Just Like You

by Nick Hornby

Joseph nodded at the glass in his hand. He was trying to work out why she looked different from anyone he knew. She wasn’t wearing very much make-up, he didn’t think. And she was wearing a long grey cardigan that by rights shouldn’t have done much for her. It seemed to hang nicely in some way that he couldn’t have described. It wasn’t tight, it wasn’t baggy, and there was no brand visible anywhere. Oh, and the eyebrows: they hadn’t been shaved off and painted back on to make a thick dark line. He didn’t know whether he liked all this because it was different, or because it was her. He knew it was weird, zoning in on the eyebrows, but eyebrows had become a thing the last couple of years, and they freaked him out. He didn’t know what function eyebrows were supposed to perform, but whatever it was, they weren’t there to be looked at. So if you ended up looking, it seemed to him that something had gone wrong.