Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu

my sister left and Karissa’s right here.

twelve
    Arizona turned thirteen almost two years before me, but she didn’t tell me about the thirteenth birthday gift until mine was presented by my dad and wrapped in fancy gold paper with a silver bow and a fake rose taped to the middle as extra decoration. I was pretty sure it was something shiny, like a necklace with my birthstone or the tiara I’d seen when I was out shopping with Natasha that Dad told me was ridiculous but I insisted was perfect for all kinds of events.
    I used to like things like diamonds and glitter and princess costumes. I used to believe in things like birthdays and stepmoms.
    The present was a slip of paper.
    Dad’s office stationery, and a promise that I could get any procedure I wanted when I turned eighteen.
    â€œFor confidence,” he said.
    â€œI don’t get it,” I said. I looked to Arizona for a translation, and she shrugged. Arizona was not very sociable when she was fifteen.
    â€œWhen I was thirteen, all I wanted to know was that I would beprettier when I was older,” Natasha said, trying to explain away the confusion all over my face. She had a bad habit of saying things that were definitely insulting but that she didn’t spend any time thinking about, so were therefore somehow “not meant to be mean.”
    â€œOh,” I said, because there is very little else to say to a gift certificate for future plastic surgery.
    â€œYou can get anything done!” Dad said. “Like, if you don’t grow into your nose. Or, you know, breast enhancement, if that’s what you’d like. I can’t imagine you’d need lipo, but that would be fine too.”
    Dad had been talking about me growing into my nose for years. It had never seemed that big to me.
    I thought of the random doodles he drew on magazine covers and spare slips of paper. Fixes he could make to the models’ faces, arms, thighs, boobs. Idle illustrations of perfect and imperfect bodies and noses and chins. There was a magazine on the coffee table with Gwyneth Paltrow in a bikini on the cover. He’d drawn dotted lines around her eyes and near her hips. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he assumed I’d be imperfect too.
    â€œYour ears are pretty close to your head, so pinning them back won’t be necessary,” he went on. I was tearing up. But if he saw the tears, he’d be insulted. He liked to deal with facts, and the facts, the literal facts of numbers and symmetry and measurement, said that my nose was too big and my chin a little too small. It wasn’t something to be sad about. Especially when he was promising to fix it. “But your chin we could add a little something to. When you’re eighteen, ofcourse. I would never do any of this on someone your age. But to know it’s there, like a safety net, Natasha and I thought it might help. With adolescence. With confidence. I want you to know we get how hard it is to be your age and that we’re here for you and you’ll get through it.” Dad smiled. “We’re so lucky to have Natasha around to help me understand you girls.” He put his arm around her and beamed like a victor of some contest for Dad of the Year.
    I wondered if maybe it was me. If I was the weird one who didn’t like the gift. He and Natasha seemed so sure that it was a full-on winner, I assumed I must be somehow off. I knew I was supposed to reflect back Dad’s happiness, but I felt the panicked sadness of waking up from a too-close-to-reality nightmare.
    â€œI got you a pet chameleon!” Arizona exclaimed, right at the moment I thought all my insides were going to start pouring out of my eyes and nose. I thought I could maybe cry so hard and so long that I’d turn hollow, eventually.
    â€œYou—you did?” I said. Arizona was giving me our patented don’t cry look, which we had perfected long, long ago when I was five