Sometimes i like to write stories #1: cake face

   
         Nikki unlocked the front door. It was dark, so she flipped on the light switch. "Surprise!" she heard them all scream. Confetti clouded the small space of the living room. When the colors cleared, she saw her close friends and some kids from school standing behind the couch or the table. They were all whooping and cheering for her. Nikki laughed. As she ran up to hug and thank everyone, music blared through the speakers, some kind of techno-dubstep mix. "Happy Birthday," her best friend, Danika cheered, and Nikki felt loved. After some dancing and opening presents (a cute top from Danika, some giftcards, a book about dolphins from her friend Ronald, etc.) the lights turned off again.
       "Time for cake," someone yelled. A perfect vanilla cake illuminated only by the sixteen pink candles set atop it seemed to float towards her. "Make a wish!" someone said. She blew out the candles. Everyone cheered. The lights beamed back on. Ronald took the cake knife and cut out a piece of cake; a perfect square.
       "For the birthday girl," Ronald started to hand the plate to Nikki's outstretched hands. But before she could take it, Johnny intercepted the slice, taking it up in his hand, and squished the cake-over-frosting-over-cake-over-frosting into Nikki's face. Everyone cheered.
        "She just got cake-faced!" Johnny jeered.
       "Like she wasn't already." Everyone laughed. Nikki recognized the voice as Danika's, cake still pressed to her foundation-over-skin. Nikki didn't bother taking the cake off her face. She just stood up and bolted for the stairs. She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She felt the pulse of the song's bass through the door as she sat with her back against it. There was a knock at the door. "Nikki, we're sorry," Danika pleaded. "Just come back to the party. You look fine," said Danika with her Bobbi Brown lipgloss and perfect eye brows. Her voice trailed off, and then Nikki heard the words, "Johnny! Apologize!" The noise downstairs began to fade. Nikki heard someone telling everyone to leave. It was Ronald. It was almost silent. Nikki cried, tears melting the frosting and foundation caked on her face. Someone knocked on the door.
         "Nikki," the kind voice said. Nikki stood up and felt for the door handle. She twisted the knob and opened it. She saw Ronald's hands holding a wash cloth. He stepped towards her and rubbed the damp towel over her face. She cried. "Shh, it's okay." Ronald used the towel to wipe off frosting and batter. Then, ran to the bathroom to wash the towel clean. Nikki felt her foundation smeared over her face, the eye liner and mascara running like ink stains down her cheeks. She put her face in her hands when she heard Ronald's footsteps drawing back towards her. Ronald lifted up her chin. He used the towel to wipe off the foundation first, the dampness trailing over Nikki's forehead and cheeks, then her eyelids, and finally, her once artificially-red glossy lips. Ronald took a mirror from the table and knelt down beside Nikki. Nikki refused to open her eyes. "Don't worry. All the cake's gone. Your face is... perfect." Perfect. She laughed. How perfect could she look now that her face was bare?
         "Ronald, I can't look perfect," she said, correcting him.
         "But you do." Nikki scoffed.
         "But my makeup's ruined."
         "It was ruining your face in the first place." Nikki felt her face grow red, redder than her cheeks would have been had she been wearing her favorite cherry-colored Benefit blush tint. "Guys don't know anything about makeup."
          "Yeah we do," Ronald retorted defensively. Nikki snorted. "And we definitely know when a girl's wearing too much of it."
          "What do you mean?" Nikki replied. "Like, how much makeup is too much?"
          "When... you can't see a girl's freckles," Nikki thought this through. It bummed her how much his logic made sense. "And when her cheeks don't get red naturally like yours are getting right now." Nikki wanted to strangle him.
          "But I look better when I wear makeup."
          "No, actually, you don't."
          "But I have a zit-"
          "That doesn't mean you need to cake-up your face-"
          "How about mascara then?"
          "Is that like, for your eyes?"
          "Eyelashes. It makes them luscious and defined... Don't guys like when girls have nice eyelashes?"
          "Uh..." There was a pause. Ronald laughed. Nikki didn't understand how her question could have prompted amusement. "Guys don't notice how luscious a girl's eye lashes are. It's not like we go home after a party and be like 'Dude, did you see her eyelashes? They were bangin'." This made Nikki laugh.
        In that moment, she seemed to regret the collective hours she's spent practicing putting on mascara since she'd discovered it. How she'd once been threatened by the product's seemingly-unavoidable desire to clump and smudge, yet how, after day after day of practice, she'd gotten to the point where she could apply it perfectly. First, you run a little bit of mascara through your lashes, just a little. Now, take your eyelash curler. Squeeze at the base. At the middle. At the tips. Continue squeezing the little hairs growing from the tips of your eyelid until your hard work renders each lash in a perfect curl. Now, take your mascara wand in your dominant hand and your mirror in your other. Hold the mirror and tilt your head so you're looking at the base of your eye lashes. This way, it's harder for the mascara to smudge onto your eyelids and easier to see the base of the eyelashes. That's where you put the wand, at the base. Okay, now starting there, wiggle the mascara wand from the root to tip. Wiggling the wand helps coat each lash more evenly and prevents clumping. One coat. Now another. Perfect eyelashes.
         Then, she contemplated her face paraphernalia: you have your moisturizer (at least SPF 45; $18), face primer (a jar of clear lotion-like substance rumored to smooth out your skin and create an adherent surface atop which your face makeup will stay all day $25), foundation (she couldn't buy the $8 drug store brands because only MAC carried the perfect shade of her skin in a clear container, $33), Maybelline instant age-rewind concealer (for her dark circles, because, after all, she was already 16, $7.99), and the ELF concealer (for her blemishes and the discoloration around her nose, $3), pressed powder (to seal in her new skin, $10), then bronzer (NARS' infamous Laguna...) and blush (...both in a convenient compact for the oh-so convenient price of $41, just so her new skin could look like it were blushing and tanning like the layer beneath it), and we can't forget the highlighter (from Covergirl so her face could shimmer and illuminate at the highest points of her nose, cupid's bow, and inner eye-corners like the girl's in the magazine ad, $5), then for the eyes are the Urban Decay primer potion (eye-shadow creases, beware! $20, note: she has 3 others in varying shades for the perfect under-eye-shadow effect), the eye shadows (usually from her personalized MAC quad, $47.50), and mascara (first, a coat of lengthening mascara, $20, and then a coat of Maybelline Falsies for more of a thickening, darkening effect, $9), and then her Anastatia brow-kit (equipt with pencils, brow gel, tweezers, and stencils, because your face is like a picture and your brows are like its frame, $65), and let's not forget chaptsick ($3), her fave MAC lipstick ($15), and lipglass ($15). Okay, I think that's all. All of this played a role in her forty-five minute morning regimen.
      "So... do you wanna see how pretty you are?" Ronald asked. Nikki opened her eyes. She gazed at her reflection. But where Ronald saw beautiful green eyes and freckled skin and naturally rosy cheeks, Nikki just picked out the flaws. Zit on her nose. Skin discoloration and redness. Dark under-eye circles. Sparse lashes. Undefined eyebrows. Smudges where eye-makeup residue remained.
      Nikki was trapped in a world run by superficiality, fighting to achieve an unattainable standard, and she couldn't escape.