Curse of Curves

I stared up at my ceiling –not like there was much else to look at. Maybe Arrow was right, maybe I should start thinking more about myself rather than trying to meet the expectations of everyone else.

I rolled over and looked towards the wall, still lost in my thoughts. But, I mean, I can’t let my parents down, can I? Isn’t that against some unwritten rule?

No wait, it’s written: thou shalt honor thy mother and thy father. Then why don’t they honor me? Instead, they point out my flaws. When I get a ninety-five on a test, Dad says, ‘you should’ve been able to get a one-hundred,’ not, ‘great job; you did your best.’

And even when my hair’s been brushed over and put neatly in place or there’s a small, unnoticeable blemish on my face, Mom wants me to fix it. I can’t remember a time where she called me beautiful when I wasn’t wearing make-up or my clothes weren’t pressed to perfection. Is it because, without perfection, I’m not praise-worthy?

Is the real Ethan not good enough? I curled tighter under my blankets at that thought, not caring that I was biting my lip now.

What about Arrow? Was he being sincere whenever he said those stupid, cheesy pick-up lines? I pulled the blanket over my head as I realized, probably not. I bet he was just messing with me when he’d insinuated I was beautiful after dinner today. But then after that he said ‘sex hair’ would look good on me because it’d make me more beautiful.

And what about the kisses? What about that weird feeling they gave me? That definitely wasn’t normal.

I scoffed before shutting my eyes and forcing myself asleep. After all, he was just messing around with me. You can’t trust Arrow to be serious about anything.

*~*~*~*

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror staring my reflection down. What would I look like with messy hair? What would Mom say? Would she be angry? Most likely. Messy hair would equal imperfect and imperfect equals an angry Mom.

But messy hair looked good on Arrow.

“Screw everyone else, huh?” I whispered to myself, ignoring the fact that I’d used language like that. I ghosted a hand over to reflection of myself in the mirror before taking a deep breath.

Then I brought both of my hands up to my hair and proceeded to ruffle it into a chaotic state of disorder and tangled locks. It all fell in front of my face, but I peered up at myself in the mirror, shocked at how I looked.

As much as I hate to say it, Arrow was right, it looked much better than it did all combed out and brushed into perfection.

Now was the hard part – sneaking past my mom.

I peeked out the bathroom door to see her figure hung over the bills on the table. I inched past the door frame and to the back door. I panicked as I heard her footsteps echoing around the kitchen and ran outside and past our backyard fence out onto the sidewalk.

Once I knew I was out of my mom’s warpathing zone I let out a laugh and smiled to myself, knowing that I was getting away with this.

*~*~*~*

I was getting weird looks at school as I walked through the halls, trying to get to my locker. My hair wasn’t perfect, therefore, I wasn’t perfect, and therefore, I wasn’t going to fit in as well as before. That was fine with me.

I stopped at my locker and twirled the combination into the lock. “Hey baby,” I was greeted as two arms wrapped around my waist. I tensed in the grasp of none other than Arrow. “I love your hair by the way.”

Then he chuckled as he let go of me. I turned to look at him. He was grinning like mad as one of his hands came up to twirl in the brown locks of hair. “St-stop,” I said, blushing profusely.

“But your hair looks so sexy today,” he said, laughing a bit before letting his face go semi-serious. “So… what made you change your mind? Me?”

I stayed silent.

“So it was me!”

Again, I pled the fifth. I didn’t have to tell him that it was his speech that made me decide to do this.

“Just admit it! I could totally become an inspirational leader if I wanted to!” He spouted, eliciting a small giggle from me. I’m not going to lie – he could be funny when he wanted to. “Ethan, your legs must be tired.”

Did he see me run to school? “What?” I asked.

“Because you’ve been running through my mind all night,” he said before laughing hysterically as my face started to burn. “Now, just admit it; it was because of my motivational speech last night that your hair is like that.”

I pulled the books I needed out of my locker before heading to first period.

“Okay, okay, fine, but Ethan… you wanna help me with my next stunt?” He grinned mischievously.

I bit my lip and looked to my feet.

Could I really do that? Throw away my reputation like that? But then again, what’s a perfect reputation when everyone around you is perfect themselves?

“What is it?” I asked tentatively, my breathing becoming shallow. He looked around before moving in a little closer, making my face heat up with blush at his close vicinity.

“We’re going to put volcano sauce in today’s lunch,” He said, snickering as he opened his bag to reveal three bottles of volcano hot sauce.

“What am I going to eat then?” I questioned, arching my eyebrow at him.

“You could share my lunch with me,” he suggested as I sighed. “So, are you in?”

I took a deep breath before forcing myself to nod to him. All I could think was, what have I gotten myself into?