Page 69 of Wide-Eyed
“How did you start your blog?”
“It’s a long story.”
Cilla motioned for me to go ahead.
“One time I thrifted a pair of ugly orthopedic ballet flats and painted them different colors. One was half red and half blue, the other was half green and half yellow. I got bullied mercilessly for them and ran home in tears. Mom was home—she was never usually home, but she was on research sabbatical that year, so I went from never seeing her to seeing her every single day. I tried to explain what had happened and why I’d come home early. I had this vision of her wrapping me in her arms and telling me to wear all the weird shoes I wanted. But all she said was that perhaps I would have an easier time with the other kids if my grades were better.”
Cilla made a what-the-fuck face.
I nodded. “That night, she sat me at the kitchen table and made me write out pages of Macbeth by hand. It didn’t stop other kids from making fun of me. At all.”
“That would have made me hate Macbeth,” Cilla said.
I made a face. “It made me hate her.”
I’d never said that out loud before. The truth was like a balloon animal slipping from my Gran’s hands before she could tie it, and whizzing away.
“I don’t mind Macbeth,” I continued. “But I still feel like I’m sitting at that kitchen table whenever I hear the dagger speech. Later that night, I uploaded my first outfit to the internet. Page hits were slow at first—it took forever to get 100, but those hundred people really loved my painted shoes. Ten thousand came quickly. Then 20,000. In my final year of high school I started really focusing on growing my channels and making videos. I had 500,000 subscribers by the time I graduated and moved to New York. I took my time learning the city and making connections. Then a few brands sponsored my tuition at fashion school. When I was twenty-five, I landed the Bossi internship. It wasn’t my mom’s preferred career for me, but she could accept that I was at the top of my field, and she wasn’t going to let her daughter live in a neighborhood that wasn’t literary. Over her dead body. Honestly, I think she was hoping that rubbing elbows with NYU students all the time would inspire a shift in careers.”
“You’ve had a very prodigious career.”
If I hadn’t been raised by a Shakespearean academic and a poet, I wouldn’t have known what that word meant. Or that it was true.
“I guess I have.” Then the wine pairings that had accompanied our dinner courses made me confess, “But now I feel like a star that’s all burned up. Like, I was too bright too soon, and now I’m finished. My best achievements are behind me, and I didn’t even recognize that at the time.”
Cilla tilted her head. “Is that what you think when you look at me?”
I frowned. “What?”
“That I’m all done?”
Her meaning clicked. “No! Of course not.”
“Right. Because you would be wrong. And ageist.”
“I’m sorry.”
She waved this off with a hand tipped with bright coral polish. “It takes time to get the things you know in your brain to sink through to your heart. But hear me, Lyssa Luxe.” She pointed at me. “I’ve got a shitload more to accomplish in my life, and so do you. Fetishizing youth, particularly as it pertains to creativity and intersects with fuckability, is patriarchy in a hat. To which we say: Get bent, you silly …?”
When she trailed off meaningfully, we said it together.
“Cunts!”
After that, the waiter asked if we would like our dessert to go. I was about to decline, but Cilla explained that what he was really saying, in a very Kiwi way, was please get the fuck out.
The Germans must have complained.
Worth it.
CHAPTER 17
MIKE
It was pathetic how empty and quiet the house felt without her—and even more pathetic how I felt without her. I swaggered around the place for the first few days, telling anyone who would listen (the animals, my dad, one or two of the customers at the café) how it was good to have my space back. Even though I didn’t, not really. Lyssa had brought so much stuff with her that after she’d packed for her micro adventure, I couldn’t see what was missing. There were satin gloves in the fruit bowl, colored stockings draped over the lamp. Lip balms on every table. There was wool—yarn she called it, and I don’t even know where she’d gotten this, surely she didn’t travel with it?—in a pile on my armchair. There was, however, a miniscule dent in the number of random products that had been cluttering up my shower, but you’d only know that if you knew that until three days ago, there wasn’t enough space for my bar of soap.
Lyssa was one of those people who rapidly accumulated stuff. Anyone looking at my house now would think she’d been living here for months. It felt like she’d been here for months. And to tell the truth, it was hard to remember what it was like without all her stuff here.
So of course, I loudly talked about how good it was to have my man space back. Dad definitely knew I was lying, but he was good enough not to press me on it. We both knew my sense of self was hanging on by a thread.
