2002
By now, I had some more money in the bank. I was earning little more than I began with, and only by exercise could I stand up throughout a shift of cutting hair.
Still, I hated talking to clients. It was only a necessity. It drained me like exercise no longer did, and naps on the weekends were preferred to the gym, until my younger brother's girlfriend rapped on my front door and round the side of the house to my bedroom window until I woke up.
It was a pain every day to notice that my older brother, having moved into his own place with his girlfriend, paid all his bills and then some. It was a hurt in my stomach that my younger brother, driving a sports cars, could take his girlfriend on trips to LA and New York and even Helsinki.
I knew plenty of my brother's friends who worked at a merchandise store or a chemist or at a mechanic's, who only by their bar tab being paid kept them from defaulting on their credit cards.
I did not expect to be the runt of the family. And still - and still - the world kept moving on.
My younger brother had joined with some pranksters to make a movie. He drove round to my place personally to rap on the door, and offer a plane ticket and dates for the red-carpet premiere.
"You gotta go," said he, glancing over my shoulder at his place, "Why'd you move here? This place sucks."
I refused him, but he held the door open.
"Tell ya what," he smacked his chewing gum, "You go, and I'll sponsor your next race. You win, and I'll give you a cash prize."
I folded my arms. There could be no denying my need for savings. But it was in me to prove to him, and others regardless, that I could do it.
The mall was a horror. Buying clothes was always difficult, for twitching that changing room curtain to face the mirror always made me sick.
Yet here I sat, in the limo winding up the road, and the flash of the cameras on the tinted windows looking out. My family wore their best, and the cackled laughter of the other cast members could be easily recognised when my younger brother got out of the limo first.
The red carpet was full of litter, and the metal barriers barely kept the paparazzi back. I kept my gaze on my mom, and then my dad when he blocked my view, and all of my body shook. I pretended I was underwater tied by rocks and forced to move until I could reach scissors and a ladder.
This was the worst idea I had fallen prey to in living memory, and being stared at, being judged, I could only scowl and stare ahead.
It was when we had to pose for a group photo. I stood back, even when my mom insisted I come near, even when my brother gestured. I followed them all into the cinema, and three hours later, needed no justification for my disgust.
I had already lived some of it, and needed not to be reminded of it.
The limo dropped my parents and me at the hotel, but my younger brother's girlfriend held me back.
"This is once in a lifetime," she pleaded, "Come on."
I was scared, but she had been my rock, and so I waved my parents goodbye. The limo took us not to a penthouse suite as I assumed, but to the outskirts where a wrap party was being held. There were half pipes and a swimming pool and music by someone called Andrew W.K.
The atmosphere was buzzing, the dark of night, the crowd buzzing. My younger brother's girlfriend got lost in the crowd to find one another, and tentatively, I sipped beer and wiped some of it off my dress when a couple stumbled into me.
I felt so out of place. But here, where it was dark, where all jived to the music, I could pretend myself unseen; and that, for the first time in a long while, made me dance along until my cheeks ached to smile.