This is my first story published on WattPad, the beginning is a little slow, but it picks up a bit in the next few chapters. Please comment and tell me what you think! :)
Chapter 1
"No Jen! I don't want to go. Owen will be there." I mumble, face down on my bed. After my best friend had eagerly burst open the door to my bedroom dragging on about how I need to be more social. I can't believe my mom actually let her in the house this early in the morning.
"Oh shut up Rory. You know you need to go! What else are you going to do on Halloween? Hand out candy to the neighbor kids? BO-RING." She says in a singsong voice and rips open the burgundy curtains on my window, bathing me in daylight.
"I don't know, I was planning to." I groan. I hear her open my closet and begin to tear through my clothes. I feel an article of clothing fall on my back as she tosses unapproved clothing behind her without a care. I roll over onto my side and prop my head up on my hand. I examine what was thrown at me. A horrid green Christmas sweater my aunt gave me last year.
"You know, maybe Owen wouldn't have broken up with you if your clothes weren't so ugly." My friend says.
"Insensitive much?" I ask and rub my eyes, sitting up.
"I wasn't insensitive...I was just...brutally honest." She says, then pauses, a hanger in her hand with a sundress from two years ago on it. She spins around to look at me. "Okay, fine. It was insensitive. But it's been like...two days. That's long enough to get over a guy." She says.
I roll my eyes. Jen with her tumbling red curls, with not a hair out of place, and bright gold eyes always seemed to bounce from guy to guy without a care in the world. She was tall and skinny with perfect skin, but not a freckle in sight. I feel a tiny pang of jealousy that Jen can forget about a boyfriend as easily as she could flirt her way out of a speeding ticket.
"Jen," I say. "Owen wasn't some guy I just hooked up with at some club. I dated him for seven months."
"Exactly! I don't know how you could stand staying with the same person for that long! It's unheard of." She says, she picks up a pair of worn boots from my closet and looks at them closely, before hurling them across the room, hitting the wall, and falling to the floor.
"It's not unheard of. It's called monogamy." I say and shake my black hair out of its messy bun.
"Where's the fun in that?" She stops going through my closet and instead moves to my dresser. "Staying with one person for so long must be torturous. It's like only drinking water for the rest of your life. You need to throw a little alcohol in there for some fun."
Jen knows how I don't drink, I find it needless and unproductive. "Jen, love isn't a competition." I say.
"Oh yes it is! And let me clue you in on something. You're losing." She says and yanks open another drawer on my dresser.
I flop back on my bed and close my eyes, not wanting to bicker any longer.
"Oh no you don't!" Jen complains and yanks on my wrist, pulling me up. "It's official. You have no attractive clothing. We're going shopping and we're going to find something cute for you to wear. And you will go to that party tonight, and you will make Owen jealous, and you will like it dammit! Now slip on some shoes and we're driving to the mall."
"I haven't even eaten yet." I say, stalling her.
"I don't care! We'll go stop at one of those greasy fast food places on the way." She says.
There's no use arguing with her. Jen always gets her way. I slink out of bed and slip on a pair of brown flip flops. These will look just fabulous with my black sweat pants and stained white tank top.
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"Okay, so we have the outfit. Now how are we going to convince our moms to let us stay out partying until 3 am?" I ask, trying to strike a hole in Jen's plan.
"Oh, that's easy." She says and digs her Motorola out of her purse, she presses a few buttons, before holding the phone to her ear.
"What are you doi-" She cuts me off before I can finish my sentence as she waves her free hand at me.
"Shh! I'm calling your mom! So don't tal- Oh hi Mrs. Bright! This is Jen. We're having a great time at the mall, thanks for asking. No, we haven't bought anything yet." She says and eyes the shopping bags hanging in the crook of my elbow. "Well, I was wondering if Rory could sleep over at my house tonight? You know, girl stuff, we'll probably make cookies and watch Legally Blonde while we give candy to little trick-or-treaters." Jen lets out a burst of fake laughter. "You're too funny! Okay, thanks, I'll let her know, bye."
I glance over at Jen as she drops her phone in her purse. "What about your mom?" I ask as I push open a glass door that leads to the parking lot.
"She's spending the night with one of her boyfriends. I think it's Richard this time." Jen and I reach her car and she unlocks it. "So she won't care if you sleep over."
I climb into the passenger seat and set the shopping bags on the backseat. "I forgot to tell you I like your new car. Was it a birthday present?"
"Yeah, it was another 'Sorry I was out of town on your birthday and you had to stay at your hooker mom's house' birthday present from my dad." Jen pulls out of the parking space. "Those kind of presents are always my favorite! Last year he-" A car pulls out in front of us as she adjust her makeup in the mirror while she talks.
"Jen! Stop, there's a car!" I shout. She slams on the brakes as she swerves out of the way.
"Good call." Jen says.
She has always been a terrible driver, so I was used to it. In fact, with her loud voice and 'trashy' outfits, I'm amazed my mom let's me hang out with her. My mom's a psychologist, so she's always saying all this intellectual mumbo-jumbo. She claims that I need a wild and boy-crazy friend like 'Jennifer' to get me out of my shell but that she's also a bad influence. She thinks that I can 'help' Jen with her problems. I think that she just drags me into them.
When we reach Jen's house, she punches in the security code to her garage and we walk in casually. We run up a flight of stairs and into her bedroom where I step daintily around a thong in the doorway, where as she, behind me, nudges it behind a floor lamp with her foot.
"Sit down on the bed and I'll get my makeup." She commands and dashes to her bathroom, which is connected to her bedroom.
I lean back on her bed, but quickly sit back up when I notice a pair of black boxers peeking out from under the rustled covers. I grab a makeup brush off her nightstand and ease the underwear out on the tip, as she comes back in, I wave the boxers in the air, still dangling on the tip of the makeup brush.
