Silver Lining

9. Dress rehearsals

30 days before

Me and Laurel were at her place doing a last minute costume check before the Halloween party in Sydney, which was in four days. We were standing in front of the ceiling to floor mirror in Laurel and Matt's en suite. Matt and Theo were in the living room, watching some football game or something. We both looked pretty good, I think. Laurel was wearing the sky blue peplum dress and a body chain, and I had on the navy top with a white collar, and the pale yellow maxi skirt. There was a split in the skirt that went up to mid-thigh on my right leg. I decided not to wear a red cape, because I did not know how to make one, and I'm pretty sure Snow White only wears it for part of the movie, anyway, if at all. My shoes were a pair of red pumps I had found in Theo's mums wardrobe, who let me borrow them because we have the same sized feet. Laurel had on sparkly silver high heels she had bought a couple days ago in the city. I was trying to do Laurels light blonde hair in some kind of updo, with a silver ribbon around her hair.

"Are you nearly done?" Laurel asked, fidgeting. She had to kneel so I could reach her hair, she's too tall to deal with.

"Patience, young grasshopper." I said, tying the silver ribbon around her hair. "There!"

"Oh my god, Madison! It's so pretty, thank you!" she said excitedly, giving me a hug. "Now sit in this chair, so I can do your makeup."

I obediently sat, and Laurel started brushing foundation on my face. I had bought one half a shade lighter than my actual skin tone, because Snow White is so pale. If we blended it well, hopefully people wouldn't notice it wasn't a perfect match for my skin tone. Anyway, that's why we were checking all our costumes and makeup now, so there'd be time to make minor changes. "You can't tell that the foundation is a bit lighter than your skin tone," Laurel said.

"Oh goodie!" I felt Laurel finish with the foundation, and she brushed a bit of blush on my cheeks before moving onto eye shadow. I tried my hardest to keep still while she waved the little soft brush all over my eyelids. She moved onto a black liquid liner, which she was going to let me do myself because she was scared she would poke me in the eye, but then realized I would see what she's already done to my face, and she wanted it to be a surprise. Her doubting herself just fills me with confidence. She managed not to poke me in the eye though, and when she finished she started doing something on my temple that went just under my eye. It was a very fine brush, and felt wet. A gel-liner maybe? After that she did mascara, and filled in my eyebrows, then applied lipstick. "Okay, you can look now!" She announced, and I opened my eyes.

"Laurel! It's perfect! Thank you so much," I told her, and it really was perfect. She had done a brown smokey eye, and my eyebrows were on point. Laurel was ace at doing eyebrows. She has contoured my cheekbones, making them look higher and more defined, and I was wearing a deep red lipstick. The thing on my temple was an intricate tree branch sprouting out of the corner of my eye, with little green leaves. It was beautiful, almost as if it was done by an artist. "How did you do the tree branch?" I asked her, leaning towards the mirror to get a closer look.

"A fine paintbrush, and these new makeup thingies I bought in the city the other day." She pointed towards the row of colourful compacts sitting on the bench.

"Okay, I'm gonna do my makeup now," Laurel said, picking up a large foundation brush.

"Yup! I'll do something with my hair. I won't die it black today though, I'll save that for Halloween." Even though I was perfectly capable of doing my own makeup (although I couldn't of done the tree branch on myself), and Laurel was good at doing hair, we had just decided she'd do both of our makeup for Halloween, and I'd do hair.

***

After we had decided the costumes were ready to go (and a minor incident involving Laurel's dress and mascara stains), we made some pizza for dinner. Matt and Theo were both good cooks, and Matt had bought a pizza stone thingy he wanted to try out, so while they fluffed around in the kitchen making pizza, Laurel and I made smoothies. We found a packet of chia seeds, which made us think of smoothies, and then we all craved smoothies. The obvious answer was to make smoothies.

It was about 10 when Theo and I got home. We were both exhausted for reasons unknown, it wasn't like we had done anything especially tiring, but we both decided to go straight to bed. I just had to quickly check our insurance cover online before I went to bed, because the insurance company had called while we were at Laurel's place. They had fixed my car which I could pick up tomorrow, and at no cost to us, which was brilliant.

I walked down the hall into the bedroom, turning off the lights as I went. As I walked in, Theo walked out of the bathroom. Shirtless. As in perfect-abs-on-show shirtless. "Hey bub," he said, walking over to me and placing his hand on the small of my back, pulling me close to him.

"Hey." I whispered, shutting my eyes as he kissed the top of my head. I put a hand on his sculpted-by-the-gods abs, and traced my finger to just above his hip, where there's a tattoo that says 'keep going'. He got it as a reminder to never give up, and I loved it. I didn't really like tattoos, but I loved Theo's. I traced my finger over the words, Theo's warm skin beneath them.