Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [18]
“You need less eyeliner,” Ashley critiqued, hovering over me as I sat cross-legged on the floor at the end of my bed, my makeup scattered around me as I peered into the floor-length mirror on the back of my door. “You should do something with bright color, like a bright green or bright pink, and play up your eyes. Really, they’re your best feature.”
“Hardly,” I griped, reaching for some more black eyeliner and applying it heavily before rubbing it in for a smoky look. “Everyone else in this family has blue eyes. Me, I get the brown eyes. The boring brown eyes.”
“No, they’re pretty,” she said, her own crystal clear blue eyes twinkling. She then flung herself on my bed, kicking her legs in the air. “They’re not brown. They’re lighter. They’re not hazel. I don’t know, I’ll come up with a name for it. Mink. Yeah. They’re mink!” She started giggling and I rolled my “mink” eyes.
“You’re a mink,” I shouted gleefully, and Ashley just threw a pillow at me.
“Whoa, better hurry up,” Ashley said abruptly, sitting up right and checking out the alarm clock on my nightstand. “It’s seven-twenty, and it’s going to take at least thirty-five minutes to walk up there.” I trusted Ashley’s New York sensibilities when it came to time. Since I knew I could walk everywhere, I estimated every destination to be about five minutes from Aunt Christine’s home. I was often wrong. And late. And ended up running everywhere. I finally get my driver’s license, and then move someplace where no one drives. Christine didn’t even have a license.
I reached into one of my cardboard boxes, still packed in the closet, and grabbed my black boots, pulling them on over my jeans.
“So, what do you think?” I asked.
Ashley scrutinized me for a moment. “Take off your necklace,” she ordered. “It interferes with the shirt’s neckline.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the charm, hanging awkwardly over the straight boatneck of the shirt. She was right. But I never took off my charm necklace—it was one of the only things I still had from my brother. I pulled out the fabric and dropped the pendant between my skin and the shirt, so all you could see was the thin silver chain.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much. Now hold on.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small bottle.
“Hell, no!” I yelled, recoiling as I remembered the sickeningly sweet stuff she sprayed on me last time. “That stuff smells like munchkin sweat.”
“It’s a different fragrance.” She sighed, handing it over. I took a cautious whiff. Okay, this is actually nice. Very light. Beachy, almost.
I handed it back to her after spritzing it lightly around my shirt and hair.
“Now, you smell good,” Ashley said, smugly. “You’re no longer stinky.”
I gave my smirking little cousin a hug and smoothed out the front of my shirt. “All right, I’d better get going.”
Chapter 5
The air was brisk and I pulled my leather jacket more closely around me as I walked up Third Avenue, regretting not wearing a scarf or something warmer. I hadn’t realized how wacky New York weather could be—cold one day, warm the next.
I got to Ninety-first Street and pulled out my new cell phone to check the time. I was eight minutes late. For me, that was early. I looked around and realized that I was standing in front of a sandwich shop.
For a split second, I wondered if it was all a joke on me. That Cisco was watching me from across the street, laughing as the loser girl stood there, waiting for friends to show up who would never come. What a waste of a good flat-ironing job.
“Hey, chica!” A few minutes later, I heard the call from down the block and looked up. Francisco was walking closer, flanked by three friends.
Relief colored my face. “Hey, look, new cell phone!” I waved the phone at him.
“Yeah, welcome to 1998.” He laughed, taking my cell phone and calling his number so I’d have it. “This is my cousin, Samantha,” he said, gesturing to a petite, older-looking girl to his right, “and her boyfriend Omar. They graduated last year. This is my friend Derek, he goes