CHAPTER ONE
Willow
“Nope.”
I step away from my roomie/quickly-becoming-best-friend, Skylar, with my hands in the air and my nose screwed up. I could never be accused of being overly girly, but even this is below me.
“I don’t care if we’re sitting in my loungeroom back home sipping Milo through Tim-Tams, you’ll never catch me wearing anything remotely like that.”
Skylar’s brow cocks in utter confusion.
“You’ll understand when we backpack Australia during summer break. You’ll be wearing thongs on your feet and slapping vegemite on your toast in no time.”
The bullshit expression I’m wearing jumps onto Skylar’s face. “You’ll never sell me on vegemite. The thongs though. . .” A frisky wink finalizes her sentence. No matter how many times I tell her thongs aren’t floss for her backside, she doesn’t believe me.
After slathering a second layer of orange glitter on her cheeks, Skylar lifts her blue eyes to mine. “Come on, Willow. You’re dying to show me all the great things Australia has to offer, yet you’re unwilling to get on board with an American tradition. It’s Showdown Saturday. You can’t get more traditional than this.”
“I can appreciate tradition without allthat.” I wave my hand at her navy blue and orange-painted face, super-tight 69er jersey, and giant No. 1 foam hand.
I wish her visible getup was the end of her craziness. Unfortunately, I saw the streamers she stuffed into my backpack when she thought I wasn’t looking. Skylar is what we normal folks like to call “football obsessed.” If she could lift her leg above her head, I have no doubt her fanfare would extend past the bleachers. Alas, the squats she does at precisely five o’clock every morning have nothing to do with agility, and everything to do with the latest curvy butt craze.
Unlike me, Skylar doesn’t have natural curves. Bar the areas she pays careful consideration to, she’s tiny. Her belly doesn’t hold the rolls mine do; her arms don’t wobble when she waves goodbye, nor does she wear elastic-waisted pants so her backside can squeeze into her favorite pair.
I have what is known as an hourglass figure: big breasts, tiny waist, and large hips. My grannie thinks my “womanly figure” makes me classically beautiful. I think my curves are annoying beacons that attract the wrong type of man.
Men these days want it all: a pretty face, large breasts, and a bootylicious ass on a petite frame. Even the drastic advancements in mankind haven’t clued them in on the fact that the likelihood of a woman having both a booty and a tiny waist is virtually impossible.
Corsets went out of fashion in the 1900s. . .along with most men’s realistic beliefs on an ideal woman.
Snagging a throw cushion from the couch, I take its spot before using it to hide the bulge my stomach gets any time I sit. “Maybe I should stay here? I have exams at the end of the week and a recital coming up.”
I love the kids I teach hip-hop to every Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning. Their mothers. . . not so much. Skylar and I reside in a region of America with more trophy wives per capita than any other place. God forbid the occasions their children’s sporting endeavors clash with their nannies’ one week of holidays they’re approved to take every three or so years.
When I started teaching, I never thought it would be the parents’ cells I’d be confiscating mid-lesson. Their eyes shoot daggers at me every time I enter the room, but poodle perms, botched manicures, and which housewife has a new set of boobies can wait until they’re outside my dance studio walls. I may not teach the classical ballet they wish their daughters would learn, but the values I instill in my students are still important.
Skylar clicks her fingers in front of my face, breaking me from my mommy-hating trance. “Nope. Nuh-uh. You’re not doing this again, Will. You chickened out of the last game.”
“I had the measles!” I throw my hands into the air.
She glares at me, but I can’t take her seriously with all she’s got going on. She looks like Bozo the Clown, but instead of a tear drop on her cheek, she has the number of her favorite player scrawled there in thick navy ink.
“My mother was dilated to ten centimeters but instructed not to push until the final whistle was called.”
“Because only an insane man would pretend his wife wasn’t in labor so he could watch the playoffs,” I murmur under my breath.
Pretending I didn’t speak, Skylar continues, “She scheduled her contractions to arrive only during commercials so neither she or my father would miss a single moment.”
I gag, sickened she thinks her parents have an ideal marriage.
“And. . .” She pauses, building the suspense as if I haven’t heard this story a million times since I commenced studies in the US three years ago. “Not only did the game go down in history as one of the greatest sporting events of all time, our team won.”
“All because your momma closed her legs?”
Even though I’m asking a question, Skylar ignores it, preferring to continue with her somewhat obsessive rant on how American football is why God created mankind.
“That’s the part you don’t understand, Willow. This is bigger than anything you’ve ever experienced.” She points to her cheek. “This is not paint on my cheek.”
“It isn’t?”
