Ten of Me ✓

Seven

A/N: Above is how Nicole would look mid-transformation.

NICOLE

The rest of the school day passed slowly. I managed to keep a bright face for the lunch hour, but I had to escape to the bathroom before pre-calculus to compose myself. It was getting harder and harder to keep pretending that Noah and I were together when I knew exactly what he was doing in his free time.

More than anything, I was hurt by the fact that Noah thought it was acceptable to keep leading me on. I liked him so much, if I wasn't disguising myself in the evenings, I would never know that he was lying to me. And while it was probably better if I knew, I still couldn't help but want for him to really, truly like me, and for me to be able to wholeheartedly look forward to our date and the lunchtimes he always spent next to me without thinking about the girls he saw after school.

I stood in front of the sinks for a long time, just taking deep breaths and hoping nobody would come into the bathroom. It was empty, but I could hear happy calls and laughs from outside in the hallway--I imagined all the smiling people with simple lives and no other worries than what Lauren's party that weekend would bring.

I'd seen Lauren during lunch, and she'd cornered me when I'd gone to throw my trash away in the cafeteria. She questioned me again and again about attending her party, and when I'd asked her why she cared so much she'd blinked her eyelashes at me curiously and said, as if it were completely obvious, "You're Noah's girlfriend, of course."

And I'd smiled and finished throwing everything away before sliding my tray in the return stack and turning away, taking deep breaths until I knew I could make it to the bathroom and let my guard down. Noah had texted me several times, asking where I'd disappeared to, and I'd texted him back to tell him that I'd had to go to a meeting with a teacher. It was one more lie to add to my ever-growing collection.

I walked home from school shortly after 3:00 that day, feeling the sunlight burning onto my bare shoulders. April was usually my favorite month of the whole year--the air was crisp and smelled like flowers and there was this invigorating feeling in the way the wind blew or how everything felt free and beautiful. I wished I felt like I usually felt in April--free and beautiful, too.

It had been become a habit for me to stop by the beauty salon on my way home from school--it was so close, and I usually had Mom do my makeover for me then so that I could head straight out to wherever I was going after an eye color and outfit change back at home. But today I just trekked towards my house, passing the street I would normally go down to go to the beauty parlor. Less than a minute later, I unlocked my front door and poked my head inside.

"Dad? Nicholas?" I called, kicking off my shoes and dumping my backpack beside the front door. The house smelled like fresh Windex, and light breeze was blowing through the open foyer windows so that the curtains ruffled. It was like a house from a storybook, the kind that was perfect on the outside, but once you started looking through the rooms and living inside it, you realized it wasn't so perfect after all.

Footsteps came from the kitchen, but it wasn't my little brother or father like I expected. Instead, Mom emerged holding a dish towel. She looked so out of place there, holding that towels and twisting it between her fingers, that I immediately wondered what could be wrong.

"How was school, Nicole?" she asked, smiling. I tried to detect something hidden in her open smile but couldn't find anything.

"It was okay. Why aren't you at the salon?"

When Mom turned back to the kitchen, I followed her, and found that she was busy chopping up fresh fruits--a task I would normally associate with Dad. Her cutting board was wet with juices, and I could practically smell the tart strawberries she was sliding into plastic bowls. Strawberries made me think of Noah, and I frowned.