It was shaky and uneven, but it was there. I liked it. I knew I’d like it even more if I learned to put it on properly.

There were lipsticks there too, shades of pink and red and brown, more than I thought even existed. I prodded at them, pulled the TEST models out of their slots to take a look. Some of them were leaking pink greasy stuff over the display, and some were worn down completely.

Eyeliner… Hey, sometimes kids my age wear eyeliner, even boys. Like a goth or an emo thing. Lipstick, though? I couldn’t be seen within a thousand-mile radius of Grace Tower with crimson lipstick on.

I had to be careful.

I leaned even further forward, hoping my hair was long enough that I just looked like a girl from behind, and smeared some red across my lips with an index finger. In the grimy mirror, a far more glamorous person than me was staring back.

I didn’t have a chance to look for much longer, because someone was suddenly standing next to me. I shoved the lipstick back into what was probably the right slot, and rubbed my lips on the back of my hand, and only then did I dare look to see who it was.

Two gold-coloured eyes were watching me. I wasn’t expecting him to have gold-coloured eyes, but there they were. They were level with my shoulders but looking right at my face, at the make-up that I knew hadn’t come off, and above them was that short, fuzzy hair that I’d seen a birds-eye view of from the fifth floor a million times. I wasn’t used to seeing it without Mum tugging at the curtains next to me.

“Suits you,” was the first thing he said to me. “You should get it.”

I froze. All I could do was stare, my sloppily ringed eyes into his golden ones, deer-in-headlights style. Here it was. What I always knew was coming. He was making fun of me and it was going to escalate into something horrible.

“I mean the, uh…” He tapped a finger to his cheekbone to indicate the eyeliner.

He looked down to the floor then, and chewed his lip.

He wasn’t joking. He meant it.

I looked at the price on the kohl and my heart dropped. Eight pounds ninety-nine? For this?

“I can’t afford it,” I told him.

He frowned. “I didn’t say buy it. Give it here.”

I handed one across, a fresh un-TEST-ed one with its plastic packaging all sealed up.

“And the lipstick,” he added. Embarrassed, I scrubbed at my lips with my finger some more, and chose a colour at random.

And he just … held them. In his hand. He set off towards the Vitamins and Supplements aisle, nodding at me to follow him, and we browsed the shelves for a minute in silence. Then we browsed the dental aisle, and the bath salts. He prodded, picked up, looked at labels.