Nora Prince, a girl far from ordinary. But in a world like this, who wants to be ordinary anyway?
Unlike the desired toned legs, shaped abdomen and blonde bleached hair of most girls in her life, she has quite the opposite.
Stretch marks.
...
"How beautiful would it be if we could just see souls instead of bodies? To see love and compassion instead of curves."
Denise Bidot as Nora Prince
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Brant Daugherty as Jason Ryder
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the music hall
The mid-October air was chilly, my teeth chattered against each other and my breath came out in visible puffs of icy clouds. My heartbeat pummelled loudly, my blood rushing through my veins and adrenaline pumping in my ears.
I had never been an exercise kind of person. I hated jogging.
But it was those words that stuck to me like a mouse in a trap, eating me from inside out, gnawing on my thoughts.
Fat. Bulbous. Undesired. Unwanted.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, I scoffed mentally at the absurdity of the statement that my grandmother had taught me as a child every time I had cried to her about some kid bullying me at school.
Checking for cars on the road, I jogged cautiously over, ignoring the pang of pain in my side, pushing myself to go further. I must have been running for a minimum of twenty minutes now. Truth was, words did hurt. At first you'd tell yourself that it's just lies, that the other people are jealous of you and that they need to feel better about themselves.
Then the more you hear it, the more your sub-conscious reminds you of the particular dislikes that people have for you. Every time you'd put on that striped tee-shirt, you ashamedly pull it back off, in fear of what others might think. I used to admire young children. They would dress as crazy as they could, nothing would match, and they would be proud, never failing to care what others thought. Society is screwed up that way. It turns the purest of souls to something dark.
As I reached our residence, I swiftly jogged up the stairs, before thrusting the key into the lock and letting myself in, then locking the door behind me again. The grandfather clock in the living room read four-fifty-seven, and I felt strangely satisfied by the burn in my calves. Inhaling deeply, I tried changing my breathing patterns from huffing for oxygen to slow intakes of fresh air. No doubt my parents were still asleep, I was up at an unusual hour too.
