Survival Of The Fittest

The makeup was wrapped tightly in a plastic bag, inside Georgia's satchel. The eyeliner had left black streaks on her fingers as she picked it up, and she didn't want to risk any of it spilling anywhere. Her mom'd always said it was better to be more careful than less, and her dad'd always said that her mom was a smart woman, and they couldn't both be wrong.  

She emptied her haul out onto the library table like some gangster divvying up loot after a heist. A heist was what it was called when gangsters stole things. Her mom'd told her that. Her dad'd said heist was when something was "superlatively high", which Georgia didn't quite understand, but strongly suspected was meant to be a joke. Her dad had a heist opinion of his comic abilities, Georgia decided.

Everything clattered out, across the table. Georgia looked up, guilty. She wasn't a proper gangster so it hadn't really been a heist, but she didn't think her sister would care, if she somehow found out about all the stuff Georgia had taken. She was mean enough without being given a reason, and she loved her makeup more than she loved anything. Georgia took a breath to calm herself, then looked up again, trying to look relaxed. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to the two of them, and Georgia breathed out, relieved. She began to collect everything together, whispering the names of the items to her co-conspirator as she did.

"Lipstick. Eyeliner. 'Nother lipstick. Foundation. That's umm, the main one I think, for you. I got this one too. And uhh, this one. I didn't know your skin colour really and it has to match so I just got a bunch. I don't really know why she has so many, cause she only has one face? I guess it's for when she tans, maybe. Eyeshadow. Mascara. Blush, for your cheek, but like, after the foundation. That's the first one we do, and then we..."

She noticed an older man looking at them, and realized her voice had risen. She dropped it back into a conspiratorial whisper.

"Y'know, then we do the rest of them."

The skinny, long-haired blonde girl sitting next to Georgia Lee hadn't said a peep up to this point. That's how it always seemed to operate with her; school had been rough for little Coleen.  Kingman had treated her far kinder than all the other cities she had lived in and all the other elementary schools she had gone to. Here, she had some people she could consider friends. She had some teachers that would help her to fit in and not point her out. She almost felt normal.

Well, almost. Georgia Lee had meant well, fetching all sorts of cosmetics from around the household in order to 'fix up that face'. Coleen was unsure of makeup; for as long as she could remember, she'd have to put lotions on her face in order to keep it moisturized and to keep scabs from getting too bad. Her mother was always very insistent on it. She'd have to take some between classes - her mother made sure that the nurse made her do it. Such practices felt alienating. To have to go through some sort of ritual that other kids didn't, and all over a stupid accident that she had only the faintest memory of. The only kids who never judged her for it, she thought, were her younger siblings.

Anyway, there was no telling how other substances and creams and powders were going to react to her face. Georgia Lee seemed right on top of things; she knew without being told that moisturizers were more important than anything (it was vital that they be gentle to skin, though). Foundation would do most of the cover-up job.

"You think all of this could make me look normal?" Coleen asked skeptically, peering over at GLD with her uncovered eye. Nearly every day at school saw her covering half her face with her long, straight hair. Some people thought it looked cute, like it was some design choice to convey shyness or inhibition. Then, of course, a stray gust of wind or an errant toss of the head and it was instantly revealed why Coleen dressed her hair that way.

Coleen picked up a bottle or two from the library table, looking at them and reading each label. Georgia Lee DID have a treasure-trove here: mascara, lipstick, eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush... Maybe they could have some fun with the good side of her face, too. Coleen's shoulders un-hunched. Just a tiny bit.

Would it make her look normal? Georgia hoped so, and she'd certainly said as much when they'd discussed this plan beforehand. Looking at Coleen's face though... there was so much to be done. The colour'd be an easy fix, she was sure, but the texture of the burn was so different to the rest of the face. Rough and whorled, like the old tree in their backyard. Georgia wasn't sure if any amount of makeup could change that really, but perhaps at least it could make it less noticeable. Georgia hoped, anyway.

