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"It'll be okay, Bella. I should have never made you do—"
I drowned out the sound of someone's voice with the sound of me puking.
"I'm so sorry."
My senses came rushing back to me for a couple of seconds.
I was on my knees in front of a toilet, my hair being held up by something. My throat and nose was burning and my stomach felt like hell. There were tears coming out of my hot, swollen eyes, but I wasn't crying. There was a buzz of background music, and it felt like someone was pounding the back of my head with a hammer.
I didn't even know who nor where the voice was coming from. I was dizzy, I felt like I was floating in space, my mouth was dry and all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn't even remember what I did about thirty seconds ago—
I leaned over the white bowl again, heaved, and it all came rushing back to me.
* HOURS EARLIER *
I leaned over the white tub and was attacked by Alice's hands.
"Hold still! Keep your head down!" she scolded me. I squeezed my eyes shut when I started to hear water running. I soon saw the little stream head it's way toward the drain. I eyed it curiously.
"Why did you make me do this?" I asked her, but I was sure I was asking myself the same question.
"Because your hair looks so much better...well...not blonde," she cheered, dunking my head further down into the tub. I heard the shower head detach and saw the hot stream of water in front of me. I gulped. I started to feel a line of hair color ooze down the side of my face towards my cheek. Alice had the gun in her hand, and I was about to get shot.
I refused to let anybody mess with the pigment of my hair ever since I first colored it blonde. I remember Alice giving me shit the day I did it. She said I was turning into a female Slim Shady. Strangely, I suppose that fit me well.
I wasn't always into girly shit like Alice. Well, I'm not still. I always let my hair air dry, I wouldn't do anything to it or put any kind of chemical in it for any reason, I wouldn't color it, and I wouldn't wear any cosmetics. Don't even get me started on clothing.
I mean, I still let my hair air dry and refuse to put hair spray in it. The only time that would happen is when Alice decides to take over me and shape my hair the way she feels like it should look like for that specific night. One night it would look like a styled-yet-teased mess, another night it would look like I used some kind of foreign silky hair conditioner without one flaw.
Alice had a way of doing a lot of things without having much knowledge of it. She does hair like she's been to a cosmetology academy for years and hasn't left.
Well, there's really no turning back now, I thought. Well, as soon as the color hit my hair, there was really no turning back, technically.
I gnashed my teeth together as soon as I felt the hot water hit my hair. The gun was fired.
"Hold still, damn you!" Alice said, smacking me lightly with her fingertips on top of my wet head. I flinched and squeezed my eyes tighter.
I continuously spit out water that collected on my lips, afraid to taste the toxic hair color. I groaned, trying to keep my aching neck up so my face didn't hit off the side of the tub from Alice's scrubbing. Alice giggled.
"Having fun?" she asked lightly.
I gave her a sarcastic thumbs up and she giggled again.
After she was done assaulting my head, I stood up, and, after a huge head rush, rung out my hair and cracked my neck. Oh God, did it feel good.
"Ew! I hate that," she said, jumping up and down. She flicked me in the nose, her perfect French manicure scratching it. "Bad Bella."
"What? I needed that," I said in my defense, wrinkling my stinging nose. "You almost broke my neck."
"Well, doing that sounds like you're breaking your neck," she said. "You know that can make your neck fat, right?"
I snorted. "Yeah, and eating raw cookie dough can give you worms."
She pursed her lips and squinted her eyes at me. I stuck my tongue out at her.
Alice had a very wide variety of facial expressions, even though her face oddly remained the same. It was difficult to explain. Her face itself would be the same, but you could so easily determine her expression at the same time. It was really weird.
"Well, get on your knees, I'm not done with you," she said.
My eyes widened. "Spoken like a true pornstar, Alice."
"Oh, just get down there!" she said, pushing my head down. She quickly put conditioner in my hair, scrubbed a little, and rinsed with cool water. My hair felt silky and knot-free afterward. I ran my fingers through the thick waves, and then realized that I didn't know what color she dyed it.
Oh no.
"Alice, what color is my hair?" I asked, feeling a little panicked. If it was a darker shade of blonde, maybe I would hug her. If it was white, I might punch her. If it was anything that wasn't a natural hair color such as a neon green, I might kill her.
She tsked me and folded her arms, her bottom lip twisted to the side as she huffed at me through her nose. "It's your natural color, silly. You won't even notice it grow out. It matches perfectly."
I didn't know if I should have sighed in relief or be upset. I liked my blonde hair. I don't know why I liked it, but I did. Something just clicked inside of me when I first colored it blonde. I had a couple compliments on it, but I didn't know if it was just to be nice or if it was sincere.
