The Man I Call Strong

Chapter 1: New Beginnings

The whole world is spinning as the alarm clock wakes me from a sleep that seemed to slip past much too quickly. I mumble and groan into my pillow with frustration and look to my alarm clock. It's agitating blare unceasingly reverberates through my exhausted body.

My inner diva is screaming at me, telling me, 'Serves you right for procrastinating.' The scene of me working on my speech at twelve o'clock at night runs through my mind. Until the blaring suddenly stops.

"Ugh, thank God," I groan as I pull the covers back over my head and stuff my face into my pillow.

"Wakey, wakey, Miss. Valedictorian," Ruby's voice pierces my ears as I reluctantly slide my eye lids back. I roll onto my side, crushing my left arm under my body. Ruby chuckles as I feel her weight shift my bed to one side.

"Up and at 'em, sleepy head." Ruby seizes my covers in her tight, relentless grip and tosses them across my room. I groan and pull my bare legs to my chest and enclose my thin arms around them, desperate to keep the cool air from breaking my cocoon of warmth.

"Come on, Aurora. We need to get you ready for your speech today." That comment gets my attention. "What!" That's today? I throw my legs over the edge of the bed, causing my body to sling out of bed.

"I'm gonna die!" My gaze stares endlessly towards the wall, imagining all the horrors that this day will most definitely bring. Ruby McGilde, my dorm-room-sister for the past four years, squeals as she jumps off the bed and runs over to me, as if she's completely oblivious to my anxiety.

She grabs my wrist and drags me out of my bedroom door.

I grumble and groan sleepily as I grab my already-very-messed-up hair and push it up and over my face, making it even more of a mop. "I am going to make you absolutely perfect, Rora." I roll my eyes.

Ugh, even my inner diva knows; nothing in this whole wide world can make me look even remotely 'perfect', and my poor little diva has had to live with that cold, hard fact for twenty years'. And I don't hesitate to divulge my regret.

"Ruby, I appreciate the gesture, but even you, my bestest-best friend, knows that nothing can ever make me look perfect. I'm just hopeless."

Ruby pays no heed to my complaints as she plops me down in a chair that she conveniently placed right in front of the mirror. My hair drops down to the small of my back. When it's straight. But no. God didn't give me chic, straight hair or sexy, curly hair.

No.

He gives me bland, flat, wavy hair. It stinks. It's as if it doesn't know what it wants. Does it want to be straight? Or does it want to be curly? You know what? I don't know, so let's just be both. It's as if He wanted it to reflect my personality. Bland, unsure, and pointless.

Ruby grabs a chunk of my hair with one hand and, with my favorite brush in her other, she recklessly rips at it until she whips it into submission.

As my inner diva continues to scold me for being so ugly and bland, Ruby presses on, ripping and pulling. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of all the things that could and will go wrong at graduation. Until my hair lays as one, long, glossy, brown sheet.

I forgot to take a shower when I came home last night, so my hair is relatively decent as the sunlight reflects off it's soft, thick, oiled surface. I run my hand through the thick hair.

I leisurely, almost hesitantly, shift my eyes up from my lap to the woman in the mirror and I see a girl who looks forever lost, forever searching. But the scary part is, I don't know what I'm looking for. 'Maybe you're looking for a man. 'Cause girl, you ain't gettin' any younger'.