Simone

I was to walk across stage and accept the official certificate that inducted me into National Honors Society. I was sitting in the car. It was 6:52. The ceremony was to start at 7:00. My hair was dry and wild and short. It looked like straw that’d been struck by lightning and blackened. Pigment from the dye clung to my forehead, my eyes red and puffy from hysterical crying. The clippings of my hair clung to my chest, and my face was oily from the anxious minutes I’d spent in the salon chair. I was quite the sight. And I was late. I sobbed. I was not going to make it.

I called my mom, begging for her forgiveness and mercy. I expected her to be upset I’d come to the ceremony much later than my call time of 6:15, but that was not her concern. She was adamant I go inside. God no, I would not go inside.

She left me no option, so I cried more and then honked so she could find me in the parking lot. She and my father consoled me and I cried more. We walked toward the auditorium and I cried more. On the way, my mother delivered to me some altered version of Nas’ “The World Is Yours,” in speech form. And then she told me to look at the sky and all its stars and the lack of debris falling from it. And for a second, I did feel like the world was mine, and maybe my hair didn’t matter.

But it did. It so did.

We went inside the auditorium, and I made the mistake of going to the bathroom to look at myself one last time. There was more crying. I found my seat in the program, and about 30 minutes later, I walked across the stage with an awkward half-smile and a spring in my step. I had to be out of public sight as soon as possible. No one could ask me what I’d done to my precious, previously beautiful hair, no one could even know.

At some point, I decided this event would be the topic of my college essay. My overcoming of this first-world challenge attested to my will to try, despite my lack of confidence. The lack of confidence that propelled me out of the doors, and through the post-ceremony reception, and back into the car, to drive home, where I cried some more.

I had been ugliest girl at the Nerd Oscars. What a shame. ♦