"Your welcome," she said, a little smirk on her face. Damned evil pixie.
She blow dried it on a cool setting, brushing it as she went through the thick layers. I told her I would do it myself, but she insisted on drying it. I was like her little life-sized Barbie doll.
She sat me down and gently brushed my hair afterward, taking each bunch tenderly in her hands and sliding the brush though them like my hair was royalty. She liked my hair a little too much. If we ever went out, she would do her hair in a flash and then take her time doing mine, even when I told her a thousand times that I could do it myself. I was her little toy.
I almost had to beg her to let me dress myself at least. She agreed with a sad pout and went to do her makeup, which took her two minutes. She was making me go out with her and her friend Rosalie tonight, meeting up with Rosalie's boyfriend Emmett and his adopted brothers, Jasper and Edward. We were going to pick up my long-time high school friend Jane and her boyfriend Alec, along with their roommate, Tyler. He was friends with Alec for years and, after his parents kicked him out, Alec decided to let him move in. Rosalie enjoyed to pick on Tyler for not having a girlfriend and being twenty-two, so they were going to pick him up while I picked up Jane and Alec. We really needed to invest in one of those rapist vans to haul everybody back and forth to the bar.
I was strictly avoiding every mirror in the house to avoid looking at my blonde-less hair. I also really didn't care what I looked like. I didn't need to impress anybody. I wasn't like Alice, dressing up nice and trying to impress Jasper. I also wasn't like Tyler and dressing like a bad boy one night and a gangster the other, trying to attract a full crowd of girls all at once. Tyler was also one of the DJ's at the bar we were going to, but that still didn't justify the way he dressed.
I grabbed my new Legend of Zelda clip-wallet from my room (which I adored) and checked to make sure everything was in it, grabbed my keys and started to head out the door.
"Bella, where do you think you're going?" I heard Alice say suddenly from behind me.
I jumped and turned around. "To the car?" I said.
"No you aren't." She held up a mirror in front of my face. I shielded my eyes.
"No! I don't want to look," I said into my hands. I wanted the memory of my blonde hair to be in my head forever. I wanted that to be the last thing I saw.
"Come on, Bella, I didn't bust my ass for nothing," she whined. I sighed into my hands and gave up. I peeked through my fingers at first, and then completely removed my hands from my eyes.
Surely enough, the old chocolate waves were cascading down my shoulders, a small red tint shining inside of each delicate strand. I hadn't seen that color in about a year and a half. I didn't really care to remember it, either. It brought back bad memories.
I grimaced at the scar that was still strongly apparent on the corner of my mouth. A permanent grimace.
I was actually looking at the length of my hair, rather than the hideous color. I grabbed a specific piece of hair on the back of my head, feeling it's length as well. It was still very shorter than the others. I didn't know how long it was going to take to grow out, but it was sure as hell taking it's damn time doing it. What really irked me was the red tone that was visible again. It shined through my hair, distorted in the waves, resembling fire. Fire...
I shook my head, flinging memories away. I half-smiled, looking at her.
"Thank you, Alice," I said, trying to sound sincere. "Not a spot of blonde left." I said the last part a little bitterly.
"Oh come on, Bella, it looks cute!" she said, grinning from ear to ear.
Cute? Eh.
"Let's go," I pleaded. She chuckled and grabbed her keys as well.
Jane lived in some back roads in a more country, farm-ish location, but that didn't mean that they're house wasn't nice as hell. After her parents died, they put the house under her name as a wish in her mom's will. The house was already paid off, so they only had to pay utilities and things like that. It was way nicer than living in an apartment like Alice and I.
I pulled up in the driveway, admiring the solar lights that led up the side, revealing sleeping flowers in a sea of mulch. Jane didn't like cleaning up the house or decorating, but she planted in memory of her mom. Her mother enjoyed gardening. In the spring, I would come up here and always get greeted by a smiling Mrs. Hadley, waving at me with a small hand shovel and a handful of soil.
I beeped the horn twice and after a couple of minutes of waiting, I parked the car. I could faintly hear loud music coming from inside the house. I knocked on her dark oak door, the finish on it beginning to peel off. There wasn't an answer for a few seconds, so I knocked harder and finally got an answer.
"IT'S OPEN!" I heard a female voice yell.
I widened my eyes and sighed as I opened the door. Then my eyes widened further at the sight I was witnessing.
Jane was dancing on top of her wooden coffee table in the middle of her living room, moving her body to the beat of the music. She had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Tyler and Alec were following suit with beers and cigarettes, watching her intently. Their eyes were already bloodshot and squinted, smiles plastered on their faces.
