They

From above, the college was a series of rectangles. Cinderblock buildings painted industrial grey, a color somehow even more drab and unwelcoming than the standard cinderblock shade. The poorly maintained quad at the heart of campus was almost always empty aside from the occasional student trying to read on a blanket stretched out on the patchy grass.

But Louella, she was all circles. The apples of her cheeks, flecked with freckles, the way they glowed when she laughed really hard. Her hair, a mass of corkscrews and swirls, framing her head like a coppery halo. Her hips, full and generous in a way I could not be. We often just sat on the floor of her dorm, and contemplated our homework, tapping away on our laptops, the blue light illuminating our faces just enough. Sometimes we would sit on her bed and watch the old cartoons we’d loved since we were kids. I’d wonder how many times we’d watched the same episodes at the same time when we were little, before we were whatever we were now. Sometimes, when we got tired of cartoons, we would kiss until we got tired of that, and then sometimes, we fell asleep.

Louella’s room consisted of rectangles, too. The twin bed, the narrow closet, her roommate’s bed, which was usually unoccupied and unmade, both of their desks, and the makeup mirror that sat on Louella’s desk. That mirror made me want to kiss my own reflection and turn myself inside out. That mirror made me insane.

If Louella knew the way the mirror berated me, she never intervened. She could be cruel that way. I think that was part of why I loved her so much, because I knew love was the kind of thing that only happened when you kept part of yourself hidden. I could never be sure what she saw, either.

Neither of us remember how we met. It was like she just sprung up out of nowhere. Like she was a wilting palm tree and I was the rain. We were freshmen, scared and alone, looking for life preservers on the sea of other students, other strangers. Without each other, we probably would have drowned separately and alone. It was a match made of convenience and necessity. Nothing more, but no less precious.

#

That evening, the sky became an unforgiving grey and the rectangles eventually yielded to flakes. Tiny white ones that became larger blue-grey lumps. “Is this a blizzard?” Louella asked, eye wide, mouth small and puckered. We peered out the window of her dorm, which looked down on a squat rectangular building used for science classes, watching the snowfall become piles and mounds.

I didn’t want to tell her that I’d never seen this kind of snow before. Atlanta would occasionally get a dusting, a couple inches at most, and the whole city would shut down because it wasn’t equipped to deal with it. Louella chewed her bottom lip, her drugstore lipstick flaking off on her teeth.

“We’ll be okay,” I said, deliberately not answering her question.

I could see her chest rising and falling too fast, and the color left her face as the anxiety coursed through her body. “Should we get… supplies or something? In case we get snowed in?” she asked.

“We’ll be okay.”

“We should run up to the canteen, just to grab, like, bottled water. And Pop Tarts or something.” Her voice was breathy, and I imagined that she was remembering the hurricanes that had pummeled the coastal Floridian town where she’d grown up. Getting supplies wasn’t a bad idea. Going outside probably was. I looked dubiously out the window. The whole topography of the campus looked different, transformed. Before I could compose an answer to Louella’s question, both of our phones buzzed, then sounded. Louella gasped and lunged for her phone.

“Weather alert,” I said, retrieving mine from my back pocket. “Campus safety says we should stay inside until further notice.”

A canyon formed between Louella’s eyebrows. “For how long?” Her voice wavered. I’d never seen her look so fragile.

I didn’t want to tell her that I didn’t know, that I had exactly the same information and resources that she did. I wanted to protect her, shelter her. “We’ll be okay,” I said. “We’ll be okay.”

Louella perched on the edge of her bed, her fingers twisted in her lap like some kind of sculpture or wreckage. I wanted to press my face to the chilly window, admire every snowflake in its loveliness. Finally, I tore my attention away from the snowfall and tried to focus on Louella. Even now, when she was anxious and vulnerable she looked exactly right. So effortlessly herself, so effortlessly her. All of her lipstick had vanished.

The stricken look on her face pulled the words out of me. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to comfort her. “Hey, we’re okay,” I began, haltingly. She looked startled, like she’d forgotten I was there. I pressed on, “We’ve got a few snacks, we’ve got blankets in case we get too cold, we’ve got, like, five more episodes of Rugrats to watch. It’s all going to be okay.”

“I thought you were going to say something all cheesy,” she said, a smile beginning to overtake her unpainted lips.

