Lighter

f o u r

and i've never felt more alone,
feels so scary getting o l d . . .

⚡️⚡️⚡️

The perk of having my best friend work at a cosmetics store is that I can pop in whenever I want and have her do my makeup. On a lazy Monday, just over a week until school came back into my life, that's just what I did.

In my car that still has no working air conditioning, I drove myself to the mall to pay Cheyenne a visit. There wasn't anything on my agenda that I had to do for the day, so bothering her seemed like a good idea. Although most times when I stop in, I'm saving her from a customer straight from hell. She'll usually send them off to be helped by someone else and spend hours with me, showing me all around the store like I've never been in before.

Though she'd like to, she doesn't go to college, and she doesn't see it happening. Not for awhile, at least. It's not in her family's budget and with the way her dad and his girlfriend are, they don't believe in the whole "higher education" thing. They insist that it's a scam, that you can get through life just fine without college because they both have. 

So in the meantime, Cheyenne took something that she was passionate about and turned it into a job. She started working at MAC Cosmetics going into our last year of high school as a part-time gig. Once we graduated, they upgraded her to full-time and offered her the chance to work at becoming a certified makeup artist.

I spotted her right away when I walked through the store opening. Towards the back in her all-black attire, with an apron of makeup brushes circling her narrow hips as she painted mascara on a woman's eyelashes. Her head, blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail with her dark roots showing in the slightest down her middle part, jerked up when she recognized me.

"Five minutes," she mouthed to me, holding up her hand to gesture the five. I nodded with a smile and drifted around for a bit to scan over some products while she finished up her client.

Although she hasn't had the best upbringing, Cheyenne has certainly made a better life for herself on her own. She's the most independent person I know, and she doesn't rely on other people for anything. Not for support, not for love, not for even a pat on the back. I admire her for her strength, because that's something I lack in significantly, even if I am working at it day after day.

Her unconventional, nonconformist guardians are more of a pain in the ass to her than anything, but she knows it's better than being with her mother. The woman lost custody of Cheyenne when she was eight, the reason being both physical and emotional child abuse. It was just a few years after a shaky divorce, so that only added to the illness that was boiling inside her mother for too long. Drinking heavily and using drug after drug didn't help either. She put Cheyenne through hell and frankly, I'm still stunned at how my best friend put up with it all, and how she manages to be the amazing person that she is today.

Now, living in Tatum Hills like the rest of us, with her "hippie of a dad and his dumb-ass girlfriend" – Cheyenne's words not mine – is where she's been since her mom was forced to leave the state. She hates it more than anything because of how different her and her dad are, seeing as that Mr. Marshall adopted a new outlook after the divorce. He claimed he needed more "zen" in his life, and he wanted to get back into his Burmese roots, so he dove headfirst into the lifestyle he had as a child. Cheyenne didn't like one bit of it when she moved back in with him and his girlfriend once her mom was gone.

They have a pretty strict Myanmar diet, and Cheyenne eats whatever the hell she wants. They like to burn candles, save electricity and water, and meditate, while Cheyenne couldn't care less about it all. They only buy the absolute necessities of life, she's an impulse buyer and treats herself with her hard-earned money. There's hundreds of other reasons why they don't get along, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.