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One sunny Friday afternoon, Patrick comes out of school looking for his mom at the gate but finds Aunt Jen instead. He walks towards her slowly, frowning in confusion.
“Hey, hon,” she calls cheerily, waving him closer. “Your mom’s not back from her training day yet.” Oh, yeah, Patrick does distantly remember hearing something about that this morning. “Where are those girls?” Aunt Jen adds, looking around for her daughters.
Patrick shrugs. His cousins are in grades six and eight, which are apparently in the same school, but might as well be another planet as far as he’s concerned. Before long, though, Beth and Nicole appear, waving goodbye to their friends. Aunt Jen greets them and then turns to herd the kids towards the car.
“Wait, what about Chris?” Patrick asks, looking around. Come to think of it, he didn’t see Chris come down with the other second-grade class.
“Uncle Robert picked him up early to go see the doctor,” Aunt Jen explains. Patrick nods in understanding; Chris broke his arm a few weeks ago when he and Patrick were climbing trees. “Now, I have a few errands I need to run, and you’re welcome to join me if you’d like, Patrick, or you can stay home with Beth and Nicole, who I know will take very good care of you,” she says, pointedly looking at the girls for their agreement.
“Obviously we will!” says Beth, looking offended. “Patrick’s like a cuter, better behaved Chris.”
“Don’t be rude about your brother,” Aunt Jen chastises her, as they all climb into the car. “I did get some snacks in for you, so you may prefer to stay at home with the girls…”
“Yes please,” says Patrick quickly. He’s really hungry. There aren’t enough snack breaks at school, in his opinion.
Nicole, sharing the backseat with him, ruffles his hair fondly. “You’re so funny.”
Patrick doesn’t know what’s funny about it, but he’ll take it.
“Snacks it is,” Aunt Jen agrees. “Speaking of which, I must get some chips for the game on Sunday. Patrick, you guys are coming to Clayton’s to see the boys play, right?” Clayton’s is the big field attached to one of the secondary schools, where their older cousins play baseball on weekends.
“I think so,” says Patrick. “I mean, Mom hasn’t said, but we usually do! Probably best to get enough chips for us too, just in case,” he advises seriously. For some reason this makes his aunt and cousins laugh.
“That is probably best, Patrick, you’re right,” says Aunt Jen when she’s stopped laughing.
*
At the house, Aunt Jen sees them all settled at the breakfast table with juice and snacks and then heads out again, promising to be back within a couple of hours. As soon as she’s gone, Nicole turns to Beth.
“Beth, Beth! We could test out the red lipstick Mom wouldn’t let me try,” she stage-whispers, her eyes bright.
“Yes! Plus, I’m getting pretty good at mascara and blush now,” says Beth.
“Yeah, because you get to practise on me all the time.”
“No, but my hand is just steadier now than when I was younger.” Patrick has noticed Beth often talks about when she was younger as if it was a long time ago, when really she means back when she was twelve, which was about three months ago.
“Because of all the practice!” Nicole insists. Patrick suspects Nicole is right, but he’s not about to say so.
“Do you want me to do your makeup or not?” Beth demands.
“Yes, please,” Nicole says meekly. Then she folds her arms. “I just wish you’d let me practise on your face too. How else am I supposed to get better at it? Looking in the mirror just confuses me.”
Beth and Nicole stare each other out for a minute, then their heads turn in unison towards Patrick, who’s still sipping his juice.
“What?” he asks.
“Nicky, you can practise on Patrick!” says Beth excitedly. “Oh, imagine his cute little cheeks all pink and rosy. Patrick, you’ll love it,” she assures him. Patrick is not at all sure about that, and furthermore does not remember being consulted on the matter, but now Nicole is all excited and he doesn’t want to disappoint her. Besides, he once saw Aunt Jen wipe a whole face-full of smeared makeup off Nicole with one wet wipe she pulled from a bathroom drawer, so it must be quite easy to take off.
“Okay,” he says mildly. “Can I finish my juice first, though?”
