Can't Look Away

  FOR JAY

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE: BEAT THE BLUES AND LEARN FRESH BEAUTY TIPS

  CHAPTER TWO: “GET READY WITH ME EVERY DAY” MAKEUP TUTORIAL

  CHAPTER THREE: GO TO CLASS WITH A TOTALLY TRENDY BACKPACK

  CHAPTER FOUR: SAY GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER WITH MIRRORED SUNGLASSES

  CHAPTER FIVE: GET GLAM AND GIRLY WITH FALL’S BEST LOOKS

  CHAPTER SIX: FLIRTING TRICKS THAT WORK

  CHAPTER SEVEN: DREAMY COLOR COMBOS THAT WON’T WASH YOU OUT

  CHAPTER EIGHT: DOS AND DON’TS FOR THE PERFECT POUT

  CHAPTER NINE: SURVIVE THE FASHION TRENCHES WITH STATEMENT TEES

  CHAPTER TEN: CAT EYELINER FOR BEGINNERS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: TEN WAYS TO STAY TONED

  CHAPTER TWELVE: DAMAGE CONTROL FOR FLYAWAY HAIR

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: FALL HAUL: DRESSES TO DRIVE ’EM CRAZY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CUTE FIRST-DATE LOOKS

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: STONE-COLD NEUTRALS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: PICTURE-PERFECT MAKEUP TUTORIAL

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: BOLD, GUTSY LOOKS TO MAKE YOU THE CENTER OF ATTENTION

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SURPRISING MAKEUP TRICKS

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: DELICIOUS GLOSSES FOR KISSABLE LIPS

  CHAPTER TWENTY: WHAT’S IN MY PURSE?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: HALLOWEEN SHOPPING FOR THE FASHION CONSCIOUS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: DON’T GET STUCK IN A FASHION RUT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE VERY BEST WATERPROOF MAKEUP

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: MORNING BEAUTY SECRETS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: WHAT’S ON YOUR WINTER WISH LIST?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY DONNA COONER

  COPYRIGHT

  Boulder, CO — A suspected drunken driver struck and killed a young girl at a crosswalk in a popular pedestrian mall. Miranda Grey, 12, died at the scene. Police said the girl was crossing lawfully at the intersection, which had a traffic signal, when she was struck by a fast-moving car. An older sister, 15-year-old Torrey Grey, was at the scene, but was uninjured.

  The driver, Steve Waters, 53, was ordered held on $2.5 million bail for investigation of vehicular homicide.

  “On the Internet, you live forever. Everything you read could have happened today. Or last year. Or never.” —Torrey Grey, Beautystarz15

  In September, my parents moved me and my dead sister to Texas.

  Today, just one week after the moving trucks left us here, my parents are going to put her ashes in the ground out in the middle of nowhere. The thought of it makes my stomach churn.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Torrey?” my dad asks as he paces back and forth in front of the couch. My mom stares off into space, her hands clenched in her lap.

  “I’m sure,” I say. “I went to the funeral.” And we all knew how that turned out. Pictures of my grieving face ended up on Instagrams everywhere. There was talk that a camera was even hidden in the huge spray of pink roses. They never found out for sure.

  Mom seems to want to argue with me, and then just doesn’t have the energy. Like she doesn’t have the energy to eat dinner or brush out the tangles in her curly blond hair. She did, however, have the strength to keep going down to that corner at Pearl and 10th Street back in Colorado. My dad found her there, night after night, staring at that little pile of wilting flowers and teddy bears and holding handwritten cards from strangers.

  “We all need a new start,” my dad says now, looking at my mom. I know that part is about me, too. I can’t really blame him. He’s trying to fix things. That’s what Dad does. That’s why we’re here in Texas, sitting on a couch the color of dead leaves and talking about putting what’s left of my sister in the dirt.

  Right after the funeral in Colorado, my parents discussed the move to Texas. Well, the truth is, my dad talked about it and my mom just stared at things like forks and lamps. I tried to not get in the way, and didn’t say anything at all, even though the thought of moving away from Boulder was another thin layer of sadness pushed down on top of all the grief.

