Don't You Wish

  “Or into every plastic surgeon’s office.” Mom’s voice comes from the top of the stairs.

  “So true, Em. Come and look at this!”

  “Really, Mom,” I call. “You need to see what I’d look like if I were perfect.”

  “You are perfect,” she says softly.

  I almost snort with laughter, but something strange about her tone makes me stop.

  “Of course, this is just a prototype,” Dad says quickly. “We need to get a really high-end computer and a special—”

  “And where are you going to get the money for a really high-end computer?” Mom’s voice is cold as ice as she slowly makes her way down the stairs.

  Dad looks a little taken aback. “You remember the idea that woke me up in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, Em? I really think I nailed it. First you see what you weigh. You love that, right?”

  “Especially if you’re five-ten and weigh a hundred and forty-three,” I add, trying to make light.

  “Those numbers are just a placeholder.” Dad dips his head to see Mom’s face as she reaches the last few steps. “Mom knows why I used one-four-three.”

  Theo and I know their little inside message. One, four, and three are the number of letters in the words “I love you.” Dad always signs notes to Mom like that.

  She navigates the last few steps deliberately, like she’s thinking about every single movement, not just trying to avoid the stacks of old newspapers. You never know when you’ll want to find an article, Dad would say.

  And then I notice what she’s holding.

  Architectural Digest.

  “Anyway,” Dad adds, filling in the awkward silence. “I told you I’ll figure that out later. You know I hate details. I’m a big-picture kind of thinker.”

  Mom stands very still, looking at the mirror. Neither Dad nor Theo seem to notice that anything is wrong, but I do. I see that drawn look across her mouth, usually a sign she’s about to lose her temper. I see her eyes glisten, like she’s been crying again. And the magazine in her hand shakes. Once when she was shaking, I asked her why, and she said she had PMS.

  Maybe that’s why she was crying over that stupid article in Walmart. Maybe that’s why she’s looking at Dad like he’s The Biggest Loser, and I don’t mean the kind who’d love to own a mirror that helps you visualize a perfect body.

  “Well, perhaps you need to be a smaller-picture kind of thinker, Mel.”

  He gives her a quizzical look. “What’s up, honey?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Her voice has a funny hitch in it.

  Dad blows out a breath. “I know what we talked about last night, Em, and I promise, I swear, I’m throwing everything out this weekend. Tomorrow. As soon as I—”

  “This, Mel. This …” She sweeps her empty hand toward the mirror. “This complete and utter waste of time.”

  “Mom!” Theo jumps up. “Don’t you want to see what you’d look like with Angelina Jolie’s lips?” God, he is so clueless.

  “Yeah, Em. Try it. I’m telling you, this is the big one.” Dad sounds pretty clueless, too. But on he goes. “And this isn’t just for fun! It has commercial potential. Everyone in this country is hung up on self-improvement and celebrities. Not to mention iPhone apps! It’s the perfect combo of our biggest fixations. I call it—”

  Mom pitches that magazine so hard, it sails across the room like some kind of wild colored airplane, all six dollars’ worth of gloss and glitz, and wham! It slams into the nest of electronics, sliding the motherboard, cracking the diodes and rectifiers and whatever else there is. The contraption yanks the mirror so hard the whole thing tumbles forward, shattering with a noisy crash.

  “Picture-Perfect,” Dad finishes with a whisper.

  No one moves. We all just stare at the jagged jigsaw puzzle of mirror shards and computer parts and really bad ideas.

  Then Mom runs back upstairs, shoving a whining Watson into the kitchen and banging the basement door behind her.

  Theo throws his arms out, his mouth wide in speechless surprise. Dad stares at the stairs, his expression as broken as his invention. Then he steps over the glass and the carton and all the newspapers and follows Mom, quietly closing the door, leaving us alone with what was once the prototype of Picture-Perfect.

  Theo lets out a loud belch, and I just kneel down and carefully start to pick up the pieces.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The whole night royally sucks. I can’t get on Facebook—which I am dying to do, because there has to be something on there about the bus incident. In fact, when Lizzie doesn’t call after her flute lesson, I’m pretty sure that means I am Facebook-ruined for life.

