Allure
“I heard that one was good,” said Liz, pointing to the lipstick in Stephanie’s hand. She’d picked up the lipstick mostly to have something to do with her hands. So far she’d picked up an eye shadow palette, a perfume bottle in the shape of a beer can, and a foundation for middle schoolers called Glow Job only to put them back on their shelves.
Stephanie nodded, but ultimately considered this trip a failure. She didn’t know what she was expecting, dragging her younger sister to this asylum-white makeup store. She felt in her bones the purpose was to gain something more than a headache and sweat under her brow.
Stephanie opened the cap of the lipstick she was holding to look at the color. She hadn’t looked at the color before, but now she felt like she couldn’t justify putting it back on its shelf without at least giving it a closer look. Maybe she would even rub the glossy finish on the inside of her wrist to feel the comforting moisture of the product.
The color was clearly red, practically the same red as the three other lipsticks in the row. Yet, when she looked at it closely enough she could see that there was no orange hue; she loathed nothing more than an orange hue. This might’ve been a useless detail to someone else, but it made her more curious so she looked closer. The lipstick was practically out of its tube and pressed against her eyeball at this point. Subconsciously she knew this was not how people picked out lipsticks, but if she didn’t look this closely, how would she be able to detect the shine and almost glittery aspect of the color? Stephanie didn’t like glitter; she couldn’t think of one thing in her drab wardrobe that had glitter in it. Still, she didn’t think she had ever seen something so mesmerizing in her life.
“I guess you like it,” her sister said, laughing.
“Yeah, it’s nice.” Stephanie looked at Liz and found her staring at her. “What?”
“No, it’s just—” She laughed again. “You’re smiling at it like a maniac.”
Stephanie responded by gazing at it once more.
“You know, you could try it on.”
Stephanie looked at her reflection in the mirror with the shade close to her lips. She applied it slowly, enjoying the easy application. She felt as if the pigment was being trapped in the grooves of her skin. As she noticed the transformation, she felt herself smiling. Then she stopped, careful not to crease the artwork she had created.
“Allure,” said Liz.
Stephanie was awoken from her spell and looked over at her sister. She was examining the box that it came in; it was shiny and new, unlike the tube with the peeling Try Me! sticker. “What?” Stephanie asked.
“That’s what the color is called,” Liz said, giving her the brand new box. “Cool right?”
“Yeah,” Stephanie said, curling her fingers around her new favorite toy. “I like that.”
Stephanie marched in the front door without Liz. Liz had dropped Stephanie off at home before driving to her friend’s house for a party. Sometimes this made Stephanie jealous, but tonight she didn’t care. She had plans of her own.
“What’d you buy?” Stephanie’s mother asked from the dinner table, still on her work computer.
“Just lipstick,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Did you use your debit? Because I’m not putting any more money in your account until next month.”
“Liz paid for me,” she murmured.
Her mother closed the computer.
“She offered, I didn’t ask,” Stephanie explained quickly.
“Stephanie, do you think it’s appropriate for a seventeen-year-old girl to buy something for her twenty-year-old sister on a trip to the mall where she drove them?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t upset about it.”
“Of course not, because this happens all the time. We’ve been having this same conversation for years. I was fine that you didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t understand it, but I accepted it. Now you’ve been sitting in my house doing nothing for two years. Your sister is going away next year. She’s taking her car with her, and her debit card.” Her mother pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “Do something; get a job, get a license, go to school, something.” Stephanie’s mother sighed. “You need to get out of this house. I don’t even know what you do all day. I can hear you buzzing around your room. I feel you going stir crazy.”
“Okay,” Stephanie said, her mind far away from this conversation. “I’m going to my room.” She left before her mother could say another word.
Usually, when Stephanie took home any kind of makeup product, it sat in the family bathroom, free for the whole house to use. Eventually, it got used by Liz, which was fine with Stephanie since she didn’t really intend to use it. But this time was going to be different. Allure didn’t deserve the same fate as all the others; she was different. Stephanie would be different for using her.
Stephanie looked in the mirror at her canvas. Even though she had never even thought about it before, all she could see was the hair. The thin blond hair, almost translucent, covered every inch of surface area from her cheeks to her chin; the thick hair in between and encircling her eyebrows, creeping in all different directions because she’d never bothered to do anything about it.
The worst was the hair on her upper lip. At the store, she was too distracted by Allure’s beauty, but now she wondered how she could bear to see such perfection so close to the distractingly dark peach fuzz above her cupid’s bow.
