Little Redhead (#OnceUponNow)

prologue

"My story shows that the 'bad boy' doesn't always secretly have a heart of gold. Sometimes, the bad boy is - simply put - bad."

- Charlotte's Journal

April 16, 2017

~*~

Dad always loved my red hair.

When I was little, he would sit me down on his lap before the television and bounce me on his knee. The wild curls would bob up and down with me, and his deep belly-laugh would send me into a fit of giggles until my ribs ached. Sometimes, he would gently tug at a loose, scarlet curl and let it spring backwards like a Slinky.

One time, my parents took me to the beaches in South Carolina. I was five at the time and refused to stick my toes in the ocean's water, even when it grew later in the day and the crowds of people left. So Dad sat with me on the woolen blanket while Mom dove in, his knees bent around me so both our feet could burrow in the cool sand. The sun was dipping down to greet the horizon's edge, and both the sky and the sea around it had turned blood red. Dad took my hand, pointing to the sunset, and told me, "That's it. That's why I love the color of your hair. You wear the sunset on your head every day."

And my hair was that kind of red. It was the color of melted cherries, or the richest dye of maroon curtains. When the sunlight hit it at just the right angle, my wild mass of curls glowed with cindered flames. My hair was firetruck red, and I stood out in any swelling crowd of people like the fiery beacon of a torch.

I would have hated my hair, probably, if Dad never told me how much he loved it. I would have despised the one thing that set me apart from others, if Dad hadn't praised the color of my hair as something beautiful that made me, well, me.

When Dad died, things changed.

When the shadowy cancer cells clouded over his mind, and when the tumor stopped his heart, I started to hate sunsets. The simmering colors of red and orange against the sky's blue reminded me of the beach where Dad pointed our hands to the horizon, comparing that once-beautiful scene to the hue of my hair. Sunsets made me think Dad should be watching the sun sink behind the earth, sitting with me, not buried six feet beneath the ground in a casket.

Dad died when I was little. I don't cry about it anymore. And although my hair still glows with its flames of red color, and although it is still an uncontrollable mass of frizz and curls that could pass as molten lava, I stay inside at sundown.

I'm starting my senior year of high school, and it seems I am still hopelessly afraid of an occurrence in nature that happens every evening without fail. I'm scared to see the sun fall below the horizon because it reminds me of someone who isn't here anymore. It reminds me of the vibrant, scarlet color of my hair that Dad loved in a way he couldn't truly explain. And the thing that sunsets remind me of is something I fear in a way I can't truly explain.

Looking back, I see there were much worse things to be afraid of than sunsets.    

~*~

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