“Ask Again Later” a short story
Rating: PG-13
Contains: Violence
Word count: 1,989
Three months before I accidentally chucked an eyeliner pencil into my left eye, I spent my summer peering in my grandmother’s windows, waiting for the Avon magazines to arrive. The ones left at home were old with edges soft from finger sweat and the gloss coated paper stuck on my lap like scotch-tape, making that awkward sticky sound whenever I stood up. Still, I could rub my finger on the pages with perfume samples and smell the fragrance.
Before the school year ended, Ms. Alvarez, my arts teacher, taught us how to make a collage out of magazines. Her classroom was full of glue-covered seven-year olds, taking strips of old magazines their mothers abandoned in the living room, left for unwanted visitors to read, and assembling an image that showed what they wanted to be.
Patty wanted to be a teacher.
Nathan wanted to be an astronaut.
Howie wanted to be a lawyer.
Ms. Alvarez thought it was cool that I cut up pieces of the models’ faces to resemble the face I wanted to have. She laughed.
When I was seven, I thought she laughed because I was creative and witty enough to submit that as my art project, but looking back at it now, I have come to realize that she was laughing because this squirrel-cheeked, baby-teethed seven-year old isn’t ever going to look like Angelina Jolie and Mila Kunis’ love child.
Why did I want to be pretty?
When my mother asked me about what happened as I sat in the emergency room, hours after I had an eyeliner pencil knifed into my cornea and three months after I became a laughing stock in the teachers’ faculty room, I explained to her my irrational fear of growing up ugly. She assumed I was having an early case of puberty or that I was just a normal, insecure child who just wasn’t afraid of clowns and the dark, just like the other kids were.
But that wasn’t the reason.
It all started with Allison.
She was that itching spot on your back that you couldn’t reach no matter how hard you try.
On the bus ride home, Allison would stand up from her seat, dip her head into my row, and call me an ugly maggot. She would also tell me that I smelled like feces and that she learned this in her fourth-grade science class, along with her spit landing on my cheek. I kept quiet the whole time this was happening.
When you’re a kid, it was understood that you had to respect the older kids.
I tolerated Allison Boulder.
I tolerated her spit spewing mouth.
I tolerated her fourth-grade vocabulary.
I tolerated the fears she gave me.
Nice girls don’t talk back, and nice girls are prettier than actual pretty girls – on the inside only.
Ignorance kept the bullies away.
“Ugly maggot can’t speak up ‘cause she knows it’s true.”
Itching. Itching. Itching.
I needed to know whether it was true: was I really an ugly maggot? Did I actually smell like feces? I needed to ask the all-knowing.
And so, for Christmas, I asked for a Magic-8 ball.
When all my relatives were getting fat on holiday hams, wasting their night and sobriety on cheap wine, and asking other family members if they had gotten a job, I was locked up in my room with my new Magic-8 ball. As I was unwrapping and unboxing dead trees that acted as a wall between me and the answers to my fears, I overheard my relatives talking about issues they had.
One of my uncles was suffering from alcohol addiction. A cousin got pregnant. One was on the verge of bankruptcy. My aunt caught her boyfriend cheating.
I couldn’t care less. I didn’t need to know which Alcoholics Anonymous was my uncle going to. I didn’t need to know if it was Jason or Ian that got my cousin pregnant. I didn’t need to know if my relative should mortgage his house or move to a new company. And I didn’t need to know which co-worker my aunt caught with her boyfriend on the night of their anniversary.
What I cared to know was if I was pretty.
And the Magic-8 ball had the answers.
Am I pretty? Concentrate and ask again.
Am I pretty? Reply hazy; try again.
Am I pretty? My sources say no.
(Allison Boulder is an ugly maggot who smells like feces)
I figured Allison was an unreliable source.
I asked the all-knowing, closing my eyes tightly as if I could make the answer I wanted to float, shaking it hard like how you would shake a nail polish bottle. My face, red, stared at the small window of the Magic 8 ball.
Am I pretty? My reply is no.
During my remaining days in school, I saved up all my lunch money in a plastic piggy bank that I won at some birthday party. It was smaller than the regular piggy bank, so its body grew wider and heavier faster than the Magic 8 ball answer could float. I also stole the small bills my aunt tucked in the sofa cushions (trying to find my crayons gave me fortune). And by the time summer had started, I could finally buy myself a cheap makeup kit.
The glossy paper of the Avon magazine still stuck on my thigh, but at least it won’t slip off when I shake the Magic 8 ball.
Should I buy the electric pink lipstick rather than the rich berry pout lip paint? Without a doubt.
Do you think I should buy the liquid foundation rather than the powdered? Don’t count on it.
I think the SuperExtend Winged Out mascara fits me, what do you think? Yes.
