All Bets Are Off

Chapter Thirteen - Ella Fordman: The Bad Girl

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            Dedicated to __Taco__Cat__ for her hilarious comments that have me laughing so hard every time. Thanks so much!

 

            Unedited! Read at your own risk.

 

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            ~Chapter Thirteen – Ella Fordman: The Bad Girl~

 

           

            Sunburn.

            That was my reward for going down to the lake with Phoenix and overcoming my fears in the water, risking my life and putting myself out there.

            A nice, big, agonizing rash that spread down my arms, legs, shoulders, chest, face and the back of my neck. In short: it was everywhere.

            It hurt to move, and I was ready to cuss out anybody who so much as trailed his or her fingers along the sensitive sores. Not to mention the fact that my skin was unattractively red and I resembled a blushing tomato. And the worse fact that in a few days my skin would come peeling off.

            I mean, I’d packed sunscreen in the bag, but in the whirlwind of being thrown into the water, I hadn’t had a chance to apply the sickly stuff to my skin. The lake had been fairly covered by dense shrubbery and thick trees, but it had apparently not been enough to guard the sun’s reflection off the water. I had hoped that perhaps from it I would develop a nice tan that would help clear up my pale skin, but it seemed I was not destined to have lusciously tanned skin. It was either pale or sunburnt: all or nothing.

            I tried to apply foundation to my skin to at least reduce it a little bit, but the powdery substance had only caused it even more pain than before and irritated the raw skin, so I had been forced to endure the mockery of coming to school looking for all the world like a ketchup commercial.

            And what had Phoenix come out with?

            Beautifully tanned, chiseled skin, of course. Could you expect anything less from him? Maybe it was his reward for working hard to get the abs he possessed.

            When I had first met Candice and Leslie by their lockers Thursday morning, my footsteps holding considerably less enthusiasm and my shoulders tense, Leslie’s eyes had widened, and Candice had clapped a hand over her mouth in shock, her eyes widening. “Oh, my God, Ella, what happened?” Candice asked, her voice slightly muffled by her hand.

            “Phoenix,” I had replied bitterly, casting a disdainful look down at the icky red sunburn on my arm that flashed more than the lights on a police cruiser.