Page 5 of Lance

Willa

I’m pretty sure I’m going to puke before the night is over. I’d say the odds are about ninety percent. Maybe ninety-five, even. The more interesting question is when it will happen. Before I leave the apartment? At the party itself? I shudder a little bit at the thought—how completely embarrassing wouldthatbe?

“Are you calculating your chances of hurling?” Nia asks, narrowing her eyes atme.

I blink up at my roommate. “How did youguess?”

She pauses in the act of applying some kind of powder to my eyebrows—I didn’t even know that makeup for eyebrows was athing—so she can look down at me. “Because you have that math face onyou.”

“I have a math face?” I ask, the thought more than a littlehorrifying.

She snorts. “You totally have a math face. I can always tell when you’re doing calculations in yourhead.”

Well, that’s good to know. Not only does the math thing make me feel like a freak, apparently it makes me look like onetoo.

“This is hopeless,” I mutter, closing myeyes.

“Hey!” Nia yelps. “The eyelash glue isn’t dryyet!”

I groan as I open them again, wondering why I allowed my best friend to put false eyelashes on me in the first place. On me. The girl who didn’t know her eyeliner from her lip pencil a mere hour ago. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I can differentiate between the two even after an hour of sitting in Nia’s makeup chair. My version of getting ready generally means some moisturizer and lip-gloss, maybe a touch of mascara if I’m feeling ambitious. But this—Nia arrived in my room an hour ago armed to the teeth with cosmetics, her expression grim, ready to do battle with my frizzy hair and unshapedbrows.

“You’re freaking out,” she says, going back to my eyebrows—at least I think that’s what she’s doing. She hasn’t let me look in the mirror since I had a mini-panic attack about the streaks of dark bronzer she’d drawn all over my face. Apparently that was called contouring and, according to her, it wouldn’t kill me to pick up a beauty magazine once in a blue moon. “Come on, Willa. Get it together,girl.”

“How am I supposed to get it together?” I ask. “I’m adisaster.”

“You’re not a disaster.” She continues to work on my eyebrows as if I’m not seconds away from a complete breakdown. “You look beautiful. You have a bangin’ outfit to wear. And your makeup is reaching epic levels, if I do say somyself.”

“Oh, God, Nia, it’s not too much, is it?” I try to lean around her to get a glimpse of myself in the mirror. “You promised I wouldn’t lookoverdone.”

“And you won’t.” She pushes firmly against my shoulder until I stop squirming to see the mirror and fall back into the chair. “So quit your bitching and let mefinish.”

I snap my mouth closed and concentrate on breathing through my nose. Isn’t that supposed to help with nausea? You would think I’d know one way or another, having a degree in biology and all. But somehow the prospect of going to this party has just about every fact I’ve ever learned scurrying from my head like rats off a sinkingship.

Maybe that’s what I need to calm me down. Some good old facts. I try to clear my mind so I canconcentrate.

“Are you reciting the periodic table?” Nia asks, and now there’s laughter in her voice, like she’s doing her best to keep from cracking up. “Your lips are moving,babe.”

“I’m trying to relax!” She’s totally laughing now and I glare at her. “Nia!”

“I’m sorry!” She tosses the brush she’s been using to the desk and plops down in the seat across from to me. “It’s just like, come on, Willa. Only you would recite the periodic table of elements, by heart, in order torelax.”

“It helps,” I mutter, crossing myarms.

“I’m sorry I laughed,” she says seriously, putting her elbows on her knees so she can lean closer and meet my gaze. “I just don’t see what you have to be so nervous about. It’s not like you don’t know thesepeople.”

I sigh. “I knowsomeof them. Only a few, actually. And there’s going to be a lot of people there. People I’ve never metbefore.”

“People you’ll probably never see again,” she points out. “And it’s not like you won’t have anyone to talk to. Your brother. His bandmates.Me.”

“Thank God you’re coming.” There’s a little string loose on the bottom of my tank top and I wrap it tightly around the tip of my pinky while I talk. “I would definitely be thinking up some excuse right now if I had to gosolo.”

“But you wouldn’t be solo even without me! That’s what I’m trying to remind you. You know everyone in Intrigue, Willa. You won’t be byyourself.”

She has a point, of course. My brother James has been playing music with Haylee Hunt since I was a little kid, and I’ve known the other members of the band for ages. They’re basically family at this point. Now that things are finally going so well for them, I should be thrilled. Iamthrilled. This party is a big deal for Intrigue. It definitely shouldn’t make me feel like I’m going to puke all over my bestfriend.

Nia’s voice takes on a knowing tone. “Besides, I thought youwantedto see him,” she says, and I know she isn’t talking about my brother anymore. “I thought that was the whole point of all of this.” She gestures at the tray of cosmetics behind me on thedesk.

“I changed mymind.”