vandrophobia

Winter Ball Impersonator

Not bad. Not bad at all.

My chocolate-colored hair is tied up in a messy, but nice sort of way. I'm not sure what it's called. Tanya helped me with it.

My nails are painted with marshmallow-white tips. Tanya helped me with that too.

I have on olive-colored earrings to match my asparagus-colored dress. I put those on myself.

Oh yes. And I'm starving. I hope it's not too obvious.

When Tanya came over earlier this morning, she nearly grabbed the pan I was using to smack me.

"What do you think you're doing!" Tanya said, pulling my spatula away.

And that irritated me. I'm rarely irritated. But if you pull a spatula away from me, I will be annoyed. Lesson 1 girls and boys: Don't pull cooking utensils away from Lira.

"I'm making an omelet," I spat grabbing my spatula back.

Tanya then turned off the heat to the stove.

"No!" she said loudly. "You can't eat!"

I gasped forgetting my rising anger.

"Why?" I pointed at my omelet. "It's egg-white, see…" I smiled sheepishly.

Tanya sighed. She then explained to me about how the salt I used in the omelet would cause me to bloat and then I'd feel horrible and look even worse in my Winter Ball dress. She also said we were fasting for the day and would only be drinking water.

So…now I'm starving…but I fit into my dress.

Then again, I fit just fine into my dress when I was trying it on after drinking three bowls of soup and eating two sandwiches. But somehow I think Tanya is going to try to smack me again if I say that to her. So until then, shhhh.

"Andrea," I say to my goldfish on my desk. "How do I look?"

Andrea stares at me with her big unblinking eyes.

I smile happily. "Yeahhhhh, I look gooooood."

The doorbell rings and I go get it. It's probably Jeff. I falter in my step recalling yesterday. There's no way Jeff could actually like me. And I'm not saying that because some people preach about how best friends make the best couples and all that fluff. No, rather it's because I know Jeff.

Jeff and I have been neighbors since I was in the womb. We're womb buddies. Seriously.

Before I existed, my parents opened a large store downtown called Farina that sells practically every kind of cookware possible. One day, Jeff's parents, who are German-Austrian chefs (his mother is Austrian and father is German—they fell in love in Rothenberg, but that's a different story) discovered my parents' store and through frequent visiting, they became really good friends.

They then became neighbors, got busy in their own way, and Jeff and I soon came to be. Womb buddies I tell you.

So I know Jeff as if he were my older brother…even though I'm older by three months. And one of the many things I know about him confidently is this: Jeff has never truly liked someone before in his life.

He'll tell me outright who he thinks is hot, ugly, fine, fugly, but it never really goes much deeper than that. He'll date, but simply for the fun of it. He'll flirt for the attention, and break girls' hearts without meaning to because he can't find the feeling they want out of him.

I know Jeff like I know how to grill a burger. And man, I can grill a mean burger.

I open the door a slit and Jeff smiles and pushes his way in.