  And we don’t even eat dinner together, which is really bizarro for the Nutter house, since Mom and Dad insist on it most nights if everybody’s home.

  To top it all off, a storm moves in, pounding our roof with nonstop rain, which means I have to get the bucket from the mudroom and put it in the hall where the ceiling leaks. Lightning and thunder add to the doom and gloom of a really dismal day.

  Mom and Dad disappear for hours in their room, the soft sounds of their conversation drifting out if I walk by the door. Or stand there and listen. Not that I would ever do that.

  Dad comes out and says Mom is resting, claiming she’s just a little upset about “things,” which usually translates into “money” or “Dad’s latest trip to the lunatic fringe.” Those are the only two things they fight about.

  I bet Jim Monroe doesn’t fight with his wife about—Wait. He doesn’t have a wife. I wonder if Mom is thinking about leaving Dad and going to hunt down her rich ex-boyfriend. Maybe she thinks she could fill that “hers” closet with clothes and shoes. She is fabulous, if not flawless.

  My heart thuds down to my feet. Do I want to be rich that bad? That I’d wish a divorce on my parents? I study Dad for a minute, trying to compare him to Jim Monroe. There is no comparison. Jim is better-looking, loaded, and probably hasn’t kept the rusted parts from every barbecue grill he’s ever owned.

  “Starving!” Theo whines from his room. “Where’s food?”

  “I’ll make pancakes,” Dad says quickly.

  “Pancakes?” My brother and I are in complete unison for once.

  “Breakfast for dinner,” Dad says. “I’ll make eggs, too. And bacon. The real way, not in the microwave.”

  Theo is too dumb and hungry to even notice how strange that dinner menu is, and I decide to let it go. Chocolate chip pancakes and the works it is, but Dad doesn’t eat, so Theo and I take our food into the den and eat in front of the TV until some pretty serious lightning kills the cable, and Theo leaves me alone.

  I give my bacon to Watson and sit in the lonely den for a few minutes anyway, the smell of our breakfasty-dinner lingering in the air, the rumble of thunder and the steady drop of water in the hallway bucket the only sounds I hear.

  It is kind of impossible not to compare our family room to the house that Forever Flawless built.

  We have the green leather sofa—pleather, Dad calls it, since it really is more in the plastic family than top-grade super-leather. The edges are torn, and Dad has covered them with clear tape.

  The carpet, once beige, has a pretty noticeable charcoal-colored path where we all walk in and out of the room. Next to Dad’s chair is an unopened box of lightbulbs (buy three hundred, get one free!) that hasn’t found a home in … four months. Under the coffee table, a set of old silverware Mom wants to throw away but that Dad says he might be able to use for some invention.

  The landfill isn’t just the basement anymore, I think glumly. Pretty soon I won’t be able to bring my friends into the den, either. I head into the kitchen, which feels dingy and cluttered and as cheerless as our torn pleather and worn carpet.

  No wonder Mom cried over Jim Monroe’s palace.

  I turn out the kitchen light and walk to my room, wondering if I can work any magic with the broken laptop. I pass Theo’s room, where he is on his computer—an ancient
IBM that has a monitor the size of a small building—with Watson snoring on the bed.

  “Night, Theo.”

  He looks up. “Is Mom sick?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He opens his mouth, and I hold out my hand. “For God’s sake, don’t burp.”

  He burps.

  “Real cool and classy, you idiot.”

  “Who wants to be cool and classy?”

  I do! And pretty and popular, and God, I don’t want to live in this dingy house on Rolling Rock Road with Dad the hoarder and Theo the burper anymore!

  But I just walk away. In my room, I close and lock the door, drawn to the Architectural Digest magazine I’ve left on my bed. Once more, I skim through the Flawless House, as I now think of it; then, disgusted and envious, I throw the magazine under my bed and turn my attention to the broken laptop on my desk.

  “Better give you last rites, old Averatec.” I set it on my pillow, optimistically plugging it into the wall, and the little green light comes on but the screen is blank. No surprise, because it has no circuitry, thank you very much, Dad.