"What...what the fuck?" I said, laughing. Tyler began to laugh too, standing up and walking over to me.
"Hey Bell," he said, giving me a sloppy hug. I gingerly returned the favor and gently pushed him off me.
"Those smell nasty," I said, looking at his cigarette. He took a puff of it and shrugged. "Want some?"
"Sure, why not," I said, enjoying the offer of some nicotine. I took it and followed him to the couch, flicking the ask off the cherry and taking a nice long drag.
As soon as I inhaled, I coughed up a lung.
Tyler and Alec began to laugh, tears coming out of their devil eyes. "Wh—what's s-so funn-ny?" I said in between coughs. "Ack! What kind of square is this?"
They stopped laughing suddenly. They gave each other a look for a few seconds, and burst out laughing once more.
"What?!" I said, watching Jane puffing on her cigarette and sipping her Bud.
"It's a special kind of tobacco," Alec managed to say through his fit. I looked at it for a moment and tried to take another hit. I held the smoke in for a minute as I inspected the small roll of paper. There was something off about it. It wasn't like any cigarette I've ever smoked. I looked at the end that I was inhaling from and scanned it, watching a small trail of smoke come out of the end. Then it hit me.
There wasn't a filter.
It wasn't a cigarette.
My mouth opened wide, smoke slowly pouring out. Tyler and Alec lost their shit.
"What..." I tried to say something, but then I started to feel dizzy.
"What's wrong, Bella? Can't handle the kush?" Tyler said, taking the blunt off of me and taking a long hit of it.
I couldn't reply because I had gotten hit with a ton of bricks.
All I saw was a swirl of colors. It looked like I was in a tunnel that kept moving in circles. Or...something. I couldn't think. I couldn't...do anything.
Where was I again?
Jane hopped from the coffee table and turned the music down. I could still see the music in the air. My ears were full of bells from the lack of sound.
"What are you guys doing?" Jane said, eyeing Tyler and Alec. She looked at me. I looked at her. She looked at me. I looked at her. We were looking.
"Is she high?" she asked, her eyes squinting. Alec and Tyler looked at each other, trying to figure out what to say. They didn't say anything—they just began laughing again.
She grunted. "Assholes." She sat next to me on the couch and eyed me up and down. I just looked. And looked. And looked...
"You're a one-hitter-quitter," she said, smiling. She kept looking into my eyes and smiling. "Dude, you're so fucked up."
I don't know why, but I started laughing. And I couldn't stop. I couldn't feel anything. I became weak and dropped my head on Jane's lap, laughing into her legs. She started giggling too. At this point, everybody was laughing. There was not a drop of sadness in the room. My brain was being bounced around and played with, and my heart was a big ball of sunshine.
I felt a tingle on my leg and started to twitch. It tickled so bad. I giggled and kept twitching.
"What are you doing?" Jane laughed.
"I don't know!" I said, still twitching.
"You're phone's ringing, man," Tyler said. He reached over Alec and picked my phone up from my pocket and answered it. I sighed when the tickling stopped. "What's good, man?" he said. "It's Tyler, dawg. Bella's on another level right now...You'll see why when she gets to her crib...Hell yeah we're coming!...Oh, well that makes sense." He laughed. "Well, we'll be on our way shortly then...You're coming here? Alright, that's cool then. Alright. Peace." He hung up.
"Who was that?" I said, still twitching but not feeling like I'm being tickled. I don't know why he talked like that, but it was funny, so I didn't care.
"None of yo' business, Miss Two-Hit-Shit."
Jane got a kick out of that.
"Well, it looks like I'm driving," she declared, picking my pockets for my car keys. "You dumbass, you left them in your car again."
"I didn't...I don't think I am," I said. I was still twitching.
"Don't think you're what? And stop twitching, you're freaking me out," she added with a giggle.
"...I don't know. I don't think. I can't."
"Man, she's not thinking at all, leave her alone," Alec chuckled.
GUESS WHO'S BACK!
Yeah yeah, it's not that exciting. I haven't touched this website in over two years. I hope everybody read my author's note posted on all of my original stories. I'm going to keep them up for a while, but after a few weeks I'm completely taking them down. They're going to be stripped, reset, rewritten. New plot line, different characters, different setup. If you don't like it, suck it. :D
But, I would love to hear from you guys on how the new start of this is. In case you haven't figured it out if you're a reader of mine, this is a rewrite of Hungover. I'll update Hungover again to let everybody know. I don't feel like deleting all the chapters and then posting again and having to rename it and all that shit I don't have time for. :D
Anyway, lemme know what you guys think. Was it bad, was it good, let me know! :D I take all kinds of criticism.
Irrevocably Obsessed