang out a little longer, just in case.

  Five fifteen, five twenty. At five twenty-five, Jen answers: Tell me you’re not still there.

  Home, I reply, embarrassed.

  I swing my backpack off the floor and over my shoulder. Pointless to hang any longer. If Amber shows now, I’ll look like a complete loser for just sitting there waiting, as if I don’t have a life. I head out of the library and walk toward the front doors, passing the lockers. I spot Amber’s locker again. A nanosecond pause and I move on.

  The last thing I want or need is to be caught gazing at it, mesmerized, like some lame groupie. I make my way out to the street where a dozen kids are milling around, half of them on their cells. A few cars are double-parked out front, some with parents behind the wheels waiting for their kids, and others with kids in the driver seats, windows down, so people will assume they drive all the time even though they probably got their permits yesterday.

  As I walk past a black Lexus that looks empty, I hear the low sound of laughter through a half-open tinted window. First a girl. Then a guy. I can’t help but turn to see who it is. That’s when I notice strands of blond hair fanned out on the black leather backseat and a blond guy whose face is pressed against the girl’s. I pause for just a millisecond as the guy moves his head to the side, and I get a clear view of her small and perfect nose.

  “Did you at least tell Meyers?” Jen says the next day at lunch as she scrapes every drop of yogurt from the container with a vengeance. True to the stereotype about redheads, she has a short fuse. When something hits her wrong, alarm bells go off. But after being stood up, I can do without an interrogation by the truth police.

  I glance at her briefly, then look away.

  “Well?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? She doesn’t show up. She doesn’t call. She’s such a complete bitch.” No one could ever accuse Jen of giving someone the benefit of the doubt.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I honestly don’t.

  “So what did you both tell Meyers when she asked how the hour went?”

  “Amber said she looked for me in the library but couldn’t find me. She said she hung around and then left.”

  “And you let her get away with that?”

  My right eyelid starts to twitch. I rub it so I don’t look like a complete freak. “I told Meyers something came up and I had to reschedule.”

  Jen fixes the drama-queen stare on me, hands crossed over her chest.

  “Am I missing something?” she says, crumpling her lunch bag into a ball and pitching it into the garbage.

  “Allie,” she mutters before she turns to go, “get a life.”

  SIX

  I have a life, only sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m the right size for my own skin. Am I the only one not secure in the role of being myself? It’s not something you can just bring up, like asking what you’re wearing to the party on Saturday. I could just imagine asking Jen.

  “Uh, nooo,” she’d say, like I’d completely lost it. Why should she feel that way? She’s not crazed about how she looks.

  So I don’t sit on my bed and take magazines quizzes like the ones that ask: “Do You Make the Grade? Find Out How Much You Love Yourself.” I know how they would come out.

  You’re not happy with the way you are …

  You’re overly concerned with how other people see you …

  What’s worse is that I’m haunted by stupid remarks that people make. “Hey nose,” Kirk called out to me one day on the way to the cafeteria.

  And that was kind—for him.

  My mom opened the door the last time I took one of those quizzes and I slammed the magazine down.

  Sometimes I think my mom should have stayed with acting because her dramatic expressions tell you exactly what she’s thinking. Her blue eyes narrowed slightly so that I could see creases between her eyebrows. She pushed her dark, shoulder length hair away from her face and studied me.

  “It’s a stupid self-assessment quiz, okay?” I held it out to her briefly.

  Her face relaxed. “I wouldn’t read too much into a psychological test in a teen magazine.” She sat on the edge of the bed and I stared at the antique gold locket around her neck. My dad bought it for her on their tenth anniversary.

  “Then again if you’re unhappy, maybe it would help to talk to someone.”

  “Someone?”

  “A shrink.” She shrugged. “Just an idea.”

  Or a surgeon.

  You can’t just start talking to my parents about important things. You have to pave the way slowly because everything they do takes forever.

  New job for my dad: two years and a bajillion phone calls, emails, letters, and lunches later.

  Search for new couch: one year and about eighty gallons of gas to visit every furniture showroom.

  New laptop for me: three months, but only because there was a sale.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  She nodded and stood, picking up a single shoe from the floor and hanging it on the shoe rack in my closet. She closed the door behind her on her way out.

  The truth is that the way I see myself would change completely if I had my nose done. Then if I was taking a quiz about myself, everything would be yes, instead of no.

  “Do you see yourself as beautiful?”


  Or, more importantly, “do you see yourself as worthy of someone’s love?”