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Like, at least we’ve got each other.”

#

As it happened, we also had a bottle of cheap rum. We made quick work of it. Louella’s limbs relaxed and her laugh became louder. She sprawled on her bed, her head hanging down towards the floor, her feet making scuff marks on the cinderblock wall above her. A Matisse poster threatened to fall on her. Her face was flushed and her lips were still pale, but her eyes were glassy and her limbs were loose. “You’re so pretty,” she slurred. “Seriously. So pretty.”

I was not nearly as drunk as she was, but I was also far from sober. I let the comment wash over me, wondering what it would be like to hear it under normal circumstances, from someone who saw me and meant it.

“The literal prettiest,” she laughed, then hiccupped.  I knew she was teasing me, and I tried to laugh along. An empty, guttural sound left my mouth. Louella was too drunk to notice. “I wanna, I wanna put makeup on you,” she said, swinging her arms to gain the momentum to sit up. “Like, right now today.”

I knew I was supposed to protest. I knew that she would laugh about it in her cruel and musical way for months or even years to come. But I also knew I could blame it on the rum, the snow.  When Louella pulled her absent roommate’s chair next to her own, I knew exactly what I was doing as I took my place beside her.

“You can’t look ‘til I’m done,” Louella said, with the cadence of an excited toddler. “You gotta promise.”

“I promise.”

She appraised my face solemnly, then began to organize her supplies, first pulling out a bottle of foundation. “It’s so lucky that we’re, like, basically the same shade,” she said, standing the bottle up on the side of the desk closest to me. She pulled out more and more products, lining them up like soldiers going in battle. It was almost unnerving how precise she was while still being so drunk. “This one’s an eyelash curler,” she brandished the silver instrument at me, as if I didn’t know. “You won’t need it though. Y’all always get the best eyelashes. Such a waste.”

I wanted to laugh. When I didn’t, Louella opened the bottle of foundation and got to work. Her fingers were gentle. She explained what each product was for as she applied them to my skin. “Tilt your head back,” she instructed, her fingertips grazing my jaw. “I wanna cover this stubble with foundation.”

I did as I was told.

I didn’t expect the powder to make my nose twitch. Louella laughed in delight as I tried to suppress a sneeze. “Here,” she said and handed me a tissue. I dabbed at my itchy nose, trying not to smear any of the makeup she’d applied so far.

The brushes felt like kisses on my skin, far more tender than any I’d ever given. As Louella guided another brush over my cheekbones, I felt like I was meeting someone I should have met long ago. “Mascara time,” she announced. “I’m gonna tell you when to blink, but be careful because I don’t wanna poke you in the eye, okay?” I nodded, watching as she moved the little black wand up and down in its tube before approaching my eye with it. “Blink,” she said. I did. “Blink. Blink. Blink. Okay, other eye. Blink. Blink. Blink.” She put the wand back in the tube and appraised her work. “So pretty!” She laughed, still drunk. Slowly, I turned towards the mirror, both excited and nervous to see what she’d made of me. “Not yet,” she said in a sing-song voice, wagging an exaggerated finger in the air like she was scolding a child. “We still gotta do highlighter.” I watched as she produced a round container of glistening, silvery powder. She tapped a clean brush into the moon-like substance, and little flecks of glimmery pigment swirled into the air. I tried to relax as she tapped the makeup onto me. I tried to imagine looking into that mirror and not having to hold my breath as I looked away.

“Done! Ready?” Louella’s voice pulled me back into the room.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice barley a whisper.

Louella flipped the mirror’s lights on, and I cautiously turned towards it. Outside, the snow showed no sign of stopping, and the moon had long made its ascent. The snowfall was still glorious, gleaming, and growing. The stars were appearing by dozens in the inky, indigo sky. The mirror showed a stranger I knew quite well. My face as it should have been. I don’t know how long I stared.

When I looked back at Louella, her face was the closest thing to reverence I’d ever seen. “You look beautiful,” she said, as if she knew what she’d done. Somehow, despite the layers of cosmetics, I felt more authentic than ever.

“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t have words for the gift she’d given me. I wanted to freeze time, to become a snowdrift. But I knew things would melt, that eventually the snow would stop falling, become something else. Tomorrow, maybe the streets and the sidewalks would be plowed, and the snow would pile up beside the walkways, briefly beautiful for what it was.