Is the Plum Pop blush better than the Heavenly Pink? You may rely on it.
Do you think the Desert Sunset Palette makes my eyes pop better than the Tranquility Palette? Cannot predict now. (I’m going to go for Tranquility Palette)
How about Glimmersticks Waterproof eyeliner over Kohl eyeliner? Outlook not so good.
If I were to talk to myself 3 months prior to the Event, I’d say, “Indeed, outlook not so good.”
But I didn’t know that, of course. All I knew was I was going to tell the Avon lady that it’s my grandmother who’s ordering the makeup, and that I’ll probably learn the process of beautifying myself when she prepares herself for Bingo night – which takes about 20 minutes long, and that’s for someone who’s been using makeup all their life.
She applies the foundation first, making sure it’s applied to every inch of the face; then, she sucks her cheeks in like a fish as she applies the blush forwards and backwards; the mascara comes next, but before she unknowingly drops her jaw as she applies on the top eyelash, she curls them first; she, then, paints her lips with aubergine, wiping the excess off with a finger; and lastly, she draws around her eyelids with the eyeliner, flawlessly. She doesn’t do her eyebrows because they’re shaped perfectly even though they’re thick as the dog’s hair.
I also learned lipsticks fade away fast and that every time a number in one of her cards gets called, she must reapply to maintain that aubergine glow. (Note: Plump lips after (re)applying).
By the time my makeup arrived, I immediately locked myself in my room and faced the mirror with my kit beside me. I stuck my Kunis-Jolie collage in the mirror’s frame and began removing the plastic and packaging of the makeup. It was then that I realized I didn’t have any brushes. Thankfully, my grandmother did. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me borrowing it for a while. I started repeating the steps my grandmother and the makeup artists I saw on TV did.
The summer heat made it feel like my makeup was melting. Somehow, I felt like a Barbie doll whose plastic face is being melted in the microwave. Because of this, I kept reapplying the foundation and lipstick.
Caked, that’s what you’d call me.
This went on the whole summer.
Coincidentally, when the school bus arrived to pick me up for my first day, I started itching. As I stepped inside, carrying my makeup kit in my small backpack, I saw Allison’s eyes in the back row. Her stare felt like I accidentally closed my eyes while applying the mascara.
Another thing that bothered me about Allison was that yes, she was mean, but she was as pretty as the kids in the children’s section in Avon. I don’t need a Magic 8 ball to tell me that. Thankfully, today was going to be the day I prove to her that I am not an ugly maggot who smelled like feces.
I am a sunflower who smells like Versace Bright Crystal Eau De Toilette.
“Hey snot-face,” Allison hissed with her head dipped into my row.
I got my makeup kit out and started powdering myself with foundation. I can’t afford to have her spit ruining my beauty this time. It’ll give me acne, I learned.
“What’s that you got there, huh?” She looked at the compact as I put it back inside. “Something to get rid of your stench?” She laughed to herself. I’m surprised she didn’t snatch it.
The process continued. I apply makeup; she insults me.
Itching. Itching. Itching.
It got as far to applying eyeliner. But there was something in what she said that made me fight back.
“You can apply makeup as much as you want, but you will never be beautiful.” Allison whispered so close to my ear, I felt her breath moist my earlobe. “You hear me? You will never be beautiful. You will always be an ugly—”
“You speak like that like you know what beauty is. You may be prettier than me, but we both know who’s really the ugly maggot. Your insides reeks of feces, Allison.” I looked her straight in the eye before batting away my mascara’d eyelashes. I continued outlining my eye.
I was using the eyeliner on the bottom lid of my eye when Allison, out of anger, pushed me too hard on the head, making my hand hit the seat in front of me and shove the eyeliner into my eye.
There was a flash of light the moment it happened, like when you turn off the TV and the program shrinks abruptly to a black screen. It felt as if someone was drilling a hole in my skull through my eye, then tried to gouge it out with an ice cream scooper. I was the TV channel being turned off, falling into what seemed like a hole of darkness, and finally being consumed by it as I heard Allison’s piercing scream.
A few days later after I went home with an eye gauze and bandage, I found out that Allison was afraid of popping balloons.
Maybe she thought of my eye as a small balloon and it popped when she pushed me…
Allison Boulder transferred schools after that school year, though while she hadn’t, she remained quiet in her bus seat and kept her saliva to herself. She never apologized nor talked to me again; she simply pretended that the girl with a torn iris didn’t exist.
Likewise, when she left, I never heard of her again and so, I pretended that she wasn’t real. Though it was hard, because every time I look in the mirror and see my pupil poured over my iris like an overflowing teacup, I start to itch.
“What happened to your eye?” they would ask.
