Consciousness and Confidence

Like planned, I went over to my cousin's house in New York City for the summer. It wasn't at all like I had pictured it.

My cousin, MJ had changed so much over the year that I hadn't seen her. Yes, she was still loud and crazy, and she still wore the most amazing clothes that only a few tough girls could actually pull off, but she wasn't the party girl anymore.

She didn't get into that stuff. She had a really tough expierence with it and decided to call it quits. Imagine my suprise when I went there, hoping to have the best summer of my entire life, and getting hit with the news that the party was off, and I was just going to chill all summer. It bummed me out big time.

At first, I didn't want to be there. I called my mom after the first week and asked her if I could go home, but she refused to pay for a third plane ticket. I obviously didn't bring enough money to pay for a ride home myself, so basically, I was screwed and stuck with there. However, after about a week, my opinion started to change.

I didn't need partying to make my life fun. I just needed to hang out with the right type of people. MJ happened to be part of these 'people'. "It's all about living in the moment." she said. "How can you live in the moment if you're so trashed that you won't even remember it the next day?"

I hadn't thought of it that way, and from that day forward, I attempted to follow her foot steps and throw my previous habits out the window. I stopped drinking. I stopped smoking. And, as hard as it was, I confessed all my lies to my brother.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a compulsive liar. I just didn't feel that telling my much older, overprotective brother about the things he would disapprove of. One thing I was thankful for, I only had to talk to him about it on the phone, and the I could let him cool off for the rest of the summer.

Today happened to be the begining of the last day with my dear cousin.

"I'm honestly going to miss throwing cold water on your head to wake you up." she told me as we made our way down the crowded city streets. We were going out to get our hair cut and dyed. It was a spur-of-the-moment type of decision.

I laughed, sarcastically. "I honestly won't. But, I will miss being with arguably the coolest person ever created."

"Awh," she cooed, throwing her arms around my smaller frame "you're the best!" I hugged her back tightly, while we continued to walk down the street. It was awkward to say the least, but I really didn't care. And I knew MJ never cared what others thought of her.

We rounded a corner and suddenly I was being tugged into a high-end, posh hair salon. Honestly, it made me feel uncomfortable. I usually just did my own dye jobs, and went to the nearest salon to get it cut.

"Uhm, MJ. Maybe coming somewhere like this was a bad idea." I whispered, glancing at all the nice, shiney furniture. The hairdressers all wore extremely in-style hair-doos. Needless to say, I was intimidated by them.

"Oh shush." she tutted. "Just tell them what you want, they'll do it for you." I nodded, still a bit skeptical of this place.

As I was about to sit myself down in one of the chairs by the door, a woman walked up to me. She was tall, with short spikey blonde hair. "Hi, I'm Christine! I'll be doing your hair today."

"Hi, uhm, I'm Ryyan." I introduced myself, standing up straight again.

"Come with me." she smiled. I nodded at her, and as she turned around I glanced waywardly at MJ who merely rolled her eyes and pushed my in the direction Christine had walked. As I neared a chair she motioned for me to take a seat, so I did.

"So, what do you want to get done?" she asked, patting my shoulders.

I looked at her through the mirror placed in front of me. "Well, I'd like purple streaks and I've wanted to get a lot more layers, if that's alright with you."

She smiled again at me. "It's perfectly fine. How about we make a fringe in the front too?" I grinned and nodded enthusiastically.

"Great!" she said before getting to work.

An hour and a half later, both MJ and I had finished getting our hair done and were walking out of the salon with wide grins on our faces. However, my smile faded when I looked at the time.

"Shit, I have to leave for the airport in about an hour." I said, accidentally swiping the smile from MJ's face too.

"Awh, this sucks ass." she whined. "Come on, lets go pack."

I agreed, following in step with her all the way back to her family's apartment.