  “It’s just for a little while,” Dad said. Like we’d come back again after a few months.

  When my mother finally agreed to go, there was only one condition.

  My sister, Miranda.

  My dad, ever the planner, already thought of this and had an answer ready. “My family has a cemetery plot down in Huntsville. We can put her there and be close by.”

  The next day, Mom carefully rolled up the silver vase containing my sister’s ashes into bubble wrap and placed it in a specially made travel box the funeral people gave us. And just like that, even though it didn’t make any sense to me, we all went to Texas. I didn’t speak up because I didn’t deserve to have an opinion.

  I never knew you could bury ashes when people died. I thought you were supposed to keep them on the mantel or sprinkle them across the ocean. That’s what they always did in the movies.

  “There won’t be anyone else there today. Right, Scott?” my mom asks my dad now in a quiet monotone. She talks like that a lot now. No one would guess she lectured to hundreds of biology students at the university in Colorado. She quit when Miranda was born and went back to teaching part-time when my sister went to kindergarten. Even so, she still had a wait list every semester of students wanting to get into her section. She was that good.

  My dad nods and adds, “Just us and the funeral home people.”

  I can’t give them the answer I know they want to hear. “I’m not going,” I say again.

  “It’s okay.” My dad stops still and looks down at my mom and me, huddled together on the couch. “You don’t have to.”

  My relief is followed quickly by guilt. I bite my lower lip, holding back any chance of changing my mind. I can hear the disappointment in his voice, but it just seeps down and blends into all the other sadness until it is indistinguishable.

  He sighs. “If you want to shut it all out, Torrey, that’s your choice.”

  “Nothing is my choice anymore,” I mumble, but I know he hears it by the way his jaw clenches.

  “She can’t stay here alone.” My mom’s voice is starting to rise.

  My dad glances over at her, frowns. “She won’t be by herself. Uncle Leo and Aunt Kim are coming over. They said they’d keep her company.” My dad knew all along I wasn’t going. He planned for it. I’m sixteen years old and need a babysitter. Even worse, the babysitters are some hick-a-billy relatives I’ve only met once, when I was eight. Great. But there’s no sense in arguing. Not today.

  “You’re sure?” My mom’s liquid blue eyes are pleading, but I’m not giving in. She can just add it to the long list of all my other failings and shortcomings.

  “Yes,” I say, firmly. It feels like I’ll drown if I don’t break away. I stand up. Her fingers cling to me, dropping off my shoulder only when I step out of their reach, but I know it’s not me she really wants.

  Later, I wave good-bye from the front door with a fake smile plastered on my face. I glance around to see if anyone’s watching. Out of habit, I guess.

  I go back inside, closing the door behind me and turning the lock. I don’t know why I bother, because minutes after my parents drive off, I hear my uncle and aunt coming in the unlocked back door.

  “Anybody home?” my uncle calls out.

  “In here,” I answer, and hope they stay in the kitchen, far away from me. Powering up my laptop, I sit down by the window in the big leather chair that looks just as old and shabby as the rest of this rental house. We don’t have an Internet connection yet, so I make do with the only spot where I can catch the neighbors’ unprotected wireless signal.

  I lurk
on Facebook first, scanning the postings and photos. I still have an account even though I haven’t posted or commented since August.

  Cody Davis and Zoe Williams are now friends.

  Cody Davis wrote on Zoe Williams’s wall. Are you going to the party on Friday night?

  Cody Davis commented on Zoe Williams’s photo. Looking good.

  There’s one photo that catches my attention, but I don’t “like” it. It’s a great picture of Zoe, but then she always looks good for the camera. The bright pink furry hat is the perfect complement to her olive complexion and her straight white smile. There is no sign of that horrible overbite she had until sixth grade. Kids called her “rabbit face” until I punched them hard in the arm and they stopped. In the Facebook photo, she’s waving from a wooden bridge. Looks like Vail in the background. When Mrs. Timbley asked me in the seventh grade what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said “famous,” everybody but Zoe laughed. She knew I was serious and had been my best friend and favorite accessory ever since.

