Burning Up Read Free

up in the Closet? ” she interrupted indignantly. “Janna, that’s just wrong!”
    Her cousin laughed. “Not in Ty’s eyes, it isn’t. He actually loves it. He likes pretending it’s a nuclear-class submarine and he’s the master spy. It doesn’t hurt that his best friend, Charlie, thinks it’s beyond cool, either.” Her mouth crooked in a wry smile.
    “Only a nine-year-old,” Macy said, shaking her head at the notion of anyone thinking that sweatbox of a six-by-ten-foot room was “beyond cool.” “Then how about our old room?” They’d shared an upstairs room for several years as teens. “Auntie Lenore said they’re keeping it open for when you can navigate the stairs again, and I’d be out of your way but still close enough to help.”
    “Uh, the thing is, I can’t use these crutches and carry anything bigger than a pair of undies at the same time. So I need help with the fetching and toting. I’m sorry, Macy, I know it’s cramped in here and not what you’re used to—”
    “No, no, no, no, no!” She shook her head in vigorous denial. “I didn’t mean it that way at all!” The action made her realize she still had on the sailor hatand she reached up to lift it off. Tossing it onto the bed Janna had assigned for her use, she tugged free the blond wig she’d worn beneath it. “I was afraid I’d be crowding you, not the other way around!”
    “Then we’re talking apples and oranges and don’t have a problem. Here. Fork that over.” Janna crooked “gimme” fingers at the wig. “I always wondered what I’d look like as a blonde.”
    Macy tossed it to her, then ran her fingers through her own super-straight hair, which was more caramel colored than the do-me-daddy platinum of her wig. She rubbed her scalp to lift the roots and sighed as a breeze ruffled through the white curtains, combing cool fingers through the freed strands and setting them to dancing against her collarbones. Toeing off her Cuban heels, she kicked them aside, then breathed a long, attenuated “Ahhh,” and wiggled her toes. “Lovely.”
    “I’m glad one of us is,” Janna murmured, making a face as she tugged at the wig and a pale blond strand flopped over her eye.
    “It’s hard being adept in the beauty department without a mirror.” Macy crossed to her cousin and shifted the hairpiece into proper position, then finessed the curls into a sassy style. Standing back, she surveyed her handiwork.
    “You need a little makeup.” Grabbing her purse, she upended it over her bed and picked her cosmetic case out of the resulting jumble. Handing a tube of lipstick to Janna with instructions to dab some on, sheapplied a pale rose blusher to her cousin’s poreless cheeks, then mixed brown eye shadow into a daub of Vaseline she’d smeared on the back of her hand. She applied the concoction over Janna’s eyelids with a deftness gained through years spent taking mental notes while makeup artists got her camera-ready for this, that or the other video shoot. After smoothing the gleaming eye shadow to just above the crease in Jenna’s eyelid to give her cousin a thirties silent-movie-star look, she finished it off with a coat of mascara, then leaned back to inspect her work. “ Now you look like the coz I remember.” Twisting around, she reached behind her for the hand mirror atop Janna’s dresser and turned back to extend it to her. “Here. Check it out.”
    Janna stared at her reflection for several silent seconds. Then, the hand holding the mirror dropping to her lap, she looked up, a slow well of tears pooling in her eyes.
    Remorse slammed through Macy. “Oh, my God, Janny, I’m sorry! I’ll take it off!” She snatched several tissues from the box on the dresser where she’d gotten the mirror. “Don’t cry, it’ll only take me a second to remove it!”
    “No! Don’t you dare.” A choked sound rose from Janna’s throat and she dashed the sides of her hands beneath her eyes. Then she let out a watery