Furious - By Jill Wolfson Page 0,72
hear them moving around and fiddling with things that crunch and ping. Ambrosia checks over her shoulder and orders, “Tisiphone, more flowers and vines. Weave them into those dreadlocks.”
Then Ambrosia is leaning over me again, her hands moving with her usual skillfulness as she curls, sprays, pats, and smudges. When she’s done, she spins my chair around and takes a critical look at her canvas. I notice that there’s an actual bead of sweat on her forehead. That’s how hard she had to work on me. Ambrosia never, ever sweats.
“The verdict?” I ask.
She pronounces me “magnificent.”
“I want to see!”
“Not yet. We’re almost there.”
She disappears into her closet and emerges with three large shopping bags hooked around her elbows. Alix, her face, arms, all of her skin glimmering with a silvery powder, receives the first bag and we watch enthusiastically as she pulls out a two-piece outfit. There’s a pair of very short shorts, bronze in color, with a matching midriff halter that laces up the front. This is clearly not the fabulous outfit that Alix had in mind. Can’t say I blame her. It reminds me of a jogging suit—if, say, Robin Hood were running a half-marathon.
Alix’s mouth twists. “I’m not the halter type.”
Ambrosia ignores the complaint. “You are going to love the accessories. They totally make the outfit.”
Next she hands Stephanie a bag that’s twice the size of the other two. It takes some manipulating to get her costume out in one piece.
“That’s more like it!” Alix says with envy.
Wings! A full set of them. Not the small, fluffy, frilly white wings that some girls wear with their underwear as part of a Hot Angel costume. These are solid, big, black, and veiny. What fabric is that? Nothing I’ve ever seen before. The wings look dangerous, like if you turn too fast in them you can poke out someone’s eye.
Stephanie is deliriously happy with her costume, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. “Bat wings! Most people hate bats, but they’re my favorite animal. Bats are totally misunderstood.” She lifts the wings in front of her and spins them like a dance partner.
My turn. I plunge right into my bag and rummage around. But my enthusiasm withers quickly. It doesn’t look very thrilling in there, just a couple of pieces of fabric of different sizes and shapes. I try to stay positive. Ambrosia does want me to look great. I remind myself that she wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if she didn’t. The material is soft and silky, the color of a caramel chew, almost exactly my skin tone. I pull out a piece that looks like an extra-long scarf, and hold it at one end so it dangles limp in front of me. “Um, excuse me, but I don’t have a clue what to do with this.”
Ambrosia grabs it from my hand, but I can tell her annoyance is only put on. “You are helpless without me,” she teases. To Alix and Stephanie: “You two team up to get ready. Tisiphone, give Alecto a hand with her hair. We need to get it all up. Don’t be stingy with the gel.”
Ambrosia hustles me into her giant walk-in closet, where she orders me to strip. I get down to my underwear, but she insists: “No prudishness. All of it.” Good thing I’ve lived in so many group homes, where you quickly get over modesty in front of other girls. I stand in front of Ambrosia naked, goose bumps erupting everywhere. I feel her eyes running over me, and I realize how desperately I want her approval. She has gone to so much trouble just for me. She cares about me and wants me to look incredible. In the confined space of her closet, the perfume on her body and lingering on the dozens of hanging outfits closes in on me, makes it a little hard for me to breathe normally.
She trades my white cotton underpants for the pair of skimpy flesh-colored ones at the bottom of my costume bag. She doubles and twists the scarf-like material and wraps it where my bra used to be. Next she takes out some fabric that’s been folded into a rectangle, holds it at one end, and gives it a hard shake. It’s bigger than I thought, the size of a bedsheet, and it floats like a parachute before settling slowly back to earth.
I think, She’s going to burrito-wrap me in a bedspread. That’s my costume?
She counters my obvious disappointment