Maria Mason was a mousey little girl. She grew up on Full House, the New Testament and celery sticks with a streak of peanut butter. Her hair was a sickly shade of brown. Her split ends, received from multiple flat irons and bad perms, laid indifferently around her shoulders. She wore charcoal liner circling the lids of her eyes; it always appeared smeared within the first two periods of school making her look persistently depressed. Everything about Maria was little, from her facial features to her scrawny frame. She was the whey of cheese, the broth of soup, the first rung of the food chain: necessary but unremarkable. No doubt, her dullness was inherent.
Her first crush was in fifth grade, Tim Salinas, a chronic back-sasser and detention-holic. He was the type of student teachers hated within t he first days of school. Nevertheless, Maria found his effortless comb over and bug-like blue eyes charming. Not to mention his favorite Pokemon was Charizard, too. Maria gawked over Tim; stealing glances across the room, sharpening his pencil for him, she even brought him a package of gummy worms because she knew those were his favorite non-chocolate candy.
One day, a classmate told Maria he "liked liked" her. She was ecstatic. That night she planned on practicing the question she would ask him the next day in the mirror. She had only heard a couple other girls in her class asking boys, but it was turned out successful for them. The couples even ended up kissing a week later.
However, that night while she was rehearsing, little did she know her mother was spying on her. "Tim," Maria began carefully ensuring she was making eye contact with the reflection."Will you be my boyfriend?". Maria then puckered her lips, closed her eyes and touched her lips to the mirror leaving red imprints from the lipstick she put on from her mother's drawer. Maria heard a gasp from behind her. She turned around to find her mother's face contorted with disgust. Swiftly, her mother clenched onto Maria's wrist and rushed her to the bathroom as though her hand was bleeding. She then grabbed hold of a mishap-en Dial soap bar and forced Maria to wash her mouth out with soap. Her mother was a Christian, and a child that young thinking about boys was unholy in her eyes. “If you ever say that filth again,” she paused letting a hot fuming breath escape her nostrils. “Expect something much worse than soap.” The ten year old lifted her head from the sink, water and tears streaming down her face and soap bubbling from her mouth, broken-hearted.
Her dad was a firefighter. Some days he would get off early and other times he’d be working through the night. But every time he was home, Maria would climb onto his lap and watch Full House reruns until her mom would nag them about the dishes. “Let’s muscle off some of this grease you sloths,” she would say.
A few years later, her dad left. Maria was trying to sleep through the chaos transpiring in the room across the hall. It was nearly 2 a.m. when her father snuck into her room. Maria shut her eyes tightly pretending to be unconscious of the situation. Her father softly patted the back of her head whispering, “I’m sorry, but I still love you”.
However, this is not just about Maria Mason. She's not the one who we are interested in.
Lola Harding had a pair of limited edition converse 69’s. The shoe was so rare; only eight people in the whole southern distributing area owned some. It was rumored that Lindsay Lohan herself couldn’t even get a hold of a pair of these exclusive Chucks. The shoe was military green with prominent brass trim stitching. On the back, brass snaps made the shoe adjustable to height. They were about four inches taller than the typical high tops sitting about mid calf when fully snapped (Lola always wore hers halfway fastened though, so the shoes loosely hung at her ankles). The inside was cushioned with black leather and even the shoelaces were made of leather. Of course, they wouldn’t really unlace. It was for show. The All Star emblem, made too of black leather, was stitched on carefully on the side of the heel. To further complicate the design from imitators, the shoe had a copper plate attached to the underside of the heel. The plate was embossed with six numbers individual to each pair. Whenever anyone asked Lola what her number was, she would proudly kick her foot into the air exposing the heel and say, “776898”.
Not only was Lola Harding the girl with most desirable shoes, but she also was one of those people who was extremely seductive. Lola looked like she was the lost member of the Runaways. She had thick blonde hair that grazed her lower back and voluptuous lips often seen sucking on a menthol cigarette. She would wear beat up leather jackets, leopard printed leggings and was the only girl at the time who attached studs onto the back pockets of her denim minis. No one honestly knew her ethnic background. Her olive complexion made her look consistently tan even into the winter months, and her piercing hazel eyes appeared to be pinched upward giving her a cat-like stare. Her long nails were coated in fire engine red.
Needless to say, Lola was a sight. She’d walk into history class everyday at 8 a.m., and the girls and boys both would take a minute to notice how she did her hair or what she was wearing that day. This was mostly due to Lola’s erratic nature. One day she’d be glammed out in heavy black liner and a corseted dress. The next day her face would be bare, and she’d be wearing only a tee shirt and jeans. The funny thing was even though Lola was always described by classmates as “interesting” and “cool”, she never had many friends. This was mainly because even the bad crowd was intimidated by her.
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