He Drugged Me And Let Her Cut My Hair Chapter 01
Ever since I had put on weight at puberty, Ethan Carlisle had never once initiated a word with me.
But on the day of my Stanton University early admissions interview, he handed me a carton of milk.
I had been so touched that I drank it without a second thought. When I woke up, my long hair was scattered all over the floor.
Sabrina Holloway stood there with a pair of scissors in her hand, smiling sweetly. “Wow, Ethan, your sedative worked like a charm.”
She prodded me with the shears, giggling. “I nearly shaved this pig bald.”
I stared at them, too stunned to breathe.
Ethan only said, calm and indifferent, “Sabrina lost a dare. If she didn’t cut your hair, she would’ve had to hit on strangers for their numbers.”
His eyes stayed on me, flat and cold. “Besides, you were never pretty to begin with. You were just fat.”
“So what if you lost your hair?”
This was the boy who had once promised to marry me once my hair reached my waist.
That boy was gone.
That day, I wiped my tears dry and quietly changed my school choice to Southern University, thousands of miles away.
******
My reflection looked like it had been mauled by a stray.
The hair I had spent years taking care of now stuck up in jagged tufts, with bald patches showing through in random places.
It was ugly. Grotesque. Humiliating.
My hand shook so badly I could barely hold the hairbrush. One gentle stroke sent broken strands cascading into the sink, swirling with my uncontrollable tears.
It felt like someone had ripped my chest open with their bare hands.
I wanted to rush out and scream at Ethan. I wanted to ask him why my hair had become the price of Sabrina’s stupid game.
But the interview was about to start.
I bit down hard on my lip.
I couldn’t walk out looking like this.
With trembling fingers, I tried to flatten the jagged ends, desperate to hide the bald spots with what little hair remained. It was useless. The girl in the mirror looked pitiful and ridiculous, like a complete joke.
Then I heard laughter outside the bathroom stall.
“Did you hear? Sabrina really chopped Clara Whitmore’s hair off.”
My whole body went rigid. I scrambled deeper into the stall and pressed myself against the door.
“No way. Seriously?”
“Of course it’s true. Ethan even spiked her milk with sedatives just so Sabrina could secure her spot. Otherwise how could Clara have slept that hard?”
“Oh my God. That’s actually kind of awful.”
“Awful? Please. She asked for it. Who told that fat pig to get delusional and fall for Ethan? She was standing in Sabrina’s way.”
“Exactly. Since when did a girl like her think she had a shot with someone like him? Everybody knew Ethan and Sabrina were basically a thing already. He only ever humored Clara because their families knew each other.”
One of them snorted. “Imagine being that delusional. She needs a reality check and a gym membership.”
Their laughter drilled into my ears, one sharp needle after another, until the last of my pathetic self-deception tore apart.
Separated from them by nothing but a thin stall door, I slowly slid to the floor.
At some point, I even forgot to cry.
I just felt cold. So cold it seemed to seep into my bones, until I was shivering on the filthy tile.
So that was the truth.
All those excuses I had made for him were lies. I thought he was just private, or sensitive about the ‘childhood sweetheart’ label.
None of it had ever been real.
The truth was simple.
He thought I was embarrassing.
He thought I wasn’t good enough for him.
That was why he could offer my hair up so easily to make Sabrina happy.
Why he could stand by, even help her, while she ruined the interview I had worked toward for years, just to clear the road ahead for Sabrina.
Memory after memory crashed through me.
When I fell during track practice, he had frowned and said, “How were you that careless?” Then he walked away while the people around us laughed.
When I brought him breakfast, he passed it to someone else without even looking at me.
When I finally got up the nerve to walk beside him after school, he sped up and left me far behind.
Every single time, I had blamed the stress or the mood. I told myself that’s just how boys were.
I had been such an idiot.
I thought if I lost the weight or aced the finals, I’d be ‘worthy.’ Maybe that gentle promise from childhood would still have some faint chance of coming true.
But the truth was, while I had spent all those years struggling to become someone worthy of standing beside him, Ethan had only ever seen me as a clingy, pathetic fat girl.
And he had already chosen someone else.
It felt as if a giant hand had seized my heart and squeezed. The pain was so sharp I could barely breathe, yet I was too numb to cry.
I curled up on the filthy bathroom floor long after the girls had gone. The silence afterward was somehow even worse.
Then my phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was a text from my mother.
Mom:[Clara, how did the interview go? Don’t be nervous. I believe in you.]
I stared at the message until the words stopped blurring.
Then I typed out my reply, one word at a time.
Me:[Mom, go to the Carlisle house and call off the engagement.]
Me:[But don’t let him know yet.]
