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me. Aimee.”
    “Aimee? Is that
you
?”
    “No, it’s someone else with my voice,” I say, and see she finally does. “Come here.”
    Krista walks back, circling slowly and taking me in.
    “What—in—the—world—happened—to—you?”
    “It’s that drastic? I know it’s drastic, but it’s not
that.
I mean, we’re not talking one of those extreme makeovers.” I pause. No answer. “Are we?”
    “We’re talking one of those
supreme
makeovers,” she says, causing me to take note of two things. How naturally beautiful Krista is, especially when she smiles. And how gracious she is to spin the spin.
    “So. Is it okay?” I ask because at this point I don’t even know. Back on Ninety-sixth Street everyone cheered when I sashayed into the living room like I was on a reality show doing my reveal. The response gladdening, then saddening. After all, I didn’t really need a makeover. Did I? Don’t answer.
    Krista studies me before she asks, “How’d you get green eyes?” I can’t believe she’s that observant.
    “If I still had my dark curly hair, I could look like Vivien Leigh.”
    Jackie shrieked when she finally washed out my hair. I would have too . . . if I was able to see. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely her fault. She kept telling me it was time to wash my hair. Saying I needed to get into that bathroom pronto. Insisting I’d be sorry if we left the henna on too long.
    But once I felt it begin to drip down my forehead, I removed my contact lenses. One dropped. And, yes. I should have been rinsing out the henna instead of looking for the lens . . . which, by the way, I never found.
    “Well, you sure can pass for a
Scarlett
O’Hara,” says Krista.
    My hair turned orange. Or red. Or something very, very bright.
    “The henna was just supposed to add some warmth. Depth,” cried Jackie, apologizing. “I can make this work. Trust me.”
    So when she offered to cut layers into my shoulder-length hair, I agreed. And when after the blow-dry she suggested a flat iron to make it straight, there was little to no point to keeping it curly.
    Without contacts and with my glasses in my apartment on the East Side, I was lucky I still had my same optometrist on the West. Thank God for New York, where everyone’s open on Sundays. Eye Guys had my prescription on file and sold me a box of contacts. There was one left in stock. The contacts came in green.
    I was meeting Krista just blocks from my parents’. Late, there was no time to go home to change clothes. Not that anything in my closet even fits. After I picked up the lenses, I stepped into a boutique on Columbus and walked out with the perfect quintessential, overpriced, sexy little black dress.
    When I returned, Jackie did my makeup using colors to match the thin, pale, green-eyed redhead who was suddenly me.
    “And that’s what happened,” I tell Krista. “How do I look?”
    “Like my long lost sister.” She grabs my hand, happy to have found me, and leads me into the synagogue sponsoring the event.
    Our twenty-five dollars gives each of us admission and a wine goblet. We enter the big sanctuary that’s now set up for a party, and head straight to the bartender to fill our glasses and taste some kosher wines.
    “What would you lovely ladies like?” asks Zev, whose moniker is printed in all caps on his name tag. Tall with glasses, wearing a black suede yarmulke, Zev points to a dozen bottles set out on the table. “Red?” he asks, and points to my head. “Or white?” he says, and points to Krista’s. We laugh, so he laughs. However, knowing we are laughing at different things, we know we get the last one.
    “Red,” I say. “Whatcha got?” I smile. I suddenly feel much better.
    “Well, these are 2007 vintages of reds and whites from a winery in Australia that made its U.S. debut this past Hanukkah.” He seems pleased to relay the info. “The name of the wine company is L’Chayim.” Zev looks from Krista to me. “That means ‘To