Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Linda Cheng
- Language: English
- Genre: Paranormal & Urban Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 6 MB
- Price: Free
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I’m never wearing anything cute or doing something glamorous when I
get recognized these days. Either some TMZ photographer’s trying to get
pictures of me eating a burrito from a deeply unflattering angle or I’m in a
sweatpants–flip-flops combo on day three of not washing my hair, standing
in the frozen aisle of Kroger.
The lady hovering next to me pretending to look at Eggos while not so
covertly examining my profile waits for me to drop the sixth frozen meal
into my shopping cart before she shuffles forward.
“Excuse me, dear, I don’t mean to bother you, but I just wanted to ask,
were you on that TV show? The one about the Asian pop group?”
The fact that she didn’t use my name or the title of the show is enough
to tell me that the best course of action here is to show myself out of this
potential social disaster by offering her a polite “Sorry, you’ve got the
wrong person.”
But the corners of my mouth lift and the words are spilling out before I
can stop them.
“Yes, I was!” My voice automatically pitches into a higher register, the
one that makes me sound younger, friendlier. “That’s me.”
The lady lets out an excited whoop. “Oh my gosh, would you mind
taking a quick picture with my daughters? Just one? They absolutely adore
you!”
“Of course.”
The rational, self-respecting part of me floats away, untethered, glancing
down in disappointment at the lesser me left behind—the one who still
craves the validation of strangers.
“Aubrey! Anya! Come here, quick!” the lady hollers. “You’re not going
to believe who I just met!”
Two tween girls come bounding around the other end of the aisle. One
has locks of purple twisted into her curls, and the other’s got streaks of blue
weaving through her high ponytail. They look twelve, thirteen at most, but
their style is impeccable, their makeup stunning enough to be on a Sephora
ad. They probably have a dance video out there that’s got eight hundred
thousand views. The next generation of trendsetters, here to step all over the
corpse of my career with their rhinestone sneakers.
“It’s Candie—from that show you love!”
The name lands like a gut punch, and I bite the inside of my cheek as the
pang hits.
Even during the height of our popularity, Candie and I still got mistaken
for each other all the time. I used to get happy butterflies when it would
happen, thinking that it meant people thought we looked alike. It took me a
while to realize they merely thought of us as interchangeable.
The mother presents me like she’s unveiling a prize, and the girls’ faces
progress through a slow-motion car crash of emotions, shifting from
surprise to recognition to alarm to disappointment to unbearable
secondhand embarrassment. And finally, to pity.
“Um, no, Mom, that’s—” Purple Curls attempts to correct.
“And she was nice enough to agree to a picture!” The woman’s already
got her phone out and she’s shoving her daughters forward, arranging them
next to me, one on each side, like we’re estranged relatives being forced
into a family photo.
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