Limitless

Chapter 1

“I cannot believe that you are doing this,” Kaylee said, twisting a straightener around my hair.  I watched indifferently as the heat from the plates escaped as steam into the air around us.

“It’s not like I want to transfer.  I’m being forced by my dad.” 

She shrugged and looked at me in the mirror as she ran the straightener over another piece of my hair.  “You are so smart. Why do you choose not to do your work?”

I pulled my bangs forward and compared the split ends between my fingers.  “I just don’t feel like it.”

Kaylee forced a laugh and rolled her gray eyes at me in the mirror.  “You’re going to wish you felt like it in a few years, trust me.”

Kaylee was my hairdresser and somewhat of a mentor.  She had done my hair for as long as I could remember and always listened to my problems and gave me advice, despite the fact that she knew I wouldn’t actually take it.  She was about 28, 8 years older than myself.   She got pregnant in high school and dropped out, and when her son was about two, she went to hair school.  She was only about 4 feet and 11 inches tall and pretty round in the mid-section.  She always knew the perfect clothes to wear to make herself look smaller though.  I admired her new outfit in the mirror and her short brown hair which was just straightened today.

“Are you going to at least attempt to make a few friends?  Really, I love you but I think you need some friends your age. Or a boyfriend, maybe?” She asked.

I shrugged.

Last semester, I was going to some kind of prep school for kids between high school and college.  I guess you could call it community college, but none of the classes counted for college.  I don’t know who came up with the idea, but it was for people like me who just didn’t try very hard in high school and weren’t ready for the real world of student debt and college-level jobs.  My grades fell so low at my old school, Tucker, that they kicked me out.  I also fought a little… and did a little bit of drugs… but that wasn’t the main reason I got expelled.  Thankfully, my father had some “special friends” at the rich-kid school nearby and paid a lot to get me into it. 

Kaylee finally finished curling my hair and shook it out.  “Your head looks like a dark red fireball,” she said as I rose from the styling chair.  I admired my newly red hair and grinned proudly.  I was tired of the dirty blonde that I had always been, so I decided the day before I started at my new school that I would dye it red.  “You’ll certainly make an impression when you walk into Briarwood.”

“Oh c’mon,” I huffed.  “It’s not like they’ve never seen red hair before.”  I picked up my black and white checkered backpack and walked toward the front of the store. “Thanks Kaylee!”

“Stay out of trouble, Fireball,” she yelled after me as I exited the store and got into my car.

I played Daft Punk all the way to the school.  Something about the deep bass of techno-y electronic sound calmed my nerves and usually actually helped me with my headaches.  I took a cigarette between my lips and struggled with my lighter as I turned the wheel of my old hunk-of-junk car and pulled into a parking space next to someone’s nice new black Jetta.  I inhaled on the cigarette as I stood up out of the car and straightened my navy blue pleated skirt and light blue polo, a ridiculous uniform that Briarwood required.  I bent down to tie the black shoelace on my white converse.  A crowd of about 6 guys and girls around the Jetta all turned to stare at me disapprovingly.  I stood and stared back at each of them for a moment, blowing out the air from my cigarette and adjusting my black Ray Bans before slinging my backpack over my shoulder and locking my car.

An obnoxious bell rang right as I walked through the large front doors of the school, almost as if to tell everyone crowding the hallways to stop and look at me as I made my grand entrance.  I calmly walked through the groups of people as they turned to take in my appearance and then whispered to their buddies about me.  I heard “new girl” about thirty times and “red hair” about ten.  A large group of not-so-fit jocks stared at me as I walked by and as I turned the corner of the hallway, I felt someone grab my butt.