A Year’s Supply of Makeup

“For family night tonight we’re going to go over our year’s supply,” Mr. McKinley said. The turned up noses and moans from the children on the couch let him know that his announcement was not being received well, but he ignored that and went on. “Well, Honey, how do things in the storeroom look?”

“Not too bad,” replied Mrs. McKinley, “but I do plan on canning cherries, apricots, and all the peaches I can get this year. I ought to do some applesauce too. That’ll mean a lot of help from you girls.” There were more moans of protest; then she went on. “Like I said, we’re not too bad when it comes to food supplies, but I’ve been thinking, if it ever comes to a point where there are no stores to go to like the prophet said, well, food won’t be the only thing we’ll need to have on hand. What about things like toothpaste?”

The younger children caught on immediately and made a game of it.

“Or soap,” one added.

“Or toilet paper,” another giggled.

Fifteen-year-old Lori, who had been tuned out up until now, suddenly came alive. “Or makeup!” she exclaimed, but immediately became embarrassed at having voiced her thoughts.

“Makeup?” her older brother, Keith, said incredulously. Keith was almost three years older than Lori and seemed to find pleasure in constantly teasing her.

“Is Lori going to get a year’s supply of makeup?” asked Bob, a younger McKinley. “That’s dumb!” The other children agreed and began to giggle.

“Now hold on a second,” Keith put in. “Maybe it’s not so dumb after all. Maybe Lori’s doing us a favor. I mean, if we’re all going to be suffering from starvation, we don’t need to suffer from having to look at her real face too!”

Bob took the lead from his elder brother. “Maybe it’s not for us after all. I’ll bet it’s so she can look good just in case Tony Wilkins comes over to borrow a cup of whole wheat flour during the famine.” Bob batted his eyelashes and flipped a lock of imaginary hair over his shoulder, while Keith pretended to be starving and begging for some food. The two little McKinley girls laughed with delight at their brothers’ antics and began chanting, “Lori’s got a boyfriend.”

Lori wasn’t amused. “Cut it out,” she said crossly. “I was just joking. Don’t you guys know a joke when you hear one?”

That only egged the boys on. But soon dad intervened and order was restored. The rest of the evening was spent evaluating the family’s preparedness needs, but Lori was miles away. She hadn’t been completely truthful when she said she’d only been joking. In fact, it was a lie. She was seriously considering putting in a supply of makeup. After all, just because a girl was going through hard times didn’t mean she had to look it. So while the family discussed how many bars of soap and boxes of laundry detergent it would take to get them through a year, Lori tried to figure how long a tube of mascara would last her and where she could hide 12 containers of lip gloss.

It was only a few days before Mrs. McKinley was able to get a lug of cherries, and Lori found herself stuck in the kitchen early in her summer vacation. Not that canning was so bad—her mother made the job as pleasant as possible—but it seemed as if she had to do most of the work. It was true that she could fill three bottles with cherries in less time than it took for her two younger sisters combined to get one bottle half full. Their deep purple tongues and lips gave evidence to part of the reason for this. Despite mom’s constant warnings not to eat too many cherries or they’d end up with a stomachache, it seemed to Lori that every other cherry ended up in their mouths rather than the bottles. And when mom wasn’t looking, they made a game out of spitting the seeds at each other.

Lori really didn’t mind helping out, though. In fact, she was just beginning to enjoy herself when the back door swung open and in walked Keith followed closely by Tony Wilkins with a basketball under his arm. Lori ducked her head. All she’d had time for that morning was a quick face washing and a hasty ponytail. She wondered how Keith could be so callous as to bring Tony here when he knew they were canning. All she could hope for was that he wouldn’t notice her. She wondered if there was some way she could crawl under the kitchen sink without being noticed.

“Well, well, well,” Keith said grandly, “so the women of the McKinley family are busy putting up our year’s supply!” The younger girls giggled and threw cherries at him.

“Whoa,” mom commanded, stopping their siege before it really got started. Keith nudged Tony as if he’d missed his cue, and mischievous grins spread on their faces.