  There is another new picture posted and I definitely don’t like this one. In this photo, Zoe’s wearing a purple lace sheath dress and black pumps. The tall blond boy in the picture has his arm draped around her shoulders. His smile is crooked with the right side just a little higher than the left and, even though I can’t see them in the picture, I know there are tiny little crinkles around his blue eyes. He’s wearing a suit. I’m more used to seeing him in jeans and hiking boots, or maybe his lacrosse uniform. I’ve only seen him dressed in a suit once before. At my sister’s funeral.

  Cody Davis is in a relationship with Zoe Williams.

  Boom. There it is. Curling my fingers into my palm, I dig my nails into the soft skin. Life is going on without me. As though I never existed.

  Hurriedly, I click over to YouTube and log on to my video channel. I feel the now familiar rush at the still of my face on the screen, and I study my well-known username: Beautystarz15. My adrenaline spikes when I see the subscriber count. Three hundred thousand of my closest Internet friends all waiting anxiously for my next post.

  They’ll have to wait a little longer.

  I select the most popular video, already viewed more than a hundred thousand times. In it, Zoe and I are sitting on my bed in my pink-walled room, surrounded by Forever 21 and Anthropologie bags. I’m wearing the Dior sunglasses I picked out that day from a clearance rack, and my dark, thick hair is perfectly straight-ironed.

  Zoe says it’s my blue eyes combined with the dark hair that really makes my face pop on screen. She’s probably right, but I figure I look like the popular girls at any high school. Tall, but not too tall. Thin, but not too skinny. I think that’s why the vlog gets so many hits — I’m approachable. Like a new best friend who tells you what to wear and how to look good wearing it.

  “After all, everyone deserves to see the fruits of our shopping trips and not have to ask where we bought stuff,” Zoe had said that day, but only to me, because we weren’t filming yet. “It’s really a win-win.”

  “You’re a snob,” I told her. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude that comes across on-screen. You have to be likable.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Zoe said, grinning at me, and then added, “you just hide it better than I do.”

  But none of the thousands of people who viewed this clip will ever know about that conversation. It took place before I hit RECORD on my laptop. They only see what’s here.

  I wait while the clip slowly loads. My face is frozen on the screen, then I come to life. Zoe is by my side and looking at me, just like we practiced a million times.

  “So normally I would say floral jeans are going to make you look huge,” I say, tilting my head slightly toward the left for the better angle. “But these skinny jeans by Free People I bought today at Nordstrom are perfect to make long legs look even longer.”

  I set down the jeans, and then pick up a purple jacket off the bed and hold it out toward the camera. “And if you really want to turn some heads, rock this fun faux fur with those jeans.”

  “Or go way edgier with Sam Edelman leopard-print booties and leather leggings,” Zoe says, reaching down to grab my foot and pull it up into the frame. I scream and topple back onto the bedspread. Zoe collapses in a fit of giggles.

  The image freezes and a spinning ball covers Zoe’s laughing face. The Internet connection is too slow for video. I shut down the computer and sit for a minute staring at the black screen. Colorado seems a long way away. I reach for my phone in my pocket and then remember the battery is dead. It’s the fifth time I’ve tried to use my phone since lunch. I feel lost without it. The charger disappeared somewhere in the move and it’s driving me crazy. Maybe I’ll ask Dad to take me to the Apple store when he gets back.

  The sound of dishes clattering reminds me I’m not alone. But Aunt Kim stays in the kitchen, letting me be. Uncle Leo isn’t quite so intuitive. He comes out to the family room and plops down in the chair next to me like he belongs there. He’s sort of like Humpty Dumpty with a big silver Texas-shaped belt buckle planted right in the middle of his stomach. And he’s a talker. Joy.

  “Good thing this house right across the street from us was empty. I know your dad wanted to be near family. It’s not what you’re used to, but it’s okay for now, right?”

  I don’t answer, staring at him with a look that usually makes people uncomfortable, but he just keeps talking.

