Zoe woke up the next morning and stumbled her way to her vanity, which, to her surprise, was completely empty.
Zoe forced her eyes closed, then opened them again. Then she blinked several times. Then she physically placed a hand upon her vanity. Where was all of her makeup?
After a moment, a memory came back to her. She'd promised Dawn that she could have Zoe's makeup after Sarah had bought Zoe new stuff the next day. Zoe groaned. For her, that hadn't happened yet. But for Dawn, presumably, she'd aged a year again overnight and had commandeered Zoe's hand-me-down makeup long ago. So Zoe was caught in a bit of a catch-22.
Zoe looked at her empty vanity, and out of the corner of her eye spotted a little red stone over on her nightstand. Should she? Could she? It was a relatively small wish, it wouldn't affect anything around her.
Dawn woke up, now at the age of 13. She wasn’t a little kid anymore, but she wasn’t really mature yet, either. Not like Mike or Zoe. But she felt like she was on the cusp of something. Like, pretty soon people would have to start taking her seriously.
Which is why she suddenly felt unsatisfied with the array of drug store cosmetics that sat on her dresser. Sure, she was grateful that Zoe supported her by giving her all of the makeup in the first place without making Dawn feel embarrassed. And sure, she’d learned everything that Zoe knew about makeup and built even more knowledge on top of that. And sure, it felt like she was in a right spot and had to make a tough decision or find creative solutions. But all of that was just part of being the little sister, and sometimes it was frustrating.
Still in her pajamas, Dawn went out into the hallway and yelled out as she knocked on the door. “Zoe! Can I borrow your Urban Decay Nake palette?”
Dawn’s sister opened the door with a puzzled look on her face. “How did you know I had that? I just got it today?”
“Nuh-uh,” Dawn retorted, “you’ve had it for a long time now. You’ve let me use it before.”
Zoe paused for a moment. Dawn hadn’t hear the wish, so she thought that Zoe had always had the high-end makeup she’d just wished up. But even so, she wasn’t going to let Dawn use the new-to-her palette before she’d even had a chance at it.
“Being a little sister means being satisfied with stuff that isn’t as nice as what your big sister has.”
Zoe felt a little guilty when Dawn went rigid for a moment, shook her head, then looked at Zoe and said “okay” with a smile. That wasn’t really a lesson for Dawn, it was a lesson to get Dawn out of Zoe’s hair.
But, Zoe supposed, it was still true. So she tried to put it out of her head when Dawn retreated back to her room.
“What do you mean, we’re not going to Sephora after school?” Sarah complained into her phone.
“I mean,” Zoe emphasized from several blocks away, her device on speaker as she tried to focus on her eyeliner, “that I don’t need any new makeup.”
“That sentence makes no sense,” Sarah accused. “You just threw random words together. As a sentence, they’re meaningless.”
Zoe’s laugh almost made her mess up her wing-tip. “I mean it. I know that we talked about going yesterday, but I looked at what I’ve got, and it’s all good quality.” A devious thought crossed Zoe’s mind. Was she about to gaslight Sarah? “Don’t you remember? You’ve seen my collection recently.”
Sarah’s brain tripped a fuse for a moment, but it didn’t take long for her to find the circuit breaker. “You made a wish! You wished for makeup so that you could skip out on Sephora day!”
Zoe should have known that Sarah would be trickier than Dawn. “It’s not like that. I’ll explain at school.”
Karyn smiled at her sister Athena as she came down to breakfast. But her smile faltered. She thought back to the night before, to the absolute, complete sense of contentment she felt when she’d decided to accept the fact that she loved Dawn like a little sister.
Had she ever felt that way about Athena? Dawn wasn’t even related to Karyn, and here was her actual, real-life little sister (albeit, wish-arranged), and Karyn somehow knew that she loved Athena, but she couldn’t remember ever loving Athena as deeply as she’d loved Dawn the night before.
”You look so pretty!” the declaration echoed uncomfortably in Karyn’s skull, even as she was warmed by the memory.
“Hey Ath,” Karyn tried to sound casual as she sat at the kitchen table. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
A burst of half-chewed cheerios, soaking in a mixture of saliva and milk, spewed forth across the table.
“Okay, okay, dumb question,” Karyn relented as Athena grabbed some paper towels to clean up the mess.
“It’s not that,” Athena replied. “I mean, you look decent enough, just… since when did you care?”
Since Dawn tried to make her pretty, was the answer. But Karyn didn’t say it out loud, she just stared off into the distance while Athena got up to throw the used paper towels into the garbage. It was only when Athena sat back down that Karyn stirred again.
“Athena, can I get a hug?”
The younger girl paused. “Are you feeling alright today?”
“I’m okay,” Karyn assured her. “I just really need a hug.”
Athena acquiesced and rounded the table to meet her sister in an embrace that lasted for several long seconds.
It warmed Karyn up. She could feel the same kind of warmth that she’d felt with Dawn. But it was a mere shadow compared to what she’d felt the night before.
Karyn tried to think about what this might mean as the sisters ended their embrace, and one thought in particular found its way out of her mouth. “Have you ever thought about making friends with Dawn?”
“Mike’s little sister?”
“Yeah.” Karyn said with a melancholy sigh. “I think you two would get along.”