Stephanie wrapped Allure into her favorite tank top with no stains and tucked it into her dresser. “I’ll be back for you,” she promised Allure, “when I’m ready, when I’m good enough for you.”
She crept to the upstairs bathroom across from her room, which wasn’t really necessary since her mother had probably reopened her computer and was grinding away downstairs. Yet it did feel exciting to be doing something secret, just for her. She ventured into the medicine cabinet to find Liz’s waxing strips. Liz had offered to teach her how to do it once. Stephanie told her she was scared of the pain, but now nothing could stop her.
She found a box with a picture of a hairless woman on it next to a pot of thick yellow liquid. Inside, there were at least ten pairs of finger-sized wax papers with honey-colored substance in between them. She rubbed her hands together with the strip in between her palms like the box said. The sound of the wax paper rubbing together and the smell of the wax warming up sent Stephanie’s brain signals of impending doom. As she listened to the sticky sound as the strips peeled apart from each other she started to panic, but this would all be worth it for her.
Stephanie looked in the mirror and tried to align the wax with the unwanted hair above her lips. She placed a strip onto one side of her lip, already feeling the tugging of each individual hair that she’d neglected all her life. She smoothed down the area, warning her skin for the pain it awaited.
“One,” Stephanie whispered, taking a deep breath. “Two.” Why am I doing this? “Three.” For her. She ripped the strip off, feeling every hair struggling to cling onto her skin to no avail. She doubled over and reflexively reached to her upper lip and started to scratch, only to feel the sensitive skin burn under her fingernails. Stephanie looked into the mirror excited for the fresh new face that awaited her, but instead of seeing a smoothed beautiful stretch of skin, she saw a red bumpy upper lip. She went closer to the mirror to make sure all the hair was off, but there were still at least two strands of hair right in the middle of the patch.
“Fuck,” she whispered. She took a deep breath and looked back in the mirror, at the stubborn hair that would ruin perfect Allure.
She knew she had to do another round in the same spot to get the rest of the hairs off. It needed to be just perfect for her. Stephanie picked up the other side of the strip and repeated the same process. She felt her skin sting from putting the wax on. She didn’t feel resistance yet because she didn’t have enough hair to even feel a tug. She ripped it off again and muffled a cry of pain. She leaned over the skin to check her progress and the hairs were removed. All that was left was skin; bright pink and burning to the touch, but she would fix that later. Stephanie smiled; she already felt closer to her.
By the time she finished off all twenty wax papers, her entire upper lip and chin were hairless. The unwanted hair around her eyebrows was also removed. So was the bottom half of her left brow and the tail end of her right brow, but she would fix that. Stephanie would fix it the same way she would fix the red damaged skin the wax left in its wake: with Liz’s makeup bag.
Inside Liz’s bag were two kinds of liquid foundation and one little sponge. One was darker than the other and she decided that the darker one would cover up the redness better while the lighter one could fix the acne on her forehead. She dug deeper for something to fix the eyebrows. She’d seen drawn-on eyebrows; thick luxurious ones and razor-sharp ones and drawn-on peach fuzz. Which one would Allure prefer? She found a tube of mascara and opened it to see a brush that circled the tip of the stick. She vaguely remembered that mascara was usually used for eyelashes, but they were made of the same hair, so what was the difference? She’d start with the liquid foundation. She squirted the darker one onto the sponge and used her finger to spread it around. Then she rubbed the sponge onto the redness caused by the hair removal. She was surprised she couldn’t hear the sizzle from the burning sensation on her skin. She rubbed it in harder, trying to itch the redness while also covering it up. Every time she rubbed it harder it only got more irritated, which made her want to rub harder.
Stephanie thought of her mother telling her not to pick at her mosquito bites. She thought about the painful scabs that appeared on her legs the morning after mutilating the bites in her sleep. She thought of her sister’s smooth legs, which were never being bitten so she didn’t have to resist itching them. She could sleep soundly while Stephanie clawed at her skin during a fitful night’s sleep.
She pounded the foundation in her skin as hard as she could stand. She looked in the mirror. There were fingerprints on her face from rubbing in the foundation with her hands instead of the sponge. The foundation, just a little too dark for her skin, was patchy and haphazard on her face. Not good enough for her.
Good thing there was a whole other bottle of foundation.
Stephanie squeezed out the lighter foundation on the same sponge as the darker one. Instead of the two colors blending to make something more similar to her face, they overlapped and swirled around each other in a pool of liquid complexion. Stephanie looked at the sponge for a moment, mesmerized.
Please make this look good enough for her, she prayed.
