Nina was right about us being the same size. The dress fit perfectly, cinched at the waist and falling a few inches past my knees. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror before going to show Nina. I still recognized myself, so that was a good thing. I didn’t think my neon blue hearing aids were a good fit with the yellow color of the dress though, but there was nothing to be done about that.

“I knew it!” Nina clapped her hands and did a little dance when I came back to her room, my clothes tucked up under my arm. “You look . . . pretty!”

“Thanks,” I said awkwardly.

“Come on . . . down,” Nina said, ushering me over to the chair she put in front of the mirror propped up on her desk. “I’m going to . . . your hair first.”

I pulled out my hearing aids and set them carefully on the desk, then gave Nina the go-ahead to pull my hair out of its twist. I used the mirror in front of us to lip-read when she started to speak.

“I didn’t know . . . hair was . . . long!” she said, eyes wide as she started working out some knots with a comb.

“I like to keep it up,” I said. “My hair gets tangled around my hearing aids a lot.”

I gave Nina full permission to do whatever she wanted with my hair and makeup and let her work her magic. I never bothered doing anything with my hair in the morning besides throwing it up in a ponytail, and after the one time Melissa gave me a disastrous makeover sophomore year, I didn’t see the point in makeup either.

I purposely did not look in the mirror while Nina worked, instead focusing on eating the pizza her mom bought us for dinner. Nina must have had more patience than I gave her credit for because she wound up doing a fabulous job curling my hair, something Melissa had declared impossible.

Nina went light with the makeup and used lip gloss to make my lips shinier than usual.

“I know you’re . . . nervous,” Nina said to me as I spent longer than I should have inspecting my reflection in the mirror. “But I promise . . . will have . . . great time.”

I wasn’t used to seeing myself with eyeshadow or mascara, but it made my eyes look brighter, my lips a shiny pink from the lip gloss. I looked . . . different, but still somehow like myself. Not hideous or anything like that, but maybe a little misshapen—like my self-portrait.

“Right,” I said, not meeting her gaze as I put my hearing aids in. “A great time.”

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12