i love you, i'm sorry

SEVENTH GRADE, FEBRUARY 2018

Sizzling was not a sound hair should ever make. But currently, that's what mine was doing. Sizzling and smoking and filling my room with the distinct smell of burnt plastic.

I wrinkled my nose, eyes stinging as I attempted for what must've been the 300th time to iron my mass of red frizz into the silky smooth locks of the girl in the video.

She'd made it look so easy. I'd used the heat protectant and everything. Was my hair too damp?

I slumped at my vanity, letting out a helpless wail. I couldn't bear to look at my reflection. I was red faced, and splotchy and had sprouted a monstrous pimple on my forehead overnight because of course I had. Because god forbid one thing went right for my first dance ever.

It wasn't enough that my mom was out of town doing press for her cookbook. It wasn't enough that I tried to steam the dress I planned on wearing to get the wrinkles out and ended up shrinking it (it was too short to begin with thanks to puberty and my awful gangly growth spurt and was now unwearable). It wasn't even enough that I felt gross in my body all the time and everytime I tried to do makeup I ended up looking like a clown and my stomach had been hurting on and off all day.

I just wanted one thing to go right. One thing. One thing I could do to make the night bearable. I knew it wasn't going to be perfect. It was a middle school dance, after all. But it was my first dance, and the little girl in me who grew up sneaking into Lou's closet to try on her heels and believed in unicorns and magic; she wanted it to be special.

I just wanted my mom to be there.

Wish you were here, I texted her. Hair not cooperating.

She'd understand. It was her genetics that put me here in the first place. I hated my stupid hair. I felt it made me look silly, immature, messy. Like I had run several miles in a field. It never laid how I wanted it to. Ever. I wished it were straight and shiny and effortless. I wished I was effortless.

My phone buzzed.

Mom: Go downstairs

I frowned at the text, confused, but padded down the stairs anyway, one-socked and frizzy and defeated.

There, standing in the doorway like my guardian angel, was Lou.

"Godmother reporting for duty." She smiled at me, glowing from the sun streaming in through the windows, just beginning to sink in the sky, arms spread wide, "I hear someone is having a hair crisis? Don't worry about a thing, Jules. I'll take care of everything."

I ran into her arms and promptly burst into tears out of pure relief.

"Goodness," Lou soothed, hugging me tight. She smelled like magnolias and lavender and light. "You didn't think Pip and I were going to let you get ready for your first dance alone, did you?"

I sniffed, finally releasing her, "I don't even have a dress."

"We'll sort everything out, I promise," Lou winked at me, squeezing my hand. "Come on."

Before I knew it, I was sitting in the buttery leather front seat of Lou's Mercedes, driving over to the Maxwell house. They lived over on the swankier part of town where all the McMansions were. Mr. Maxwell was a hedge fund manager, and they had a pool and a housekeeper and a membership at the country club and everything.

I don't really remember when I realized Gavin's family had more money than mine. Only that it had always been that way. Lou didn't work, but my mother did. They had three nice cars, we had one clunker that took a second to start up in the winter. This is not to say that we were poor– we were very comfortable, especially now that my mother had gotten Gordon's decently established, and it was starting to turn a profit. I remembered the days when my mother was still in culinary school, waitressing at night, when we still lived in our apartment.