Lipstick Apology by Jennifer Jabaley Page A

tubes into a row, and pointed for me to hand him a cup and a club-shaped thing.
    â€œWhat do you mean, all the time ?” I handed him the items.
    â€œI do the morning shift,” Anthony said. “Mortar and pestle,” he said, holding up the cup and club, then laughed at my face. “They’re for grinding.”
    â€œOh.” I scooped some of the white compound into the cup. Anthony started to crush it with the club.
    â€œAnyway, I go in before school and prepare the breakfast stuff—pastries, bread.” He smiled and his teeth looked white against his slightly olive skin. “I do a great croissant.”
    Mrs. Klein walked by, glancing over our shoulders. Anthony looked up and said, “Forty-seven.”
    â€œExcellent.” Mrs. Klein nodded and walked on. Apparently he had worked some equation while simultaneously grinding our compound, organizing the glassware, and recalling his morning bakery inventory.
    â€œYou go in before school?” I asked, shocked.
    â€œRight,” he said. “I get there about five.”
    â€œFive?” I half screamed. “A.M.?”
    He laughed. “I only stay until quarter to seven,” he said. He scooped up the white material and gingerly added it to a test tube. Then he took a label, wrote our names on it, and stuck it to the test tube. “Have you ever had a job?” he asked.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œOh,” he said, “because most of the people at this school have never had a job.”
    â€œHmm,” I said, thinking how everyone back home did something to earn extra cash, even if it was shoveling snow. “Well, when I was fourteen, I got a job vacuuming at a nursing home.” I smiled, shaking my head. “It was a riot because every day when I’d get up to the eighth floor, the Alzheimer’s ward, there was this man, Mr. Wilson, and he thought I was his dead wife, Lucy. Well, apparently there was a past incident with another woman. When he saw me, he would grab my elbow and scream, ‘Forgive me, Lucy. Oh, PLEASE forgive me.’”
    Suddenly, I froze. Please forgive me. Those were my mother’s final words. Was it a common dying plea? I wondered how many people spent their lives harboring feelings of guilt until in their final moments, it expelled out of them like a ruptured balloon?
    â€œEarth to Emily,” Anthony said, waving a Sharpie at me. “Another brain fart?”
    I tried to smile as the bell rang.
    We gathered our things and filed out the door. I walked slowly in hopes of talking with the new girl, Carly, but her conversation with Mrs. Klein seemed to go on forever.
    So I just walked on alone.
    Â 
    A FEW DAYS LATER AT LUNCH I set my salad down beside Lindsey and Andi, who had become my lunchtime regulars. I couldn’t believe my luck. Not only to escape the whole lunchroom debacle, but to be instantly catapulted to the highest tier of social standings. I couldn’t stop analyzing the situation—two new students in one week. Somehow I wound up sitting with Darlington royalty and Carly was stuck by herself, eating in the corner with a romance novel. Why? And was Anthony really eating in the library?
    Here’s the truth: I was never this popular at my old school. I wasn’t like a geek or a loser or anything, but I never wore the homecoming crown either. Georgia and I used to say we were just on the fringes of top-rank popularity. I was lucky because my varsity tennis doubles partner, Lacey, was a total elite and sometimes she’d invite me to parties. Though once, freshman year, when I went to a Halloween party at Lacey’s house, this guy Jordan from my Spanish class asked me what school I went to. But maybe he didn’t recognize me because of my costume.
    So I couldn’t exactly wrap my head around why in the course of one week I’d been launched into Darlington’s high-society lunch crowd. Sure, my once-dishwater blond hair