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I felt bad for him, orphaned at such a young age, but he’d managed alright. At least he hadn’t ended up in the foster system I thought as I walked down the street to his house.
It was cold, and I had on a gray knit cap, black wool pea coat, a gray scarf, over my jeans and a dark gray sweater. I stuck my hands in my pocket as I walked on, lost in my thoughts. His life could have been so different if his parents hadn’t been rich. I’d gone to school with foster kids, heard their horror stories, and knew they could have just as easily been him.
Even my own upbringing would have been different if my parents had been rich when my dad passed away. We wouldn’t have had to scrabble so much, and Mom wouldn’t have had to work so hard. She could have spent more time at home, with me, if things had been different.
It wasn’t that I resented my parents for the poverty we’d endured, I just thought it would have been nice if Mom had been able to have an easier time of it. She’d worked so hard to raise me, and now to keep me in this really awesome school. I had let my head run away from me a bit lately, but I knew I had to get back to it. Mom and my family were counting on me to do well.
If I wanted to get into the neuroscience program when it was time to do my master’s, I’d have to stay on the ball too. I had just reached the steps to his house when a car sped down the road, and then something was launched at me. “Stop lying about Rachel, you skank!”
I felt something cold and hard hit me in several places, and then something oozy rolled down my face. The car sped away before I could really notice anything about it other than the fact that it was red. My face stung from the impact of whatever it was, and I screamed when I pulled my fingers away from my face. They were covered in something that looked a lot like blood.
“What the fuck?” Keith called out as he came out of the house and looked at me. “Celia? What’s happened?”
He pulled me to the steps and settled me on the bottom as he looked me over. His fingers moved tentatively along my cheekbone and pushed away whatever was lobbed onto my face. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I heard the car, felt something hit me and somebody screamed something at me about Rachel. I don’t know what’s happening, Keith.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital, come on.” He pulled me up and he led me to the car I’d seen so many times but never really paid a lot of attention to. This was one of those neighborhoods with car brands and names I’d never heard of before. His car was some kind of Italian car, with plush leather and expensive gadgets, but I didn’t pay any of that any mind. I was trying my best to wipe the stuff off me with my scarf, so it wouldn’t get on the seats of the interior.
“Don’t worry about the car, darling, just try to get that stuff off you, even if you have to sling it in the floor.”
I saw my hands were stained with whatever it was. Also, I thought the smell was familiar, but couldn’t quite place it. Keith drove quickly and walked me into the hospital when we arrived. I was called back after a short time, considering how many people were in the waiting room. A nurse took my vitals, someone else took my insurance information. A short while later, a doctor came in.
“Let’s have a look at you.” He examined me, felt some of the goop that was still in my scarf, and looked at my hair. I grew concerned when he kept pulling at strands that had started to dry. “I think I know what this is.”
“What?” I asked, my brain still on autopilot but coming awake again. “What is it?”
“I think it’s hair dye. My wife uses it, but don’t tell her I told you.” The man said, his bald head and reassuring face somehow calmed her, even as she thought about having hair dye all over my body. “I think your hair might look weird for a bit, and it might take some scrubbing to get it off your skin, but I think that’s all it is. If you haven’t reacted by now, you shouldn’t have an allergic reaction. Let me send some down to the lab, and we’ll check, but I’m fairly certain that’s what this is.”
Great, I thought as the doctor left the room, now I’m going to have speckles of red in my hair. And because it was so light, I expected the red would either be intense or an odd shade of pink. I wasn’t really sure how it worked, because I’d never used it.
My aunt did though, and that’s when I remembered where I’d smelled it before. When she sat near me as she waited for the dye to work, I could smell ammonia and perfumes. That’s what it was. Some asshole had doused me in the stuff!
“Why don’t you try to rinse it off your hair in the bathroom, before it gets any worse, Celia. I’ll be back in a bit.” Keith kissed a bare spot of skin on my forehead and walked out of the small room I was in.
I looked at myself in the mirror once I was in the bathroom and wanted to cry. I had streaks of red down my face, on my forehead, and all over my hair. It wasn’t going to be pretty. And I barely had any hair left to cut off now! I let the tears mix with the water from the tap as I ducked my head down to the sink.
Why did this keep happening to me?
Rachel cut my hair and I would have thought that she would have been proud about that, but it was as if she wanted to hurt me even more. She was doing an excellent job of it. I needed to be strong since letting her know that her stunts had gotten to me, wasn’t going to make things better.
No, just make them worse.
That I didn’t know how to deal with this situation was my problem but I was sure that Becky would help me out. Especially, if I told her how bad things are getting. She was my only friend on campus. Even if I had treated her badly that one time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Colin
“Yeah, she’s going to be fine,” I said to my brothers through a Facebook group call, outside the hospital. “They’ve just fucked her hair up. Fucking again.”
I heard both of my brothers swear and knew we had to do something. But we didn’t want to do too much, not until Celia knew about all of us. Not just Keith. We had a lot of explaining to do, I knew, which was why I hadn’t really wanted to play this game. Celia had changed my reluctance to eagerness, however, and now I didn’t want to let her go any more than Grant or Keith did.
