To Be A Hero | Peter Parker

01: "i'm a walking stereotype"

Song chapter: Ever Since New York - Harry Styles

One Year Later

A bathroom mirror. Scissors. A box of red hair dye.

I looked at myself in the mirror, scrutinizing every minor detail I could find wrong.

You have too many freckles. Your eyebrows are too thin, why did you pluck them to death in middle school? The scar from your first fight is ugly. Why is your mouth permanently shaped into a frown?

I was so unbelievably plain.

My first day of school at Midtown was tomorrow, and no one needed another blonde hair, blue-eyed shell of a person in their life. I was a walking stereotype, for crying out loud.

As I inhaled deeply, I thought again if this is really what I wanted. The haircut would be okay, but the red tips would not go over well with my parents. Such a drastic change would have consequences, therefore it had to be worth it if I was going to do this. I huffed, puffing out my lips for dramatic effect.

My own bathroom was old, but it wasn't necessarily dirty. The mirror  had some scratches and there was evidence of chipping on the edge of the ceramic sink. The shower had water stains in various places and the white tile of the bathroom seemed discolored from years of dirty feet trudging across it. Even the walls were tile, which made me believe that the walls had recently been remodeled. 

Screw what my parents think, I deserve this.

I'd watched enough YouTube tutorial videos and practiced on enough wigs to know how to do this. I had been thinking about doing it for months, and I felt like now would be the perfect time.

A new image, a new me before I started a new school. Hopefully, I could pull off a new attitude: One less aloof and withdrawn.  A new me, without Ghost-Spider.

My costume stayed safely tucked outside of the lining of my duffel bag, sufficiently hidden for now. I didn't have the heart to unpack it, fearing that if I saw the costume, I'd want to put it on again. And I couldn't break that promise to myself. No more Ghost-Spider. I was done.

Sighing, I gathered my hair into three perfect sections and tied them, creating three separate pony tails. I'd done this at least 15 times on a wig, making sure to use a handheld mirror to section my hair precisely with a comb. Next came the hard part. As I took a deep breath, holding it in, I snipped the scissors over the first pony tail. The other two came easier, but that first one was the hardest to cut. As I cleaned up the unevenness, giving myself choppy layers to help give my hair more dimension, I wondered if I just made a huge mistake.

I didn't have too long to dwell on it as I grabbed the box of red hair dye. After mixing the dye, I applied it to the ends of my newly short hair, giving it a dip-dye effect. The t-shirt I was wearing was effectively ruined with red stains dotting the shoulders.

After waiting thirty minutes, like the box suggested, I jumped into the shower to wash the rest of the hair dye and any excess hair clippings from my previous haircut away. When I started drying my hair and seeing the new me unfold, I started to like it even more. For once, I felt like I looked like me.