Five minutes later, Patrick finds himself upstairs in Uncle Robert and Aunt Jen’s room. He never really comes in here. It’s bad manners to snoop in someone’s parents’ room when you’re at their house, his mom told him. But he guesses it doesn’t count when the kids who live there are snooping too.
“Okay, sit here,” Beth instructs him, pointing to the end of the bed; he sits. “Nicole, you’re going to need the blush from the drawer on the right, but not the bright pink one, the other one, the one Mom wears for work dinners. And then the lipstick is in…”
“I know, Beth!” Nicole huffs, marching over to the vanity and gathering the items she needs.
“Okay, well, you’re the one who said you never get to practise!”
“But I always see you getting the makeup out to put on me!”
The girls bicker in this fashion until they’ve pulled up two stools. Nicole sits on one, Beth on the other, and they deposit the various bottles and sticks and tubes they’ve collected in a heap on the bed beside Patrick.
“Now, Patrick, you have to sit really still,” Beth tells him seriously, her eyes wide. “It might tickle a bit, but don’t move, or it’ll jolt Nicole’s hand and mess it up, okay?”
“Okay.” Patrick nods, then realises he’s supposed to keep still and stops.
“So where should I start?” asks Nicole.
Beth hums, her eyes looking all over Patrick’s face. “I think you should start with the eyes. That way it won’t matter if you accidentally lean on the cheeks while you’re doing them,” she muses, talking about Patrick like he can’t hear her. “Just go slow, because you don’t want to jab him in the eye by accident.”
Patrick feels his eyes go wide. He shakes his head.
“Don’t worry, Patrick,” Nicole says confidently. “I have done this before. Also, Beth poked me in the eye the first time she did mine, and it hurt a bit but I was fine. Nothing to worry about!”
Patrick is not entirely reassured by this, but he stays quiet and goes along with it anyway. He watches warily as Nicole unscrews the lid of a narrow black tube to reveal a spiky-looking brush with wet black mascara all over it.
“If we were doing eyeliner, you’d put that on first,” says Beth, to Nicole or Patrick or both, “but Mom doesn’t have any eyeliner, so we’re just doing mascara.”
Patrick’s apprehension grows as Nicole wields the small stick and brings it closer to his face.
“Okay, so, Patrick - look up, and try not to blink for a sec, okay?”
He follows Beth’s instructions and looks away from Nicole’s frown of concentration, up at the textured ceiling of his aunt and uncle’s bedroom. He makes his eyes as wide as he can, until they sting a bit, and a second later the brush makes contact with his lashes.
He gasps and blinks rapidly.
“Patrick!”
“Sorry - sorry. I’ll hold still, I promise. Go again.” He looks up again, his eyes not quite so wide this time. When the brush touches again, he holds himself still - not just his face but his whole body in solidarity, like he’s playing musical statues.
It’s a weird sensation, the light pressure against his eyelashes as Nicole makes her way along the width of them. At one point, her unsteady hand jerks a little, and Patrick feels the bristles of the brush touch his brow.
“Nicole!” Beth scolds her, leaping up and dashing to the bathroom.
Nicole just rolls her eyes. “It’s fine,” she tells Patrick. “We’ll wipe that off after. She’s just being dramatic.”
Beth comes back holding toilet paper and a rinsing cup. “I told you, when your hand needs a rest, pull it away and then go back when it’s steady again! Otherwise you end up doing that.”
“Alright, alright,” says Nicole, leaning back to give Beth space to wipe the smudge off Patrick’s brow. “Just don’t drip the water everywhere or Patrick will get mascara all in his eyes.”
Beth doesn’t drip any water down his face, even though she’s distracted arguing with Nicole. Nicole resumes the mascara application, delicately brushing the outer edge of the line of eyelashes and then dipping the brush back in the bottle. Patrick takes the opportunity to blink before she starts on the other eye.
Her hand is steadier on this one. She soon pulls back and looks to Beth for guidance. “Do I do the bottom lashes too?”
