Act Your Age, Eve Brown

She tried to process, to find the right words to explain herself—but the conversation was already racing off without her, a runaway train she’d never been fast enough to catch.

No pulling the parental punches today, then.

“Do you like my hair? Roller set. Twenty-four hours and seven different YouTube tutorials! I had to sleep on the rollers. What a nightmare.

Imperfection is inevitable. That’s life. But it doesn’t sound to me like you’ve failed at all, Eve. It sounds like your dream broke, and you’ve been picking up shattered pieces and blaming yourself when your hands bleed

Imperfection is inevitable. That’s life. But it doesn’t sound to me like you’ve failed at all, Eve. It sounds like your dream broke, and you’ve been picking up shattered pieces and blaming yourself when your hands bleed.

“You look per
fect,” he said again, each word falling like a petal onto a tranquil lake.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking. Don’t. There isn’t much that takes the smile out of you like this, so whatever’s on your mind can’t be good.”

“Eve,” he said, “everything about you matters.”

“And listening to music and eating crap,” she said firmly. “Basically a teenage girl sleepover.”

“Ah.” He nodded gravely. “Because no one knows how to have fun better than a group of teenage girls.”

So he assumed she had bad relationships. She couldn’t feign outrage, since she’d once dated a white guy who’d said Wha gwan, rastaman? to her father.