Her Artificial Hair [editing]

05 // the grouch (oscar).

"Okay, so, Ethan really did that?" Mr. Feigner asks."You're not exaggerating, sugarcoating or anything?" I nodded vigorously.

Really, Mr. Feigner, if I'm going to exaggerate – or sugarcoat, something I don't usually do – will I say that Ethan Beckham climbed my window on Christmas Eve, yelled at me and freaked out my mother, who, by the way, thought that he was my boyfriend and decided to bless me with such a long lecture Hunter was laughing all the while? And believe me, Hunter wasn't the one to laugh at my expense.

Anyway, Ethan, apparently, wanted to compensate for his awful mistake of trying to tell me what to do – and scaring my mother of having a stranger in her house – that he decided to say sorry in an unusual way. But what he didn't know, Mr. Feigner, was that saying sorry was good. But presenting me with a peace-offering was not good.

I hated gifts from people I didn't want gifts from. And so when I got a text from Ethan – who apparently knew from where to get my number, stalker alert – the day after Christmas, telling me to come to the school's gym, in the holidays, I had my suspicions.

And I didn't want to go.

That, of course, was before Cassie showed up with a special guest at my door. Well, not necessarily my door since I wasn't the one to own or open it, but you get the point. I was trying to write another rant – about people who show up at your window and ask for you to hate your crush without a given reason other than 'You don't know him' – when my brother decided to knock on my bedroom door, telling me that I had 'visitors'.

Cassie and Colton – yes – entered my room. My expression went... well... by four different stages.

1. At first, I was surprised. My eyes widened and I was literally gasping for air because Colton was the perfect adjective of calm and collected. Now you see why him and Cassie hit it off.

2. Then I thought they had some business going on and then I raised an eyebrow and smirked at them.

3. But then I concluded that Cassie had this crush on some guy other than Colton and thought they were just friends and so my nervous side kicked in because I didn't know Colton back then.

4. I was pretty impressed because he looked just like the way she described him.

"Alice, I want you to meet someone..." Cassie started, with a face expression that clearly meant 'Embarrass me and you're dead'. And I didn't embarrass her at all – well, that depends on how you define 'embarrass' but at least, I didn't do any permanent damage, and for me, that was more than enough.

"Hey, I'm Colton, Cassie's best friend and also, um,..."

"I know."

Colton was Ethan's close friend and so, in the small time we had spent together, he convinced me to go to where Ethan wanted because Colton had a way of convincing you to do stuff, you could throw yourself off a bridge and he'd make it look like you just ate an apple.

Just like that.

Colton and I became friends at that point because he was awesome. I mean, I was awesome but I wasn't as calm in being awesome as he was. After that, I guess we just locked ourselves in my living room and kept playing video games until about an hour before the time written in Ethan's text.

That was when Colton 'had to leave' and Cassie decided it was best for her to stay and choose an outfit. To be honest, my choice of clothes sucked balls – an expression we used to use when describing anything extremely bad and disgusting – and I was going to admit that happily. And so, I wasn't that displeased when Cassie decided to help.