Chapter 6

Ava

I cross my legs one way and then the other as I wait for Hunter to pick me up. He said he was going to take me shopping.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind getting out of the house for once. Generally, I’m not stupid enough to leave my bedroom on the weekends; I get bullied enough while I’m at school. But I’m anxious about going out with Hunter.

The bad boy of the school, who does anything he wants with girls because they always throw themselves at him, could take me anywhere, do anything. So, just in case, I pick up a can of pepper spray and place it into my bag. It makes me feel safer.

I decide on wearing black jeans with rips on the knees and a baggy, gray top with a faded picture of SpongeBob on it. This is one of my better outfits; I don’t normally wear jeans, but I’m going out with ~Hunter~. He always looks so plush and sexy, and I don’t want to look like trash next to him.

I stare at my phone. ~Why am I so bothered by him? He is a stupid player.~ Maybe it’s because I want to know what his end game is here—why he needed me, the most unpopular girl at our school.

I glance at my phone to see if I have any new texts.

Nothing.

I get up to make sure I have everything I need in my purse and notice the $30 I made while working at the library over the summer. It was meant to be a volunteer job, but the librarian paid me minimum wage for the few days of work that I did. I never spent it.

As I close my purse, my phone goes off. I walk over and look at it.

Asshole

I’m outside princess, hurry up and come give me love 😉 x

I roll my eyes at his text but check everything one last time and proceed out the door anyway. I grab my keys off the side table so I can lock up; my mum is already at work.

When I walk out, I find an orange Aston Martin Vanquish waiting. At my house! How amazing is that?

~I could do so much with the amount of money it cost to buy this car.~

Still, I stare at the beautiful car longingly.

A car horn brings me back to my senses, and I turn my focus to the man behind the wheel. Feeling my cheeks heat up slightly, I walk to the passenger-side door and hop in. The car is just as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside.

After I finish looking around the car, I turn to Hunter. We haven’t set off yet, so I give him a quizzical look. He smirks before greeting me with that oh-so-sexy voice.

~Did I actually just think that?~

“Hey, princess, you like what you see?” He throws me a wink.

“Yes, actually. The car is gorgeous; it’s in my top five.”

Hunter nods but doesn’t say anything before we hit the road.

A few minutes into the ride, I feel words tumbling out of my mouth. “You’re going to want to refrain from calling me ‘princess,’ asshole.”

I see Hunter smirk slightly, but his grip tightens on the steering wheel, making his knuckles turn white. He takes a few breaths and then turns to look at me. “What would you prefer to be called, princess?”

I can hear all the smugness in his voice as he says this, and it just makes me want to punch him in his pretty face. I don’t know where this violence comes from; I have a feeling he brings out the worst in me.

“How about you just call me by my name?” My voice comes out harsher than I intended, but I need to get my point across to this asshole.

“Sure thing, princess.”

I roll my eyes at this and look out the window, deciding to ignore him for the rest of the ride. But the ride, surprisingly, isn’t awkward. After a twenty-minute drive in comfortable silence, we arrive at the shopping mall.

I say “twenty minutes” like the mall is close. It’s not. It’s a good half hour, but between this amazing car and Hunter’s reckless driving, we shed ten minutes off.

I jump out of the car as soon as we park, thankful I’m no longer gripping the seat for dear life. The silence may have been comfortable, but I spent the whole drive praying that we would make it and that I wasn’t damaging the seat with my death grip in the meantime; I doubt that I could afford to pay for any damage without selling an arm and a leg and possibly a kidney.

As soon as we walk into the mall, we get weird looks. Hunter is seen with a lot of tall, skinny, and pretty girls, so you can imagine everyone’s surprise when they see him with someone like me. Average.

That’s actually an understatement. I’m below average.

I walk in nervously, fumbling with my fingers. The glances that we get are proof that I will no longer be invisible; I won’t be able to blend in with the lockers or walls at school when teachers walk past; I won’t be able to hide when Jessica comes storming down the halls to terrorize someone. Usually me. There’s no going back.

But the shopping mall is amazing. Through the shop windows, I smile at the gorgeous clothes and signs advertising summer sales. I don’t usually like shopping—fluorescent lights and changing rooms are like my version of hell—but everything is so beautiful.

And with the sales at least I’ll be able to afford something.

Because my mom and I don’t have a lot of money, I’d only ever been to the mall a few times. Most of my clothes come from charity shops, and there aren’t many in here. This is one of the bigger malls around, which means there are bigger and better shops to attract more customers.