“Mm, you can, but this mascara’s kind of clumpy,” says Beth, gesturing to one of Patrick’s eyes, “so it might not look that good. Maybe leave it for this time. You did a good job, though!”
Nicole smiles, obviously proud of herself. Patrick wants to see, but as Nicole puts the mascara brush back in the bottle, Beth’s already undoing a little round pot of reddish powder.
“This one’s blush,” Beth tells Patrick. “It’s for your cheeks, to make them more red or pink. You’ve seen people wearing this, right?”
“Yeah,” says Patrick, though he’s not sure. He doesn’t know if it looks noticeably different from when people just have pink cheeks in the cold, or if it’s maybe like when Uncle Jack drinks a lot and his whole face goes red and sloppy.
“This brush?” Nicole asks Beth, pulling a very short, wide, round brush out of a container and holding it up. It looks unbelievably soft; Patrick reaches his hand towards it and runs a finger along the tips of the bristles, and finds it’s exactly as soft as it looks.
“What’s this made of?” he asks in awe.
“Ummm… I don’t know, actually!” says Beth. “Isn’t it soft?”
“Yeah. So, that’s for my cheeks?”
“Yep. We’re gonna make them all rosy and cute,” says Nicole. “You don’t have to pull any funny faces for this part; just hold still.”
He does, and this part is much more pleasant than the mascara. Nicole traces smooth circles around his cheeks with that lovely brush, going over and over the same spot on one side then the other. Patrick closes his eyes, content.
“Done!” Nicole exclaims, and he opens his eyes again.
“I like that one,” he says, watching Nicole screw the blusher shut and place the brush back in its box. She nods cheerfully.
“It’s nice on you!” she says. He was talking more about the feeling of having it put on, but now he’s quite excited to see it, too.
While Nicole shows Patrick her mother’s extensive lipstick collection, Beth gets bored and retrieves a bottle of deep purple nail polish from her room. Patrick didn’t know there were so many different types of pink in the world until now, with Nicole showing them off one by one. Finally she holds up the red lipstick she was eager to try out. Under her direction, he awkwardly holds his mouth open for her to smear the red tip over his lips, and watches Beth apply her nail polish out of the corner of his eye. She’s careful and precise; it reminds Patrick of colouring in. He likes the idea that colouring in isn’t just for paper, that it can be for fingernails and cheeks and lips too.
“Oh, I should’ve done eyeshadow!” Nicole says suddenly, as she twists the lipstick back into its container and clicks the lid shut. “Um…” She looks through the large rectangular palettes she brought over to the bed. “Patrick, what’s your favourite colour?”
“Blue,” he answers.
“Hm…” Nicole puts down the palette she was looking at, which is full of more pinks and reds, and picks up a different one. “What about this one?”
She holds it up, pointing to a steely blue pad on a palette of greys, whites and browns.
“I like that,” he says.
“Great!”
Nicole instructs him to close his eyes again and he winces as he senses her approach, but this brush is much more like the blush than the mascara, so he relaxes again and lets her make gentle little strokes over his eyelids. He tries to imagine them blue, then wonders if he’ll even be able to see it, or if it will only be visible when his eyes are closed.
Maybe it will be all around his eyes and forehead. Between all the blue and the red, he thinks he might end up looking like an alien.
“Now open,” says Nicole, and he does. She frowns. “Hmmm.” She looks over at Beth, whose nails are drying. “I should’ve done the eyeshadow first. It’s made the mascara all dull.”
“Just go over the mascara again, then,” says Beth.
“Do we have to?” Patrick asks. He didn’t especially enjoy having the mascara put on.
“Please, Patrick,” says Nicole. “Trust me, it’ll look so much better. And it’s just a little top-up. It won’t take as long this time.”
“Okay,” he agrees. Nicole’s right, as it turns out; whether because there’s less to do or because she’s more comfortable now, it doesn’t take as long the second time, and this time Nicole beams when it’s finished.
