What I Saw and How I Lied Read Online Free PDF

mercilessly ran a wet comb through my tangles, laughing at the faces I made. They put setting lotion on it and pushed it one way, then the other. Mom fussed over me with lipstick and powder while I felt my hair being tugged into a French twist. My back was to the mirror so I couldn't see what she was doing, only the line between her eyebrows as she concentrated.
    "Don't look yet," Mrs. Grayson warned me. The amusement in her voice was gone now. She was taking the job seriously. Hope made bubbles in my chest. If anyone could make me pretty, I thought, it was Mrs. Grayson. Mom had always put the kibosh on my attempts to be pretty. She said I had plenty of time. Mrs. Grayson seemed to understand that I didn't.
    Mom cradled the dress in her arms like a newborn and carefully pulled it over my hair. She did the hooks in back. Then she pulled down the skirt in a professional way. Mrs. Grayson brought over a pair of high-heeled white sandals. I slipped into them and wobbled.
    "Keep your head up," Mrs. Grayson ordered. "Don't look at your feet. Straighten your spine!"
    I straightened my back and lifted my chin.
    "Good," they said together.
    "Now look," my mother instructed.
    I looked in the mirror. I expected to see a version of my mom. Somehow I'd hoped that the dress would look better on me than on her. It didn't.
    "Smile," Mrs. Grayson said, and I smiled. "There. You're beautiful."
    She said it seriously. Not like Joe did — and I realized at that moment that when Joe said I was beautiful, he always lumped me in with Mom, as though I was the giveaway and she was the real prize.
Sure you're beautiful, kid — look where you came from!
    In the mirror, I exchanged a glance with Mrs. Grayson. I was surprised to see sadness there.
    She leaned over to speak in my ear. "This is your time, Evelyn. Grab it."
    Just one dance. Just one. That's all I wanted.
    I know now how you can take one step and you can't stop yourself from taking another. I know now what it means to want. I know it can get you to a place where there's no way out. I know now that there's no such thing as
just one.
But I didn't know it then.
    "Come on," Mrs. Grayson said. "Before you turn into a pumpkin."
    They spun me around and pushed me out the door, wobbling like a top winding down. Now I had no choice. I went.

Chapter 7
    Luckily the band was playing, and mostly everyone was dancing. I walked straight to the punch bowl and poured myself something red in a crystal cup. I did it slowly, hoping that some boy would come over and offer to pour for me. No one did.
    I stood with my back to the gold brocade curtains and watched, sipping the sweet warm punch, afraid to spill on Mom's dress.
    I figured out pretty quick that everyone in the ballroom knew each other. I overheard conversations and realized that they were all seniors in the local high school across the water, in West Palm Beach. This was the first dance of the year.
    If I were pretty, a doll, a dish, maybe some of the boys would have gotten up the nerve to come and introduce themselves. But I saw their glances slide off me, like ugly was Vaseline, and I was coated with it.
    I felt like I was disappearing. I clutched the punch glass, empty now. I couldn't seem to move to put it back on the table. If I moved a muscle, someone would notice me. The best I could do now was hope to stay invisible and then sneak out.
    Then the worst thing happened. A boy noticed me.
    He was the most unattractive boy in the room, a dogface, a Poindexter, the one who hadn't asked any girl to dance, because he knew that no girl wanted him to. But I was a stranger, so he figured, why not?
    I realized that there was something worse than not being asked to dance. It was being asked to dance by the wrong boy.
    He pushed himself off the wall as the band swung into "In the Mood" and the swirl of dresses took over the dance floor. I was trapped, caught between the dancers and the punch bowl.
    "You don't recognize me, do you?" he said. "Which makes