As I glance around, I feel Hunter watching me, probably sensing that I haven’t been here in a long time. I smile up at him, and we start walking.

After a few minutes, we stop outside of a pale pink storefront with a sign that says “Kathryn’s Beauty Salon” in cursive. Inside the shop are two sinks for washing and three stations for cutting hair, which to me doesn’t make sense because there aren’t an equal number of stations.

I haven’t had my hair done in ages. The last time was before my dad died two years ago. The thought of him brings tears to my eyes, but I push them back; I don’t want to cry in front of some shop with Hunter standing next to me.

He walks in, and I feel my heartbeat quicken. I don’t want my hair cut; my dad and I always preferred it long, and imagining myself with a short bob makes me uneasy. But I follow Hunter anyway.

When we walk into the shop, a young lady lights up like a kid at Christmas. She is maybe a few inches taller than me, with pale skin and rosy cheeks. She has shoulder-length black hair that frames her heart-shaped face, and her emerald eyes sparkle with mischief. She looks bubbly and warm.

“Hunter!” she practically squeals, running to give him a big hug.

I smile as Hunter returns the hug slightly awkwardly, and then the woman turns her dazzling eyes to me.

“Hi, you must be Ava. I’m Kathryn, Hunter’s cousin.”

I nod in realization. That’s why they have the same eyes, although Kathryn’s seem to be fiery while Hunter’s seem cold.

Kathryn drags me over to one of her chairs, not even asking if I want my hair done or not. “So, do you have any ideas in mind?”

I think about this for a few seconds before shaking my head. I have never bothered to dye my brown hair.

“I just don’t want too much cut off,” I say. “I like it long. Other than that, you can do what you like.”

Kathryn nods and gets to work, painting dye on my hair, letting it sit, and then washing it out and trimming the ends. I hold in a little sob as I watch some of my beautiful strands fall to the floor, memories of my father dancing in my head.

***

After two hours, Kathryn finishes. I’m glad it’s over; I can barely feel my bum after sitting down for so long. Not being allowed to move for that long is ridiculous. At least I had some magazines Kathryn gave me, but they aren’t as interesting as ~Jane Eyre~.

Hunter left about half an hour into me getting my hair done, and he still isn’t back. I send him a quick text, thinking that he is probably snogging some other girl, and wait to see what Kathryn has done to my hair. After she noticed me staring morosely at myself, she covered the mirror.

When she uncovers it, I gasp.

My hair has been trimmed slightly—not too much, as I asked—so it now falls to the middle of my back in swaying motions. Natural-looking highlights have been added in so it doesn’t look dull and dead anymore. To give it more bounce and shine, Kathryn even curled it into beach waves. It looks like something from a magazine.

I am absolutely in love with my hair, and all I want to do is run my hands through it, but I don’t want to mess with the masterpiece that she has created.

As a bonus, Kathryn did light makeup for me: foundation, nude shadow on my lids, and peachy pink lips. Whatever else she did, I can’t name, but I am blown away. I don’t even look like myself; my cheekbones look more pronounced, and my face seems to have more color in it.

Overall, I like the whole look. I look like someone else but in a natural way.

I turn to Kathryn, who looks anxiously at my face, trying to gauge my reaction.

“Do you like it?” She stumbles over her words slightly, as if afraid I’ll say that I hate it.

A smile comes over my face. “I love it, Kathryn. Thank you so much! Although you’ll have to take me through how you did the makeup and how you curled my hair effortlessly because I am hopeless.

“It’s not that I haven’t ever been interested in this sort of stuff, but I guess I haven’t had anyone to teach me how to do it. Then I saw all the girls at sixth form, and that put me off learning.”

Kathryn giggles at my little rant about the girls at my school but agrees to teach me.

The shop’s bell rings, and I turn to find Hunter walking through the door. He stares at me for a moment with his mouth hanging slightly open, but he quickly recovers and flashes that wolfish grin of his. “You clean up good, princess.”

I blush and say a quick “thank you” before turning back to Kathryn. “How much do I owe you?”

She smiles, laughter in her eyes. “Didn’t Hunter tell you? He’s already paid for it.”

I shake my head, surprised, but give Kathryn a quick hug and say “thank you” once again. I can feel Hunter’s eyes on me as we walk out, but I try my best to ignore him, instead thinking about what Kathryn just said. ~I wonder why he paid for me.~

I am dragged from my thoughts when Hunter touches the small of my back, guiding me toward a shop filled with summer clothes. ~I got this~, I think as we pass through the dreaded doors of hell.