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“You must surely agree, Madam, that this will be perfect for you with this black top,” she said. “Please, try it on, or our designer, Monsieur Daddier, will have a stroke and a half.” She snapped her fingers and called for champagne.
I laughed at her antics.
“That’s not too much of an exaggeration. I’ve been to these fancy-schmancy boutiques and fashion shows with my mother. It’s enough to make you puke. Go on, try it all on already.”
I did. The skirt was the shortest I had ever worn, and the top was so tight it felt like another layer of skin.
“Beautiful. Only you can’t wear a bra with that. It looks stupid. It’s no big deal anymore, Sasha,” she added when I showed surprise. “Don’t worry about your nipples. I’ll show you a little trick, no shows,” she said. She stepped back and looked at me hard for a moment. “You know, I think I remember Mother buying Alena some boots that would go with this. Let me look.”
She went into the closet and was out so quickly that I suspected she had known exactly where they were. They were a pair of high black boots with black fur at the top.
“Try them on. You look like the same shoe size.”
I had secretly tried on some of Alena’s shoes, and they had fit, so I knew these probably would. After I put the boots on, Kiera smiled.
“Wow, you’re really hot. I might get jealous,” she said.
Of me? How could someone who looked like her ever be jealous of me? I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. The girl who looked back at me looked so different that, for a moment, I imagined I was looking through a window at someone else and not at a mirror. Did I dare wear this?
“Now that I see you, I’ve got to rethink what I’m wearing,” Kiera said. “C’mon.”
I followed her to her suite. This was the first time I had seen her walk-in closet. It was a little bigger than Alena’s, and despite the way Mrs. March had been buying Alena clothes, Kiera’s looked fuller. It didn’t look as well organized, but Kiera seemed to know exactly where what she wanted was located. She told me to sit on the chair at her vanity table while she tried on one outfit after another—skirts, tight jeans, and dresses. She asked my opinion about each outfit, but they all looked great to me.
Finally, she decided on a pair of designer jeans with sequins up the sides and across the waist. She matched it with a blouse that wasn’t as tight as mine but left a naked midriff. Then she went to her jewelry and found a pair of earrings for me, as well as a gold necklace. After I had everything on, she looked at me and shook her head.
“Makeup,” she declared, and sat me down at her vanity table. I had never used lip gloss or mascara or eye shadow. As she applied it, she told me why I needed it. She used some blush and then decided we couldn’t go out without my having my nails polished.
“We don’t have time to do a real manicure, but let’s get some color on those fingers,” she said. “Didn’t you ever do any of this?”
“Once my mother did my nails, but she didn’t like me wearing lipstick yet. She didn’t wear much makeup herself. She had such a beautiful complexion. Once,” I added.
She nodded and averted her eyes. “I never really got the chance to do much of this with Alena,” she said, as if she had to match my loss with her own. Then she smiled. “But now I have you.”
She did my nails. She said she would have liked to do more with me but declared that we had to get moving. We hurried out. I couldn’t help feeling very excited, but when we reached the bottom of the stairway, Mrs. Duval was there and nearly dropped her jaw to the floor at the sight of me.
“Mrs. March said you have to be back by eleven,” she told Kiera, her eyes still fixed on me.
“That’s very unlikely,” Kiera said. “I won’t drive fast, and the movie doesn’t end until ten forty-five. It will be closer to midnight.”
“I’m just telling you what your mother told me.”
“Well, I’ll explain it to her when she returns,” Kiera said. She didn’t sound condescending or nasty. She made it seem like nothing anyone should have the slightest concern about.
Mrs. Duval turned to me. “You be careful, Sasha,” she said.
“She’s with me, Mrs. Duval.”
“That’s why I said it,” Mrs. Duval replied, and walked away.
“That woman has come to hate me,” Kiera said. “She can’t wait for me to go off to college or something. She used to love me.” She sounded as if it saddened her, but then she smiled and added, “Oh, well, you can’t get everyone to love you, can you? Let’s go.”
When I got into Kiera’s car, the excitement of wearing those clothes, changing my image with the makeup, and going to socialize with older kids took a backseat to my realization that I was in the automobile that had struck Mama and me. A feeling of dark dread washed over me. It was truly as though I were committing a sin. I was surprised that Kiera hadn’t thought of what this meant. Maybe she had but was just better at burying it. She seemed to be in an entirely different place, a place where she could remember only what she wanted to remember.
“Oh, this is really exciting,” she said. “I feel like I’m taking my younger sister out for her first big night on the town.”
She drove very slowly and carefully through the gate and turned down the road. Because of my silence, she asked if I was all right.
“Yes,” I said, but my voice sounded small, the voice of someone lost.
