CHAPTER 34

I asked Alisa about the will. I half expected her to look at me like I’d lost my marbles, but the second I said the word red, her expression shifted. She informed me that a viewing of the Red Will could be arranged, but first I had to do something for her. That something ended up involving a brother-sister stylist team carting what appeared to be the entire inventory of Saks Fifth Avenue into my bedroom. The female stylist was tiny and said next to nothing.

The man was six foot six and kept up a steady stream of observations. “You can’t wear yellow, and I would encourage you to banish the words orange and cream from your vocabulary, but most every other color is an option.” The three of us were in my room now, along with Libby, thirteen racks of clothing, dozens of trays of jewelry, and what appeared to be an entire salon set up in the bathroom. “Brights, pastels, earth tones in moderation. You gravitate toward solids?”

I looked down at my current outfit: a gray T-shirt and my second-most-comfortable pair of jeans. “I like simple.”

“Simple is a lie,” the woman murmured. “But a beautiful one sometimes.”

Beside me, Libby snorted and bit back a grin. I glared at her. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I asked darkly. Then I took in the outfit she was wearing. The dress was black, which was Libby enough, but the style would have fit right in at a country club.

I’d told Alisa not to pressure her. “You don’t have to change how you—” I started to say, but Libby cut me off.

“They bribed me. With boots.” She gestured toward the back wall, which was lined with boots, all of them leather, in shades of purple, black, and blue. Ankle-length, calf-length, even one pair of thigh-highs.

“Also,” Libby added serenely, “creepy lockets.” If a piece of jewelry looked like it might be haunted, Libby was there.

“You let them make you over in exchange for fifteen pairs of boots and some creepy lockets?” I said, feeling mildly betrayed.

“And some incredibly soft leather pants,” Libby added. “Totally worth it. I’m still me, just… fancy.” Her hair was still blue. Her nail polish was still black. And she wasn’t the one the style team was focused on now.

“We should start with the hair,” the male stylist declared beside me, eyeing my offending tresses. “Don’t you think?” he asked his sister.

There was no reply as the woman disappeared behind one of the racks. I could hear her thumbing through another, rearranging the order of the clothing.

“Thick. Not quite wavy, not quite straight. You could go either way.” This giant man looked and sounded like he should be playing tight end, not advising me on hairstyles. “No shorter than two inches below your chin, no longer than mid-back. Gentle layers wouldn’t hurt.” He glanced over at Libby. “I suggest you disown her if she opts for bangs.”

“I’ll take that under consideration,” Libby said solemnly. “You’d be miserable if it wasn’t long enough for a ponytail,” she told me.

“Ponytail.” That got me a censuring look from the linebacker. “Do you hate your hair and want it to suffer?”

“I don’t hate it.” I shrugged. “I just don’t care.”

“That is also a lie.” The woman reappeared from behind the clothing rack. She had a half dozen hangers’ worth of clothes in her hands, and as I watched, she hung them up, face out, on the closest rack. The result was three different outfits.

“Classic.” She nodded to an ice-blue skirt, paired with a long-sleeved T-shirt. “Natural.” The stylist moved on to the second option—a loose and flowing floral dress combining at least a dozen shades of red and pink. “Preppy with an edge.” The final option included a brown leather skirt, shorter than any of the others—and probably tighter, too. She’d matched it with a white collared shirt and a heather-gray cardigan.

“Which calls to you?” the male stylist asked. That got another snort out of Libby. She was definitely enjoying this way too much.

“They’re all fine.” I eyed the floral dress. “That one looks like it might be itchy.”

The stylists seemed to be developing a migraine. “Casual options?” he asked his sister, pained. She disappeared and reappeared with three more outfits, which she added to the first three. Black leggings, a red blouse, and a knee-length white cardigan were paired with the classic combo. A lacy sea-green shirt and darker green pants joined the floral monstrosity, and an oversized cashmere sweater and torn jeans were hung beside the leather skirt.

“Classic. Natural. Preppy with an edge.” The woman reiterated my options.

“I have philosophical objections to colored pants,” I said. “So that one’s out.”

“Don’t just look at the clothes,” the man instructed. “Take in the look.”

Rolling my eyes at someone twice my size probably wasn’t the wisest course of action.

The female stylist crossed to me. She walked lightly on her feet, like she could tiptoe across a bed of flowers without breaking a single one. “The way you dress, the way you do your hair—it’s not silly. It’s not shallow. This…” She gestured to the rack behind her. “It’s not just clothing. It’s a message. You’re not deciding what to wear. You’re deciding what story you want your image to tell. Are you the ingenue, young and sweet? Do you dress to this world of wealth and wonders like you were born to it, or do you want to walk the line: the same but different, young but full of steel?”

“Why do I have to tell a story?” I asked.

“Because if you don’t tell the story, someone else will tell it for you.” I turned to see Xander Hawthorne standing in the doorway, holding a plate of scones. “Makeovers,” he told me, “like the recreational building of Rube Goldberg machines, are hungry work.”

I wanted to narrow my eyes, but Xander and his scones were glare-proof.

“What do you know about makeovers?” I grumbled. “If I were a guy, there’d be two racks of clothing in this room, max.”

“And if I were White,” Xander returned loftily, “people wouldn’t look at me like I’m half a Hawthorne. Scone?”

That took the wind out of my sails. It was ridiculous of me to think that Xander didn’t know what it was like to be judged, or to have to play life by different rules. I wondered, suddenly, what it was like for him, growing up in this house. Growing up Hawthorne.

“Can I have one of the blueberry scones?” I asked—my version of a peace offering.

Xander handed me a lemon scone. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

With only a moderate amount of teeth-gnashing, I ended up picking option three. I hated the word preppy almost as much as I disliked any claims to having an edge, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t pretend to be wide-eyed and innocent, and I deeply suspected that any attempts to act like this world was a natural fit would itch—not physically, but under my skin.

The team kept my hair long but worked in layers and cajoled it into a bed-head wave. I’d expected them to suggest highlights, but they’d gone the opposite route: subtle streaks a shade darker and richer than my normal ashy brown. They cleaned my eyebrows up but left them thick. I was instructed on the finer points of an elaborate facial regimen and found myself on the receiving end of a spray tan via airbrush, but they kept my makeup minimal: eyes and lips, nothing more. Looking at myself in the mirror, I could almost believe that the girl staring back belonged in this house.

“What do you think?” I asked, turning to Libby.

She was standing near the window, backlit. Her hand was clutching her phone, her eyes glued to the screen.

“Lib?”

She looked up and gave me a deer-in-headlights look that I recognized all too well.

Drake. He was texting her. Was she texting back?

“You look great!” Libby sounded sincere, because she was sincere. Always. Sincere and earnest and way, way too optimistic.

He hit her, I told myself. He sold us out. She won’t take him back.

“You look fantastic,” Xander declared grandly. “You also don’t look like someone who might have seduced an old man out of billions, so that’s good.”

“Really, Alexander?” Zara announced her presence with next to no fanfare. “No one believes that Avery seduced your grandfather.”

Her story—her image—was somewhere between oozing class and no-nonsense. But I’d seen her press conference. I knew that while she might care about her father’s reputation, she didn’t have any particular attachment to mine. The worse I looked, the better for her. Unless the game has changed.

“Avery.” Zara gave me a smile as cool as the winter colors she wore. “Might I have a word?”