  “The school here is great. They’ve only been back in classes for a couple of weeks, so you won’t have missed all that much. You’re going to like it fine.”

  The chair gives a big squeak as he rocks back against the wall, his JCPenney shirt stretching tightly at the buttons. I wonder if it would be too rude to get my earbuds out and stuff them into my ears.

  “You’re sixteen, right?”

  I just stare back at him. What’s it to you?

  “Do you have a car?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t have a license yet,” I mumble, digging around in my Fossil bag for the earbuds. I don’t add the fact that my birthday passed unnoticed weeks ago. Funeral arrangements make a trip to the DMV completely trivial. And seeing the crumpled front of a car that just hit my sister didn’t make me eager to get behind the wheel. I especially don’t want to talk about that.

  “I’ve got just the thing.” My uncle slaps his leg and I almost jump off the couch. “My daughter has her license. You remember your cousin, Raylene, right?”

  I vaguely remember a skinny girl with big ears that I met at some relative’s wedding when I was eight. We never had much contact with the Texas side of my dad’s family before. Now we’re practically living with them. I figure it’s sort of like being in the witness protection program. No one is going to be looking for me here.

  “I’m thinking maybe we can help each other out,” Uncle Leo is saying.

  I pause, with the earbuds ready to shut out his noise. He gets two, maybe three more sentences max, then I’m drowning him out.

  “You don’t want to be riding the bus to school, do you?”

  Okay. Now he has my attention. There is no way I’d be caught dead in a school bus. Even one in Nowhereville, Texas.

  “Raylene can drive you.” He announces it like it’s this huge present and I’m supposed to clap my hands in glee. “You’ll be in the same grade anyway, so it’ll help you get acquainted. She can introduce you to everyone.”

  How exactly is this helping him out? Does his daughter really need friends that bad? I give him a tight smile. Not only do I have to live across the street from these people, now I have to go to school with one of them.

  “I’ll go get her and you girls can make plans for Monday.” He gets up out of the chair with a big groan at the effort and opens the front door. I hear him yelling from the porch.

  Within minutes, a bleached-blond girl with a ponytail and a teased-up bump on the top of her head is standing in front of me. She holds a can of Diet Coke in one hand and looks me up and down, chomping
away on a piece of gum, her big silver earrings jangling with the motion.

  “I hear we’re going to be in the same class.”

  I know she’s heard a whole lot more about me, but she’s restraining herself. Barely. Someone must have given her a good talk about it before I arrived but, honestly, I don’t have much hope she is going to hold out very long. She takes a big swig of the drink, but doesn’t stop staring at me. I notice for the first time there are little tacky daisies painted on each of her fingernails. This is evidently what I have to look forward to.

  “Do you have a charger?” I ask.

  She stares at me, still chewing away on her gum, like I’m speaking another language.

  “My phone is dead.” I throw in one of my smiles, with dimples and a flash of straight white teeth, for extra emphasis. When I was a kid I used that grin when I needed another quarter for the pop machine or a ride home from school instead of taking the smelly bus. Later, I discovered it even worked with teachers for an extra point for the passing grade, and classmates for the right answers on their math homework.

  Raylene blinks at the quick change of subject and stares at me dumbly. I feel like reaching out and shaking her.

  “A phone?” I stand up and make a motion like I’m punching in numbers on a keypad. Finally, her face clears and she nods, reaching in her pocket to pull out an iPhone with a tacky pink glitter case.

  “Can I use it?” I ask, but I’m already taking it from her hand. I give her a look to let her know she needs to back off and give me some privacy, but she doesn’t budge.

  I try not to roll my eyes as I text Zoe. Call me on landline. Phone is dead. I hit SEND and then realize she won’t know who it’s from so I add, It’s me, T.

  I hand it back to my cousin. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Raylene suddenly grabs my shoulders and pulls me in toward her body. She is evidently not discouraged at all by my frozen, board-stiff response because she just keeps hugging and hugging and hugging.

  When she finally releases me, she smiles from ear to ear and says, “That’s what cousins are for.”