My life was marred by events of turmoil and self-mutilation. When I was five, I played
hairdresser with Barbie before turning the scissors on myself. When I was done, Barbie looked
like a model walking into rehab after a couple months of hard partying. I looked like the
lopsided top of a carrot muffin.
In third grade, Tyler Brown convinced me that everyone had freckles but that they hid them with
paper Wite-Out—it made perfect sense to an eight-year-old. So I spackled it on before I went to
bed and left it overnight, to make sure that the paint was well embedded before my big reveal at
school in the morning. At least I got to stay home from school for a week while my skin
recovered from the paint thinner that the maid had to scrub into my skin.
It was hard being the kid who just wanted to get lost in the crowd when my head was like a flare
being set off in an ocean of blondes and brunettes. People were always drawn to the girl with
the fire-engine hair, in the same way that they couldn’t help themselves from slowing down to
stare at car accidents on the side of the road—hoping that it was as bad as it looked, wanting
to witness some shocking thing that only an elite few have ever seen up close.
I also wasn’t blind to the attention that I reaped from the opposite sex. It had started with
the boys in grade school who would dare each other to run up to me and pull my hair; those boys
would later grow up to be frat boys who were looking to do more than pull my hair. I was a rite
of passage for most of the male species, at any age.
But, as an almost adult, I was getting a little better at singling out the guys who were looking
for the red-headed experience. So when a man with red-rimmed glasses approached me, my red-radar
was up right away.
“Excuse me,” he said, standing across the table.
I sighed through my nose, looking up. He was rail thin and tall. His spiked hair, which was
sporadically present, made it ever more obvious that his hair was thinning at the crown and that
he was trying very hard to hide this.
“Would you mind if I sat here?” he asked pointing to the bench across from me. “There are no
other tables in the shade.”
I gave a nod and went back to my dumb variables while he sat down.
But he didn’t get my cues of indifference.
“I’m Anthony Francesco,” he started, though it had sounded more like a question.
I glanced over the edge my book. He was staring expectantly at me, obviously waiting for a
response.
“Emily,” I said without emotion and tried to go back to my book; but I somehow knew that he
wasn’t done. I instantly regretted my decision to not bring my earphones.
“No last name, Emily?” he said, nervously chuckling. “Are you like Madonna or something?” I
flipped a page of my book, even though I hadn’t finished reading it.
“So … do you go to school here, Emily?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Are you from around here?” he asked.
I started to mow down my sandwich faster, just in case I needed a quick exit, and thought of a
good vague response that I had recently heard.
“Not really,” I said, hiding my smile.
“ … Yeah, I’m not really from around here either.” There was another blissful moment of
silence, and then he continued, “Do you live close to school?”
“Kind of,” I answered, my eyes never leaving the page, my lips never more than an inch away
from my sandwich.
“I’ve got my own place a couple of blocks from here,” he said. “Do you still live with your
parents?”
“Yep,” I lied.
“Do you have any siblings?” he hurriedly asked, likely noticing that I was shoveling the food
into my mouth as quickly as possible. But he was too late. I was done eating, and for the first
time, gladly offered more than a few syllables.
“Sorry, my break is over. I’ve got to go before my boss freaks out.”
I picked up my stuff and rushed off before he had a chance to find something else to question me
about. I would have run out of there, but that would have made it a little too obvious.
“What a freak,” I whispered to myself, as I walked back into the library—though he was
probably thinking the same thing about me.
I was back at work, half an hour early from my lunch. And my fake boss didn’t freak out.
By the time I strolled out of the library at the end of my work day, the weather had changed
dramatically; the sky was dark, and black clouds were rolling in like a tsunami. With all of the
humidity from the past few days, I expected that I didn’t have much time to spare before the
rain came crashing down, hard.
Back at the house, I spent more time than I had squinting in the mirror, fixing my devastatingly
frizzed hair, trying to find something to wear.
When I reached the cemetery’s entrance, black clouds were already threatening overhead. With
only two or three people idling under the shadows of the trees, the cemetery was almost desolate
—the smart people were indoors again.