Reasons to Be Happy - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,1

those muscled arms, those high cheekbones, and those really long lashes (totally unfair to waste on a man, if you ask me) all added up to this casual, comfortable certainty. He made you feel safe, like he’d handle anything that threatened you, just like he did in his movies. His teeth could hypnotize you, lighting up a room like a flashbulb. Really, that wasn’t an exaggeration; his face would be all still and listening, then flash! off went that smile. You felt like you’d been touched by the sun when it was aimed at you.

It hadn’t been aimed at me in a long time.

Seeing my mother made people stop and say “oh” aloud, like they’d seen the Taj Mahal or a perfect sunset—even while she was so skinny and sick. She liked to say, “Pretty is as pretty does,” and it was truer of her than of anyone else I’d ever met. When she was healthy, her pale, porcelain skin glowed like moonlight against her paprika hair. She had kind, hazel cat eyes and a pixie nose that turned up slightly at the bottom. Her smile was slower than my dad’s; it started in the corners of her mouth (where she has these great dimples) then slowly unfurled. She crinkled her nose when she smiled or laughed. Everyone—men and women alike—smiled back, looking grateful, like they’d been handed a gift.

So with breeding like mine, I should’ve been hot, right? What happened? I was as tall as my dad, which meant I towered over everyone in my grade. I wasn’t petite like Mom at all. I was this ogre that got switched at the hospital. I was sure there was some big, ugly, giant couple somewhere with this pretty, proportioned, ballerina-looking girl just giving each other high-fives every day.

I always knew I wasn’t as beautiful as my parents, but you know what? I never knew I was ugly until I showed up at my new school.

• • •

I liked my old school. I liked school in general. But Mom and Dad had both gotten new attention in bigger, critically acclaimed roles and had become worthy of paparazzi. We hadn’t had to deal with that before. I mean, occasionally a fan would stop one of them in a coffee shop or at a gas station or whatever, but with my dad’s last movie, Cold Right Hand, people were taking our pictures when we went to pick up Thai food or shopped for toilet paper.

So over the summer, they had enrolled me at a private school that had security especially for this reason.

Everything might’ve been different if Brooke hadn’t been my “host” that day.

When Brooke called me the day before, she was so friendly I felt like I was in great hands. Maybe I should’ve been clued in by the way she gushed, “Caleb Carlisle is really your dad? Oh my God, that must be so cool. You are so, so lucky.”

Probably half of the kids’ parents at my new school work in the film industry (and a bunch of the kids are actors themselves), but Brooke’s dad was CEO of some bank.

Brooke’s eyes narrowed when I walked up the school sidewalk. She looked me up and down in a way that made me feel naked.

I wore my usual jeans, T-shirt, and flip-flops. My hair was in a ponytail. I wore no makeup. I reached up and touched my earlobes—nope, I hadn’t put in any earrings.

Brooke had on jeans too, but stylish jeans embroidered with sequins and flowers up one thigh—one very skinny thigh, that is. She wore strappy sandals with heels and a see-through gauzy top with a pin-tucked camisole underneath. She had on not only earrings, but a necklace, bracelet, and rings on most of her manicured fingers and even on one toe. Her dark hair was piled up loosely on top of her head, like she was going to an awards show.

She looked like a woman.

I looked like a little girl.

A chubby, plain little girl.

“Hannah?” she asked, like there might be a chance she was wrong.

I nodded.

“Okay, then,” she said, throwing back her shoulders. “Come on.” She pulled me into a bathroom and offered me some makeup. I hardly knew what to do with it, so she took it out of my hands to apply it herself. “You’ll wanna ditch the backpack and wear better shoes,” she said.

I almost laughed and said, “I don’t remember asking your opinion.” Why didn’t I? The Hannah I’d been that morning when I’d left