In Six Years' Time

The Mange

Getting discharged from the hospital was a pain in the ass.

Apparently my wreck was pretty serious, if the thirteen stitches wasn't enough proof. They wanted to run all kinds of tests and thoroughly check me out before they actually let me check out.

They decided I had to have some kind of amnesia. They asked me various questions but of course I didn't know the answer to all of them. Things like "what class do you have for third period?" or "what's your locker combination?" It's been six years, of course I don't have the answers.

But it works out for me in the end, because now I don't have to pretend to have just forgotten in a bout of ignorance.

I was in the hospital for three days before they let me go.

In that time, the only person who came to see me was my mom. I made an effort to be nicer to her, to hopefully show I wasn't such a little shit anymore. I'm sure she noticed because she seemed thoroughly confused by my actions and often asked "are you sure you're okay?"

Better than ever, mom. I thought wistfully. Even if all of this went wrong. Even if this is all a dream. Kace is alive somewhere out there, and that was good enough for me.

Mom told me I could take off school for as long as I wanted, but I doubted she'd let me take the rest of the year off. I still had most of it to go, and I dreaded going back to that place. At least I could be thankful it was my senior year, and I only had to survive until graduation.

Let me explain something. Under no circumstance was I the shy, nerdy girl with good grades but few friends. I was, by no means, the sporty girl with a great tan and good body. I wasn't even the weird goth kid with tripp pants and multicolored hair.

I was some kind of mixed genre girl. I liked art, and music. I gauged my ears and, unknown to my mom, pierced my nipples. I smoked American Spirit cigarettes, not for the taste but because of the aesthetic. And I had several friends. The problem was, they were bad friends.

Don't get me wrong, they'd probably kill for me. But that's the problem. They would really kill for me. Most of them were in prison in the future for serious crimes. I hung out with them because it made my mom stressed out and because they were fun. But when I got older and started maturing, I realized they were actually kind of terrible people.

They started asking to borrow money, they slept off booze comas on my couch and trashed the place. They broke in whenever they felt like it to watch tv and use my shower. I had to break off contact with them because they were just... Lost causes. Eventually, I started developing a life and actual maturity. They never did.

I didn't want to go to school and see them again because it was hard to do the first time, but to do it again when, just the other day, I was a piece of shit too? They'd wreak havoc.

It didn't help that the stylist at the hair salon mom visits wasn't too sure what to do with my hair, so we did a side shave that made me look... Well, to be honest, kind of badass.

We continued to jokingly call my pre-haircut hair "The Mange," but when it came down to it, my hair had to go. Not all of it, thankfully, but a large portion off one side. I remembered that in the near future, some celebrities did the side shave and it looked good on them. I tried to describe it to the best of my ability, and though I could tell my mom wasn't a fan, we both knew there weren't too many options for mange hair that wasn't kind of dramatic.

The stylist did a really good job salvaging what hair I had left. My head felt a lot lighter (though still pounded from the stitches), but now I just looked like an alternative kid instead of someone that tangled with the wrong, diseased cat.