Her Artificial Hair [editing]

04 // the cereal girl.

"Yes, she's in front of me. I don't think you should talk to her right now—alright fine, here she goes." Mr. Feigner, I concluded, was talking on the phone with my mother and now, he decides it's best for me to talk to her. Either that or he's just way too freaked out by her yelling. I mean, the woman transforms when she's angry you'd think she's a howler.

I hold the phone, closing my eyes and scrunching up my nose in preparation for what to come.

"Hi, mom."

"Oh, young lady, what do you think you were doing?" She screamed through the phone. "I go outside town for three days and that is what I hear. What were you doing drinking and partying and punching people like that?"

"I was—"

"You know what, let me answer that for you, you just wish to tire me even more and more." I roll my eyes, and Mr. Feigner chuckles. "I was relaxing, and I get a call telling me my daughter's in jail, having no money. I thought that when you reached eighteen I'll get a rest but no, you just have to go—"

"Mom," I stop her. "Enough. Yes, I did some mistakes but why the hell do you care? I'm talking to a police officer trying to fix this and where are you? In Hawaii? Jesus, Mom, I'm just asking you for some money. I'll pay you back. Although, you never did."

"Alice, don't." She groans, finding out that I'm about to hang up. "Alice, I swear to God if you hang up, you'll—"

"Oops." I say to Mr. Feigner as I give him the phone. He laughs and then crosses his arms. "So, where were we?"

Ah, yes, I was having mixed feelings after his replies on my comment that I just decided to do what Cassie said because she was just so calm and collected while I was a hot mess.

The next morning, in fact, while waking up, I rolled down the sleeves of my shirt, had breakfast, woke up even earlier than I should, aspiring to make him get off of my back. I was, as I stated, just tired and wanted some serenity.

While reaching the bus and opening my phone to read yet another update from my favorite story, Ethan came, stood in his place, crossed his arms and didn't utter a word. I turned to look at him, took a deep breath and started a speech that I hoped wouldn't turn into a rant later.

"Look, I was fighting with you for no obvious reason – at least, from your point of view. I just want to thank you for that necklace because it was really beautiful but I swear to God, Ethan, if you give me one more thing that I didn't ask for – whether it was a cookie, a gift, or whatever – I'll freak out and make sure everyone calls you a creeper for the rest of your life."

He looked at me, smiled, shrugged his shoulders and held out his hand for me to shake.

"Truce?" He asked.

"Truce." I answered. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm not that scary to the bus driver anymore."

The driver, whose still horror-stricken face had silently denied my hopes of him not being that afraid of me anymore, nodded for me to enter as I walked to get to my place at the very back of the bus. It was almost as if it was my own personal space – without the personal part, because every time I sat there, Ethan decided to bless me with his wonderful presence.

But it was alright, because the truce we called was enough to make up for his previous annoying...well...existence.

And in fact, I didn't hear anything relating to Alexander Ethan Beckham for about two months after that small talk we had at the bus stop and I actually was pretty happy about it. All I've heard was that he was dating someone and was pretty busy to bother me anyway. My relationship with Cassie had grown fonder, my relationship with Cassie's best friend – Willow Hunt – had grown fonder-er (that's not a word, but who cares?) and we used to Skype her every weekend together because the lucky motherfucker was in England.