Project Pom Pom

Chapter 7- You have as much as fashion sense as a hobo

Everyone says I look like my dad. I hate it when they say it. I never wanted anything from him including my features. My wavy brunette hair, sharp pointed face, my slightly tanned skin, eyes not to mention my height. The only features I inherited from my mom are my nose and lips. Not something I'm extremely happy about.

My reason for hating the way I look goes beyond my dislike for how plain I look compare to my mother. The main reason are my parents.

During her last few days when my mother was at her wits end she used to look at me and cry on and on for hours. I reminded her of my dad who did nothing to lessen her pain, instead he increased it ten folds. To this day I remember the look of absolute pain in her eyes and face as she cried for him. Every girl counts on her father being the one she could always count one. My father is the last person I would ever trust in this world.

Those incidents in my childhood effected me psychologically. In fact it effected me so deep that now I can't even look at the mirror for more than a minute without remembering my mom as she cried. I never dress up nicely as I have spectrophobia, which is the phobia of ones reflection. I may wear baggy jeans, weird t-shirts and unmatched conversed and hide my face behind those ridiculous thick glasses but I was okay with it. As long as I'm comfortable I'm okay.

So you can understand how reluctant I was when Rissa said that the next lesson would be on how to dress 'appropriately.' I pointed out that more than half of the girls on the cheer team wore outfits so low, short and tight that you could basically see everything. No need to imagine. She silenced me with her signature 'shut-up-or-else-I'll-make-you-run-fifty-laps' look. So silently and and of course reluctantly I trudged along with her to the mall.

I can't say that the last two weeks were pleasant. If I do then I'd be lying, big time. But there has been great improvements. I can now run at least ten laps around the field and not be that tired, I can perform a back flip and a somersault including all those arm movements. Rissa says I have potential but it's still up to the team.

"Dressing up nicely is a must for the cheerleaders.Every girl in the school looks up to us. We're like their role models so I don't want anything to interfere with that." She shot me a disdainful look. "I'm not going to be like Regina from mean girls and tell you what you need to wear and when you need to wear it. You'll buy the clothes that I approve. Other than that if I see you come to school wearing something as crappy as you usually do, then it'll be a hundred laps!" She warned.

"Hey! My clothes are just fine!" I protested.

A salesgirl nearby looked at me and chuckled then walked away. I stared at her shocked. My clothes are okay!

"Yeah sure. You have as much fashion sense as a hobo." Clarissa said as she shuffles through the rack of dresses.

I chose not to say another word seeing that it only leads to Rissa talking back and people laughing at me. Instead I look through the racks of t-shirts ignoring Rissa as she picks up one dress after the other to inspect them before either nodding in approval and keeping it aside or muttering some crap and keeping it back.

"Okay take these and change up. Let's see how you look in these." She said shoving about a million dresses in my hand.

I nearly toppled over with all these clothes. "Are you serious?" I asked Rissa after I managed to stand properly and not fall over making even a bigger fool of myself.

"Yes. Now go ahead and try those on. I'm going to see how many more clothes I can find that'll make you look like a human being and not a freak of nature." Rissa says before walking away to another rack of clothes.

I look at the clothes and sigh. Let's do it.

*~*~*~

"How's this?" I ask as I walk out of the changing room wearing a dark blue knee length dress. I twirl around a bit as Rissa analyzes it like she is solving the hardest math problem.