I am living proof that you reap what you sow. I could almost feel sorry for myself if not for the fact that I know I deserve the lumps of coal falling on me. Between that little twit Arielle invading my world and stealing Gregory out from under my nose—which, thanks to my brother, now has me looking like a female Cyrano de Bergerac—this is not going well. If only I was as noble as Cyrano! I’m trying to steer my life in a new and better direction, but I feel like the steering wheel is broken.
Her phone dinged with a text.How’s it going?Josh texted.
Rotten. Broke my nose.
Free nose job?
Wasn’t he the comic? She scowled.Snowball fight.
To this she got the old laughing-’til-I-cry emoticon.
Happy to amuse,she texted back.What am I doing here?
Growing spiritually. Hang in there.?
She didn’t want to hang in there, and she didn’t particularly want to grow.Growth is overrated.
It’s not, trust me. You will look back on all this and be glad it happened.
She doubted that, but she thanked him for checking up on her. Things may not have worked out for them romantically, but he was proving to be a really good friend.
That night she dreamed her nose swelled to the size of a watermelon and she found herself in downtown Eagledale wandering the streets dressed as a clown. “And she thoughtshe was so cool,” she heard someone say. She whirled around to find a crowd standing behind her. It was comprised of all the people she’d mocked or put down in the past, regarding her with superior smirks.
“You reap what you sow,” said Pete, echoing what she’d written in her journal. “What goes around comes around.”
“Yes, it does,” said a voice from the back of the crowd. “What goes around comes around. What goes around comes around.”
Soon the entire crowd was chanting it, pointing fingers at her.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry!” She woke up with the words still on her lips.
She was really sorry when she checked out her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her bruised and swollen nose made her look like a freak. How was she supposed to go out looking like this? By hoping nobody she knew would recognize her.
Erika and Cole were already gone, and Dad had left for work, so it was just her and Mom sitting at the kitchen table. Mom worked on her second cup of coffee, Darby on her first, icing her nose and staring morosely at the pastry on her plate.
“What are your plans for today?” Mom asked.
“I’m supposed to meet Ainsley and Laurel for coffee,” she said. “But I’m going to cancel.”
“Nonsense,” Mom said. “You don’t look that bad.”
“Compared to what, roadkill?”
Her mother shook her head at her. “Your friends won’t care.”
“I should have them come here.” That would work. She could hide out in the house all week.
“Sorry, darling, but I’ve got a full house today. The mah-jongg girls are coming over to play and have lunch.”
Oh, yes, Mom’s crazy friends. They’d be wearing Rudolph noses and reindeer antlers and ugly sweaters, and they’d all want to know every detail of Darby’s life to date. She was better off risking the coffee shop.
So at ten thirty she walked into Brewed Awakenings, determined to brazen it out. After all, she was Darby Brown. And a little thing like a dinged-up nose didn’t make her any less... fabulous. Mom had gotten the bloodstains out of her coat, and she’d worn her most stylish clothes under it.
The Phantom does fashion. She hoped she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew.
She did. To her surprise, when she walked up to the counter to order her favorite eggnog latte, there was Janice Jenkins, one of her favorite targets way-back-when. She had seen neither hide nor hair of Janice on her visits home and had assumed she moved away... never to return again. But here she was, behind the counter, ready to take Darby’s order.
She’d slimmed down some, but the old Darby still would have judged her for her less-than-perfect figure. Her nose was still her worst feature (but who was Darby to talk about noses!), but her complexion had cleared—and somewhere along the way she’d finally gotten her teeth straightened and had gained the confidence to smile.
