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I wasn’t surprised to see Olivia on my doorstep at quarter to twelve the next morning. She was chronically early, and of course, since I’d been dreading this little outing, she wouldn’t disappoint me by being late. I sighed as I let her inside.

“I have a game plan for us,” she announced, striding into my living room as I dumped the remainder of my coffee down the drain. I didn’t figure she’d give me enough time to finish it.

“I bet you do,” I said, grabbing my purse off the kitchen counter. “You’re probably planning to drag me all over Hell’s creation today, aren’t you?”

She gave me a very wicked smirk as she looped her arm through mine and pulled me to the door. “You have no idea,” she laughed.

We didn’t bother taking her car, what with the London traffic being as hectic as it is. Instead we took a black cab and made our way to Olivia’s first stop.

“Does London even have clothing stores for fat people?” I grumbled as we pulled up in front of Harrods. Though I’d never been inside, the stick-thin mannequins in the window didn’t make me feel any more confident that we were in the right place. My stomach dropped as we got out of the cab and headed inside.

“You promised, no griping, remember?” Olivia whispered as we proceeded through the ground level of the store. I wasn’t sure what we were looking for, but Olivia seemed to know, so I just kept my mouth shut and followed her.

To my surprise, we didn’t go near any clothing, but instead she led me to the cosmetics section. There, she pushed me into a chair at a station and gave the disdainful-looking woman who sat in front of me instructions.

“I thought we were clothes shopping,” I complained as the woman slathered a richly scented white lotion on my face, her perfect eyebrows furrowed in concentration. She used a little white sponge to spread it around.

“You need make-up first,” Olivia said, sitting beside me and pulling a nail file out of her purse. “If we don’t get your face right, it won’t matter what you wear.” She looked up from her file. “Pay attention to what’s being done, Peyton. You’ll have to do it yourself for the wedding.”

I grimaced at the idea of painting my face like a circus clown, but I didn’t object. The woman in front of me began testing colours against my skin, shaking her head at the ones she didn’t like. When she pushed my hair back off my face and put a white hairband in it, I saw her wince.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said quietly, feeling my face flush. Though she remained professional, the corners of the woman’s mouth turned down slightly.

“Relax,” Olivia ordered, the snap of her eyes and tone of her voice telling me I didn’t have a choice. She crossed her long legs, framed in sleek black trousers, and sat back in her chair, studying the work the woman was doing on my face.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have anything thick enough to cover these,” the woman said, refusing to meet my eyes. She was talking to Olivia, avoiding me. My stomach clenched.

“We don’t want them covered,” Olivia replied, somewhat snobbishly. “We want her face highlighted, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with the scars the way they are.”

I tried to give her a smile, but I couldn’t do it. She may not have seen anything wrong with my hideous deformity, but I sure as hell did, and so did the woman who was now plastering my face with cold foundation, as evidenced by the way she still wouldn’t meet my eyes. I kept them firmly directed at the floor.

After awhile I began to tune out what was going on around me. Olivia prattled on about eye shadow and the right type of mascara, but I really didn’t care. I felt the sting of my eye brows being plucked, and the urge to move away when the little sponge moved over the scars on my neck as the woman tried to blend the colour with the rest of my skin, but I didn’t really register any of it. I knew I should be paying attention, but in truth, I didn’t care enough to.

“I think brown-black will be better for her than straight black,” Olivia was saying when I at last decided to come back to the present. “Black is too severe.”

“With her colouring, though, black might be more dramatic,” the woman argued, her hand hovering dangerously close to my face with a mascara wand. “We’ve already done brown with her liner.”

“Precisely,” Olivia snapped, getting up off her chair and grabbing another wand from the woman’s table. “Going with black would be all wrong.” She leaned in and began brushing the mascara over my lashes as I fought not to blink. Her brusque strokes made me a bit nervous, that close to my eyes, but I forced myself to trust her.

