Clueless | DAERIN

epilogue 1

h a e r i n
—

Two Years Later...

"Oh my god," Dani whispers from the island counter.

She chose to sit up there and finish her job applications while I made us dinner.

We decided on tacos.

"Oh my fucking g-god," she whispers again, but this time it comes out with a slight tremble.

I turn away from plating our tacos and face the now platinum blonde-haired girl. Last summer, when we were juniors, Dani decided that she wanted to dye her hair. She said that her other hair didn't really feel like her.

She chose to dye the majority of it platinum blonde with a silver-ish hue. As for the rest of her hair, she left the lower third blonde and asked the stylist to do a rainbow with vertical lines.

From a first glance, her hair seems to be a silver-ish platinum color, but if she were to part her hair where the top of her ears are and flip that platinum hair up, you would see the hidden rainbow.

She told me that it represents her having to hide who she really is from her family, hence the name "hidden rainbow."

"What's wrong?" I ask her once I notice tears welling up in her eyes.

She is silent and does not immediately answer me.

I grab her plate of tacos and quickly make my way over to her, placing the plate down in front of her once I reach her.

I peek at her computer only to smile when I see what's on her screen.

She just got accepted into Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. She wanted to choose a college that was both affordable and offered what she wanted: either nursing or child development.

I glance up at her, only to see her staring wide-eyed at her computer screen.

"How do you feel?" I decide to ask her.

She blinks, seemingly coming back to the real world, and looks down at me.

"Shocked, confused," she trails off.

I furrow my brow in confusion at her confession. Confused?

"Why are you confused?" I ask.

She breaks eye contact with me and places her laptop down on the counter space beside her.

"My GPA was barely enough to get into that college," she says as she picks up a taco.

I smile at this and try not to laugh when she gets sour cream on the tip of her nose.

We may be eighteen now, but Dani has not lost her charm from when we were sixteen.

I reach over, grab a napkin from the counter across from us, and hand it to her. She silently accepts the napkin but doesn't wipe the sour cream off of her nose, choosing to continue eating her taco.

I roll my eyes at this.

"Maybe the world is giving you a break. You have been through a lot, you know," I state with a shrug. Plus, if you are lucky, I have heard that some colleges around here do the same thing. It is very rare, though.

"Please," she scoffs through her bite of food. She takes a few seconds to swallow the food before continuing her sentence. "There are people that have been through way more than me," she says, taking another bite of her taco.

Is she serious?

I bite my bottom lip at this statement from her.

While, yes, she is being logical and selfless, she shouldn't invalidate her experience.