I found myself standing in front of the mirror once more, trying to decide what to wear. I grabbed one of my only dresses and put it on. It was a plain black T-shirt dress that hung loose, to just above my knee. I turned sideways and sighed. My boobs were so big that the dress sort of hung off them like a massive tent. It made the dress shorter in the front than in the back.

“Wait!” I said as I realized my inner bully had kicked in without me even noticing. Vicki was right—I probably wasn’t aware of how many times a day I said that to myself.

“Lipstick!” I turned away from the mirror and reached into the makeup bag I seldom used. I rolled up the lipstick and spread it across my lips, careful not to go outside the lines, and then I dived back into my cupboard and grabbed a pair of red sneakers. I was a sneaker girl through and through; the idea of heels simply struck terror into my heart. Maybe for a thinner, more agile girl the idea of walking on spikes was okay, but to a girl like me, it wasn’t. I laced up my sneakers and then took one last look at myself.

Fine. I looked fine. “Fine,” I said out loud and then shot myself some half-assed thumbs-up. This was good . . . a little mist of water, or whatever.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I found my mother sitting on one of our couches, which had finally arrived from Joburg today. The room was so huge that the furniture drowned in it.

“Where are you going?” she asked. She looked like a small grain of sand in the vast room. Our house was cold and lifeless. White walls and hollow, empty rooms that echoed when we talked. I felt like I was looking into the eyes of a cold, dead fish. The kind you see lying on a bed of ice at the grocery store. White isn’t really a color, you know. It’s more a trick of light, or a trick our eyes play when it mixes all the wavelengths to see it. White is the absence of any specific color. It’s a nothing. An empty. Just like this house, and just like the woman sitting on that couch with the faraway eyes.

“Out,” I said dismissively.

“You’ve put on lipstick.” For some reason her comment made me feel self-conscious. I lifted my hand to my mouth and wondered if I should take the makeup off.

“What time will you be back?” She stood up and her heels clicked on the floor, echoing through the room.

“This house is too big. It echoes.”

She stopped walking and looked at me strangely for a moment. “One should really focus on the positives, not the negatives, Lori.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been reading this book—”