He Drugged Me And Let Her Cut My Hair Chapter 06

He Drugged Me And Let Her Cut My Hair Chapter 06

Two weeks passed after Ethan left, and my inbox 

stayed quiet. 

Then another email came. 

Longer this time. 

Not an apology. A collection of memories. 

He wrote about when we were five, building 

sandcastles in preschool. 

Mine always collapsed, and he would grumble the 

entire time he helped me rebuild them. 

He wrote about elementary school, when a boy 

had yanked my braid and he had charged at him 

without thinking, come back with a cut on his 

forehead, grinning like a dorky hero. 

He wrote about middle school, when I couldn’t 

keep up in gym class and he had paced me for 

every lap, our shadows stretching across the track 

in the sunset. 

He wrote about how, every time I finished an exam, 

I would nervously ask how he thought I’d done, and he would flick my forehead and say, “Relax. 

You’re fine.” 

At the end of the email, he asked: 

[Ethan: Clara, did you forget all of that?] 

[Ethan: We had so many good years. Does it all 

mean nothing because of one mistake?] 

I looked at the screen, and to my surprise, my 

heart stayed calm. 

I remembered. 

Of course I did. 

Those good memories were like old photographs. tucked in a dusty corner. But they had faded over 

time, blurred at the edges, buried beneath the 

jagged shards of the present. 

Touch them now, and all they did was cut. 

I sent back a very short reply. 

[Me: Ethan, I remember.] 

[Me: But memories can’t save the present.] 

[Me: And I don’t need your memories to prove that 

I once mattered.] 

After I hit send, I blocked him. 

Life kept moving. 

Debate training was brutal. 

Some nights we were still in the discussion room 

at ten, tearing apart arguments and rebuilding 

them from scratch. 

Our team captain was strict, but she had our 

backs too. 

The first time I did a practice round, my palms. 

were drenched in sweat. I stumbled over my 

words more than once. 

When I came off the floor, she didn’t scold me. 

She only said, “Next time, slow your breathing. Look your opponent in the eye. Don’t be afraid.” 

The second time was better. 

The third time was better than that. 

Little by little, the words started coming more easily. I started to enjoy the clash of ideas, the thrill of dismantling an argument with surgical 

precision. 

When my teammates threw me approving looks afterward, the satisfaction was a high Ethan’s crumbs of validation could never provide. 

I started learning how to take care of myself, too. 

Instead of drowning in oversized T–shirts, I began 

choosing clothes that actually fit, in softer colors. 

and cleaner cuts. 

My roommates taught me how to do light 

makeup. One of them laughed and said, “Clara, 

your skin is gorgeous. A little lipstick would look 

amazing on you.” 

I looked at the girl in the mirror, the one with clear 

skin and bright eyes. 

And I smiled. 

By then, my hair had grown to my collarbone, the 

ends curling inward just slightly. When I went in 

for a trim, the stylist smiled and said, “This length. 

frames your face perfectly.” 

That was when I stopped obsessing over 

waist–length hair. 

It was my hair. 

Long or short, straight or curled, all that mattered 

was that it felt like mine. 

In the second semester of freshman year, I signed 

up for a national public speaking competition. 

I spent my dawns on the bleachers, reciting my 

speech to the empty field until every gesture felt 

like second nature. 

The finals were held in the Founders Hall 

Auditorium at Redwood State. 

I drew the third slot. 

When I stepped onto the stage, the lights came down so brightly that I couldn’t make out a single 

face in the audience, only a blurred sea of 

outlines. 

I took a deep breath and began. 

My topic was about breaking labels. 

I talked about all the names that had been 

pressed onto me over the years. 

The fat girl. 

The awkward one. 

The delusional one. 

Then I spoke about peeling those labels off to find 

the voice they’d tried to smother. 

I didn’t force emotion into it. I didn’t dramatize 

anything. I simply told the truth. 

At one point, I heard a quiet sniffle from 

somewhere in the audience. 

When I finished, applause crashed through the 

hall. 

I bowed and walked offstage. 

I took silver. 

My captain thumped me hard on the shoulder. I 

stood there holding the certificate, the weight of it finally making my worth feel real. 

That night, I made an Instagram post for the first 

time in ages. 

I uploaded a selfie and a picture of my certificate 

with the caption: 

[Keep going. The sky brightens on its own.] 

A lot of people from high school liked it or left 

comments. 

Some said, [Congrats.] 

Some said, [Clara, you’re amazing.] 

Others said, [You’ve changed so much.] 

Sabrina commented too. 

Just two words. 

[Lol. Cute.] 

I ignored it. 

A few minutes later, the comment disappeared. 

She had probably deleted it herself. 

Ethan didn’t like the post. 

But sometime late that night, his profile picture 

turned completely black.