Chapter 9

On Tuesday, Rachel came over to Leah's to visit me again. I was surprised this time; she'd never told me she was coming to visit. Leah, of course, saw her and assumed that I'd invited 'the bitch' over again. This time, I didn't bother correcting her.

"Why've you come?" I asked Rachel, subsequently inviting her to have a seat on my bed.

"Didn't you say you were going to meet Jacob on Wednesday?" she countered, ticking off the days on her fingers. Rachel had been even more excited than I had after I'd showed her Jake's note.

"And Leah," I corrected her slightly, "which is the bad part. He said 'all will be revealed' and that he's gonna make things clear. What if he means that he loves Leah and tells me to back off?"

Rachel shrugged. "Trust me, he won't. What are you planning to wear tomorrow, anyway?"

I shrugged back at her and opened the door of my newly-invented walk-in closet. "I haven't decided yet. Probably the brown pants I wore shopping with you that day, paired with that pale yellow top you bought for me."

Rachel shook her head vigorously. "No, you can't! That's why I came over today. To ensure that you leave a lasting impression on Jacob tomorrow on your date."

"Rachel, it's not a date," I insisted.

The girl only snorted in response. "Oh, but it will be. I'll be back tomorrow morning again with makeup that's gonna make you look absolutely perfect. Today is for planning your outfit and I'm bringing you back to the Canthacey District to get your nails done by professionals. Oh, yes, and I'm bringing one of my mother's stylists over tomorrow as well to help with the styling of your hair. I promise you, you're going to look gorgeous."

"Rachel," I protested, trying to sound as calm as possible, "it's not a date and you don't have to take all that trouble for me. He just told me to meet him there, that's all, nothing special."

"Yes, but you can be sure that Leah will be dressed her best. Don't you want to look worthy of her competition as well?" Rachel challenged, knowing that she had won this argument. "Besides, it won't be any trouble for me. Fashion is my passion and it'll be fun."

An hour later Rachel pulled into a parking lot at the Canthacey District and we took a lift up to the eighth floor, the topmost floor, of the mall right beside Canthacey Hotshot, where we had already visited that day. This new mall among the cluster of the famous Canthacey Malls was called Streetshop.

The eighth floor was all about beauty. The two wings, the north and south wings, were both lined with hair salons, cosmetic surgery shops, nail art and design shops, and so many more. It was impossible for a girl not to be at her true paradise here. Except for girls like me, of course, who would never actually know fashion and bother to do so, let alone have the money to afford the expensive shopping at the Canthacey District.

Rachel took me to the largest shop in the area, the Relaxation Bar. A dozen women knelt on the floor in front of posh-looking armchairs lined with velvet, six on each side, dressed in white cotton robes and matching slippers. Seven of these armchairs were already occupied, with females of all ages relaxing and leaning back getting a foot massage with cooling cucumbers over their eyelids.

There was a spa in the corner, as well as three trained hair stylists on high rotating chairs. At the very back of the shop was a nail parlor with the option to customize your very own nails at a high price, or choose from the 250 nail designs in their collection, not to mention the 50 "nail art" decorations.

Rachel produced a gold card with her name and personal details on it and handed it to the assistant behind the polished frosted-glass counter. I realized it was a "Relaxation Bar Gold Membership Card", the "highest-ranking" card out of the three available ones, Club, Platinum, and Gold. From the friendly, familiar way the assistant greeted Rachel, I could tell that they were already friends, and guessed that Rachel was probably a frequent customer of theirs, if not on an errand for her fashion-loving mother.

The assistant led us to the corner, where a middle-aged dark blonde was waiting with an array of nail art accessories were on a shelf beside her. Her name tag read 'Valentina'.

Rachel seated herself on the wooden stool on Valentina's other side and gestured for me to take a seat on the plush velvet armchair with a small plastic platform to place one's fingers on.

"Miss Zane-Whitley, are you not?" Valentina said. I noted a slight hint of a French accent in her voice. "How may I be of help to you?"

Rachel smiled politely at Valentina. "This is my friend Nessie here. She's got a naturally pale skin tone, and I think dark colors would look great in contrast with that shade of skin. I was thinking perhaps dark blue, scarlet, or something classy but yet not too fanciful. What do you think, Val?" I was a bit taken aback by the casual way Rachel addressed Valentina.

