Pretty Girl ~ Short Story

Pretty Girl

I was born beside a boy named Peter. Peter and I grew up together. Our parents made sure that we were the best of friends, that our friendship was so solid that it would never break. They never planned how growing up would affect our friendship. Our parents didn't expect Peter to become hot. They didn't expect him to surpass six feet or gain muscle on every inch of his body. They didn't expect him to excel at sports and become someone that colleges kept a record of. They didn't expect my face to become dull looking. They did not expect my hands to fly over a page. They did not expect the watercolors I would soon fall in love with, the colors of the rainbow, the colors of the dirt, sky, and eyes. They did not expect the paintings I painted to win awards. Peter and I flew to other sides of the spectrum. Peter was the hot jock, and I became the pretty painter. That is what people would say, that I was pretty. My prettiness depended on the shade of lipstick I wore or the amount of mascara I applied. That is why I was pretty. That's at least how I saw it. I seemed to be the only one to see how our school was. Everything depends on how you looked. The pretty people grouped together, the cute people grouped together, the hot people grouped together. That was how our school worked. The hot jocks threw balls to each other on the courtyard, the pretty theatre girls ate lunch in the chorus room, the cute geeks did their classwork in classrooms, the pretty athletes walked the halls, the cute artsy guys played with clay in the art room, the hot girls roamed the school looking for the next boy to chase. That's just how life went at my small school, and like always I was the only one who saw it for what it was. Just like everyone else I fit in somewhere, and because of the makeup I wore every day I ended up with the pretty girls. I was with the pretty girls who ate their lunch at the courtyards daydreaming of the day our prince charming was going to pick us up off our feet. We were the pretty artists. The girls who could find the arts in wherever they went and whatever they touched. There was me, the pretty artist who could pick up a pen and napkin and draw whatever you asked, there was Amanda the pretty daydreamer who wrote stories about life, about girls and boys finding themselves in a life of poverty or magic that would send glistening trails down your cheeks, there was Cassie who could sing a note to the heavens, who could write a song about butterflies and turn it into a symphony worthy of the Queens' ears, and then there was Sophia who could take out her camera and angle it into the sky and create a picture so beautiful and pure it looked more real than real life. We were the pretty artists who dreamed of the hot jocks finally giving us a glance and sweeping us off our feet and carry us off into a reality only Amanda could write of with sunsets only caught in Sophias pictures. They would love us with the passion and grace like one of Cassie's songs and tell us we were more beautiful than one of my paintings. That was what we dreamed of when we watched Peter and his friends throw footballs around the courtyard. We did what we knew best while the boys did what they knew best, but in the end, it would never be true. We would never get the courage to talk to the boy, especially me because whenever I looked at Peter I would freeze. I would remember us. Remember the rainy night of 8th grade formal where Peter took me as his date, or the wonderful nights spent on his roof in sixth grade planning what we would do with our lives, to the times when Peter would demand I draw him with muscles the size of The Rock's in seventh grade. The memories would hit me with the force of one of Cassie's songs and I would sink. Sink into the eternal depth of nothing but self-pity. For the rest of my life, I would think of myself like this. As dull. That's all I would ever be. Dull. I wouldn't truly be a Pretty Girl. I was too dull. So forever and always, just call me Dull.

A/N~ I wrote this quite fast. I had all this in my mind and needed to get it out. I hope anyone reading this enjoys it as I did while writing it. It may not be the most positive thing in the world but in its own way, it serves to me as a reminder that we are all scared or self-conscious of something about ourselves. Instead of hiding it away inside we need to learn to embrace the things we're afraid of so that over time maybe we won't be so afraid anymore.

That's all for tonight kids, goodnight...

Ember Elowen