"Hey, you. Watch it."
"I'm terribly sorry." I muttered out. The boy looked me up and down with a look of disgust on his face and stormed off. I swallowed nervously.
Thirteen-year-old me never fitted in at school.
"Is that May's sister June?"
"Ah, no wonder. May must have stolen all the good genes and left nothing to her. The only thing that little wretch has going for her is that all the teachers like her."
"She's definitely the ugly twin."
"10,000 dollars to date her? Give me a million dollars and I might just think about it, but even then, I might bail out within a week."
"Where'd she get all those ugly scars?"
May never responded to them. She never laughed either. Who could laugh at their own sister? She just tightened her lips and looked at her perfectly polished school shoes as she was dragged away by girls with foul mouths and exquisitely done make-up.
She always apologised when we were out of sight and earshot, and I took it all in and forgave her one time after another. What could I do? She was my sister and I was stuck with her. But she changed throughout the course of her teenage years. She had started caring about her looks more than anything else, and getting angry with me when I couldn't at least fix my socks.
"May!" our mom would scold her. "Be nicer to your sister."
And when they had thought I was gone and couldn't hear them...
"You know what she was caught up in at a very young age, May. She may have recovered physically, but her mental health is down the drain. We can't afford therapy, either."
One day, we had a festival at our school. I wanted to look my best, so early in the morning, I popped my head around May's bedroom door and tried to smile.
"May, could you do my make-up?"
She stopped in the middle of applying her mascara.
"Since when were you interested in looking remotely pretty?"
"I wanna look nice because today is the festival."
May set down her brush.
"If you say so. But you better not make me late."
"Yay!"
I giddily flumped down on her stool beside her. She finished her mascara and got to work on me. I remember sitting perfectly still for her.
"No, mascara won't work for you..."
She fished around for some fake eyelashes. I flinched a few times and she told me to stop or else it wouldn't look right. When she finished, she gave me a half-smile.
"Haha, maybe the kids won't pick on you too much today."
She had given me a full transformation in under 10 minutes.
"I look so amazing!"
"Okay, okay! Don't touch your face, you idiot... now come on, we need to make it to school!"
When we got there, I felt everyone's eyes on me. They whispered to one another, and I suddenly had a feeling that they were good whispers this time.
I wondered what would happen if Tyler saw me then. Would he think I was pretty? I couldn't resist thinking of him when multiple guys smiled in my face and a few girls gushed at me.
YOU ARE READING
North
General Fiction"Iriehen was a dreamer's city. It wasn't a city for the faint of heart, not for someone like me, who was just waiting for the next big thing. It was a city for the people who were in the next big thing." ... When June Winters, a young attorney aspir...
