The Color Master: Stories by Aimee Bender Page A

It was named Electric Seashell. Which I thought was a bad name because if you put together a seashell and electricity, you could get electrocuted, depending on the location. She put it in a little MAC bag, and when I stepped out of the store, there they all were. All three of them, boom. Sculpture upright.
    “Hey, Louanne,” said Sylvia.
    “Nice lipstick,” Nature said, and I sort of blushed a little, and looked in the bag, at the lipstick case and the name, like I forgot it was there.
    “Electric Seashell,” I said, and I didn’t know why I felt like they had caught me somehow. They were the ones that left the bench.
    Nature fiddled in her pocket and pulled out a lipstick and read hers. “Electric Seashell,” she said. “What do you know?” Behind her, Jack stuck his hand down Sylvia’s shirt.
    “Hey,” said Nature, spinning hers up. It was almost flat. “I’m low on mine.”
    “Your what?”
    “My lipstick,” she said. She stepped up to me and I had this feeling like she was going to hit me, right here at the Beverly Center, with no windows, by the new café area with the indoor hedges. I never took Tae Kwon Do. But she stepped closer than a hitter would, and then she kissed me. Right in front of the MAC store. My third kiss in my life so far. She pushed her lips against mine, sort of hard, smearing them around. She smelled like tea, not cashews. Then she let go of my shoulders and stepped back, and Electric Seashell was all over her mouth and it’s so perfect on her, it’s raspberry jam on her stalky hair and her skin is all butter and I know cannibals are disgusting but still. Her face was a scone. “Thanks,” she said. And Sylvia was laughing and laughing behind her, saying, “Louanne, you should see your face!” but I can’t ever see my face, I’m in my face, and then Nature said, “Thanks, Louanne, now I’m all dressed and ready to go,” and they all turned around and walked off together and Jack started telling a story because he was making his arms out like an airplane. Her lips were gentle, Nature, even though she pushed them really hard. Way gentler than you would think her lips would be, being that she is Nature.
    The old overalls man walked by, walking slow.
    It got me thinking, for a second, about what would happen if Nature did hit a person in the road. She’d run to the neighbors and say she’d hit a telephone pole, or a rat. And no one would think it was a big deal and everyone would have a cup of tea and make the call to Triple A and stroll out to look at the damage to the car, and then there’d be a person, dead in the road, bloody, no pole at all, but a person who might’ve lived if only Nature had known it was a person ten minutes before.
    I felt a little wave of downness then, for a second, like I might just fall on the floor of the Bev and not be able to do anything for a long time, so I walked as fast as I could and got a lemonade from the hot-dog/lemonade stand and I smiled at the balding Arab man who makes the lemonade and told him it was delicious, before I’d tasted it, actually, and he said thanks, bobbing his shiny head, and I could see him thinking what a nice thoughtful teenage girl, who takes the time to compliment lemonade and doesn’t assume he’s a terrorist when most teenage American girls are just busy thinking only of themselves.
    “Enjoy,” he said, handing over the straw.
    It was okay lemonade. Not delicious, but not bad. Still, meeting him and drinking it gave me enough of a lift that I could get myself to the elevator in front of Victoria’s Secret which was having a big sale on pink bras that said PRETTY over the boobs, PRE on one boob, TTY on the other.
    When I was out of eyeshot, I tossed the lemonade.
    I took the elevator to P3, which was the right level, and then my car was in G2, which was green, and which I had remembered by thinking GIRL, I am a GIRL, and the 2 was for TWO GIRLS: Louanne and Sylvia, going to the mall.
    “G2,” I’d