“Perfect!” she says.
Beth looks up. “Aw,” she says. “It looks really good, Nicky.”
“Can I see?” Patrick asks. Nicole leaps up in obvious excitement.
“Of course - come see in the mirror!”
He follows her to the vanity; Beth comes too, and they stand at his shoulders, watching hopefully as he looks at his face in the mirror.
He doesn’t look like an alien. The face in the mirror still looks like his, but with more colour. The blue eyeshadow is visible even with his eyes open, on the skin all around his eyelids, and it looks really nice with the black mascara next to it. The lipstick is very bright red, which is funny against Patrick’s light skin, but he likes it. It’s like a costume for his face, and he enjoys dressing up. He imagines going to a party in a fancy-dress costume and choosing a lipstick the same colour as his pirate vest or karate belt. Maybe there’s an eyeshadow the same blue as his Blue Jays jersey. He wonders if you can still put it on over the sunscreen his mom always slathers all over him when he’s outdoors.
He beams at his cousins’ encouraging faces in the mirror. “It’s nice!”
“It is nice!” Beth agrees, and turns to Nicole. “You did great!”
Patrick feels an itch on his cheek. He goes to scratch it on instinct, but Nicole sees and grabs his hand before he can. “Oh, I forgot to mention - make sure you don’t touch your face while you’ve got all this on, or it’ll get all over your hands and your face will smudge.”
“Oh, okay.” Patrick thinks for a moment, then tries to alleviate the itch by scrunching up his face a few times. It sort of works.
“My turn?” Nicole asks Beth, her voice hopeful.
“Sure! What colours do you want?” asks Beth, turning back towards the bed. Nicole hurries after her to help. Patrick looks at his face a little longer, seeing his smile in bright red as he takes it all in, then goes to sit on the free stool and see which colours Nicole chooses.
He sits up straight, feeling very aware of his own face in a way he doesn’t usually, and listens to Beth describe how she’s applying Nicole’s makeup, watching the steady brushstrokes. She does the eyeshadow before the mascara, so Nicole only has to have the mascara done once. When Nicole can’t decide which shade of pink blush is nicer, she asks Patrick which one he likes, and she picks the one he says, which makes him happy. It looks pretty on Nicole’s cheeks.
Afterwards, they stand and admire themselves in the mirror together, covered in a veritable rainbow of colours between them, and then they run downstairs to watch TV.
*
When Aunt Jen comes home, she encounters Beth first. “Hello, gorgeous,” she says, giving her daughter a kiss on the forehead. “How is everyone? What did you all get up to?”
“We ate all the snacks, and I painted my nails,” Beth answers, showing her mother her fingers.
“Oh, lovely - is that the one Amy got you for your birthday?”
“Yeah,” Beth smiles. Nicole gets up from the couch at that point, so Patrick follows her.
“Hey, honey,” Aunt Jen says to Nicole as she rounds the corner. “Oh my goodness - Beth, did you do Nicky’s makeup?”
Patrick remembers at that moment that Nicole said her mother wouldn’t let her use the red lipstick, but it’s the one that both she and Patrick are now wearing. He stands behind the corner, wondering if he’s going to be in trouble.
“Yep,” says Beth.
“I see,” says Aunt Jen. Patrick doesn’t think she sounds angry. “And what have you done with Patrick?”
“I’m here,” he says, stepping forward into view. “Hi, Auntie Jen.”
“Oh! Patrick,” she exclaims, faltering as she comes towards him. Her hand flies to cover her mouth. “I… well. I was going to ask whether the girls had taken good care of you, but I suppose now I know the answer to that!”
She’s smiling, so he figures he’s not in trouble, but he doesn’t entirely understand what she means.
“I had a really nice time,” he says, remembering his manners. “Thank you for the snacks.”
“Oh, Patrick, honey,” says Aunt Jen, reaching out and petting his hair as her eyes scan his face. He remembers how red his mouth looked in the mirror, and smiles widely at her. “I can’t believe you let them do that to you. You deserve a reward.”
