In the years since the original Makeover from Hell, I’ve also added my own touches: corkboards covered in notes from friends, shadow boxes full of dance team ribbons and medals, black-and-orange pompoms stuffed behind both my desk and my dresser, a dozen or so picture frames capturing carnivals and football games and dances.
There I am, a million times over, smiling back at myself: same coarse dark hair, deep brown eyes, and dark skin; same square face and high cheekbones. There I am kissing Matt Kincaid, for the four consecutive years I kissed Matt Kincaid. Standing in the gymnasium in the dead center of the dance team’s middle row, with all the other girls of perfectly average height. Hugging Megan and making that godforsaken Charlie’s Angels pose, in a completely nonironic way that can never be undone, all over Gray Middle School.
Since Grandmother disappeared, I’ve felt less and less like the girl in the photos, and more and more like I needed to get out of here. I quit the dance team, quit Matt, and ever since getting in to Brown, have started to quit Kentucky altogether. And now, three months away from my grand escape and new start, Grandmother’s visit has everything feeling messy again.
“NAT—JACK—COCO—BREAKFAST!” Mom shouts up from the kitchen, and my stomach flip-flops as I pass the rocking chair and head downstairs.
I’m usually the last one out of my room in the morning. Coco, being the very definition of efficiency, is always first to the breakfast table, doubling back upstairs a few minutes later to hurry Jack along as she sounds off a checklist of things he needs for school, while simultaneously texting, braiding her hair, or applying mascara. Without her, Jack would probably routinely walk out of the house without pants, and honestly, he’d also probably manage to have a pretty good day.
Downstairs, Jack has a plate full of only bacon, which he’s shoveling into his mouth with a fork. I’m pretty sure his eyes are closed. Across from him, Coco is texting over a bowl of fruit, her pretty blue eyes lined perfectly in clean layers of eyeliner and eye shadow. She looks exactly like Mom, except for her angular nose, which comes from Dad. I’ve always wondered what that must be like, to look like our parents.
One excellent thing about being adopted is that you always get to worry you’ll end up accidentally dating someone you share a gene pool with. If I were fully Native American, I wouldn’t have to think about that in a mostly white town like Union, but they tell me my biological father was white, so that complicates things.
Mom looks up from the stove, and she clamps a hand over her mouth and gasps like her sleeve’s just caught on fire. “Oh, honey. Look at you. You’re so beautiful.” She starts shaking out her loose strawberry blond waves as if it helps to fight back emotion, then holds out her arms. I shuffle forward reluctantly into the hug. “I can’t believe it’s your last day of high school! I remember the day we brought you home like it was yesterday.”
“Yeah, I was a real crybaby.”
“Oh, stop it, you were not. You were so quiet and so curious. That whole first night we just stayed awake looking at you, and you just looked back at us and didn’t make a sound—”
“Mom,” Jack says from the table.
“We knew you were special, and now look at what a smart, talented—”
“Mom, I think something’s on fire,” Coco says, without glancing up from her phone.
“What?” Mom spins back to the stove, immediately harried by the blackening omelet caked to her cast-iron skillet. “Shit.”
“I didn’t know you spoke French, Mom,” I say.
“Did you hear Mom say ‘shit’?” Jack asks Coco, his mouth full of more bacon.
“Yeah, she’s so weird,” Coco answers flatly. They’re polar opposites—Coco the goal-oriented perfectionist type and Jack the goofy, go-with-the-flow jock—and yet they’ve always been inseparable. I guess that’s what cohabitation in a womb for nine months does.
Mom waves a dishrag at the smoke plume. “Give me five minutes. I’ll make you another one.”
I pour myself a mug of coffee and step through the glass-paneled door onto the deck, where Dad stands, drinking coffee in his long-sleeved denim shirt, despite the hot morning mist. “Morning,” I say.
He flinches in surprise before turning back to me and ruffling my hair. “How you doin’, sugar cube?” I shrug, and Dad sets his mug down on the railing, folding his arms. “Nightmares?”
Dad has this way of knowing things, at least when it comes to me and horses, without understanding the nitty-gritty of how or why, but he won’t pry. I want to tell him everything, but I can’t speak, and I suddenly realize why: I’m terrified it’s him—what if it’s Dad I’m supposed to save?
I shake my head and lean out over the shadowy yard. Dad takes a long sip. “You remember those tantrums you used to have? I don’t know why, but I was just thinking about those. You’d lie down and scream and kick and bite and sob, no matter where we were.”