When Karyn woke up, she was already awake. She had just slipped into consciousness already showered and clean and dry, wrapped in a towel and leaning over her bathroom sink with an eyeliner pen in her hand, a perfect wing applied to her left eye, but not yet her right.
The hand holding the eyeliner began to tremble. Karyn didn’t own any liquid eyeliner. How had it gotten there? Looking down at the countertop, she saw more makeup items that she’d never bought.
As her head cleared, vague memories of the morning began to materialize. She’d woken up a little before 6am and started getting ready for the day, or at least someone else had woken up within her body at 6am and started getting ready for the day. Karyn had no way to know that this time coincided with the moment when Sarah’s car entered her neighborhood and positioned itself closer to Karyn’s house than Jon’s bedroom was. Or that her moment of clarity coincided with a moment when Sarah had positioned herself within Jon’s room such that Jon was briefly the closer of the two.
Then Karyn’s trembling hand stilled itself. And with a movement that appeared practiced and confident, the eyeliner was brought to her other eye, and Karyn’s consciousness faded once again as her hand applied a perfect matching wing onto her right eye.
“Where did you get these clothes from?” Jon asked as Sarah began removing items from the suitcase.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Sarah chided.
“How do I know this gift horse isn’t infested with fleas, and you’re doing this to embarass me in front of Karyn and break us up?”
Sarah sighed a placating sigh. “If you trust Karyn as much as you told me last night, then you also have to trust that she’ll see through any prank I try to pull on you, and she’ll know it was me, and then I’ll be out a best friend. So if you think putting you in some nice clothes is going to break you up, then last night was a lie, and you deserve to be broken up.”
This left Jon speechless.
“Now let’s start by finding you a signature color.” Sarah held a yellow shirt up to Jon’s chest, then put it down in favor of a red one. “That doesn’t mean it’s all you wear, but it gives you a default for when you want to add a pop of color to an outfit, or add an accent. It’s something you know will work.”
The next shirt that Sarah tried out was a silk button-down in a jewel tone blue. “That’s it,” she declared. “Blue is your color. It’s perfect: it goes great with green and that’s Karyn’s color.” Sarah laid out the shirt on Jon’s bed and started pulling through everything else. “For now we’ll do a simple black sports coat with matching slacks over the blue shirt. It’s a little Miami Vice, but it’s a basic, classic look, and it works even if the clothes are a little too big for you. It’ll work for today, and we can take your measurements and get you something more fitted later.”
Sarah produced a sports coat and a pair of slacks, and placed them on the bed next to the blue button-down.
“But first,” she pulled something long and black out of the suitcase, and with the press of a button it began vibrating, “First we trim your hair.”
