Faces of Fear

implants taken out again, but she’d still have scars, wouldn’t she?

So why did both her mother and Conrad think it was such a great idea? Of course, she couldn’t remember ever having talked about plastic surgery with either one of her parents, so maybe she’d just always assumed they would be against it.

And no matter what her mother thought, she was pretty sure she was still right about her father. Maybe Scott would think it was a great idea — in fact, he probably would — but not her father. Her father would hate it.

Absolutely hate it.

Like he’d hated her being on MySpace.

He’d probably forbid her to have the implants, just like he’d forbidden her to stay on MySpace.

Why? What was the big deal?

It wouldn’t be fair — it wouldn’t be fair at all!

Realizing she’d just made the decision she’d never thought she’d make, she did what she always did next: picked up her cell phone from the nightstand and speed-dialed Cindy.

“Hey,” she said when Cindy answered. “Guess what I’m getting for my sixteenth birthday? Besides a party, to which you’re the first person I’m inviting.”

“Great!” Cindy said. “And I know exactly what I’m going to get you for a present. It’s perfect for someone who lives in Bel Air.”

“What?” Alison demanded, suddenly missing Cindy more than she’d realized.

“You’ll find out on your birthday,” Cindy shot back. “I can’t tell you before then. So what kind of a party is it going to be?”

“Like nothing we’ve ever even been to before,” Alison said. “I think it’s going to be kind of a fancy thing up here at the house. A garden party with caterers and a band.”

“A band?” Cindy repeated, sounding less enthusiastic. “How much am I going to have to dress up?”

Alison hesitated, glancing toward her closet where the twelve-hundred-dollar dress hung. “Some,” she admitted, knowing what Cindy’s clothes budget was. “It’s my parents’ idea.”

“Ooookay,” Cindy said slowly. Then: “So I better buy some really, really nice jeans, right?”

“Just wear that dress you wore last Christmas,” Alison told her. “It looks great, and none of the Wilson kids have ever seen you in it.”

“And they’ll know exactly how much it cost and that I didn’t buy it at Neiman-Marcus,” Cindy said sourly.

“Oh, who cares?” Alison replied. “Anyway, the party isn’t even the big news. Guess what my stepfather is giving me for my birthday.”

“What?”

“Implants.” Alison waited expectantly for Cindy’s gasp of envy, but instead heard only silence.

A silence that stretched on way too long.

“Cindy?” she finally said. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” Cindy finally replied. “I just assumed you were kidding.” Now it was Cindy who waited for a reply that didn’t come, and finally she spoke into the void. “You mean you’re not kidding?”

“No,” Alison said. “Why would I be kidding?”

“Because it’s the stupidest idea I ever heard,” Cindy replied. “What are those kids at Wilson doing to you? It’s only been, what, two weeks? And you’re already getting plastic surgery?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Alison demanded. “Everybody gets—”

“Everybody does not get plastic surgery for their sixteenth birthday. And a boob job? From your stepfather? You know what, Alison? I think I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Cindy, wait.” But it was too late — she’d already clicked off.

Alison closed her cell phone and pulled Ruffles closer. “She could have at least listened to me, couldn’t she?” she whispered to the dog, who only wriggled for an answer. “I mean, she didn’t even let me tell her why I’m doing it.”

Ruffles whimpered.

And then, as she went back to petting the little dog, a thought came to mind.

What if Cindy was right?

What if she was making a terrible mistake?

Her eyes fell again on the gift bag on her dresser. She jumped up, got the bag, and dumped its contents onto the bed.

Then she went into her mother’s bedroom, took a black bra out of her middle lingerie drawer, and went back to her own room. She fitted the perfectly molded foam prosthetics into the cups of the bra, then put it on. It didn’t feel quite right, so she pushed the fake breasts around a little until they felt comfortable, then pulled on her favorite sweater — an ice-blue cashmere her father had given her on her last birthday — and turned to the mirror.

And she looked good. In fact, she looked fantastic.

She looked like Teresa at Conrad’s office, with breasts that were neither too large nor too small, and looked perfect on her lean frame.

But maybe it was only the sweater.

She took off the sweater and her jeans and went into the closet. Very carefully she took the party dress off its hanger and slipped it on.

And once again the fake breasts filled the bodice perfectly.

So Cindy was wrong.

The perfectly formed breasts made her look better — a lot better — and when the implants were in, it would all look even more natural than it did now.

Suddenly, she wanted to tell Conrad to schedule the procedure as soon as he could.

But first she’d call Cindy again and tell her that her attitude was all wrong. But what good would that do? She wasn’t going to change Cindy’s mind — when Cindy decided something, that was that. So this would just have to be one of those things that friends accepted in each other.

But as she turned in front of the mirror, she knew she had to tell someone what she was going to do. And it had to be someone who would be as excited as she suddenly was.

Tasha!

Of course! Alison took off the dress and put it back in her closet, then put on her bathrobe. Even it looked better with her new shape.

She flopped back onto the bed, picked up her phone, and speed-dialed Tasha, who would not only understand and share her excitement, but also be able to tell her exactly what to expect in the surgery. In it, and after it.

And maybe — just maybe — Conrad would have time to do it next weekend.

Suddenly, life was fabulous.

NATALIE OWEN FISHED a Diet Pepsi out of the nurses’ station refrigerator and dropped into the chair behind the big reception desk in the lobby, her eyes automatically going to the computer monitor. Everything was quiet tonight. Most of the nursing home’s residents were sleeping, and all but one showed no signs of not making it through the night. The single exception was Manny Smithers, whose family was sitting vigil at his bedside so he wouldn’t die alone, even though he’d shown no signs of recognizing anyone for the past two years.

In fifteen minutes Steve Williams would arrive to relieve her, and since she’d finished all her paperwork half an hour ago, she decided she might as well log on to eHarmony and see if the man of her dreams had noticed her yet.

With a few strokes on the keyboard, she logged into her account and found that almost a dozen people had looked at her profile since the last time she’d checked.

But nobody had responded.

And she was pretty sure she knew why: it had to be the photograph.

Double-clicking on the image to enlarge it, she gazed dolefully at the offending picture. It had been taken by her mother after her solo performance with the church choir last Easter, when she’d sung the Lord’s Prayer. In the picture, she was wearing the blue choir robe with the gold V-neck stole that made her eyes look bluer and her hair even blonder than it was, and she knew it was one of the best photographs ever taken of her.