Hannah Vergult
Violet thought maybe she wasn ’ t beautiful enough to be asked permission . No , that was dumb .
She allowed herself to look down . It was a mistake . A galaxy of freckles appeared before her . Constellations of blotchy spots and old scars . It looked like someone took a soaked paintbrush and whacked it over her . Splatter paint . She felt like a black hole . “ She walks in ugly like the sun .” She remembered the way she felt at the end of her ninth birthday party . All alone with a small pile of presents . Feeling bad for feeling empty . If Violet could go somewhere else , she would , but she didn ’ t feel like it . Insatiable , her mom would say .
The last trickle of shampoo traced down her ankle and swirled away . The drain gulped the last of the water as Violet spun the shower knob to the right . Righty tighty , lefty loosey . A final drop landed on her eyelash and spilled down her cheek . She quickly wrapped a faded green towel around her body and looked at a blurry reflection in the foggy mirror . She breathed out steam . Wet hair stuck to her forehead and neck . She needed to brush it before it turned into a giant tangled tumbleweed and drifted out of control . She should ’ ve used conditioner , but the bathroom always felt so suffocating and the water pressure was so pathetic . She wanted to supernova until she was dust . She went to her room instead .
She ’ d barely memorized the first two lines of the poem and school started in approximately six hours . Violet knew she needed to feel a bit more panicked ; she was going to humiliate herself in third period English . Maybe her classmates would mess up too . She could pretend she was sick and not go to school in the morning . The idea allured her , but she was fake sick last week . Her parents would suspect something .
She fed her arms and head into an over-sized sweatshirt , a souvenir gifted by her father from his most recent business trip to New Mexico . It had a blown up image of a Georgia O ’ Keeffe painting — a skull accompanied by a couple flowers . The sweatshirt might ’ ve been the first present from her father Violet actually enjoyed . She began to brush through her tumbleweed . Her mother used to brush her hair every night . She was too old for that now and always took showers long after her mom went to sleep .
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