The First Day of School.

I hear it before I even open my eyes. My dreaded alarm.

As soon as my eyelids lift open, I feel the heaviness of them and immediately want to sew them shut. As I ponder whether to manually open my eyes or not, the buzzing sound from my alarm clock seems like it’s growing louder and louder. I bring my arm over my snoozing body and slap the top of my alarm clock, causing the irksome sound to come to a halt. 

Against my will, I lift my duvet covers off of me and immediately feel the frigidness of my room, even though technically it’s still summertime. Reluctantly, I stand up just to feel the burning coldness in my feet on my bedroom floor. I decide to push aside that sensation and force my way to my bathroom in the hallway. I look up at the mirror to find that there are several stained splashes of water near the bottom. I don’t even have to question who marked their territory here. My little brother is the definition of a handful when it comes to hygiene. 

I don’t want to further deteriorate my mood, so I ignore the stains and look up at my reflection. That only leads me to begin to fill my eyes with horror.

My hair is completely gone.

I stare at my freshly shaven head, which I do not recall ever, ever shaving. My hair was completely normal yesterday, as it always is – red, frizzy, and messy. But not today.

I just stand there in complete shock for what feels like hours. Days, even. Until a shriek brings me back to my senses.

“Juliette! Hurry up, you’ll be late for your first day!” My mother howls from downstairs. I can’t let her see me like this.

“Just a sec!” I shout back, attempting to gather myself back to reality before she comes in. I begin to feel panic in my bones as I hear footsteps growing louder. I’m looking around at my cramped surroundings trying to find something, anything that will cover up this mess. 

“I don’t have time for this, Julie. I have an extremely tight schedule today that cannot afford any other obstacles.” At this point she’s banging at the bathroom door, disrupting my failed attempt at somehow finding a wig to hide in. I have no other choice but to open the door.

Reluctantly, I hang my wrist against the doorknob and slowly turn it right. 

“Jeez, you couldn’t be more late.” She says calmly as I meet her face at the door. She pushes past me to look in the mirror and see if she has anything in between her teeth. I look at her like she’s grown two horns. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you see my head?” I reply waving my hands in the air.

“Yeah, it’s a mess. Oh, why don’t you let me ever brush it? It won’t kill you, you know.” She says back. Now I look at her like she’s grown a third horn in the middle of her forehead. She checks her teeth and fluffs her hair out one last time before she pushes past me again and reminds me I have to start walking to school in 10 minutes.

For a moment, I think I’m in some dream state. Like REM sleep. 

I decide that I can’t waste any more precious time, and scurry back to my bedroom to rip apart my dresser in an attempt to find a plausible outfit. Was it my mother in need of some spectacles of her own? Or is it me? I reach for my nearly broken glasses on my bedside table and walk over to my mirror on the back of my door, just to see my head reflecting the light from my open window. 

Before the tears from my eyes begin to fall, I realize I’m in a state of panic, and immediately begin to deepen my breaths and close my eyes. 

This is a dream.

Not only am I closing my eyes to calm my body down, but hopefully to wake up from this hallucination. Until I am met with a loud noise from downstairs.

“JULIETTE! I’m not going to ask you again!” I open my eyes and run to my closet and pull out the first thing I see, which happens to be a red and green Christmas sweater. 

“What?” I whisper to myself, “I don’t remember ever owning this,” holding it up. However I don’t have the energy to care, so I quickly lift it over my head and grab the first pair of jeans that I see on my floor. I reach in my drawer for some random socks and reach them over my feet.

I nearly tumble down the stairs as my mother is still squawking at me. “I’m here, I’m here!” I cry out.

“Great, now- oh, that’s a lovely dress! I thought you hated that one,” My mother looks up at me, baffled.

“Huh? Mom, I’m not wearing a dress-”

“Oh shush, go eat breakfast quickly, you gotta get walking soon.” My mother refocuses her attention on the stack of papers on the kitchen counter and looks away from me.

I blindly lead myself to the main dining table in our small kitchen, take a seat on the squeaking chair my mother never bothered to fix, and take a good look around at our walls – the drawings I made in kindergarten, along with my brother’s newly designed artwork, attached to the front of our tiny fridge. With yellow walls with the chipping paint, and the nearly broken, buzzing fluorescent lamp on the ceiling – my surroundings all seem the same. I then glance down at my presumed Christmas sweater, finding nothing else. Maybe my mother was losing it.

Yeah. It’s just my mom, it’s not me.

I reach for the poorly buttered slice of toast in front of me and start chomping down on it, without realizing how starved I am. Within seconds, my toast seemed to have disappeared. I stand up and wipe my mouth to get the crumbs off my crusted lips when I feel a strange sensation that I don’t recognize from that area of my face. I look down at the hand I used and find hot pink paint smothered all over it. I run to the nearest mirror I find, which happens to be in the same hallway as my gross little brother. I ignore his antics and look in the mirror, but find nothing. I then looked back down at my hand, to see that the paint had disappeared. I stare at my clean hand with extreme confusion, feeling it as though I’ve never touched a hand in my life. 