When she’d done both eyes, she stepped back and looked down at me, an appraising look on her face.

“What?” I couldn’t help but ask when she’d stared for too long. “Damn it, say something.”

“I like it,” Olivia announced finally, a smile on her face. Her green eyes sparkled in the mirror lights as she moved behind me to grab the hand-held mirror, thrusting it at me. “Look.”

I closed my eyes as I raised the mirror to my face. I didn’t want to see what was waiting for me. Make-up or no, it didn’t matter. Make-up wouldn’t do anything for Quasimodo, so what made me think it would work for me?

“Oh for heaven’s sake, open your eyes,” Olivia hissed, nudging my shoulder roughly. “It’s not going to kill you to look.”

I took a deep breath and slowly forced my eyes open. The face I saw in the mirror wasn’t mine. It couldn’t be. My skin was even and smooth, except for the little bits of my scars that showed under my hair, my eyes were bright and really stood out from my face, thanks to the golden-hued tones that swept over my eyelids and the liner than wrapped around the edges, and my cheeks had a bit of a rosy glow to them. My lips were light pink, very natural-looking, though I knew they weren’t really that colour. I blinked a few times, waiting for the image to fade, to be replaced by my less-impressive image.

“What do you think?” Olivia asked, clearly exasperated that I hadn’t said anything yet.

“Um, it’s…nice,” I managed finally, not sure what else to say. I was at a loss for words.

“Some writer you are,” she teased, taking the mirror from me. “Now, do you remember how to do this?”

Still stunned, I shook my head. This prompted the make-up woman to launch into a lengthy explanation that I know I didn’t catch all of, but I was sure I picked up the basics. I knew I’d have to practice to get even half the desired effect, but for some reason, I was suddenly willing to take the time to do it.

Once I’d paid for my make-over and took the three bags of stuff from the woman, we headed back outside to find a black cab. It was a good thing those cars have so much room in the back, or else my shopping would need a separate ride. And we weren’t even to the clothing part yet.

“Harrods carries plus-sized clothing,” Olivia explained as our driver wove his way through the wall-to-wall traffic around us. “But their selection can be limited, and I think their styles aren’t quite what we’re looking for. We’re going to try New Look, on Oxford Street. They might have something that’s a bit more you.”

“I don’t even know what ‘me’ is,” I mumbled, looking out the window.

“Trust me,” Olivia said, smiling as she patted my hand. “I know exactly what we’re looking for.”

I just sighed for the hundredth time that day and focused on the traffic, hoping she was right.

A short time later, we were in another store, surrounded by those damned skinny mannequins again. The sales girls looked like they hadn’t eaten in weeks, and it would have taken at least two of the other customers to fill my pants. The brief jolt of enthusiasm I’d felt over my new make-up dwindled rather quickly.

But Olivia didn’t seem phased. She walked in as though she owned the place, her no-nonsense air firmly in place. She was intimidating in her black suit and crisp turquoise blouse, her hair in an elegant French twist, her stiletto heels clicking smartly on the floors. I followed behind her, feeling the The Swamp Thing.

“We’re looking for fun, flirty dresses,” she informed the sales girl who came over to us. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty, with glowing skin, shiny black hair, and a tiny little waist that was probably no thicker than my ankle.

“What’s the occasion?” the girl asked, leading us further into the store, toward racks of rather loud prints.

“A wedding,” Olivia said, shouldering her handbag and tugging me along by the wrist when I resisted. “We need a dress for someone who doesn’t normally wear dresses.”

“What size are you looking for?” The girl shot a quick look at me, then trained her glance back on Olivia. Olivia looked at me expectantly.

“I have no idea,” I said honestly, since it had been so long since I’d purchased clothing for myself.

“That’s okay, we’ll get your measurements,” the girl assured me with a surprisingly friendly smile.