  It’s nothing a shrink could fix. They’re always asking how you feel, at least according to Jen and a show I watched on TV about a therapist and his patients. They expect you to talk and think about everything, even if you don’t want to, and all they do is sit there and wait and make you feel dumb and self-conscious. My problem is obvious. A nose. It’s there. You can’t deny it, so what is there to discuss?

  Jen went to a shrink after her favorite aunt died unexpectedly, and she ended up unhappier.

  “You spend almost an hour unloading and then they give you this blank stare and say, ‘So how do you really feel?’” she said. “Or worse, ‘I’m sorry, our time is up. Let’s continue next time.’ That makes you doubly depressed because the last thing you want when you’re talking about your loser life is to stop in the middle and wait a whole week to start talking about it again.”

  Surgery is faster. Therapy with a knife.

  I hit Google and typed the ugliest word in the English language into the search box: rhinoplasty.

  Translation: nose job.

  Somewhere in the middle of the listings I came upon a website called The Swan. It includes bulletin boards about beauty and plastic surgery. People leave comments, but they also post pre- and post-op pictures and ask for feedback. They bitch about procedures and doctors, ask for recommendations of surgeons in their area, or just vent about things they need to get off their chests.

  Click. I’m anonymous. I decided to call myself A.

  So I began.

  A: I’m desperate to get my nose done. No one I know needs the surgery so I feel dumb talking to anyone else about it. If anyone had any idea what I was obsessed with 24/7, they’d think I was a freak, you know?

  When I checked back, I saw that a girl had welcomed me to the site, telling me “not to feel like a freak.”

  “Everyone thinks they’re the only one who obsesses about their nose or whatever else,” she said. “So welcome to the club.”

  Other posts were responding to someone trying to decide which of the three LA doctors she’d seen to go with. Someone else talked about how her nose was so swollen she couldn’t tell how much the surgery helped. As I was about to close the screen, someone named Melanie answered me.

  Melanie: A, I’m consumed with my nose too. Every time I look in the mirror—and I look in every mirror, even my reflection in store windows!—I’m reminded how much I hate the way I look.

  I went to get a snack, and when I came back, there was a comment from another girl.

  Katrina: Mel and A, I know how you both feel. I’m obsessed, 24/7.

  Melanie: No one except my mom and my boyfriend know how much I hate my nose.

  Katrina: I haven’t told anyone at all.

  A: It’s just not the kind of thing you feel safe bringing up because if someone didn’t think about it before, they’ll never not think of it after you talk about it.

  Melanie: My mom took me to a plastic surgeon when I was ten, but he told me it was too early to do it.

  For the next few days, I went back to the site every night after dinner. It started to feel like a private universe where I could finally open up. Mel was always there. Katrina less so, but once the three of us connected, we had a routine—eight o’clock weekday nights, except for Tuesdays when Katrina does volunteer work.

  Katrina: Have any of you seen a surgeon recently?

  A: No, and my parents have no idea how much I think about doing my nose. More than anything, I wish I could go to one of those free consultations because then, at least, I’d find out what could be done.

  Melanie: I’m sure whatever you look like, they can help you. Do you spend hours looking at all the before-and-after pictures on the plastic surgery websites like I do? Can you believe the difference an hour of surgery can make? What did people do before surgery? And before the Net? LOL! Who did they talk to about all this stuff?

  Katrina: Can’t imagine. Maybe all their secrets went into their diaries.

  A: LOL! I’d be afraid someone would find mine. How old are you guys?

  Melanie: 16.

  A: 15.

  Katrina: I’m 15 too.

  For the first time in my life I was spilling all my feelings to faceless people in the virtual universe who got me better than anyone I know in real life. How weird is that? Out of the blue, I was flooded with relief. It was all out there, not locked in my head anymore. There were other people who felt the same way I did. I wasn’t a total freak.

  Now, after only a few weeks, our lives feel bound together.

  One thing we all agree on: “You can’t escape the mirrors.”

  Sometimes I laugh because a lot of what we talk about sounds like it’s off someone’s blog.

  Melanie: Did you ever notice how different lights in dressing rooms—neon (deadly) or incandescent—can totally change the way you see yourself?

  Katrina: I hate to go to the hair salon because a light just above the chair spotlights my nose. It makes me look totally gross.

  Katrina is from a woodsy New Jersey town I never heard of where there are supposed to be black bears. Mel, as she calls herself, lives in Westport, Connecticut, near the water. Unlike my parents, Mel’s sound totally cool.

