Fern giggled and immediately changed faces. Her lower lip quivered and her chin puckered and shook and her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh man, you are way too good at that!” Ambrose was laughing full out now, the dough forgotten as she entertained him.
“Do you want to try?” Fern was laughing too, wiping away the tears she had manufactured to create her “sad” face.
“Nah. I don't know if my face would cooperate,” Ambrose said quietly, but there was no self-consciousness in his voice, no defensiveness, and Fern let it go with a quiet “okay.”
They visited for a few minutes more and then Fern thanked him again and said good night. And it had been a good night, in spite of Becker Garth. Ambrose had talked to her. He'd even laughed with her. And Fern felt a glimmer of hope flicker in her heart.
The following day when Fern arrived at work there was a quote on the whiteboard.
“God has given you one face and you make yourself another.” - Hamlet
Shakespeare again. Hamlet again. Ambrose seemed to have a thing for the tortured character. Maybe because he was a tortured character. But she had made him laugh. Fern smiled, remembering the invention of the Making Faces game.
2001
“Why are you making that face, Fern?” Bailey asked.
“What face?”
“That face that looks like you can't figure something out. Your eyebrows are pushed down and your forehead is wrinkled. And you're frowning.”
Fern smoothed out her face, realizing she was doing exactly what Bailey said she was doing. “I was thinking about a story I've been writing. I can't figure out how to end it. What do you think this face means?” Fern gave herself an underbite and crossed her eyes.
“You look like a brain-dead cartoon character,” Bailey answered, snickering.
“What about this one?” Fern pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows while wincing.
“You're eating something super sour!” Bailey cried. “Let me try one.” Bailey thought for a minute and then he made his mouth go slack and opened his eyes as wide as they could go. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth like a big dog.
“You're looking at something delicious,” Fern guessed.
“Be more specific,” Bailey said and made the face once more.
“Hmm. You're looking at a huge ice cream sundae,” Fern tried again. Bailey pulled his tongue back into his mouth and grinned cheekily.
“Nope. That's the face you make every time you see Ambrose Young.”
Fern swatted Bailey with the cheap stuffed bear she'd won at the school carnival in fourth grade. The arm flew off and ratty stuffing flew in all directions. Fern tossed it aside.
“Oh yeah? What about you? This is the face you make whenever Rita comes over.” Fern lowered one eyebrow and smirked, trying to replicate Rhett Butler's smolder in Gone with the Wind.
“I look constipated whenever I see Rita?” Bailey asked, dumbfounded.
Fern snorted, laughter exploding from her nose, making her grab for a tissue so she didn't gross herself out too much.
“I don't blame you for liking Ambrose,” Bailey said, suddenly serious. “He is the coolest guy I know. If I could be anyone in the whole world, I'd be Ambrose Young. Who would you be?”
Fern shrugged, wondering as she always did what it would be like to be beautiful. “I wouldn't mind looking like Rita,” she answered honestly. “But I think I would still like to be me on the inside. Wouldn't you?”
Bailey thought for a minute. “Yeah. I am pretty awesome. But so is Ambrose. I'd still trade places.”
“I'd just trade faces,” Fern said.
“But God gave you that face,” Rachel Taylor said from the kitchen. Fern rolled her eyes. Her mother had the hearing of a bat; even at sixty-two years old she didn't miss trick.
“Well, if I could, I'd make myself another,” Fern retorted. “Then maybe Ambrose Young wouldn't be too beautiful to even look at me.”
She hadn't even meant to quote Shakespeare then, but Ambrose had been too beautiful to even look at her.
Fern wondered at Ambrose's choice in quotes until she saw the display cases in front of the bakery. She shrieked like an excited little girl seeing her favorite pop star, and then began laughing out loud. The cases were filled with dozens of round sugar cookies iced in cheerful pastels. Each cookie had a simple face. Squiggles and lines in black icing created a different expression on each one–frowns and smiles and scowls, edible emoticons.
Fern bought a dozen of her favorite ones and wondered how in the world she would ever be able to eat them, or let anyone else eat them. She wanted to save them forever and remember the night she made Ambrose Young laugh. Maybe having a funny face wasn't such a bad thing after all.
Fern found a marker and wrote Making cookies or Making faces beneath Ambrose’s message on the board. Then she circled Making cookies, so he would know she had seen his offering. And she added a little smiley face.