Catching Red Eyes

“You look like shit, girl. Did you get hit by a bus?”

“Thanks, Laurie,” I said to my roommate.

We were both in our bathroom and I was trying to do something with my hair after washing it but it was the same long, straight mess.

“What are you doing over there?” Laurie asked.

“Trying to…ugh! Do something with this mess!”

“Come here.”

Laurie sat me down on the toilet and pulled out a comb and her hair stuff. I sat and let her work. Laurie was attending NYU for business after getting her cosmology license. She wanted to open her own salon in New York City when she graduated. The things I’ve seen her do with hair and makeup was crazy. I got to be her hair model a few times but I read the entire time.

“So, let me ask you something…you never do your hair. What’s so special about today?”

“Oh, well, I just wanted to see if I could do anything different with it.” She eyed me
suspiciously but dropped it.

“Why are you up so early anyways? Your class isn’t till noon,” I asked her, getting the subject away from my hair experiment.

“Well, I was sleeping peacefully but then I heard someone making grunting noises in the bathroom. I also had to pee.”

My face flushed red. I really had no idea what I was doing beauty wise. After about twenty minutes, she was done. I got up and went to my room to change.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to see what I did?”

I walked back to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. The person looking back at me
wasn’t me. Her hair was fuller looking, it wasn’t a mess, and the ends were curled. There was also a white, beaded headband Laurie had draped horizontally across my forehead.

“Woah.”

“Right?! Your hair is flawless if you actually did it once in a while. I’m going back to bed. Hope you get the attention of whoever I just did your hair for.”

“Laur—, “but she just waved me off and went back to her room.

I checked the time. I had about twenty minutes until I had to leave to still be early. I looked in my closet and pulled out my normal go tos: dark wash jeans with holes in the knees, my black boots, and my black raincoat but instead of my normal sweater, I opted for an off the shoulder white shirt that I think was Laurie’s. I also grabbed a long necklace and a few silver bracelets.

Before I hauled a cab to Manhattan, I looked at myself in my full length mirror.
I looked…actually really good and I was happy and confident even with 4 hours of sleep. I grabbed a cab and made it to the studio which was lined with paparazzi already. This was normal when Marc and George had A list celebrities come in for studio interviews. I would usually ask the driver to drop me off around back but today I felt like I wanted to go through the front. As I paid the driver, a black SUV rounded the corner and a stampede of teenage girls exploded from the side street. The driver basically pushed me out and sped off to get away from the scene. The paparazzi surged forward and I was pushed out onto the street. I lost my footing and landed on my left arm. The stinging started in my elbow and made my hand go numb. My head was also throbbing from landing so hard. I rolled onto my stomach and slowly pushed myself off the ground with my right arm and onto my knees. I brushed the dirt and road off myself and the sound coming towards me was deafening.

I saw a huge NYC garbage truck coming towards me, beeping to get the stampede of fans out of the way. They didn’t notice me, sitting on my knees trying not to faint or die. Before I could even tell my brain to move, I felt a pair of hands pull me off the street and onto the sidewalk before I was a NYC pancake.

“Rowan, what the hell are you doing?? You almost got yourself killed!!” said a deep, worried voice in my ear. And there it was. The woodsy, sweet smell in my nostrils filling every pore of my body. His arms were around me, holding me close to his chest. I made eye contact with his chest and saw his layered necklaces inches from my face before everything actually got fuzzy and the world went black.

Notes