The Journalist and Her Actor

Chapter 11

Getting thrown into makeover mode with a bunch of strangers washing away the details that make you yourself is already an uncomfortable experience, but throw in little brother commentary and a leading actor who hates your guts, sitting in the chair next to yours, getting his own makeover, and you've got yourself a circus of stressful. 

 Luke was utterly quiet, body leaned back in a salon chair as one of the women in the room silently rinsed his hair, fingers pushing strands of hair back out of his face to keep him from being doused in water. 

Carter had taken up a chair in the corner of the room, comic book abandoned in his lap as he chattered with Luke who gave occasional grunts in response, trying to stay still so he wouldn't get shampoo in his eyes. 

I watched strands of my own hair drain of color, reminding me of days when I was little, the color of life so vibrant, that I didn't need the extra color in my hair to make me feel like magic was real. I watched the tattoos along my shoulders fade as makeup was smeared across them, erasing each memory I had inked into my skin, a sense of loss washing over me. 

"Woah!" Carter said, abandoning his chair and peeking over my shoulder, watching in the mirror as makeup crossed my bare skin. "Do you have to have the tattoos removed every time you do a scene?" Carter asked, looking up at the woman who wiped my skin with fascination.

She smiled kindly, the look not quite reaching her eyes, focused on the task. "Yes. Both Miss Springs and Mr. Walker have to get here earlier than the others because they have so many tattoos." There was a hint of of disapproval in her tone.

Luke's jaw tensed slightly in his chair but kept silent. I looked away, self consciously. 

"Do you know what the tattoos mean?" Carter asked, unfazed by the woman's opinion. He gestured to the one on my left shoulder that was already half covered in makeup. "See the cherry blossoms? Em got them the day I was diagnosed. Let me pick it out and everything." 

His tone was too happy for the story he was telling. Too personal to share with a stranger. But Carter didn't obey the rules of the world, instead always openly expressing himself, living without fear, without concern because in his own mind, there was no time to second guess himself, to be afraid. He never knew if he would get a second chance to say something that mattered.

I remember the day I got the cherry blossoms. Carter was pale at the mere idea of being shoved full of needles, terrified that he was now signed up for a life long repetitious cycle when I decided to distract him. If he was going to have to deal with needles, then I was going to show him that not all needle experiences had to be bad ones. And every time it got too hard for him to handle, I added to the tapestry... until recently when I needed to be a more constant blood donor.

Carter tapped the cherry blossoms with a soft smile. "I thought of these because they bloom in the spring, like our last name. And they symbolize the end of the winter, a time of death, and the beginning of new life." 

He shrugged, walking back over to his chair. "Tattoos aren't for everyone. But most of them tell great stories... A look into the book that makes up a person. You just have to ask what that chapter is about."

Then Carter pulled up his comic book, and went back to reading, leaving a speechless woman standing above me, and Luke wearing a ghost of a smile. 

...

"And that's why Jean-Luc Picard is better than James T. Kirk," Carter said, finishing up his monologue on Star Trek. "And personally, I think I'd enjoy spending time with Picard better anyway," Carter added as an afterthought. 

We had been in the makeup room for an hour. My skin was now clear of all signs of tattoos, and my hair was wrapped in dozens of layers of tinfoil, making me feel like an alien conspiracy theorist, and not in a cute way.