She blushes when she sees them. "Sorry about that, I thought I cleaned everything up from last night. Did I tell you? A new family moved in across the street. And they have a hot son our age, I could hook you two up if you want, but I don't know if that would be awkward, because I already hooked up with him last night if you know what I mean." She grabs the boxers and drops them into a trashcan by her doorway, before returning to the bed and dumping out the contents of her makeup bag onto the comforter. "Take your hair out of that ponytail." She complains. I slip my dark hair out and put the hair tie on my wrist. "Now close your eyes, and let me do my magic."
After what seems like hours of Jen smearing eyeliner around my eyes and running a curling iron through my hair, I hear her step back. "Okay, open!"
I tentatively open my eyes, they feel almost heavy with makeup. I look up and into the hand mirror she's holding in front of me. I freeze as I look at the girl in the mirror. It takes a minute for me to connect to my brain that the girl I'm seeing is me. I barely recognize myself.
My hazel eyes look brighter, forcing the green to outshine the brown, and they are framed by thick dark lashes, curled to perfection and coated with mascara. I reach up to touch them, to see if they are fake or not, but Jen swats my hand away. Jen has obviously gone for the smoky eye look I notice, dark eye shadow and eyeliner that wings out from the corners of my eyes, contrasting with my pale skin. My lips are covered in a sheen of gloss and my black hair hangs in curls down to my chest.
"I hope I didn't go overboard, I know how you don't like to wear makeup. I tried to make your face look more angular, you know, highlighting your cheekbones and all, but then I realized how cute your freckles look on your cheeks, so I tried not to cover them, so then I-" I block out Jen's voice. She had added silver dangly earrings to compliment the look. I look startlingly older, yet attractive. I never really like to think of myself like that. I guess because I've never really considered myself that pretty, with Jen being my best friend, I have always felt that people compare me to her. But Jen...Jen had made me look beautiful.
"Thank you so much!" I say and reach out to hug her, but stop myself before I smudge my makeup.
I think I must have startled her, because it takes her a few seconds to register what I said. "No problem, you'd do the same for me, not that I'd let you. No offense, but I think we have already established you don't have any style. I mean, when I was looking through your closet I'm almost positive I found a sweatshirt that had to be 4 sizes too big for you! No guy is going to be checking you out in that. Which reminds me, onto clothing." She grabs my arm and leads me to her closet.
I wince as I examine the skimpy articles of clothing, shirts that are cut so low, you can see your belly button in them, dresses so tight that you could suffocate in them, and skirts so short, anyone passing by could see your entire ass. You might as well not be wearing a skirt at all.
"Please don't put me in something too revealing." I plead.
Jen stopped shifting through her closet and turned to give me one of her 'oh please' looks. "Like there's anything in here you wouldn't find 'too revealing'. God, you're such a prude Rory. Besides, I'm looking for me, not for you. Your clothes are still in the bag, remember?" She points to the bedspread where we had left the shopping bags.
"Right..." I mumble. I never even got to look at the clothing Jen picked out for me because she sent me to go buy us smoothies in the mall food court.
I peer into the bag and see something black. I close it quickly. "Jen!" I complain. "I can't believe you're making me wear black! I'll look like a 'Goth' with my dark hair and pale skin."
"Don't get your thong in a twist." She says, but I interrupt her.
"I don't wear thongs." I retort.
"Oh but you will! You're going to need to in the slinky dress I'm putting you into. Panty lines are never attractive Rory. And you won't look Goth." She says and takes off her shirt.
I tentatively pull the slip of fabric out of the bag, pushing the thong laying on top of it, to the side, the dress looks small enough to fit on a Pomeranian.
I pull on it, at least it was stretchy, skin tight, but stretchy. A closer examination of the dress, if you could call it that, reveals it to be strapless. "I didn't bring a strapless bra." I object.
"You don't need one, it has a built in push up." She reply as she slips on a one sleeved dress the color of smoke and covered in sequins over her body. Damn. She had thought of everything, that girl's a whole lot smarter than I give her credit for.
After changing into the outfit, I emerge from Jen's bathroom to find her applying makeup with one hand, while adjusting the strap on her heels with the other. "Jen, you look like a hooker." I say simply and sit on her bed, I try to pull the fabric down past my butt, almost an impossible feat. "And I look like a whore."
"That's the idea." She replies as she applies her third coat of eyeliner.
"To look like walking high school STD's?" I ask innocently.
She pauses, as if considering it, then drops her eyeliner and begins applying lip stain. "No, to look like a hot mess, all while making Owen a jealous fool."
"It's not me though Jen, he probably won't even recognize me." I say. I tug at the end of the 'dress'.
She glances over at me. "Oh good, you took my advice. See? Doesn't your ass look better with no panty lines?" I feel blush creep up on my face. "And...there." She says and places her lip stain onto her nightstand along with the handheld mirror. "Now all I have to do is get you in a pair of hooker heels and we're good to go."
"Wait, Jen?" I say.
She turns around from searching through her closet floor for heels. "Hmm?" She asks.
"Didn't you say it was a Halloween party?" I ask, eyeing our outfits.
"Oh yeah! I almost forgot," She turns back around and grabs what look like two headbands, black and grey, off her dresser. She tosses me the black one. "Put on that, and hold on one second."
I take a closer look at the black headband, only to find that they are cat ears with little pink triangle centers. I hesitantly place them on my head and when I look up I am greeted by Jen smearing a patch of pink lipstick on my nose. "What's that for?" I ask.
"Just hold still." She says and draws three lines on both my cheeks in black eyeliner. Cat whiskers. I think, when she turns around in matching costume makeup. Oh gosh.