Becoming Popular ✔ (EDITING)

Chapter Ten-"No it's clearly mouthwash"

~Dedicated to awkard jokes~

Chapter Ten

It’s never been a secret but I was always a bit self-conscious about my body. It wasn’t anything major, after all I was now dressing like I had some fashion sense and there wasn’t the need for me to stare at myself in the mirror and cry my eyes out. Okay, maybe the last part was a lie, but I blame Jessica Hubert for it. It all started when everyone was forced back in freshman year to try out for every sport imaginable, sadly on that faithful Thursday it happened to be swimming.

Yes, swimming. The sport the sport that requires you to use all your body muscles and more importantly to use a bathing suit which surprise, surprise forced you to show more skin than necessary. Of course I freaked out because in all honesty, I rarely showed more than my legs so to use a bathing suit in the pool, surrounded by half of the school was a bit nerve wracking. I couldn’t be more right too, especially when Coach Adam thought it would be the best thing for me and Jessica to be paired up as swimming partners.

Jessica even back then was a hottie and major pain in my butt. I suppose it was then that our enemy thing really started. We were both getting ready to dive and practice laps when Jessica commented in her silly, high-pitched voice that even now sends shivers down my spine in disgust, ‘Oh my God, are you seriously getting in looking like that?’. Obviously I didn’t really know what she was talking about, mainly because I didn’t have my glasses on and couldn’t really see the problem with myself, which Jessica didn’t seem to have a problem with pointing out.

‘You should get some shorts to cover those legs of yours,’ Jessica sneered loudly, ‘thunder thighs are so gross.’

Of course I laughed in her face. That’s a lie. I ran out of the pool area with sounds of laughter from the other snobby Jessica gang and burst into tears in the girls’ change rooms and then after cleaning my red puffy eyes, I went to the nurse’s office and faked being sick which led me to be sent home early and that’s when I vowed never to bother about what other people thought about me. The whole vow lasted about a week before I began to start to hate Jessica for humiliating me and well I suppose it was the real reason I made the deal with Sean Gregory.

And that brings me to my current situation, which might I add is not something that I’m comfortable with doing. Yes, Vivienne Lanter, me, the girl who used to wear glasses but now had contacts and whose hair was no longer some shabby brown one length, straight yet frizzy mess but now a deep blonde that reminded me of warm honey was now standing in a changing room in one of Redwood’s hottest fashion stores with Amanda and Sean waiting impatiently outside while I held a bunch of bikinis in my arms.

Breathe Viv, this is normal. Lots of girls use bikinis and besides, it’s not like Jessica can see you anymore. Remember what mum told you that night? ‘It’s just baby fat honey, it’ll disappear with age’. Wait, what? See even mum agreed with Jessica, you do have thunder thighs. Look at yourself in the mirror, your butt is really huge now that you think about it, big, no ginormous. Do yourself a favour Viv and spare the humiliation. You are going to pretend you’re sick, yup that’s right. Say you have meningitis and your head really hurts a lot. Yes, that’s it!

I pulled open the wooden door and stuck my head out with a frown, “I think…I think I have uh…”

Sean’s hazel eyes met mine causing my cheeks to heat up and made my eyes divert to Amanda. Yes, it was easier lying to Amanda.

“I have menopause!” I suddenly blurted.

Amanda’s eyes widened, “What? Viv, you’re not that old and…what?”

Sean rolled his eyes, “Seriously, you would make a lousy liar Lanter.”

“It happens, in rare cases,” I retorted.