The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell Page B

We’ll have dinner at eight and I can get you home by eleven.”
    We hang up and I go into the bathroom to examine my face. I have a sudden desire to radically alter my appearance. Maybe I should dye my hair pink and blue like Dorrit’s. Or turn it into a pixie cut. Or bleach it white blond. I pick up a lip pencil and begin outlining my lips. I fill in the middle with red lipstick and turn the corners of my mouth down. I draw two black tears on my cheeks and step back to check the results.
    Not bad.
    I take my sad-clown face into Dorrit’s room. Now she’s on the phone. I can tell by her side of the conversation that she’s comparing notes with one of her friends. She bangs down the receiver when she spots me.
    “Well?” I ask.
    “Well what?”
    “What do you think about my makeup? I was thinking of wearing it to school.”
    “Is that supposed to be some kind of comment about my hair?”
    “How would you feel if I showed up at schooltomorrow looking like this?”
    “I wouldn’t care.”
    “Bet you would.”
    “Why are you being so mean?” Dorrit shouts.
    “How am I being mean?” But she’s right. I am being mean. I’m in a mean, foul mood.
    And it’s all because of Sebastian. Sometimes I think all the trouble in the world is caused by men. If there were no men, women would always be happy.
    “C’mon, Dorrit. I was only kidding .”
    Dorrit puts her hands on top of her head. “Does it really look that bad?” she whispers.
    My sad-clown face no longer feels like a joke.
    When my mother first got sick, Dorrit would ask me what was going to happen. I’d put on a smiley face because I read somewhere that if you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. “Whatever happens, we’re all going to be fine,” I’d tell Dorrit.
    “Promise?”
    “Of course, Dorrit. You’ll see.”
    “Someone’s here,” Missy calls out now. Dorrit and I look at each other, our little tiff forgotten.
    We clatter down the stairs. There, in the kitchen, is Sebastian. He looks from my sad-clown face to Dorrit’s pink and blue hair. And slowly, he shakes his head.
     
    “If you’re going to be around Bradshaws, you have to be prepared . There could be craziness. Anything might happen.”
    “No kidding,” Sebastian says. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, the same one he was wearing at Tommy Brewster’s party and on the night we painted the barn—the night we first kissed.
    “Do you always wear that jacket?” I ask as Sebastian downshifts on the curve leading to the highway.
    “Don’t you like it? I got it when I lived in Rome.”
    I suddenly feel like I’ve been swept under a wave. I’ve been to Florida and Texas and all around New England, but never to Europe. I don’t even have a passport. I sure wish I had one now, though, so I’d know how to deal with Sebastian. They should make passports for relationships.
    A guy who’s lived in Rome. It sounds so romantic.
    “What are you thinking?” Sebastian asks.
    I’m thinking that you probably won’t like me because I’ve never been to Europe and I’m not sophisticated enough. “Have you ever been to Paris?” I ask.
    “Sure,” he says. “Haven’t you?”
    “Not really.”
    “That sounds like being a little bit pregnant. You either have been or you haven’t.”
    “I haven’t been there in person. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been there in my mind.”
    He laughs. “You are a very strange girl.”
    “Thank you.” I look out the window to hide my tiny smile. I don’t care if he thinks I’m strange. I’m just so happy to see him.
    I don’t ask him why he hasn’t called. I don’t ask himwhere he’s been. When I found him in my kitchen, leaning against the counter like he belonged there, I pretended it was perfectly natural, not even a surprise. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, like it wasn’t odd that he suddenly decided to show up.
    “Depends on what you