Mannequins | completed

Three

Thank you to Becca for editing!

CALLUM INFORMED THAT I’d been passed out for about fifteen minutes before I woke up. When I woke up, he nagged at me about why I fainted. I didn’t want to tell him that I fainted because I had freaked out about the mannequin; it was just plain weird. So I lied, telling him that I fainted because I hadn’t eaten lunch and dinner—the latter was to be expected because I was working during dinner time—and I most likely was quite hungry.

It was a lie and Callum didn’t seem to be convinced. I had a strong stomach; I didn’t get hungry too easily and I had eaten a heavy meal for lunch. But Callum didn’t know that.

I usually wasn’t an ignorant person, but I had been for the past few weeks. I hadn’t watched the news because I didn’t want to know more about the victims of the massacre, scared that I would see their faces in C’est La Vie as mannequins. I didn’t look at the mannequins in C’est La Vie either, scared that I’ll see one of the faces of the victims of the massacre. It was all too much for me.

And thus I had been ignorant. I went on working in C’est La Vie, acting like everything was okay, ignoring the fact that I’d seen a mannequin that resembled a murdered person. I forced myself to think it was okay, and within those few weeks, I felt like it was.

When I got my first paycheck, my parents pushed me to move out, so I did. Venturing into the real world and being independent was frankly a scary prospect for me, but with my parents guiding me every step of the way, I guess it wasn’t so bad.

Plus, I didn’t want to end up like Elliot, who still lived with our parents at the age of twenty-five. Actually moving out after being pushed by my parents was probably reassuring for them because it was evidently a sign that I wouldn’t end up like Elliot. They wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but I knew that they were incredibly disappointed in Elliot.

On another note, I’d also gotten my car back as well. I missed driving my white little Honda around. My car was a gift given to me by my parents on my sixteenth birthday and I loved it to bits and pieces.

I glanced at the mirror. My hair was tied up in a neat bun, but since my hair was layered, strands of pale blonde hair cascaded down the sides of my face. My makeup generally wasn’t heavy, even though it should’ve been since my pale face needed more color. However my dark eyeliner and dark red lipstick were extremely heavy and prominent, and they honestly looked scary as shit since they stood out in contrast to my pale skin tone. It was vampire makeup, my mother would call it.

My eyes travelled down the full-length mirror situated in the only room in my new apartment. I was wearing a simple white shirt and ripped skinny jeans. Felicity told me to dress nicely and dressing too casually as if I was just heading to a class, wasn’t what Felicity would expect. She was probably expecting  a dress, but the only dresses I owned were bought when I was fourteen, during a girly phase I’d gone through in eighth grade. I was pretty sure those dresses wouldn’t fit me anymore, especially five years later.

I usually didn’t take too much time to get ready and I didn’t really care about my appearance too much, but today was when Ambivalence occurred. Ambivalence was basically a cheaper and less stylish version of fashion show and it was ran by the local shops around Calinton, not Vogue or something as fancy as that. In fact, Ambivalence was actually kind of dowdy. Anyways, Felicity expected at the very least for me to look decent since I needed to dress to impress because along with Felicity and Callum, I was representing C’est La Vie.

C’est La Vie was participating in Ambivalence since it was a local shop in Calinton. Felicity had been stressing about this for the past few weeks. I learned in between all the stress that she was a perfectionist at best, which kind of annoyed me but it was understandable. Ambivalence was a big event in our town and any failures simply weren’t acceptable.