Coleen's face had never really bothered her, she didn't think. Not like some people, anyway. Even today, outside the library, she'd seen people look away when they caught a glimpse of the part of the girl's face that she kept hidden.Georgia'd never felt the urge to look away.

Still, it frustrated her sometimes how Coleen just seemed to accept it. She'd wanted to shout in the faces of those people who couldn't even look at her friend. She wanted to tell them it was just skin, that it had been an accident, that it wasn't Coleen's fault and that she was just a little girl and how would they have felt if someone couldn't even look at them. Sometimes she wanted to shout at Coleen too. It made her so uncomfortable, that was clear, but she never did anything about it, just hid behind her hair and let people treat her like she was some gross, horrible thing.

Georgia would never let anyone treat her that way. Even if her whole face was all burned off and she didn't even have any hair left to cover it with, no way would Georgia let people pretend she didn't exist. Never, not ever.

She'd never shouted at the people, or at Coleen, no matter how much she'd wanted to sometimes. Georgia thought of herself as a positive person, and she knew it was always better to be constructive than destructive, so she'd bitten her tongue and watched her temper. She was good at that. Instead of shouting and making a scene, and making Coleen cry like she did sometimes, when she didn't know that Georgia could hear her, Georgia thought of a solution, and this was it.

Georgia hoped it would work.

She smiled at Coleen brightly.

"Only one way to find out, I s'pose."

"Okay. Gosh. Goooooosh, uh, where do we start?"

Coleen looked down to all the tools in front of her. Or should they be calling them 'toys'? Tools was the more appropriate word, she thought, but Georgia Lee had made it clear to some extent that this was for experimentation, and Coleen had resolved to have fun with this. That was how she crossed the hurdle of her anxiety; it wasn't exactly easy to let somebody else get all up in her face in order to 'fix' her.

"I guess the foundation. Umm..." She picked up one disc-shaped container of the foundation, then set it down and picked up another. Any of the really dark shades that she knew wouldn't fit her were put aside, and from visuals alone she narrowed down the selections... slightly, anyway, to about four or five different shades. "This one? This one? I don't know... should we just start putting them on me?" Coleen had no idea what she was doing. At their age, the number of girls wearing makeup wasn't huge, or at least so she thought. Anybody who tried usually ended up doing things garishly and making themselves look like a clown, risking humiliation from their classmates. But if this was going to help her look pretty, darn it, she wanted to get better.

"One of these two," Coleen decided. "Try my right side. Then... then I guess, we could try..." She scratched the side of her nose with a long fingernail, looking nervously off to the left.

What was most important, Georgia thought, was to be optimistic. Coleen was the sort of girl who was constantly telling herself that she couldn't do things, that they were too hard, that everyone was staring and everyone hated her and nothing would go right again. Sometimes that was true, of course, but even if it were true that made it no less negative, and even if she was wrong, Georgia was sure her optimism would still be for her friend's benefit. You needed to know that there was someone who had your back, and who thought everything would turn out okay, even when it didn't.

Her mom had always told her that she should never be afraid to make a mistake, and Georgia believed this with all her heart.

"We can start with whichever! I got the stuff you take it off with too," she pushed a couple of bottles to the side, along with some baby wipes, "so we can always take it off if it doesn't match! I know you're kinda, sensitive - the skin is, I mean - but this one here's for around the eyes, and I figure if it's okay for your eyes it's okay for, y'know, your face?"

Coleen looked scared, Georgia thought, but also hopeful, and in that moment she wanted so, so, so badly for this to work, and for everything to be okay, and for her friend to feel happy and safe and normal.

"It, umm, it might not work straight away, you know? I'm still new to all this, so it might take some time to get right, and we may have to start over a bit, okay? But it'll fine!"

She gave Coleen a smile.

"We've got all the time in the world to get this right."

[Georgia Lee Day continued years later in Is This It]

((Frankly thought that was a lovely way to end it. So... Coleen continued elsewhere.))