Boycotting Blue

03/Lou

Lou

 

“Hey, Lou, I saw your mom last night,” Kevin Yanks said, making a very vulgar motion with his hands. He winked, and his friends laughed, thinking they were very, very original.

    Whatever joke I had heard about Mom, I had heard it from everybody fifteen times over. Now, the jokes passed in and out my ears this moment, and then hid in the back of my mind for me to process when I got home. Alone. In my room with the music turned up.

   I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I saw her, too, Kevin,” I muttered, thinking of my beautiful, beautiful Mom. Sometimes, I wished she had been born ugly and fat, and unattractive. I would rather be ugly and poor than be her daughter.

   “I can’t wait to hear her screaming—“

   “Enough,” I snapped, glaring at him. They would not pick on me this year. I wouldn’t put up with it. I didn’t care if my brother wasn’t here; I could handle myself.

   “That’s not what she said last night.”

   My face heated up, and I turned away from him. Turning the other cheek was a shitty ass  piece of advice. I had been ‘turning the other cheek’ for the past six years. I was tired of turning the other cheek. Hell, I was out of cheeks to turn.

   Not for the first time, I wished my mother would’ve left me, went away for good. I didn’t need her anyway. She hadn’t caused anything but trouble in my life. Nothing but heartache. And she didn’t even seem to care; if she cared, she would’ve stopped so long ago.

    You can’t change the past, Lou. Or the present. Hell, you can’t even change the present. The sad part was, I knew this would happen. I had practiced snappy remarks and burns and put-downs for every joke they would say—even some I knew they wouldn’t. I had envisioned myself standing up to them and glaring, making them leave me alone. But those were just thoughts. As I watched them stare, whisper, and define me by my mother, every put-down remained sealed behind my lips.

    “So, Lou, how’s your mom?”

    Shut up. Face red, I glared stonily ahead as a new voice came to torture me.

    “She single yet? Your old man finally untied the knot, I hear.”

     I ignored him. My dad would never divorce my mom. He completely adored her, her faults and all.

    “Is that a yes?”

    I flipped him off, closing the door to my car—a new Charger, courtesy of Dad—and slinging my backpack over my shoulder. I locked my Charger, enjoying the fresh paint job. All black, including the rims, and electric blue—

   Blue.

   For some reason, a little smile danced across my lips as I immediately thought of our banter this morning. My responses had been a little hormone-fueled, and I regretted them now. Even though he played back, he was probably being nice. Guys didn’t look at me like that before realizing who my mother was. Even then they realized who she was, I still treated more of like a toy than someone they actually desired.

    Would you rather be loved or desired?

    I just wanted my first kiss.

    With my mom being who she was, it was kind of hard to believe I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet. I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t go places with boys. I had reserved myself when it came to guys, that the only men I talked to were related to me. The others I made conversation with me, but none of them knew me personally. Did I regret my decision? No, not really. It was much, much easier this way.