Chapter 7: Part 7 — Thursday

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Part 7: Thursday

When I woke up in the morning my eyes were all puffy. I hadn’t let my mom see that I’d been crying the night before. In fact, I didn’t want Mom to see me at all. Not until Anna had worked her magic on me with her MAC Technakohl Liner and her Bobbi Brown Blush Brush.

I’d never considered myself to be a girly-girl. While most girls had grown up with some kind of dolly or dress-up or other totem of their girlhood, I’d been encouraged by my dad to climb trees and kick a ball. I didn’t feel as though I’d missed anything, but climbing and kicking weren’t going to help me today.

We were going for a glow-up. I wasn’t sure how this would work, as I still had to wear the depressing uniform (purple blazer and a black skirt).

“It’s all about the accessories,” my sister explained, and reached for a silver bow and a platinum butterfly necklace. With the finishing touches set, I was ready for my big entrance.

“Oh, dear Lord!” my dad said when I entered the kitchen. I shrank a little back into my shell.

“Is it… is it okay?” I asked.

“You look wonderful, darling,” my mom said. “Doesn’t she, Gerald?” she asked my father.

“Stunning,” he said, a little lost for words. I watched him shuffle the morning mail under his bowl of cereal, then flash me a reassuring smile. I beamed from ear to ear and sat down to eat my breakfast.

All the way to school I was nervous. I never wore make-up. I was always more of a tomboy kind of girl. But Anna had dolled me up like I was going to an awards ceremony. Spray in my hair. The kind with glitter in it that sparkled. My eyebrows shaped. My face contoured. I smudged a little of the expensive lip-gloss that she put on me when I ate my toast, but Anna helped me smooth it out again.

Getting out of the car, I wanted to smile. But there were two things stopping me. The first was that usual existential fear that every girl has when she changes her look (will people recognize me – will they laugh – will I be accepted – could this be the new me… can I do this??). The second was that if I tried to smile my face would crack under all the weight of the stuff Anna had slathered on to it. But I felt beautiful. For the first time. Maybe the world was finally going to see me how I saw myself. A small hope in a hurricane. But I’d cling to it.

In my head, I was strutting down the hallway like a dream. Everyone was looking at me. There was smiling and nodding and finger-guns pointed at me in a cute ‘Hey you!’ kind of way. Everything was in soft-focus and there was 80s music playing somewhere.

The reality was kind of different.

I’d been so worried that everyone was going to laugh, that everyone was going to be a Leierna Scott and point and me and get others to point at me, that I never considered the other possibilities at all. In reality, neither of those two extremes happened. But I felt like they both had. Most people just said nothing. Like, I’d gone to all this trouble (well, Anna had), and nobody even cared. With the exception of two important incidents, nobody noticed a thing was even different.

The first exception was a guy called Todd Sanderson. He was a sophomore and all the girls had crushes on him. As I walked past him, I gave a little toss of my raven-colored hair (like I saw the other girls do when they wanted attention). Todd saw me and smiled. He looked me up and down like I’d seen him look at the other girls in the lower years. Like he was considering whether or not to have us for lunch. It was kind of gross, but it made me feel accepted in a weird sort of way. Like he just threw me in with all the other girls and leered at me the same. It’s weird, I know, but when you’ve spent so long trying so hard to fit in, you’ll take anything. Even if it is gross. Todd Sanderson was leching on me. Take that Ms Pike!

The second was a far more wholesome experience. I was about halfway down the hallway when Jessie came running up to me and grabbed me excitedly by the hands.

“You look amazing, Ella!” she said. “Is it your birthday today, or something?”

“No, it’s Saturday,” I smiled, and tossed my head a little like I’d just done for Todd. “A girl just wants to look her best, you know?” I added. And we broke down into fits of giggles.

As we were walking down the hallway, I saw Ms Pike.

“Quick!” I said to Jessie. “Laugh like I said something funny!”

She didn’t even ask me why. She just erupted into fits of hysterics as we breezed past Ms Pike.

“Keep it down, girls!” she shouted after us without even looking. I gave myself a secret fist-pump.

It was only after we’d rounded the corner towards homeroom when Jessie grew serious and asked me, “Why did Ms Pike want to see you after school, yesterday?”

That wrung the laughter out of me like a dour mangle.

“Oh,” I said, my face falling a little. “It was just this thing about the team.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. There was no way I could get through the rest of the school year dodging the question of why I wasn’t on the soccer team. And there was no way Ms Pike was going to change her mind. So I lied. A little. Just a little.

“It’s just cos I played a couple of times for my other school. I can’t play in the team here,” I said.

“Oh no!” Jessie cried. She looked heartbroken.

“But it’s okay,” I said. “I’m still gonna train with you guys. And then maybe next year they’ll let me play?”

I mean, it wasn’t a total lie. A year is a long time to change someone’s mind. Jessie seemed a little happier after that.

We chatted for a while in the hallway (even though the bell had called us to class a few minutes ago). We swapped socials and even snuck a quick selfie when there was no one looking. At the end of it all, I was riding high on cloud nine. But what Jessie said next made me fly even higher.

“Well, I know it’s probably not what you want to hear, right now,”

Jessie said, sincerely, “but I’ve got the soccer tryouts for state on Friday after school. And I wondered if you’d like to come and cheer me on?”

She wanted me to come and watch her play. Like a real friend. Like I was just one of her girlfriends.

“Of course I’ll come!” I said. And I was happy for her. I genuinely was. I’d never felt closer to my new friend than in that moment, so I decided to go for it and just touch on what I’d seen the other day. Those lines and bruises on her waist when her shirt had lifted up a little.

“Cos I thought that maybe you’ve been feeling down a little lately, so anything I can do to lift your spirits —” I didn’t really know how to finish that sentence and I suddenly felt like I was Ms Pike, fishing around in something that was none of my business.

“No, it’s nothing,” she replied quickly. “Just some stuff at home. I’m fine.”

She smiled again. It was forced, I could tell, it was fake. But at least I had my answer. This wasn’t stress about the state tryouts. If anything, she was excited to be taking part. There was something else going on with Jessie.

And it had to do with her home.

Submitted: January 02, 2025

Young Adult teen drama ya lgbtq trans