Char Coal (BWWM)

Prologue

They always say that someone's beauty is in the inside. Why is that? Why is our true beauty hidden away from others? People could always fake like they're a good person but you can't fake 'pretty'. Why couldn't it be that if you're a kind person, then you have a lovely face and vice versa.

I was what most would consider a good girl; I did my homework and never talked back. That was how I was raised up to be, obedient and smart. Somehow, that didn't get through to my three sisters.

Annabelle and Mirabelle were twins, the middle children, while the oldest was Belle. That left me, Char, as the youngest. I guessed my parents were psychic because they knew my sisters would grow up to be beauties. Maybe that was why they all had belle in their names, a French word for beautiful, while I was named Char. My mom said my father got to name me since she named the other girls and he chose to name me after his late grandmother, Charlene. I didn't come out as pretty as my sisters, leaving me the ugly duckling of the family.

Ugly.

Yup, that was my unofficial nickname. My sisters had glowing golden skin and wore weaves to give off the illusion that they had long hair, each looking identical to my beautiful mother. I, on the other hand, was dark skinned with un-permed hair, taking my looks more from my father's side. My hair was still long and that was one of the reasons my mom wouldn't let me get it relaxed. She said the chemicals would make my hair fall off and I would end up looking like 'one of those ratchet girls with baby fists for ponytails'.

One of the theories being speculated as to why I was so much darker than my sisters was the fact that I was a playful child. Every day, I would go outside and play in the dirt. My dad encouraged me to do so because to him, I was the son he never had. I got skinned knees from falling off my bike and twisted ankles from being pushed when playing basketball with local boys got too harsh. My sisters were too busy talking on the phone and updating their MySpace pages to even step outside then.

On rainy days, I would have my head in books, studying for random quizzes my parents would give me from time to time. They never tested the other girls which I took offense to. Why was I being grilled while they got everything they always wanted? All the pressure was on me when all my sisters had to worry about was looking pretty.

They were brought makeup, extensions, and fake lashes. I was brought books, scar cream, and glasses since I broke my frames a lot from playing. My parents soon gave up and brought me contacts instead. I rarely wore them; instead I walk around with my thick framed black glasses resting on my nose.

My dad was a chef at Franklin's, a popular local restaurant, so after school I spent a lot of time cooking dinner with him. My mother owned her own hair salon called Tasha's Retreat, so she did all of our hair. She taught my sisters how to sow in their own tracks and gel their edges down while I was only taught how to braid. I guess because she didn't feel like I was pretty enough for a weave. Of course she never said that but I just had a feeling that she didn't see me as a daughter either.

Belle graduated high school a year ago but she stilled stayed with us, deciding to go to a local cosmetology college instead of a university. My dad was disappointed but my mother was happy that she had a daughter following in her footsteps. Since her graduation was near, my parents had extra income to do what they always wanted to do, send us to private school. I was a junior and the twins were seniors. I was actually supposed to be in the tenth grade but I skipped the fourth grade since I was more ahead than the other students.

Again, I was who I was raised up to be. My parents knew how to raise a smart child but they didn't raise me to be a pretty girl.

I could hang with the boys at my old public school but the girls always kept their distance from me. They would make fun of me, nicknaming me 'Char-coal' since I was really dark-skinned. The new trend was for a girl to be light skinned, it was in the music and in the magazines. I was out and my sisters were in.

If my own mother didn't think I was beautiful, what were the chances that a boy would? I wasn't a diamond, I was Char-coal.