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Ellis laughs at my disgruntled face as she lounges in Jolene’s plush chair in the corner of her room. I wish she wasn’t here to witness my mortification. The last time I was forced to primp like this was for my high school senior photos, and my grandma pinched my cheeks and told me I was a “sweet boy.” After my mom got the pictures back from the photographer, she showed them to anyone and everyone who would look at them. She framed them and hung them all over our house. I hated it. I vowed to never take photos again.
How did I end up here? It’s the Barker girls. They’re all very convincing on their own. Get them together, and you’re doomed. These girls could convince me to buy a bridge in a desert.
“You’re next, young lady,” Jolene says, pointing a comb in Ellis’s direction. She stops laughing and sits up straighter. Her long, wavy hair fans around her shoulders. I want to feel the silky strands and wrap it around my fist. I shake the thought out of my head just as I always do when thoughts like these pop up.
She’s just a friend. She’s your best friend, I remind myself.
“Why are you next?” I ask, turning my head to see her better. Jolene grabs my chin and turns me back to face her. Sheputs some clear stuff in my eyebrows and combs it in. I had no idea women did so much to their faces, and this isn’t even half of it, according to the makeup artist who’s currently plucking stray hairs from my brows like she has some sort of personal vendetta against me. My eyes start to water when she gets a more stubborn hair.
“You can’t cry right now, Josiah! You’re going to mess up all my hard work,” she says, stomping her foot and pointing a finger in my face. She dabs under my eye with a tissue, looking more annoyed than is warranted. I thought she was supposed to be nice. She must not treat her normal clients like this, or she’d have horrible reviews. And I’ve seen her reviews online. Everyone claims she’s an angel.
“Oh, um… I wasn’t going to say anything because I know you despise social media and you’d torment me about it… But I’m starting an account for all of our adventures. It’ll be like a video diary to document everything, and I’ll be able to look back on it and see how far I’ve come,” she says. She lets her hair fall in front of her face to hide the deep blush that has settled on her cheeks.
“Adventures?” I ask. I thought she was just going to try to find a new hobby. I wasn’t aware that she planned on traveling or doing anything outlandish. I don’t have the funds to be able to do all of that with her. Everything I have in savings has to support me until I build up enough business to pay my bills again.
“Well, adventure might have been a stretch, but for me, it is adventurous. I’m trying new things and starting a new life of sorts. Adventure is a relative term, isn’t it?” She shrugs her shoulders with an air of defensiveness. I get the sense that I’ve offended her. I didn’t mean to make her embarrassed or belittle her. I don’t want her to think that I’m anything but proud of her for putting herself out there and trying to live herbest life. I’m proud that she’s not letting Brandon’s betrayal break her. She could be wallowing in self-pity, but instead, she’s putting on a brave face and trying new things. And I guess she’s going to be doing it for the world to see. She’s so strong—stronger than she thinks.
“Oh, okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“It’s a good idea,” I say, trying my best to sound supportive. Willingly starting a social media account to document new hobbies is not something I would choose to do, obviously, but if it’s what she wants to do, then she should go for it.
“It was Jolene’s idea,” she says, waving a hand at her sister, who is now plucking hairs from my ears. It hurts like the dickens. I wave her hand away and stand from my seat at her vanity table. She tries to reach up to grab at one last stray hair.
“Enough! You aren’t taking pictures of my ears, are you?” I grumble and rub my stinging ear. If I had known she was going to be this meticulous, I never would have agreed to this.
She throws the tweezers onto the little table and sighs. “I’m just trying to help you reach your full potential.”
“Okay, children,” Ellis says. “That’s enough bickering.”
Ellis moves to take my place at the vanity, and Jolene immediately gets to work applying creams and powders. She puts the tan goop all over her face, and I’m disappointed when I can barely see her freckles afterward. Her freckles are one of the best things about her face.
Ellis sits quietly and lets Jolene do whatever she wants. She doesn’t even flinch when Jolene begins to attack her eyebrows with the tweezers. She just trusts that Jolene will have her looking beautiful afterward. The joke is on her, though, because she always looks beautiful. She could be wearing a grocery sack and have a literal bird’s nest in her hair, and she’d still be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
“What are you going to try first?” Jolene asks, bringing the conversation back to Ellis’s hobby hunt.
“I was thinking of letting Josiah choose the first one since he agreed to try things with me,” she says. She looks at me pleadingly. This is the first time I’m hearing this. I did agree to go along with her on some things. I’m the one who suggested it, actually. But that was before I knew she was going to be documenting everything online. Now I’m not so sure if I want to be a part of it. Surely she could ask one of her sisters or Valerie to do it with her. Starting my page for my graphic design is already pushing toward my limit. This just might push me over the edge. But I can’t back out on her, not when she needs me and she’s looking at me with those big puppy eyes. She’s doing it on purpose. She knows I can’t resist the sad, puppy eyes.
She points to the list of activities on Jolene’s nightstand, and I give it a quick glance. There’s a lot of stuff on here that sounds downright torturous. Knitting? Yoga? Cooking?
“How about we go to the rock-climbing gym? I’ve always wanted to give that a try,” I suggest. Jolene laughs hysterically and accidentally smudges black goop (pretty sure I remember that being called mascara) across Ellis’s forehead. Both women gasp and then get to work correcting the mistake.
“Umm, I’ve definitely never rock climbed,” Ellis says.
“Or had the desire to rock climb,” Jolene adds.
“It’s okay if you want to do something else first, but it is on the list,” I say, pointing at where it’s written in Ellis’s own handwriting on the paper. I don’t want to drag her somewhere she doesn’t really want to go. This is for her, after all. I could ask one of my guy friends to go with me. Caleb, my old roommate from college and workout buddy, likes to do outdoorsy things. He’d probably be interested. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he has a membership at a rock gym.
“Merrily suggested it to me, but it sounds…interesting,” she says, but she doesn’t look excited or at all sure about herself.
Ellis and I are standing in front of a huge wall of brightly colored “rocks” waiting for our instructor for the day to give us instructions. We have on our special climbing shoes, we have our bags of chalk for our clammy hands, and we’ve been strapped into harnesses…but neither of us knows what the heck we’re supposed to do. That wall in front of me might as well be Mt. Everest. I could maybe make it six feet off the ground if I tried right now. Maybe. If I’m lucky.
I’m suddenly very nervous that I’m about to make a fool of myself. When you look at pictures of these places online, it doesn’t look too bad, but now that I’m standing in front of this wall, I’m realizing how high up it goes and how far apart those little rocks are. And speaking of the “rocks”, they’re so much smaller than I thought they would be. How am I supposed to grip those things? I thought there’d be more to hold onto.
The instructor saunters over to us, looking very cocky. I want to punch his skinny face. I just know he’s going to love holding my inexperience over my head in front Ellis. I saw the way he was checking her out in her tiny workout shorts while we were signing our waivers a few minutes ago. Those shorts are my own personal torture. Why did she have to wear them today?
I bet he can’t wait to show off all his skills for her. Little does he know, Ellis has almost zero interest in rock climbing. She probably can’t wait to get this over with. She was just too nice to tell me to pick something else for her first “adventure.”
