Only Once

Chapter Eight: First Impressions

Chapter Eight: First Impressions 

Erika pursed her lips as she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror at school. Tilting her head and viewing herself from different angles, she felt as if something wasn’t right with the way she looked. Something was simply…off.

Delicately sighing, Erika ran her fingers through her dark, wavy hair in an attempt to give it some volume before reaching into her bag and pulling out a tube of mascara. As she unfastened the tube, she wondered what she’d done to look and feel this bad.  

Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced over at Melanie who too was peering at her reflection. Mere centimeters away from the mirror, the other girl was intently focusing on her black rimmed, green eyes.

Erika felt a sigh of bitter escape from her as her eyes roamed down the taller girl’s body and she took in her slim figure and perky butt. She glanced down at her own body and felt a wave of resentment pass through her as she took in her rather chubby thighs and flabby stomach. Since she did no form of physical activities whatsoever, Erika had rather let herself go that past year. It made her sad.

“Have you heard?” Melanie suddenly asked, her green eyes meeting Erika’s blue ones through the mirror.

“Heard what?”

“You know!”

 “No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

 “About Mary Clarks…”

Erika impatiently sighed as she carefully applied mascara. “Oh my god you stupid ginger, just spit out what you’re trying to say.”

After the sharp words slid off her tongue and upon seeing her best friend’s face fall for a moment, Erika puckered her lips in penitence. She hadn’t meant for her comment to come out sounding so rude and blunt. In fact, she hadn’t expected to lash out with such an uncouth comment, period. Perhaps the yelling she had received by her mother that morning, for spilling some milk on the kitchen counter, was taking its toll on her.

Melanie shook her head slightly and quickly recovered. She was used to Erika’s unexplainable and sporadic outbursts.  

“She broke up with her boyfriend.”

“What?” Erika gasped and stopped applying mascara to turn to her best friend. “Why? They were like the perfect couple!”

Mary Clarke and her boyfriend were the typical high school sweethearts. Never being without the other, they were often found making out by other people’s lockers, walking each other to class and making out some more before parting as well holding back each other’s hair as they took drinks from the water fountain. Erika herself was still undecided whether it was cute or disturbing that they were so into each other.

Melanie shrugged. “I don’t know why. Like I mean they were almost as perfect as you and Chade. It’s a real shock!”

Erika didn’t say anything as she turned back to the mirror. Suddenly there was only one thing on her mind at that moment: Chade.

In fact, recently he was the only thing on her mind. She felt as if they were drifting apart. They were talking and texting far less than before. Not to mention that Chade always seemed rather annoyed by her presence and they were frequently getting in arguments. To add on, the arguments were about the stupidest things. For instance, that very morning at Erika’s house, the pair had argued over the shirt that Chade was wearing. She called it repulsive and ordered him to change out of it. He, however, denied and insisted that it looked fine. Their little dispute ended with Chade stomping out of the house and telling Erika to find her own way of getting to school. She ended up arriving to class ten minutes late as she had to get her father to drive her.