  On the nightstand next to me, I see Dad’s off-brand smartphone that I brought up from the basement. What if I connect the phone to the laptop with my phone charger cable? Possible to run the old Averatec off the iPhone?

  Only the daughter of a RadioShack salesman could have that idea. The cables fit—also because only a daughter of a RadioShack salesman would have a cast-off universal phone charger that some customer left in a box at the store. I plug it into my computer, hit the On button, and miraculously the screen flashes to life.

  “Oh, my God, it works!”

  I wait for the Averatec logo to pop up, but when it doesn’t, my heart sinks. This is a fool’s errand. If I want to get on Facebook that bad just to read the nasty post–Shane bus episode comments, I could borrow Theo’s computer. Then he’ll read about it, and—

  My face fills up the screen.

  Whoa. Not my face. That face. That face Dad created and saved on the iPhone! I reach to tap the Escape key, but my finger hovers, not quite ready to part with that image.

  Because … what would Shane Matthews say to that girl?

  When he asked her to go to homecoming, he’d mean it. And he’d be sweating out a rejection. Man, what would it be like?

  I can’t even imagine. Where would a girl like that live? My mind skitters to the magazine I’ve just thrown under my bed. She’d live in that house, with that billionaire for a dad, and—

  A white flash of lightning blinds me for a second, instantly followed by the loudest smack of thunder I’ve ever heard. All the power goes out.

  Damn. Just when I got the computer to work.

  The only thing still lit is the little flat-screen phone in my hand. I glance at it to see if it has a flashlight app, but freeze at the sight of me on the screen. Again, not the real me. Not plain Annie Nutter with paper-bag-brown hair and braces and zits.

  Everything is pitch-black but that tiny screen and that beautiful, beautiful girl.

  Why can’t I be that girl? Why can’t I live her life, in her world, with that face and that house—

  Another strobe flash of lightning steals my breath, so close that I feel the voltage ping through me, lifting every hair on my body, like the bolt has hit my window.

  The impact knocks me forward, right into the computer. My chest hits the screen, slamming the computer backward as sparks of electricity ricochet through my body.

  I try to cry, to move, or think, but … I’m paralyzed, suspended, hot and cold and sweaty and dry, all at the same time. All I can do is shift my eyes to the phone in my hand.

  I can still see her. I can still … see … her.

  Something buzzes under my pillow. I try to lift my head, but every muscle in my neck feels heavy, and there’s a fog deep in my brain. But the pillow vibrates again, a soft hum from underneath.

  What is that? The computer? Did I bring it back to life?

  I slip my hand under and touch something smooth and slick. Dad’s cheapo phone? Light pinches my eyelids, still stuck together.

  So I’ve slept, long enough for it to be daylight.

  And those damn vibrations start again, this time with a soft beep.

  I manage to pry my eyes open and feel under the pillow until I grab the rounded edge of a … What? I pull out an iPhone.

  A real one. No off-brand here.

  This one is so new and shiny, it looks like it has never been touched. Was it my birthday and I forgot?

  I blink again, vaguely aware that behind the iPhone is something bright and blinding green. The pillow.

  My pillowcase is pale blue. But I can’t quite comprehend the change of sheets because my brain is processing the screen of the iPhone.

  Alarm 7:01 a.m.

  I turn it over, frowning at the engraving on the back. I run my finger over the words.

  Ayla Monroe.

  Who is Ayla Monroe, and why do I have her phone?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The phone vibrates again and freaks the crap out of me. I swipe my hand over the screen, and it stops. I stare at it, then at the pillow with the chartreuse case.

  I mean, pillows, plural. There is more than one, which is weird and wrong. I have one pillow on a twin bed. But now there are four, five, six pillows on a … huge bed.

  Chills tiptoe up my spine, lifting the hairs on the back of my neck. Very, very slowly I shift my gaze from the ginormous bed to the rest of the room and am assaulted by vibrant colors and a whole wall of arched windows draped in yards and layers of fabric.