He supposes it was their idea, not his, but he really didn’t mind; he actually ended up liking it. On the other hand…
“Chocolate?” he asks hopefully.
Aunt Jen laughs. “I don’t think your mom will thank me for giving you any more sugar today, honey. What about a Cheestring?”
“Okay,” says Patrick.
“They’re in the fridge,” she says, nodding towards it; he takes the cue and goes to grab one. As he looks for them, he hears Aunt Jen resume her questioning. “Which one of you girls did that to him?”
“Nicole,” Beth says promptly.
“Yes, because Beth never lets me practise on her!”
“Of course,” says Aunt Jen. She laughs again. “Well, Nicole, you’re very lucky your cousin is so obliging. I don’t know many boys who’d be patient enough to let you practise on them. I mean, can you imagine Chris?”
Beth snorts. “He’d wriggle around so much you’d take his eye out with the mascara.”
“And he’d rub it off as soon as you finished,” Nicole agrees. Patrick wonders why she thinks that. Patrick certainly didn’t want to spoil Nicole’s lovely work by smearing it.
“I think it’s nice,” he pipes up, coming back with his Cheestring.
Aunt Jen puts an arm around his shoulders and squeezes him in a half-hug. “Aw,” she coos. “You’re very kind to say that, Patrick,” she says, as if he didn’t actually mean it, but just said it to be nice. He frowns, but doesn’t correct her. They don’t seem to be in trouble, and he has a Cheestring, so he doesn’t dwell on it.
*
Patrick is upstairs colouring with Nicole in her room when the doorbell signals his parents’ arrival half an hour later. He hears them come in and exchange greetings, everyone merrily talking over each other, and then he hears Aunt Jen say, “Patrick’s with Nicole upstairs.”
Nicole smiles at Patrick as their parents’ footsteps sound on the stairs. “I like your pirate,” she says, pointing at his picture, where he’s just finished colouring in the black skull-and-crossbones flag. “You colour in much neater than Chris does.”
Patrick glows at this. He’s always been good at staying within the lines and keeping the colour even throughout each segment. Maybe he could do his own makeup one day.
“Thank you,” he says with a smile.
Their parents’ voices sound at the end of the corridor. “Now, there is a teeny little surprise for you…” Aunt Jen says. Patrick figures she’s talking about his and Nicole’s makeup, because nothing else out of the ordinary has happened since he’s been here.
“Oh?” Patrick’s mom sounds intrigued.
“I’m afraid so - wait ’til you see what the girls have done to poor Patrick.” Patrick frowns. Poor Patrick? “Honestly, you leave them alone one time…” The words disappear into chuckles from all three adults.
“Were we not supposed to use the red lipstick?” Patrick whispers to Nicole. Aunt Jen didn’t seem upset about it before, even though Nicole had said it wasn’t allowed. Nicole shrugs, not looking too worried.
Aunt Jen knocks on Nicole’s door and swings it open. Patrick and Nicole look up as the adults file in.
“Oh! Oh, dear,” says Marcy, instead of saying hello. Just like Aunt Jen, she covers her mouth with her hand. “Well! Look at you.”
Clint’s eyebrows are high on his forehead. “I think you sat still for too long, Patrick,” he says, pulling a face as if to say whoops!
Patrick doesn’t think it was too long. He sat still on purpose to let Nicole put the makeup on him, so that he didn’t jolt her hand. Does his dad think it was an accident?
“Nicole asked me to,” he tries to explain. “I didn’t mind.”
“Oh, you are so sweet,” says Marcy, and she’s smiling, so he doesn’t know why it makes him feel uncomfortable. “Well, Nicole, you did very well. You have a good eye for the blush; it’s very even.”
“Thank you, Aunt Marcy.”
“And did you do yours too, or did Beth help?”
“Beth did mine,” says Nicole.
