Keep Holding On (12 page)

But she didn’t come over. She just turned around like she didn’t even know me.

I try to
avoid school bathrooms as much as possible. It’s agonizing to be in the bathroom when a bunch of other girls are using it. I really don’t need to hear them gossiping with their friends and checking their phones.

One thing about being bullied is that you quickly learn how to avoid the people who make your life miserable. I never use this bathroom. This is the one Carly uses. But if I tried to fight my way up the crowded stairway to the safer bathroom, I’d be late for class.

Of course Carly comes in as I’m washing my hands.

With Audrey.

“Hi, reject,” Carly says. “Having a good day?”

A girl I don’t know is at the mirror. I’m mortified she’s seeing this. I yank a paper towel out and dry my hands, heading for the door.

“What’s the rush?” Carly blocks the door.

“I have class.” I hate the panicky ache I always get whenever I see Carly. I keep promising myself I won’t let her upset me next time. But when next time comes, it’s always like the time before.

“You have class? Or you have an ugly bracelet?”

My bracelet is not ugly. It has delicate, transparent beads strung with an elastic. Sherae gave it to me for my birthday last year. She puts together the most amazing gift bags.

“I think she has an ugly bracelet,” Audrey chimes in.

They’re still blocking the door.

“Excuse me,” I say, trying to get by.

“Oh,
excuse
her!” Carly shrieks to Audrey. “Noelle is
so
much better than us! It’s beneath her to even be in the same bathroom!”

“At least she’s using the bathroom,” Audrey says. “Half the chairs in this school are smeared with her blood.”

The bell rings. The girl at the mirror hurries out. She throws me a disgusted look.

“Can you guys move?” I ask.

“Sure,” Carly says. “How’s this?” She gets right in my face, grabs my wrist, and yanks my bracelet off. Then she stretches the elastic like a rubber band and flings it over a stall door.

“Nice one!” Audrey praises. They actually high-five. After they leave, I can still hear them laughing down the hall.

I open the stall door that Carly flung my bracelet over. I scan the floor for those pretty beads. But I don’t see them anywhere.

Panic clutches my stomach.

I peek into the toilet. My bracelet is sitting at the bottom.

Part of me wants to take it out, wash it, and put it back on. But
even though I love that bracelet, I can’t make myself reach into the toilet for it.

It sucks that Carly gets away with stuff like this. And it sucks that Audrey is part of it now.

Audrey and I were best friends back in fifth grade. After we moved out of Lewis’s house to our tiny apartment, everything changed. Not overnight. But gradually, mother became more distant. She shut down. She stopped looking at me or talking to me or taking care of me in any real way. And it’s been getting worse ever since.

Audrey and I stayed friends after we moved. But everything changed on Valentine’s Day when we were thirteen. She was stoked because Corey Smith had given her a big, heart-shaped box of chocolates. She had a massive crush on Corey Smith. Until he gave her the chocolates, she wasn’t sure if he liked her back. Audrey had only eaten three pieces. I couldn’t figure out how she resisted eating the whole box.

I went over to Audrey’s after school. We were playing Sorry! on Audrey’s bed when her mom called her down to try on a dress for this wedding she was in.

“Do I have to?” Audrey groaned down to her mom.

“Yes! It needs to be hemmed!”

“Can I do it later? We’re in the middle of a game.”

“No, I need you down here right now!”

Audrey made a face. “I’ll be right back,” she told me.

But she didn’t come right back. She was down there for a long time. And I was alone with her Valentine’s Day chocolates.

I only meant to have one piece. I didn’t think Audrey would
care. So I snuck a piece. Then I got
Tiger Eyes
off her bookshelf because she kept telling me I had to read it. I ate another piece of chocolate while I was reading. And another.

The broken version of Mother After Lewis never bought sweets. She thought she was fat. Which was weird because she was so skinny you could totally see her hipbones jutting out. We didn’t even have sugar in the kitchen. I craved sugar so much it was ridiculous. I’d never seen a box of chocolates that big. Each one had a different filling and shape and texture. It was like I was in a trance or something, just reading and eating. I really don’t know how it happened, but I ended up eating most of the chocolates.

When Audrey came back upstairs, she freaked.

“Who said you could eat my chocolates?”

“I was—”

“Oh my god you ate the whole box!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why did you eat all my chocolates? Who
does
that?”

I had no idea.

“I knew you were jealous Corey liked me, but you didn’t have to go and eat all my chocolates!”

“I’m not jealous!”

“If you were happy for me, you wouldn’t have eaten my entire Valentine’s Day present!”

That was the moment Audrey and I stopped being friends. It wasn’t just about me eating her chocolates. I’m sure my other friends were noticing how strange I had become. People were looking at me differently, like I wasn’t one of them anymore. Everyone found out I lied about mother. And then Audrey told them
about the chocolates. People were telling Audrey that she’d be unpopular if she stayed friends with me.