She prepared to smooth out the bumps of acne that littered her forehead. The acne was raised and came in all different sizes. What she really needed was something to smooth down her skin so her entire face was level. She could get sandpaper and sand it down, or maybe a knife to cut off all the unwanted texture.
Stephanie looked in the mirror once again. Still not good enough, she thought. The final touch must be the eyebrows. They were the darkest parts of her face, what stood out the most, at least until she put on Allure.
If Stephanie was in an observational mood, she might’ve noticed that the mascara she was planning on using was much darker than the color of her eyebrows, which were dark brown and sticking out in all directions. Since she wasn’t in the mood to focus on that kind of thing, Stephanie decided to proceed without caution and unsheathed the brush from its bottle.
The action of brushing all her eyebrow hairs in one direction was definitely the most soothing of all her makeup endeavors, but was also the least satisfying. Through the night she had learned that the more something makes you burn, itch, or cringe, the more necessary it was. That’s what Allure had taught her; it’s what everyone in the world knew but her. Her whole life Stephanie had chased comfort. She had lived in a state of inertia for twenty years waiting for something to go right. Little did she know that this is what she was supposed to be doing all this time; she was supposed to be changing from the girl she was to the woman she was destined to be. The “girl” version of her was useless, a disappointing waste of space. The “woman” version of her was going to be different. Some people were born knowing how to be a woman—Liz knew, her mother knew—and now it was Stephanie’s turn.
As she brushed the last stroke of the mascara onto her eyebrow, she started to hum. A quiet ladylike hum that would come from a Disney princess, or a female CEO, or an evil queen, one of those.
Stephanie backed away from the mirror. Her face was two different colors, three if you included her neck. The hair that was left on her face was patchy and uneven. Her eyebrows looked greasy and villainous instead of elegant and regal.
It was all wrong.
She felt a loud grunt come out of her throat.
“Stephanie, what is it?”
Allure would hate it, she knew it. Unless this is what she wanted. Stephanie started to laugh.
“Stephanie, are you alright?”
Stephanie ran to her dresser. She slowed down enough to unwrap her. This is exactly what Allure wanted, she wanted to be the star of the show. Stephanie could never look good without Allure. Allure could make Stephanie perfect. Allure could make Stephanie beautiful.
Stephanie uncovered the lipstick. She closed her eyes and smeared as much product onto her lips as possible. After she had already gone over her lips twice, she started circling around her lips until it went up to her nose, almost in the nostril. Stephanie opened her eyes and looked at the mirror.
“Stephanie, should I come up there?”
Wrong. It was all wrong. Her face was wrong? Her hair was wrong? Her smile was wrong? Allure was wrong? No, Allure couldn’t be wrong. Everything else was wrong. Stephanie didn’t deserve Allure, not even a smudge of her. What was Allure to do since no one was worthy of her beauty?
Stephanie took the lipstick tube into her room. Her eyes scanned everything she had ever owned. All of it was ugly, ugly, ugly. Everything needed Allure, nothing was worthy of Allure. She started with her clothes. Each piece of clothing got an undeserved taste of Allure. Stephanie went through each item in her dresser, then turned her attention towards her bed. What better place for Allure to live than Stephanie’s bed? The place where she spent all her time lying down and dreaming of a better life. Allure would help. Stephanie drew swirls onto her comforter, then her pillows, then her sheets.
Stephanie had to twist the lipstick tube more. Stephanie needed more, more than Allure could ever provide. She went over each of her walls and blessed each corner with a smear of Allure’s perfection.
“Stephanie, what the hell are you doing?”
Stephanie turned around and saw her mother standing in her doorway, sneering at the room. She stood there with her uneven wrinkled face, her wicked sneer, her undereye bags, and how she dared to question Allure.
Her mother needed Allure too.
Stephanie lunged at her mother, and knocked her over, so her head hit the wood floor of the hallway. Her mother would thank her later when she was conscious. She needed Allure just as badly as Stephanie did, they all needed Allure.
Stephanie drew Allure onto her mother’s lips; round and round went Allure. It was working, her mother started to transform. Stephanie dipped inside her mother’s mouth to give her tongue some much-needed pigment. Her mother needed more, more, more. It wasn’t enough, not even close. Stephanie shoved the tube of lipstick down her mother’s throat.
Amy Nicol is an up-and-coming writer from Long Island, New York. She is a freshman at SUNY Oswego where she is majoring in creative writing and is an editor for the Great Lakes Review. Her story “Rain” was published in an anthology entitled Road Trip to El Dorado (Free Spirit Publisher). She has also published in great weather for MEDIA.