  What the eff?

  This place is humongous! Even with big pieces of furniture and clothes strewn over every square inch, I feel small and lost.

  I hear my throat gulp, a mix of fear and disbelief, or maybe I’m doing a sound check to be sure I’m awake. Because this cannot be real.

  Where am I?

  I turn. The walls are neon lime-green and turquoise, with splashes of bright pink and the occasional dark brown accent. Even a sofa by the windows is satiny chartreuse with one curved armrest, like an old-school Hollywood starlet loungey thing.

  Oh, my God. Look at that flat-screen TV! Like a freaking movie theater. I’m vaguely aware that I’m climbing out of the bed, my gaze flicking from one unbelievable sight to another. One whole wall is a bookcase with a huge desk, a hot mess of papers, and pictures and junk. In the middle is a laptop—as new and insanely expensive as the iPhone I’m still holding—with a stylized A floating around as a screen saver.

  Next to it, a rose in a crystal vase, with a card leaning against it.

  Is this some kind of joke? A reality TV show? Am I being punked?

  It has to be a dream. Either that or I’m dead and this is … Oh, if that’s true, then the big guy totally overlooked all those times I punched Theo and sent me straight up to the Good Place.

  As I take a step, something silky brushes my legs and I glance down, expecting to see my old striped sleep pants and SpongeBob tee. Instead, silver silk flows over my legs, a long … nightgown? I hate nightgowns. Still, this one is so soft and sheer, it’s like wearing flower petals and air.

  I lift the material to reveal my toes. Well, someone’s toes. Toes painted a bruising violet and decorated with teensy-tiny rhinestones in the shape of a teardrop.

  I wiggle; they move. They are my teardrop toes.

  I pinch the flesh on my arm, hard, and feel the pain. Does that mean I’m awake and this isn’t a dream? It has to.

  Or … No other explanation even suggests itself to me.

  I take a few steps. My bare feet hit cool hard wood, dark and gleaming, and then sink into the edges of a plush throw rug in the middle of the room.

  There are shoes everywhere—heels and wedgies and brightly colored sneakers. As I navigate my way over them, I notice the inside of one sandal, decorated with interlocking C’s and the word Chanel.

  Over by the Hollywood Barcalounger, a door is partially ope
n, all dark inside. The closet? Curious, I make my way over and give a nudge.

  Without me touching a single switch, soft rose-colored lighting lifts from the floor up, like an electric sunrise, illuminating … Oh, my God.

  For a second, I can’t breathe.

  This is somebody’s closet.

  No, no. Calling this a closet is like calling the Empire State Building an anthill. It’s the size of my whole room and then some. One entire wall and around a corner is for shoes and bags, and someone has filled every inch. On the other side, jeans and tops and dresses and stuff are hung sloppily on green and blue satin hangers. In the middle, the open drawers of a huge four-sided dresser spew more clothes.

  It’s like Forever 21 has dropped out of the sky.

  I back out and close the door, and the lights dim like in a stage production. That effect is just too much.

  There’s one more door in the room, and I’m starting to feel like Alice in Wonderland. Pretty certain it’s a bathroom, I turn the knob to find I’m right.

  Inside, acres of creamy marble, a tub the size of most people’s pools, a glassed-in shower with—holy crap—six showerheads? And one giant one at the top? It’s like a car wash in there.

  Fluffy white towels are dropped all over the floor, little mountain ranges you’d have to climb to get to the vanity.

  And the vanity. Like being in Sephora after an earthquake. Every inch is covered with products and brushes and earrings and more stuff. Milky white ball lights surround the mirror, giving it that Hollywood feel again.

  The mirror.

  Do I even dare look? I mean, I have to, right? But surely that’ll be the thing that ends the dream, and I don’t want it to end. Everything will melt away, and I’ll look like someone else or some old witch and the magic spell will be broken. Even if I’m not a witch, seeing Annie Nutter in this setting would just be a big fat letdown.

  I study the purple toes. The teardrop. The clump of towel by my feet. Slowly I lift my gaze, holding my breath, bracing for …