Audrey took their side. She didn’t want to look back on this time in her life as the worst time ever. The way I already know I will.

Top line of a flyer found in the English hallway:

Are You a Team Player?

I’m just minding my own business going to class when I turn a corner and there’s Julian.

Talking to Jolene DelMonico.

Gorgeous Jolene DelMonico with her straight, shiny blonde hair.

Jolene leans in close to Julian. Apparently, she’s unable to hear what he’s saying unless part of her body is touching part of his. She laughs at something he just said, tossing her head back so all of that long, smooth, silky hair swings luxuriously behind her. I’ve always been jealous of Jolene’s hair. But I haven’t been insanely jealous until now.

Of course Julian is talking to her. Even their names are cute together. Julian and Jolene. Jolene and Julian. Jolian. Maybe he used to like me, but I pushed him away.

Losing the genetic lottery sucks. I’d give anything to look like Jolene. To get up in the morning and not have to worry about what I’m going to do if my skin is all broken out or if my eyes are
puffy or how I’m going to make my hair look decent enough to walk out the door. I wish my hair glinted sunlight and moved in the breeze the way Jolene’s does.

If I have to endure my spastic hair for one more day, I’m seriously going to lose it.

Sherae thinks she’s driving me home after school. But when she comes over to my locker I say, “I really need to go to the mall.”

“What for?”

“This.” I point at my head.

“Could you be more specific?”

“Hello! My hair? It’s ridiculous! I can’t stand it anymore!”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

We go to the expensive hair place at the mall. I call it Fancycuts. I can never afford to go there. I always get my hair cut at Supercuts. But Sherae’s insisting that I borrow money and she won’t take no for an answer.

I’m not about to protest.

Sherae leaves to scope out this new book we’re dying to read. I get whisked into Fancycuts, then seated at one of the stylist’s stations. The counter in front of me has some glossy magazines neatly fanned out and swanky bottled water. They even ask if I want tea.

This is going to be one fierce haircut.

The guy who’s about to cut my hair doesn’t really speak English. He’s not understanding what I want. He gives me a pencil and a piece of paper so I can sketch it for him. Not exactly what I was expecting from the most upscale hair stylists around.

I draw what’s supposed to be my profile. I draw my nose really big to make sure he understands it’s my nose. I draw my hair straight and ask him to blow it out. Then I try to draw angling on the side with blunt ends, the way Jolene DelMonico’s hair is. She has it cut straight across the back with these boxy ends that always make her hair look like it was just trimmed that morning.

My guy nods like he gets what I want.

I sit back. He spritzes my hair. The spritz smells like flowers. I take a big whiff of it. Then I proceed to have a coughing fit. I clearly do not belong here and all these fancy people know it. Trying to blend in, I pick up a glossy magazine and start flipping through it. I hardly ever get to read magazines. Being decadent for a change will be fun.

When my guy tells me he’s done, I wish I had more time. I really want to finish this article about a girl who got plastic surgery so people would stop bullying her. But I’m excited to see my new upscale haircut with professional angling and blunt ends. It should look like a shorter version of Jolene’s.

Except that’s not what I see. Not even close.

What I see is the worst haircut in the history of the world. This butcher destroyed my hair so badly I can’t believe I’m looking in the right mirror. Huge chunks of hair around my face have been chopped off. He didn’t cut the sides at an angle. He cut stairs into the sides of my head.

This isn’t a haircut. It’s a staircut.

I. Am.
Mortified
.

I stay frozen in my chair. My eyes get watery. It takes all the effort I can manage not to burst into tears.

The staircutter is asking what I think. I want to yell at him so bad. I want to storm out without paying. Instead, I don’t say anything. I get out of the chair. I hand over Sherae’s money and go wait for her outside.

When Sherae shows up, one look at her face confirms what I already know.

“It’s really bad, right?” I ask.

Sherae shakes her head slowly. “No, it’s … not that bad.” But the horror in her eyes confirms it’s a disaster.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I panic. “There’s no way I can go to school like this.”

All I want to do is go home and hide, but I let Sherae drag me to Claire’s. She picks out a bunch of hair clips and pins for me. My eyes keep getting blurry. I blink back tears, determined not to cry in front of her. At least I have the weekend to figure this out. There has to be some way to make my hair look decent.

There is no way to make my hair look decent.

The first thing I do when Sherae drops me off at home is go to my room and cry. I thought I hated my hair before. But this is so much worse.

After I’m completely dehydrated from crying, I take the hair things Sherae got me at Claire’s into the bathroom. I spread the sparkly pins and cute clips out over the counter. It was awesome of Sherae to buy me all this stuff. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

I spend the next hour trying out every combination of hair
tools I can imagine. Nothing helps. In the end, I settle for pinning the top two steps of my staircut with bobby pins so they’re overlapping the bottom step. It sort of looks like I’m just wearing my hair back. Or maybe it looks like I’m the biggest reject ever.