Chapter 29

"Years and years, dear! This is like my life," she said, returning the tweezers to her case and selecting an eye makeup palette. She applied eyeshadow quickly, followed by liner and mascara.

You might wonder how I've known those silly things? Ha! I've googled everything yesterday—from “how to contour a double chin” to “difference between eyebrow pencil and eyeliner”. I couldn’t risk my identity as Catherine if I looked like Tarzan or a monkey fresh out of the forest, blinking at civilization, who doesn’t know those very important silly things they called make-up and pencil. I even watched a twelve-year-old beauty guru on YouTube do a full glam look in eight minutes. I’ve never thought that in my entire life I’d be googling things like “what is a setting spray” or “can mascara kill you if you stab your eye?”

The last touch was a little coat of lipstick. I glimpsed glances of myself in the little mirror connected to her make-up bag as she worked. The lipstick hue complimented my natural lip tone, adding a little pop of colour. Woah! I am beautiful! I mean, of course I am beautiful; my kids, I mean, Catherine’s kids used to say that all the time, but now... This is a different kind of beauty, and I'm happy about it. This body was happy.

I nodded to myself.

“You’re all set, darling,” she mumbled, cleaning up her supplies

The woman who looked back at me was tall and pretty. My eyelashes were almost as long as Jhing Jhing now, and there was a pink glow to my skin. You would never know I had fat pants at home. Or that my idea of dressing up was wearing faded mama jeans, a T-shirt, and an old Nike from Catherine’s closet.

Somehow I’d been transformed into the supermodel fantasy version of Catherine.

Woah! This was next-level shit!

Am I scared? Yes.

Am I foolish to go through all that torture? Yes.

I thought it would require plastic surgery, but all I needed was the appropriate hair and make-up. Huh. So there you have it.

Meanwhile…Jhing Jhing was yelling at a colorist. “You turned me ORANGE!”

Mylene was arguing about lipstick. “I said Blood Red, not ‘Berry Bliss’! I’m not here to look edible, I’m here to look expensive!”

It was a three-hour storm of hairspray, bobby pins, nail polish, and death threats.

Jhing Jhing peeked over from the next chair and burst out laughing. “You look like a Bond villain’s ex-wife who came back for revenge.”

“Exactly the look I was going for,” I muttered, trying not to lick the lip gloss that felt like someone had glued strawberry jelly to my face.

Mylene, who’d already gone through her transformation and looked like she walked off the cover of Vogue for Agents, gave me a thumbs up. “You’re killing it.”

I stared into the mirror again.

My hair flowed in shimmering waves, like I had my own wind machine following me around. My lashes were so long I was sure they could cause a windstorm if I blinked fast enough. My cheekbones were sculpted by the hands of makeup demigods, and my lips? Red. Glossy. Dangerous. Like I'd kissed a Ferrari.

“I look… expensive,” I whispered.

“You look terrifyingly beautiful,” Santy corrected, proud like a mother hen. “Now go put on that beautiful dress, the one with the slit up to your liver.”

Oh, right. The dress.

Jhing Jhing brought it out, holding it with the reverence of someone carrying a holy relic. “Are you sure about this? It’s basically two napkins held together by prayer and spaghetti straps.”

“Perfect,” I said grimly. “If I’m going to rob a casino blind, I might as well blind them with my thighs.”

So we squeezed into our outfits.

Correction: we fought our way into them. Jhing was doing lunges just to zip hers up.

Mylene tried jumping while screaming, “Why do I feel like a sausage in a casing?!”

I was sweating like a convict at a lie detector test by the time mine was on, but once I stood up?

Oh, yeah.

We didn’t look like three tired moms on a mission.

We looked like we were about to bankrupt a nation.

Jhing Jhing’s new honey-blonde waves glowed under the salon lights.

Mylene’s smoky eyes could kill a man in an alley.

And me?

I was a dark flame in a velvet storm.

When it was all done, we looked like gods. And I swear, something in me was happy, this body remembered something from maybe, old days, it was happy. I am happy. I looked good. Catherine looked good.

We strutted out of the salon like a pack of lions on a catwalk. People stared.

One guy dropped his coffee.

A kid on a scooter literally ran into a bench.

The guy at the exit did a double take so hard, his hat fell off.

It was glorious.

Let them sweat.

Because the three extra-large magnets had arrived. And we were ready to attract chaos.