When we’d figured out what size I was, I was dragged toward a rack of dresses. Some of the darker colours appealed to me, and I immediately reached out for a black dress that would cover me from head to toe.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Olivia hissed so that only I would hear. “That’s a moomoo, for God’d sake. If you want to look fat, that’s the type of shit you should wear.”

“Oh,” I said, blushing and shoving the offensive dress back on the rack. I resolved that that was my last attempt to be useful during this little trip.

“What colours are we thinking?” the sales girl, whose name was Courtney, we’d discovered, asked as she pulled dresses off the rack.

“Blues, purples, greys,” Olivia rattled off, grabbing some things herself. “Nothing too busy, or too bright, and I’m thinking an Empire waist would be beneficial.” I immediately hugged my arms around myself and felt a blush shoot through my face.

I was herded into a dressing room with an armload of dresses to try on. None of them went below my knees, and none of them had long sleeves, so I was totally out of my comfort zone, even more so than I’d already been. But to give Olivia credit, nothing she’d picked or allowed me to try on had a plunging neckline or was in any way too overtly revealing. Most of her choices were dresses I could live with for one day.

I paraded in front of Olivia and Courtney for the next hour or so in a wide variety of styles and colours. There were some that Olivia vetoed right away, and others that she told me to put in the ‘maybe’ pile so I could try them on again later for a second look. My body started to ache about half way through my little fashion show, but I didn’t complain. I had other things to worry about, a little pain was nothing.

When I’d exhausted the pile of dresses I’d been sent in with, we were left with four official ‘maybes.’ Two of them I wasn’t very fond of, the prints being too big and the neck lines a little too wide. Luckily, Olivia shot them down as soon as I tried them on again.

“Try on that blue one,” she called as I pulled off the second rejected ‘maybe’ dress. “I think that’s my favourite.”

I grabbed the dress and began pulling it over my head. It wasn’t really blue, more an off-white with little blue flowers patterned over it, giving it more of a grey appearance from a distance. I was told it was called a ‘babydoll’ dress, with the Empire waist Olivia had requested, and a little blue bow just beneath the square-shaped neckline. The sleeves were short, with elastic in them to make them bunch around my arms and puff up a little, and there was edging around the neck that I was told was quite flattering on me. The hem of the dress was ruffled, with a slightly different pattern that made it stand out, and it hit me right around my knees. The best part was, I didn’t feel like a total troll in it.

“That one is definitely the nicest,” Courtney said as I came out of the dressing room yet again. She began straightening the dress, smoothing it out, adjusting where it sat, and generally getting a bit too familiar with my shape for my liking. I fought the urge to shove her hands away.

“We’ll take it,” Olivia said without any hesitation at all. “Now we need shoes and a bag to go with it, and we’re all set.”

Another half an hour later we were back in a black cab, my various shopping bags spread around us. Olivia had a goofy grin on her face, like a kid on Christmas morning, and I couldn’t help but smile back at her.

“See, this wasn’t so bad, was it?” she said, playfully shoving my leg.

“As long as I keep my hair down, my scars will barely be noticeable,” I said, shrugging. I wasn’t ready yet to admit that I hadn’t completely hated our shopping trip, and Olivia seemed to sense that, so she didn’t press me any further.

“I think your hair should be up,” she said, as though pondering the idea herself. “It’s more formal for a wedding, more classy.”

“I suppose,” I said half-heartedly, remembering my threat to my mother. I wanted to show my scars, to make her uncomfortable. But somehow the idea of ruining that cute little dress with such a hideous waste of skin made my stomach turn. I’d have to decide what was more important to me, completing the look Olivia was obviously so proud of and pissing off my mother, or staying in my comfort zone and hiding in my hair. It was a tough choice.

“I can show you how to do something simple,” Olivia was saying when I snapped back to her. “It won’t take any time, and you’ll look wonderful.”

I gave her a small smile. For some reason, I was starting to believe her.

***Peyton’s dress: http://www.newlook.co.uk/women/dresses/day_dresses/1347957/134795719/ProductDetails.aspx ***