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chapter fourteen quick curl barbie
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Isadora Windsor used to like to believe she didn't need anyone. It was an old state of mind which she adopted when she was young, but it stuck with her throughout her teenage years. But that was just it. She liked to believe she didn't need anyone. That didn't mean it was true. Because no matter how many times she tried to tell herself in the past that she'd be better off not caring about the people around her, she did. She cared maybe a little too much. It was caring about others that got her in this mess.
It was a tricky thing . . . pretending not to care. It had almost ripped her at the seams and torn her into pieces of a puzzle she would never learn how to mend. But she was tired of that. Maybe she was having a mid-life crisis way too early, but whatever, she was tired. It sucked trying to be the quick curl Barbie she had always wanted to be. And she didn't want that anymore. She wanted to let herself care. And sure, that was going to be hard, because telling herself she was going to be better for her mother was a lot easier than actually trying to be better. But she had to try. Because she didn't like the person she had become, and she had to do something about it. No one else was going to do it for her.
It was those thoughts that caused her to bask in the sun, the heat pounding down on her until the moon rose, instead of taking Sarah and Kiara up on their offer to smoke with them. Sure, weed wasn't that bad, but it was for Izzy. Weed would lead her down the road to alcohol and cocaine . . . like it had in the past. And she didn't want to be that person anymore. She couldn't. That was the person she knew her mother would be disappointed in. She would. Izzy knew she would.
You have to live for her, Izzy repeated in her head as she observed the stars littering the night sky. And she was. This was how she lived for her mother. This was how she lived for herself.
A heavy sigh escaped Izzy's velvet lips as she tore her eyes from the stars in the sky. She always found the night beautiful. And the stars always had a way of making her feel. They made her feel less alone among other things; it was why she painted her ceiling in her room with a mural of the stars littering the night sky. But she wasn't alone now. Kiara and Sarah were there—two lone stars drifting through the darkness.