“It looks lovely,” says Marcy. “Of course, you have a beautiful face anyway, but the colours are very pretty on you. It’d be perfect for a special occasion!”
Nicole beams. Patrick turns to his mom, waiting to hear if she likes his colours too, but his dad speaks first.
“I bet you’re itching to get out of all that, eh?” he says jovially to Patrick. “My poor boy.”
Patrick has been enjoying it, actually, but now that his dad mentions it his face is a little itchy under the makeup. And it doesn’t really seem like he has the option to say he’d like to keep it on. Everyone expects him to want it off. He feels upset now, in his stomach and behind his eyes, and he doesn’t know why.
He nods mutely.
“I’ve got wipes in the bathroom cabinet,” Aunt Jen tells Marcy. She directs her next words to Patrick. “We can get you all cleaned up before Chris gets home - I don’t imagine you want him to see you with makeup on!”
She’s still grinning, like it’s funny, but Patrick feels sick. He doesn’t want Chris to see him with makeup on, suddenly, which is weird, because Chris is his cousin and one of his best friends. Why can’t Chris see? But from what they’re all saying, he has a strong feeling that it would be a bad thing, if Chris saw. That Chris would laugh at him, or say something unkind.
“Come on, then,” Marcy says, and she seems amused too, but she’s gentle, reaching out a hand; Patrick takes it and lets her lead him down the hall to the bathroom, wondering what Chris might say that would be unkind.
Maybe it just doesn’t look as nice as Patrick thought it did. His mom liked how Nicole’s colours looked on her, but when she looked at Patrick she just said oh dear. She said Nicole did well applying the blush, but maybe she was just being polite, like when Aunt Jen tells Chris his colouring in is neat. But that doesn’t seem right either. Even Beth said Nicole did a good job. If it was terrible, she would definitely have said so.
In the bathroom, Marcy locates the wipes and kneels in front of Patrick. “You okay, sweetheart?”
“I don’t like it,” Patrick whispers, trying not to cry, and it’s true. He did like it before, but now he feels like he did something wrong. He wasn’t supposed to like it; he was supposed to laugh. He feels embarrassed. “I want to take it off.”
“I know, honey,” says Marcy, smiling sympathetically. “You were very good to let Nicole practise on you, though. I think she was really happy.”
And that’s not quite right, but Patrick just wants his mom to fix it, and she does. The wipe stings, makes his eyes water, tastes bad on his mouth. When it comes away it’s red and pink and blue and black, and Marcy takes another one out of the packet and scrubs at him again.
“I know, I know,” she murmurs soothingly when he screws up his face in discomfort. “Nearly done, sweetie.” She finishes up with the second wipe, which comes away much less colourful than the first. “All gone,” she reassures him, but he’s not sure he feels any better about it.
“Didn’t I look nice?” he asks finally, voice soft and lip trembling.
Marcy’s face falls. “Oh, Patrick,” she breathes, placing her hands on his cheeks and looking heartbroken. “Your face is beautiful just the way it is.”
“So is Nicole’s,” he points out. His mom said so herself.
“Yes, it is,” she agrees. “But boys don’t wear makeup.”
Oh.
He didn’t think of that.
It’s a good thing his mom fixed it before Chris could see. Chris would probably have thought he was silly, not knowing something like that.
He doesn’t really understand why - he thought his makeup looked just as nice as Nicole’s did - but at least he knows now.
He and his mom return to the others. He doesn’t look at Nicole. When Chris gets home with Uncle Robert, he’s tired and his arm aches, so he and Patrick draw and play indoors while their parents chat. Chris notices Nicole’s makeup when she comes downstairs, but nobody tells him about Patrick’s, so Patrick supposes the secret is safe.
Life goes on as usual into the evening, with distractions and fun and laughter. They sit down for dinner together. Chris shoves his carrots onto Patrick’s plate when their parents aren’t looking, and they giggle when Aunt Jen asks what they’re looking so guilty about, and the sick feeling in Patrick’s stomach subsides.
Mostly.