Valentina stared me up and down, as though trying to weigh the pros and cons of each shade of nail color mentally. "Maybe I could just go for a classic black. It's the safest color…" I suggested in a quiet aside to Rachel.

Rachel looked horrified, but I wasn't exactly surprised. I'd prepared myself for this kind of reaction, since I had never been someone's idea of "fashionable". "No!" she whispered in the same horrified tone that matched her expression. "Never, ever go for black unless you're attending a funeral or any other solemn occasion. That's the most basic mistake no women should make, even though sadly many of them have the misconception that wild colors make them stand out and black is usually the safest color."

After spending time debating, Rachel finally decided on a two-tone nail design labeled as 'Blue Midnight'. The first, lighter tone up my nail was to be painted a glossy, casual medium tone blue, and the second, darker tone running along the bottom part of my nail was to be painted a sleek, classy midnight-blue. Rachel also decided to place three high-shine silver mini-stars on each of my nails as a decoration, and then left when Valentina had started work to find me some good fashion magazines to read.

The entire nail art thing cost Rachel a couple hundred dollars, and she didn't even seemed bummed by the fact that she'd had to fork out that much money for a girl she'd only known for a week. I questioned her on that point, and again she repeated how 'fashion was her passion' and all of that.

We drove back to Leah's house and went straight down to the basement to my room, and into my walk-in wardrobe.

"Let me figure out how to use this," Rachel hummed as her eyes appraised the panel of buttons next to the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the closet.

She then pressed a button with the words 'Outfit Planner' marked on it in bold black print. Almost immediately, the mirror lifted and folded up, tucking itself away in the depths of the closet I'd never really explored. A sort of brown mattress-like thing was pushed out in place of the mirror.

But the mattress wasn't really a mattress at all. There were gaps for shoes, bags, belts and other such accessories, with a space in the middle for outfits.

Rachel hemmed and hawed over my outfits. Seeing as there was nothing much I could do, I just followed her instructions and would occasionally bring in a couple of fashion magazines "stolen" from Leah's conventional library.

By the end of the evening, Rachel had triumphantly emerged with a beautiful outfit.

There was a dress of deep red silk with black trimmings over it. Just after that dress had been bought, Rachel had sewn gold threads across the neckline, waistline, and hemline. It showed more cleavage than I would have deemed necessary, but Rachel insisted it her way. The dress ended midthigh, with flexible red ballet flats with a gold ribbon on each of them to match. Rachel had bought me a golden-bronze open-heart rose gold chain pendant, which she now placed together and set it on a separate rack.

The next morning, Rachel's mother's stylist came over to Leah's house. She was named Amber and combed my tangled bronze hair so that they fell in soft curls, cascading down my back and shoulders, and shook them loose to get the "wind-blown" look, or so Amber and Rachel called it.

Then, Amber padded my pale cheeks with rose-pink blusher, with natural-looking pink lip-gloss and coated thick mascara. According to Amber, my eyes were "really expressive" and she wanted to bring out the best in them.

Amber added eyeshadow that was two parts smoky and one part shiny, I suppose it was a seductive combination. She dabbed a final coat of smooth-skin foundation and concealer on my face, and then pronounced me ready to go.

Afraid that my flats would be ruined if I walked to the cliffs, Rachel cautiously drove me along the rocky path that led up to the first slope of the jagged cliff. When her Mercedes would go no further, Rachel stopped her car and got out with me.

"You'll have to go on foot," Rachel explained, pointing out the correct path to the second cliff where Jake had wanted us to meet. "I can't accompany you there. Do remember, Nessie, look confident, chin up, shoulders back, stand tall…be relaxed, be natural, be yourself. Be beautiful and stare Leah down. You can win this. You can win Jacob."

I took a deep breath and did as she asked, trying to look confident. Then I stepped up and over the small sloping hill that led from the first cliff to the second cliff, and immediately saw the clearing Jacob had been referring to.

How could I have missed it? There was a picnic table set up with food on it, and a tent with lights strung from the top even though it was bright early afternoon still.

Leah was standing casually by the tent talking to Jacob, but all I saw of her outfit was a glimmer of blue.

I took another deep breath, breathing through my mouth this time, blowing softly out through my lips, and stepped bravely into the clearing.

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