“Hey, Lori,” Tony said, “I’m really surprised to see you canning cherries. I mean, I understood you were more concerned about storing things of greater necessity, like makeup.” Lori’s face went red with anger and embarrassment, and the boys knew they’d hit their mark. She kept her head down while they rummaged in the fridge. They soon found two bottles of pop, and after grabbing a handful of cookies, headed back outside.

Lori stood silently at the sink. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. When Keith came in alone later that day, she met him at the door with a glare.

“How could you?” she began coldly, but the coldness soon rose to hysteria. “You’re the most awful brother anyone could have, telling Tony about my makeup. You’re terrible; I wish I didn’t even have a brother.” With that she burst into tears and ran upstairs to her room.

Keith, who had been enjoying her outburst as a sign of his victory, was stunned by Lori’s tears. He had badgered her an awful lot before. He had seen her red in the face with anger and heard her yell until he thought she’d break a blood vessel, but he’d never seen her cry.

“We were only joking,” he explained half to himself and half to his mother who had entered in time to see the episode. “I didn’t think she’d take it so seriously.”

“Well,” Mrs. McKinley explained, “things like that and crushes on boys like Tony are awfully serious when a girl is 15. It would help if you were a bit more considerate to her.”

“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “I did push it a bit too far.” He thought for a moment, then headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a while,” he said to his mother.

It was almost dinner time when Lori heard a tap on her bedroom door. She had spent most of the afternoon there crying and scolding herself for crying in front of Keith. “You should’ve been tough. Now he knows he’s got you and he’ll never let up.”

Lori sat up. “Who’s there?” she called.

“Me, Keith.”

“Go away.”

“No, please let me in. I just want to talk to you. No jokes, I promise.”

Lori finally relented. “The door isn’t locked.”

Keith came in cautiously. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“I’m okay, no thanks to you.” She wanted to say something about her crying and spending the afternoon in her room having nothing to do with his and Tony’s dumb joke, but she couldn’t think of anything that sounded very convincing.

“Here,” Keith held out a slip of paper to her. “I guess it’s sort of an apology.”

On the paper was scrawled a hasty attempt at poetry:

Lori couldn’t help but smile as she read the poem. “Typical, huh? So you really think I’m typical, not weird?”

“Oh no, not weird. If anything maybe a little abnormal, but only if the ‘ab’ meant above.” Keith noticed that it was kind of fun to tease Lori this way; it made her smile. “I mean, there aren’t many girls who are thinking far enough ahead to worry about how they’re going to look in the coming hard times, and we guys appreciate a girl who cares about how she looks.”

Lori grinned at his earnestness, but then her face fell. “What about Tony? I’ll bet he thinks I’m weird.”

“Oh, no,” Keith put in hastily. “In fact, he told me he thought you were good-looking!”

“Really? What did he say, I mean exactly.”

“Well … uh …”

“Come on, word for word.”

“Well, his exact words were, ‘I don’t see why a cute little kid like her should be worried about makeup.’”

“A cute little kid, huh?” Lori said with disappointment. “And I bet you agreed.”

“No,” Keith defended. “As a matter of fact, I said, ‘She’s not really a little kid. She’s only three years younger than we are, and when we get home from our missions, that’s probably just the age girls we’ll be looking at.’ And he said he hadn’t thought of that before and agreed. Then he said maybe he’d have to take a second look at you.”

Lori squealed with delight. “Oh thank you, Keith!”

He just smiled and shrugged. “How’s your makeup supply coming?”

Lori hesitated, then opened up the bottom drawer of her dresser and took out a sweater that was folded on top. Under it was a box with six tubes of mascara. “That’s all I’ve been able to get so far, and I spent all of my babysitting money on that. You should’ve seen the funny look they gave me at the drug store when I bought six mascaras.”

“If you think they looked at you funny, you should’ve seen the look they gave me when I bought four tubes of ‘kissing potion.’”

“What?”

In answer, Keith stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out four dainty glass tubes filled with lip gloss. “The prophet says to get our supplies in as fast as possible, and I figured you might be able to use some help.”

“Thanks, Keith,” Lori said warmly. “I guess you’re not such a bad brother after all.”

“Yes,” said Keith, using a deep voice and sticking his chest out melodramatically, “the true character of us good guys always comes out in the end.”

Laughing, Lori threw a pillow across the room at him, just as mom’s voice drifted up the stairs calling them to dinner.