“What are you doing?” My brother looks up from the plastic building blocks that he’s constructing into what looks like a mess. 

“It’s nothing, Joseph.” I gather myself back, reach for my worn-out boots from the shoe rack near the front door, and just plainly slip them on without bothering to re-tie them. I snag my knapsack over my back with a shout to my mother letting her know of my departure. I twist the crooked door knob of my front door and begin to walk to my dreaded area of socialization. 

I force myself to keep strutting forward and make myself lift my head high. 

I have no clue what’s happening to me.

As my feet move onward, they somehow feel like they are growing lighter and lighter. I don’t think much of it until it feels as though I’m walking on nothing.

The ground is gone.

I look down rapidly at my feet, horrifically noticing that they aren’t touching the ground. My feet are floating!

The gravity in me has been sucked out like a vacuum.

I nearly lose my balance and trip over, however, it seems as though that isn’t physically possible. 

I try to run away from my floating feet unsuccessfully, faster and faster.

Until it stops.

It feels like a thousand bricks have just been set on my shoulders.

I’m huffing and puffing until it starts to sound like a fire alarm.

“Julie?” I hear a voice behind me say. I startle back and turn around to surprisingly see my friend from school.

“Oh. Uh, hi Bella,” I start to say, gathering myself back.

“Are you okay?” She asks as she walks closer to me.

“Yeah, of course,” I say with my best attempt at a joyful smile. I begin to feel the heaviness of myself after that low gravity experience, then subconsciously lead my hands to my head to realize that she probably sees no hair on my head. Oh god.

“Well, you looked a bit startled,” She says looking back down at her feet. She didn’t notice my head? I figure that there’s no better person to talk to about this out-of-body experience than my best friend.

“Okay, you have to listen to me carefully, alright?” I grab her wrists and make her face me. 

“Julie, stop, you’re freaking me out.” She replies, ripping her wrists out of my hands. “We’re going to be late for the first day, I can’t have my perfect attendance ruined the day I get back.”

“Just answer one question. Do you see my head?” I ask her, struggling to walk beside her at her fast pace.
“Yeah ..” Bella answered truthfully. “I also noticed that you’re wearing the dress that you complained to me about for hours after your mom forced you to wear it. Did she force you again?”

My head starts to spin. It wasn’t my mom. It was Bella too. Or was it me?

Before I know it, we’ve reached the school doors. I barely notice everyone around me because I feel as though I’m trapped in my own thoughts and confusion. We stand in lines to retrieve our brand-new schedules for the year, but I barely look at mine anyway. Bella steals it and makes an effort to compare our schedules. I’m looking around at all of these people that I’ve known all my life, yet they don’t seem familiar to me. 

“YES! We have 4 classes together, including homeroom!” that transports me back from my daydream.

“Oh, that’s great!” I reply as happily as I can sound. She grabs my hand and leads me through the cramped, crowded hallways of the school. We eventually reach our homeroom class, and immediately sit down in two seats together. Bella begins to chat with me about random things before the teacher walks into class as the bell rings.

But there’s something wrong.

I analyze the teacher as she introduces herself, however, something seems off.

Then I noticed it.

But nobody else does.

The teacher’s head is morphing into some reptile-like creature, and before I know it, her whole body is a lizard.

A lizard!

I look around at other students, hoping, praying, that they at least see this. But of course, no one does. Every student in this classroom looks unbothered and casual as a damn lizard is taking attendance. I’m so freaked out I can’t think straight.

Am I even in the right place?

Her head then cocks towards me. 

“Julie?” She says.

I realize that this is my time to speak. My time to vocalize ‘here’.

But nothing comes out of my mouth. 

The teacher grows impatient. 

“Julie.” She says with more force, her lizard-like mouth breathing on me.

I’m here. I’m here.

Before I know it, she’s running towards me.

Even though it’s as though the lizard is running at full speed, everything is in slow motion. I almost feel like I’m not living in my own body. The adrenaline in my veins pumps through me, making me feel alive but at the same time lifeless.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to die. 

And as it all begins, it all stops.

Darkness.

Darkness is all I see.

Am I in heaven? Hell? Somewhere in between?

A strange sound suddenly starts blaring out of nowhere.

I then start to feel my eyelids. Actually feel them. They feel weird. Heavy.

Then they rip open, without my consent. I’m shocked by my surroundings. In total awe.

I’m in my bedroom. And my alarm. It’s going off.

My alarm! It’s 7:30 AM! I nearly jumped for joy.

It was all a dream! 

I automatically aggressively lift my duvet covers and spirit to the bathroom mirror. Nothing was real! 

I close my eyes before I am met with the mirror, thanking the spirit above for making that horrible day just a bad dream. I gracefully open my eyes to expect my beautifully frizzy, messy hair but am met with the opposite. 

Oh no.

No No No No

All I see when I look in the mirror is my bald head. 

My freshly shaven head.