The new chin is still swollen and bruised, but I know what it will look like later. It will look the way my dad wants my chin to look. Defined and strong.
“I know it’s a little shocking,” she says. “It’s still healing, so it looks scary now. But it is going to look out-of-control gorgeous. It’s going to change everything.”
“Jesus,” Bernardo says.
I think she got Botox too. Her forehead has an eerie stillness, a plastic, inhuman look that makes me sad. She had this one line in the middle of her forehead that I bet had been there since she was younger than me. Not a wrinkle, but a piece of her. Now it’s gone.
“I know, I know, I look like someone punched me,” Karissa says. I have all these fighting words to say, but I can’t get the energy to say them.
I try to let go one more inch of who I thought Karissa would be. I try to sink in one more inch to what Bernardo could be for me.
He looks confused and overwhelmed, and I must look the same. We are two people who have been unprepared for the things happening around us.
“We want to go out,” Bernardo says. “We want to do a celebratory night out. Are you allowed?”
“Awesome!” Karissa says, as willing and filled with unquestioning as usual.
I’m missing her face.
“Where are we going?” she says. “Dirty Versailles?”
“Fancier,” Bernardo says.
“So what are we celebrating?” Karissa asks. She grabs my elbow. “You didn’t celebrate whatever it is with Natasha already, did you?”
“No. You’re the first,” I say. I’m shaking from the pressure. She’s holding this thing over me like it’s a boulder she could drop on my head at any moment. She could crush me.
“Well, let’s make sure you don’t feel the need for any other celebrations. Let’s make sure this one is truly epic.” Karissa takes a drag of her cigarette and hands it to me, and I don’t give it back. I hide the hand with the tattoo on it. We have to reveal it at the right moment. With champagne and house music and sparkly clothes that I’d never in a million years wear otherwise.
Karissa delivers on the celebration. She gets us a table at some fancy club she used to go to a lot before meeting my father. She has friends there, the way she did at Dirty Versailles, but they’re different kinds of friends. Sadder. Dressier. Older. Drunker.
“You. Are. Perfection,” one woman says when Karissa kisses her cheek on the way to our table. The swelling of Karissa’s chin has gone down a little more after icing it, and she’s covered the yellow with makeup. The lights, or lack thereof, hide the things we don’t like about ourselves from others.
The drinks hide the things we don’t like about ourselves from ourselves.
So we get drunk. Blasted. First me, then Bernardo, then Karissa.
Karissa has something else too. Pain pills from her surgery. She takes one, then two.
We go through two bottles, then three. We talk to guys in suits and girls in crop tops and thousand-dollar shoes. I can’t stop shimmying in the fringed dress Karissa lent me. I love how the fringes hit my arms and the backs of my legs when I twist.
I’ve never gone out dancing before, and adults dance differently than we all do at high school dances. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but it’s something about the way they throw their hands in the air and the movement of their fingers and who they are looking at and dancing for.
“I feel awkward,” Bernardo says. He’s barely dancing, mostly moving his head and his arms, and I tell him to have another drink.
“It’s our engagement party!” I say, because it’s all become both lovely and a big joke.
“This doesn’t feel how I thought it would,” he says. “I hate this music. People keep bumping into me. This place is gross. Depressing. Like, this is what we have to look forward to?”
He’d hate Dirty Versailles if he thinks this place is gross. Which is sad, because I’d pictured us there together when we’re Karissa’s age, kissing the bartender’s cheek and taking shots of whatever bright-blue or green or pink thing he felt like making us. I thought we’d entwine our legs under the bar stools and make out under precarious chandeliers.
“Don’t you want to be in love and reckless and wild and us?” I say, which isn’t exactly the point I wanted to get across, but it’s close enough.
“We are,” he says. He points to his finger. My initial marking him.
“Remember when it was only Sharpie?” I say. That day in the basement when we wrote all over each other felt permanent and scary, but this is even more. Bernardo shakes his head and points to his ear. He didn’t hear me.
It’s for the best. He’d take it the wrong way.
“Let’s hear that congratulations,” I say. “She’s wasted, we can tell her. She’ll be happy. She’ll scream and jump and tell the whole club. That will be fun, right?” I want his mood to match mine.
“Okay. Let’s do it. And I have another idea too,” he says.
“Telling Arizona and Roxanne?” I say, unsure if I’m kidding.