Ten of Me ✓

Three

NICOLE

When I woke up the next morning, I wanted to go back to my closet and pull on what I'd worn yesterday as Katherine, but I knew that would only draw suspicion. Instead, I made myself pull on my ragged faded jeans with the gaping hole in the left knee that was technically against dress code, and a grey and white cardigan with a tank top underneath.

I stared in the mirror for a long time, my fingers itching to reach for my color contacts drawer. No matter how much I narrowed my eyes at myself, I couldn't appreciate my reflection as anything more than normality.

Carefully, I did my makeup, then went downstairs to work on making breakfast. As it turned out, Dad was already in the kitchen scrambling eggs.

"Glad to see you're back to normal, Nicole," he said pointedly as I leaned against the counter and watched him cook. Instead of responding, I went to our kitchen cabinets and opened the plates drawer.

"It was only wash-out dye," I said finally, setting the plates on the counter with more force than necessary. I'd taken out four, even though I knew Mom would never sit down and eat at the same table as Dad.

Dad didn't say anything else, and he began putting the eggs on the plates I'd provided with the kind of finality that meant our conversation was over. Pursing my lips, I went to get forks and returned just as he'd finished putting eggs on the last plate.

Just as I'd taken my plate and sat down at one of the barstools to start eating, still groggy from my lack of sleep the previous night, Mom came into the kitchen. She took the plate of eggs from the counter and came to sit next to me at the barstool, swiveling her chair back and forth much like my little brother would.

"Did the dye wash out okay, honey?" she asked, fingering my now disgustingly brown hair. I nodded as she began taking out the tangles with her manicured fingers, braiding the individual pieces and studying it with the air of a pro. "I think today we'll go a little lighter," she observed, drawing back and taking a bite of her eggs.

When I glanced up at Dad, I saw that he was looking down at his breakfast--it was hard to tell whether or not he'd heard.

I finished my plate of eggs and got up, my barstool scraping against the newly polished floors and making an awful screeching sound. Dad shot me a look, and I hurriedly put my plate in the sink before scampering up the stairs to brush my teeth.

It wasn't long before I'd arrived at school, still getting used to how my straight hair felt different against my back than Katherine's wavy red curls. As I headed up to my locker and greeted the same people with the same tentative smiles, I was disappointed to see that I was back to being the definition of mediocre and average--and that there was no escaping that while I was still simply me.

I wasn't sure what I thought about Noah. He had flirted with Katherine at the coffee shop the previous day, but in a weird sense, I was Katherine, so maybe it meant that he had some radar deep down and knew it was truly me, even though he didn't realize it? When I sat down in English class two desks away from him and he leaned forward to wink at me, I decided that my theory had to be right; otherwise, he would have just ditched me completely and gone after Katherine.

Morgan slipped into the desk beside me; showing up for English two days in a row must have been a record for her. She sat cross-legged in her desk, which looked extremely uncomfortable, and set her enormous purse down at her feet before addressing me.

"Did you do the homework?" she asked, pulling out a stick of gum and popping it into her mouth. She offered another stick and I took it, knowing Mrs. Coale wouldn't care if we chewed gum in class.