I search her face for signs of the Lily I’m used to, the one who usually only notices me long enough to forget about me again. But I have to admit, she actually seems kind of . . . sincere.

“Well,” I say, still cautious, “I’ve been better.”

“Yeah. This vitiligo thing must be kind of tough to get used to, huh?”

“Kind of,” I agree. And then, because for the first time I can remember, Lily is showing an interest in me, I add, “Thanks for asking.”

“I was actually thinking maybe I could help,” Lily says, holding up the makeup bag. “It’s totally up to you, but if you wanted to cover up your, um, you know, spots, I could teach you how.”

“Really?” I ask, eyebrows shooting up behind my bangs. “You would do that?”

Lily looks stung, like she offers to do nice things for me all the time. “Of course,” she says. “I actually watched a couple of tutorials on YouTube about how to do it. Do you want me to?”

“Um, yeah,” I say. “That would be great, actually.”

Last night, I read this blog that Fina sent me about a supermodel who has vitiligo. She has really dark skin (twilight falls), so her vitiligo patches stand out a lot. And she has them all over her body. In the blog, she talks about how she’s really proud of the way she looks and how her vitiligo makes her unique and beautiful.

She’s right, too. She is really, really pretty and totally different looking from basically anyone else I’ve ever seen before. I think it’s awesome that she loves her patches.

And I wish I felt the same way about mine. Maybe one day I’ll think they’re cool, like Fina says she does. But that’s not how I feel about them now.

Lily is sorting through the bottles and sticks and containers that she’s spread out all over my bed, her hair tucked neatly behind her ears.

“I borrowed some of Mom’s stuff,” she says, “since your skin tone is pretty similar to hers. But we’ll buy you your own. I can take you if you want.”

She puts a few bottles up to my face and studies the colors before making her choices. “You’re going to want to start with a concealer,” she says, showing me this tube that looks like lipstick except inside, the stick is skin-colored.

She hands me a mirror that I can watch myself in as she holds up my bangs and rubs a thick line of the concealer stuff over the pale spots above my right eye, which have now joined together in full patches—like a pale caterpillar crawling along my forehead. She rubs it in with her thumb. Already my skin looks much more even. Then she tells me to practice on the left.