The Last Days by Scott Westerfield

Author:Scott Westerfield
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781440677892
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2009-11-15T19:43:09+00:00

17. FOREIGN OBJECTS

-PEARL-

I’d bought a new dress just for this, and nine kinds of makeup. My hair had been redone that afternoon, cut and blown and sculpted with goo. I was dripping borrowed bling and staring at my bathroom mirror, a contact lens balanced on the tip of my finger.

Color my mother ecstatic.

“You can do it, Pearl.” She was hovering behind me, similarly glammed.

“That’s not the question.” I stared at the contact lens, which shimmered like a tiny bowl of light. A dreadful, painful glow. “The question is whether I want to.”

“Don’t be silly, darling. You said you wanted to look your best tonight.”

“Mmm.” Foolish words that had sent Mom into a spending rampage.

Back a million years ago when she was seventeen, she’d actually had a coming-out party, like a real old-fashioned debutante. She still had the pictures. And we’d stayed in New York City no matter how high the garbage got, no matter how dangerous the streets—because this was where the parties were. So she probably hoped this was the beginning of a new era of Pretty Pearl, no more blue jeans or glasses or bands.

“I could just go there blind.”

“Nonsense. To be truly lovely, one must make eye contact. And I don’t want you stumbling all over the art.”

“She’s a photographer, Mom. Photos are traditionally hung on the wall; you can’t stumble on them.” Typical. It was my mother who always got invited to these things, but she never bothered to Google the artist. Which was lucky, I guess. A glance would have revealed who else was on the guest list tonight, giving away the real reason I wanted to go.

“Quit stalling, Pearl. I know you can do this.”

“And how do you know that, Mom?”

“Because I wear contact lenses and so did your father. You’ve got the genes for it!”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks for passing on those sticking-a-finger-in-your-eye genes to me. Not to mention the crappy-eyesight genes.” I stared at the little lens gradually drying to razor-sharpness on my fingertip, imagining all my totally lateral caveman ancestors jamming rocks and sticks into their eyeballs, none of them realizing the whole thing would pay off a thousand generations later when I had to look good at an art gallery opening.

“Okay, guys, this is for you,” I said, taking a breath and prying my left eye open wide. As my finger approached, the little transparent disk grew until it blotted out everything, dissolving into a fit of blinking.

“Is it in?” my mother asked.

“How the hell should I know?” I opened one eye, then the other, squinting at myself in the mirror.

Blurry Pearl, clear Pearl, blurry Pearl, clear Pearl . . .

“Hey, I think it’s in.”

“See?” my mother said. “That was easy as pie.”

“Pi squared, maybe. Let’s get going.” I scooped new makeup into my brand-new handbag, its silver chain glittering softly in my blurry eye.

My mother frowned. “What about the other one?”

I alternated eyes again—blurry mother, clear mother—and shrugged. “Sorry, Mom. I don’t think I’ve got the genes for it.”

As long as I could recognize faces, the demimonde was good enough for me.

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