He Drugged Me And Let Her Cut My Hair Chapter 02
When I came out of the bathroom, I didn’t go back to Stanton University’s interview room.
I turned and walked straight toward Redwood State’s classroom instead.
The moment I stepped inside with that ridiculous head of hair, the interview panel clearly froze for a second.
I drew in a breath and focused on answering every question.
Maybe it was because I stayed calm. Maybe it was because my answers were compelling enough to transcend my appearance.
Either way, their eyes gradually moved away from my hair, and by the end, they were nodding in approval.
“Ms. Whitmore,” one of them said with a smile, “we hope to see you on campus in September.”
By the time I walked out, my palms were slick with sweat and my heart was still pounding.
For years, Ethan and I had always assumed we would end up in back home together. That unspoken plan had once been my North Star, the only reason I’d survived the grind.
But after that text I had sent my mother in the bathroom, I had already made up my mind.
From that point on, my future would have nothing to do with him.
That night, our families had dinner together.
My mother and Mrs. Carlisle spoke to each other in low voices, then left the table and went into the bedroom. Ethan sat across from me, distracted and restless.
At last, he couldn’t hold back anymore.
“How did the interview go?” he asked.
I lowered my eyes. “Pretty well. They said they hoped to see me on campus in September.”
His expression changed immediately. He set his fork down.
“Your grades were already good enough to get into Stanton. Why did you have to fight over that guaranteed admissions spot too? That was selfish.”
Selfish?
I looked at his handsome face and almost laughed from how absurd it sounded.
“My hair was butchered,” I said. “Are you really still worried I might score higher than Sabrina?”
He reacted like he’d been burned. “What did that have to do with anything? I just didn’t want her to lose her chance because of some stupid dare.”
Then he added, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, “She’s not like you. She’s pretty. What if she ran into the wrong kind of guy out there?”
She’s not like you.
Six simple words, and somehow they hurt more than everything else.
I nodded numbly just as my mother and Mrs. Carlisle came back. Both of them had red-rimmed eyes. I stood up at once, ready to leave with my mother.
That only seemed to make Ethan more uneasy. He reached across the table and caught my wrist.
“What were they talking about?” he asked.
He hadn’t touched me in a long time.
Maybe he had found me disgusting before. Maybe now he was only doing it because he felt something shifting beneath his feet.
I paused, then gently pulled my hand free.
“Nothing.”
I looked into his restless, searching eyes.
“Probably just worrying about our future.”
Ethan Carlisle.
We didn’t have a future anymore.
The next day was the first day back at school. The second I walked into the classroom, everyone stared at my hair.
“Oh my God, look. The pig got a new haircut.”
“Is that a new look, or did she lose a fight with a lawnmower?”
The boys burst into laughter.
Ethan was standing among them. I saw the corner of his mouth lift too, almost on instinct. But the second our eyes met, the smile froze on his face.
The sting in my chest was sharp and sudden, like a bee had lodged its stinger there.
I looked away and ignored every sound in the room, then walked to my seat and pulled out my textbook.
When the bell rang, our homeroom teacher announced that there would be one final round of student council reshuffling before graduation.
So I got up and walked to the front of the room with that humiliating haircut on full display.
The snickering never stopped. Neither did the whispers.
My hands were shaking, but I still gave my speech without notes, steady and fluent from beginning to end.
When I bowed, the teacher started clapping first. A few girls joined in after her.
Just as I finally let out a breath, Sabrina stood up and walked to the front.
She wore a short skirt, her long hair falling over her shoulders in soft waves.
Standing there beside her, I looked even more miserable by comparison.
She held a sheet of paper and said a few casual lines about wanting to serve the class.
She stumbled in the middle, blushed, stuck out her tongue, and the boys cheered with the kind of adoration reserved for the Prom Queen.
I didn’t laugh.
The votes were counted.
We tied.
The teacher turned toward Ethan. “Where’s your ballot? No abstaining. Cast your vote.”
Every eye in the room shifted toward the back.
Ethan pressed his lips together and stood.
He was tall, his prep school blazer hanging open in that nonchalant way that defined him.
He walked toward the front one step at a time, sunlight tracing the lean line of his back.
I stared at him, my eyes burning.
I didn’t expect anything from him anymore. I told myself I didn’t.
But there was still a small, stupid voice somewhere deep inside me whispering, What if?
What if he remembered how he used to campaign for me with candy, bragging to the class that I was ‘number one’? What if he remembered buying candy for our classmates to bribe them into voting for me? What if he remembered grinning even wider than I had when I won and saying, “That’s my girl. Clara came in first.”
What if he remembered that this title was the only thing that gave a girl like me any sense of self-worth?
He reached the teacher’s desk and handed over the folded slip of paper.
The teacher opened it, glanced down, and announced, “Sabrina Holloway, twenty-five votes. Clara Whitmore, twenty-four.”
She looked up. “The new class representative is Sabrina. Clara, hand over your responsibilities after class.”
I sat there for a long time without moving.
Everything around me faded into the background until all I could feel was the dull, aching pain in my chest.
Ethan had already gone back to his seat. He didn’t look at me, and from where I sat, I couldn’t make out the expression on his face.
I lowered my head.
Tears dropped one by one onto my textbook.
The girl beside me panicked and kept patting my back, trying to comfort me, but I couldn’t even manage to say I was fine.
For nearly ten years, I had been class representative. I’d gone from the girl he bought votes for to the student who earned them.
No one knew better than he did what that position meant to me.
To a fat girl who had grown up under everyone’s stares and laughter, it had been one fragile piece of self-worth I had built with my own hands, one tiny proof that I wasn’t worthless.
And he had taken even that away from me without hesitation.
For Sabrina.
I was too devastated to even pretend otherwise.
That little boy who had once bought candy to help me win had died a long time ago.
The Ethan in front of me now was the Prom King, the Golden Boy, the man hopelessly entangled with the Queen Bee.
He was everything except mine.
