Letters She Wrote | Outer Banks

𝐢. 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤

[ i. an angry red streak ]

➸➸➸

WILLA DEVERAUX HAD ROYALLY and spectacularly fucked up.

With small hands clenched tightly around the rim of her bathroom sink, Willa lifted her gaze from the pink stained porcelain and towards the smudged mirror before her. A sixteen-year-old girl with pale, shallow cheeks and rattling, shell-shocked orbs of sage stared back at her, but it was not the horrified eyes that reflected in the blinding light above her that now held Willa frozen to the tiled floor. No, it was the haphazardly deranged, slightly idiotic, and beautifully reckless smile that, despite the horror of her stupid actions, still lingered proudly on her horribly painted purple lips.

Her shoulders racked with disbelief and unexpected giddy laughter slipped from the tight spaces of her lungs as her knees suddenly buckled and her hold on the sink tightened to prevent herself from falling to the floor in hysterics. "Oh, no," Willa sputtered, still maniacally smiling, blazing emeralds for eyes still full of surprise and glee. "Oh, no. Oh, no!"

Willa rose her left hand, still slick with lavender soap and gleaming with light that danced from the multiple gaudy rings on each finger, and grabbed a clump of semi-wet, knotted, brunette curls.  With bated breath, she lifted a curtain of hair slightly to reveal several thick strands that had become bound together by the weight and stickiness of the pink hair dye. But now, despite what her box dye's instructions had said, the color that stared back at Willa was not a hot pink that she had been promised. Rather it was a brilliant burning red, so hot that it was as if the universe had decided that Willa's natural rage could no longer be contained inside her body. Now, the universe and all its hellish spirits were blessing her with a very visual and very prominent everlasting angry red streak.

"This is amazing," Willa whispered to herself, turning her head to catch a better angle of herself in the mirror. "Oh, Willa, I think this is your greatest mistake yet."

When Willa had set out for the market earlier that morning, she had certainly not been anticipating that she would be exiting only a short while later with nothing more than a flimsy box of pink hair dye. She had initially been sent by her mother to gather some snacks for the baby, but Willa had clearly forgotten—or so she would say when she returned back home—while self-consciously on the chase for her newest look. Afterwards, Willa was quite honest when she admitted to herself that she did not regret forgoing her mother's grocery list. Besides, her baby sister had more snacks in her old diaper bag than she was certain some of the Outer Banks residents had in their entire houses.

"They're going to kill you."

Willa's startled eyes shifted in the mirror at the newfound voice, no longer looking to the red strip of deadened hair, but now rather to the tiny, lively girl that stood behind her in the narrow bathroom doorway.  Lex Deveraux, with all her pointed excellence and silent judgement, had her skinny arms crossed tightly over her small chest and her round face tilted carefully to the side, watching her older sister closely.  For a long moment, Willa only stared back at her unwanted shadow, a bitter callousness pulling at the narrow threads that made up her fragile bomb of a human heart.