Only Once

Chapter Thirty: Super Sweet Eighteens

Chapter Thirty: Super Sweet Eighteens

Erika felt like she was going to be sick. She really, really did. Her stomach was churning uncomfortably and she felt as if she was ice cold and yet burning hot at the same time. It was quite a strange, paradoxical sensation.    

Letting out a groan, Erika closed her eyes and pressed a cool hand against her scorching forehead. She leaned back against the wall and began to take deep, shaky breaths in an effort to calm herself down.

Everything is fine, everything is fine, everything is fine…

She chanted the same mantra over and over again in an effort to calm herself down and relax.

It wasn’t working, though.

Instead, all she could think about was how the day of Isabelle’s birthday party had come and how petrified she felt. What if she embarrassed herself on television? What if she made a fool of herself? What if something bad happened?

Irritated at how her stomach continued to uneasily churn, Erika stumbled to the bathroom and knelt at the toilet. Then, she stuck two fingers down her throat and her stomach turned inside out. After she was done, Erika flushed and began to wash her hands and rinse her mouth with cool water. It had been a while since she’d thrown up and the fact that she had done so again disgusted her.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed that thought out of her mind and checked her appearance in the mirror for about the hundredth time that day. She expressionlessly stared at her for several minutes, her eyes glazing over the curve of her lips, the shape of her nose, the curl of her eyelashes and tried to give herself a wobbly smile of reassurance. Yet it only made her feel worse so she sighed and turned away from her reflection.  

Erika was about to wipe off some of the makeup she was wearing, she felt a bit too done up and her inner perfectionist was kicking in, until she heard someone call her name and stuck her head out of the bathroom to find Jenna and Melanie approaching her.

“Oh, hey guys!” Erika greeted them and flashed them both a brilliant smile, all hints of terror had disappeared from her face. She looked down to see that both girls had dressed up and were completely ready for the party. “You guys look amazing!” she told them honestly.

“Thanks,” Jenna nodded and smirked. “You look pretty hot yourself.”

“Thank you!” Erika beamed and her thoughts about being redoing her makeup vanished. Instead, she glanced down at her skintight, navy blue dress; she tried not to wince at how large her thighs seemed to look.

“Yeah, you look awesome.” Melanie added.

Erika smiled weakly this time and ran a hand through her hair self-consciously. She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her. Surely, she had more confidence than this. But alas, she didn’t. Over the past month she felt as if she had become an entirely new person and she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.

“Are you okay?” Jenna questioned and cocked her head to the side.

Erika was about to answer truthfully and tell her friends how nervous she was but before she had the chance to, all girls were distracted by the loud ringing of Jenna’s phone.

“Excuse me,” she said sheepishly and retrieved her phone from the silver clutch that had been slung on her arm.

“Hello?” she answered and began to converse with the person on the other end of the phone, “Uh-huh…uh-huh…uh-huh…bye!”

Jenna hung up her phone and looked at her friends.

“That was my mom.” She explained. “She recommended that we should leave now. She also said that someone called my house for me but, seeing as her English is really bad, she didn’t understand who it was or what they wanted.”