I looked down, running my tongue over my piercing.

“See,” she said, “you’re doing it again.”

“I am not.”

She lifted my chin so I had to look at her. “It’s all about you, Colie.” She touched one finger to her temple, tap tap tap. “Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.”

There is something infectious about confidence. And for that one moment, with my eyebrows burning and my eyes watering, I believed.

“And good hair never hurt either,” she said, grabbing the dye box off the floor. “Come on. I’ve got plans later but if we hurry we can get this done now.”

I just sat there, peering in the mirror at my reflection. One small change, but I looked different already.

“Let’s go!” she yelled from the kitchen. I took one last look at myself, framed by all those beautiful girls, and went to put myself in her hands. But when she sat me down in a kitchen chair and tipped my head back over the sink, telling me to close my eyes, I could think only of that one girl, her dorky fat cousin, as the water splashed all around me.

Chapter seven

I was on my way home when I bumped into Norman.

Literally. I was walking backward, waving good-bye to Isabel, when I crashed into something solid.

“Mmmpht,” it said, and there was a thump and a clatter. I turned around to see Norman, lying underneath a huge painting with only his feet and head sticking out. He blinked at me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” I was alarmed. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said easily, carefully moving the canvas and sitting up. It was a strange night, balmy, with the wind coming off the water in a curvy kind of breeze. My shorts were flapping against my legs and everything smelled like rain. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.” He stood up, flexing one of his wrists, which cracked. He was wearing a T-shirt that said CAN’T STOP DANCING! in worn, white letters. “I was just going to drop this off,” he said, nodding toward the canvas.

“What is it?” I said. The breeze blew across us again, ruffling the trees. I could hear thunder off somewhere, a low grumble like someone clearing his throat.

“Oh, just this painting I did,” he said. “It’s part of a series.”

‘You paint, too?”

“Yeah.” He tipped it back and looked at it, then rested it against his legs again. “Well, my best stuff is this kind of object sculpture. I’m really into bicycle gears right now. But I’ve been working on this series of paintings for my portfolio for art school. It’s kind of experimental. This one’s of Isabel and Morgan.” He turned it around so I could see.

They were both in sunglasses. Morgan’s pair was red and cat’s-eye shaped, with black edging; Isabel’s, big and white, took up half her face. They were sitting at the counter at the Last Chance. Morgan was resting her chin on her hand, and Isabel had her lips pursed, as if she was about to blow a kiss. Even if I hadn’t known them, I would have understood they were close. All they were was right there to see.

“This is great,” I said. He shuffled his feet. “I’m serious, Norman.”

“Well, it’s okay,” he said in his lazy way, turning it so he could look at it again. “I’m really interested in the idea of anonymity and familiarity. And sunglasses, you know, are so indicative of that. I mean, they’re worn by some people to hide themselves. But they’re also a fashion statement, meant to be noticed. So there’s a dichotomy there.”

I just looked at him. Even after a month of knowing and working and talking with Norman, this was the longest, most complicated thing I’d ever heard him say.

“Norman,” I said, as the thunder rumbled closer, “that’s amazing.”

He smiled. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. It got me into art school, anyway. Now I just have to finish the series.” He picked up the painting again. “I only have three so far. But I promised when I finished this one I’d bring it over so they could see it.”

I remembered, suddenly, the portrait of Mira and Cat Norman that hung in the living room.

There was a loud boom right behind us, over the water, and I heard Mira’s front door fly open and slam shut in the wind.

We both looked up toward the house, lit up yellow and bright in the increasing darkness. And then I saw Mira slipping past window after window, her hands pressed against her face.

“What’s going on?” I said, but Norman was already halfway up the lawn, the canvas banging against his leg. There was another clap and it started to rain, hard, splattering my bare arms.

“Cat Norman!” I heard Mira call out as we came up onto the porch, the door still swinging and banging in the wind. “Where are you?”

“Mira,” I yelled, grabbing the door to silence it. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t find him!” she yelled back. The wind was blowing through an open window on the porch, a few loose papers whirling past. “Cat Norman!”

“It’s okay,” Norman said. “He’s around here somewhere.”

She stepped into the doorway of the back room, her hair sticking out around her head. “I could hear him a few minutes ago, but now . . . you know how he’s scared of storms.”

I jumped at another thunderclap: it was close. “Stay there,” I said, as Norman rested his painting against the front bay window, out of the rain. “We’ll find him.”