  Melanie: They think if I can fix my nose and look a hundred times better, why not? Plastic surgery isn’t a big deal for them. You have a problem, you take care of it.

  But that doesn’t settle it for her. She has to deal with Mark, “the boyfriend.”

  Melanie: I’ve been going out with him for almost a year, and he doesn’t want me to do it.

  A: Why not?

  Melanie: His older brother had surgery for a burst appendix and nearly died, so now he can’t imagine why anyone would go near a hospital if they didn’t have to. Not only that, but he likes the way I look. Doesn’t care about the bump—he doesn’t want me to look like everybody else.

  A: What are you going to do?

  Melanie: Do not know.

  Katrina doesn’t have a bump, “just a crooked nose.” She says she has a black belt in tae kwon do, a super-fit body, and long, blond “boy magnet” hair, as Mel calls it.

  Katrina: Still, whenever I look in the mirror, I hate what I see.

  Mel: Hate, that’s the operative word here.

  A: Amen.

  SEVEN

  The next morning, I morph back to the real world. I’m supposed to meet Amber for mentoring at five. In English I slip her a scrap of paper with my home address so I won’t be stuck waiting in the library if she doesn’t show. Only this time, I’m not going to roll over and play dead if she stands me up. It’s called pride.

  “If she pulls something today, Mrs. M. will hear about it so she gets a big fat F and I get another partner,” I tell Jen as we leave school together.

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” she says.

  When I get home, I drop my backpack on my bed and go to the fridge. I take out the milk and pour it over Special K with strawberries. Like magic, the milk changes the look of the berries, bringing them to life.

  I carry the bowl to my room and check my phone for texts. There’s one from Jen.

  Barf-bag David C took a picture of me today a second after I slipped on the staircase. What is it with him?

  I don’t tell her about him taking a picture of me in the library because she already thought I was a douche for waiting so long for Amber. I text back: I’m glad I didn’t get him to mentor—can you imagine?

  On Facebook, Melanie links me to a sale at Nordstrom. I go online to look at cool leopard sneakers and a matching messenger bag, ignoring the baseball cap because it would flatten my hair and red flag my nose. I delete the usual garbage from my email account and start my homework.

  The red digital numbers on the clock radio flash 4:45. What are the chances that Amber will show?

  I go to the mirror and study myself. It’s raining outside, and humidity does not work in m
y favor. I brush my hair hard, then harder, finally hurling the brush across the room. My ceramic straightener. Where the hell is it? I know I left it in the bathroom, but it isn’t there. I discover it half hidden under my bed. Section by section, I straighten my hair.

  After all the times I’ve straightened it, you’d think it would know by now and just give up. I look at the clock.

  Four forty-six.

  Four forty-seven.

  Four forty-eight.

  Will she at least call if she doesn’t come, or is she just a total screwup?

  At four fifty-five, the intercom buzzes.

  “Amber is here,” the doorman announces.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Why did she show this time? Was Josh Ryan out with his mentor?

  Instead of ringing, she knocks softly. She’s wearing a fitted, black down jacket over black jeans and black high tops, and has a black backpack over her shoulder.

  “Hi,” she says, smiling.

  Oddly enough, I think about whether she might be concerned with making a good impression.

  “C’mon in.”

  She follows me to my room. Does she feel guilty about not showing for our first meeting and then making up a story to get out of trouble? She unzips her jacket, tosses it on the bed, and flops down on the floor.

  I glance over at her, trying to ignore the sinking sensation that settles over me whenever I’m around Amber—this aching gut feeling that I’m inferior, an unappealing face in the crowd who fades to black around this standout, über-cool celebrity. I know that’s ridiculous and sick but I can’t help it, so maybe I do need a shrink. I sneak in a deep breath and turn to her.

  “You want to start with the vocab words?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Did you look them over?”

  She raises an eyebrow like, are you serious?

  “Well, look at them now. I’ll get us some juice.”

  In the kitchen I search for two matching glasses and fill them with OJ. Would she rather have soda? But I’d look completely dumb to go back and ask her now after I said I was getting juice.

  To give her time, I stare out the kitchen window and watch a woman trying to walk a golden retriever who’s zigzagging her left and right like they’re on a slalom run, a perfect routine for America’s funniest pet videos. I can’t decide who I have more sympathy for—the owner tugged in all directions, or the dog who’s pulling her. Next I play with the magnetic letters on the fridge, rearranging them in an arc to spell my name.