Little ghosts said they’d teach her how to apply eyeliner like Audrey Hepburn.
“it’s a psychedelic sorta flick of the fingers,” they whispered.
She cracked her knuckles and turned to the next page of last week’s Cosmopolitan. An unlit cigarette and two Tylenols sat on top of her introductory microeconomics textbook. She scrunched her toes until she heard the joints pop.
“sometimes it’s cathartic to put your face on”
She opened her bronzing powder and the brown dust exploded onto page 23 (“Free Therapy: Ten-Minute Abs for the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”).
“that was a forty-three dollar contour palette, you little shit.”
Sometimes she put the unlit cigarette between her lips while she solved the microeconomics practice problems because it helped her focus. Once, her roommate’s boyfriend caught her swirling it around in her mouth, and he smirked when she met his gaze. She spat out the Marlboro onto a series of indifference curves and imagined how she’d look with an Audrey Hepburn cat-eye.
“you have to accept that it’s not working. you have to go to the sink and wash your face and start over.” October made them so unbearably impudent.
She ripped the red dress on page 31 out of Cosmo and pinned the now-headless figure to her bulletin board. Inspiration for the next inevitable Formal Event.
“it’s been five minutes and you’re already applying blush you should be ashamed we thought this was a dignified affair we thought this was the steady creation of a masterpiece we thought your body was a temple and you’re rushing the blush god you should be BLUSHING”
Maybe she was more of a Katharine than an Audrey. Yeah.
…Yeah. And later she’d go to the cemetery for the silent disco.
