Life Imitates Art

Part 25 - Immortal Memory

There are certain shops I could never find a reason to enter before. I would perhaps argue that this isn't me, Max, today. It's Maxine. Maxine is now out in public. My breathing won't quite steady itself, and I feel like I'm sweating enough to make my new jumper look as though it was fished from the Forth.

"Do I look OK, girls?"

"I'm almost jealous of you." Molly's words surprise me.

"Really? I look nowhere near as cute as you do right now!"

"That's not the jealousy I'm talking about." Courtney and Tessa break away in front of us, letting us fold into a 2-2 formation with cis in the front and seemingly trans in the back. "You look so much better than I did on day one."

"You mean you haven't always looked this good?"

"Oh hell no!" Our walk slows behind Courtney and Tessa, allowing them to gain a further lead on us in our journey. It's for good reason. Molly pulls her phone from her beast of a bag and opens a file marked 'Tracker'.

"See that one there of me in this same outfit? Day 4. I looked so much like a guy in drag that Mum gave me a full-on disguise. Your hair is such a better state for all of this, and you have a coach in the family that's around your age. It took my mum a little bit to really understand that while I am now her little girl, I'm also 17. I need to dress like it, as odd as that is to say when I'm walking around like a Barbie doll from the business line."

Her heels punctuate her sentences as though she's rapping to a beat.

"If I were to draw you in that outfit, I guarantee it would be a huge hit. You look every bit the girl you are." My words aren't said with any thought. I just let them fall from my face and they gladly don't offend her.

"That means a lot more coming from a newbie like you than I thought."

Our conversation is put on pause as we come to a stop outside Superdrug. Courtney mimes that she is sleeping, slumping her head against the glass window in an upward position like she's at the dentist. My sister looks at a fake watch on her wrist.

"Come on, ladies! We haven't got all day." We cross the security scanners and I look at the shelves of the popular drug-store type shop for the first time. I've maybe been here a couple of times while Mum has popped in for a thing or two. I never looked like this. I never took an interest in any of it. The most I would feel is an idea for a sketch, but this was before Maxine came around. Who knew one girl in a sketch would lead me this far?

We aren't here to buy anything. It becomes pretty clear when Tessa takes my hand and leads me in front of a too-well lit mirror. It's here that I see every individual aspect of Courtney's skill and all of the details.

I'll start with the small stuff - the things you wouldn't quite notice especially. My cheeks have silver specks on them which dance whenever I so much as move my head one degree in any direction. My complexion looks a little darker than usual. I don't hate it, but that isn't my normal skin colour. Even Courtney's lightest option has given me a tan!

That tan could also stem from some brownish streaks I can faintly see when I turn my head one way to fully examine the eye makeup. But it's with the eyes that the true beauty reveals itself.

There are 3 or 4 different shades of blue on my eyelids that I can see. It starts light on the bits closest to my nose and builds itself darker going out to the end of my lashes, which are caked in so much mascara that they look like Batman lives there. This spectrum then goes the other way with dashes of light blue glitter and teal flicks forming a triangular-esque design on the outside towards my hair on either side of my face. A thick, coal-like black line persists from one side all the way to the other, including outlining the unique shapes she has printed on my skin.

From another angle, isolated pebbles of blue glitter have made it under my eye, which is also lined with the tar she has used. Those blue specks mix with an additional pink and the little brown streaks to make something that sounds revolting when I describe it. Nonetheless, it looks stunning.

"My face is like a disco ball!" My voice would give away the fact that I'm not like most girls. Not one person in the shop bats an eyelid. No one cares. It's as if it has always been this way. It's as if I want it to always be this way forever more.

"We all remember our first discovery of how fun it is to be shiny." Tess tells me.

Courtney adds, "And some of us never grow out of it! Seems none of us 3 have yet. We're all sparkling!"

"Like vampires!" That's not something I'd normally say. Twilight is just so commonly mentioned online.

"Didn't have you down as a fan of that, little sis. But you don't need to hide anything anymore." She lowers her volume before delivering that second part. She's more conscious of my presence here than I am.

And that's really what punctuates today for me - Tessa's encouragement for me to stop hiding. She's suggested it over the past week or so on and off, but today, she's being so overtly overt about it. She thinks I am destined to be her sister. I feel as though destiny will arrive soon enough if I keep going at this rate.

We stroll about in our 4, visiting shops without buying anything for the most part. Apparently, this is a common part of a girls' day out. You look at things you would never buy unless you stumbled upon a heap of loose cash. These days, that's quite tough to do.

I could go into many details about what we see, but it all circles around to the same thing. None of us buy it, even when we all find it cute.

The main takeaway from the day is not a material object. It is a memory. A memory that we immortalise with a photo. A photo that will undoubtedly be my next drawing. The photo that could ruin my entire life.