Chapter 3.

Her new self

Due to a terrible headache Fran went to bed right after she had returned to her flat. She assumed it was both the alcohol and the fact that she’d spent too much time in a shopping centre. Shopping centres tended to make her head hurt. The alcohol part was just an assumption. In any case she had dozed off straight away and didn’t wake up until her hellish alarm clock rang the next morning. Half an hour to her next lectures then.

“What?!” She woke up abruptly and repeated the last line: “Half an hour to my next lectures?!” Fran quickly got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Her balance wasn’t too good this morning, she noted. Although, so did probably her neighbour too, as she kept shouting things like: “Shit!” when she bumped into things. She really would have to move her furniture around. Wait, déjà vu. Fran knew she had thought these exact same things not long ago. No time to focus about that now, though.

Her next shock was the bathroom mirror, not surprisingly. Who the hell was that? Where she had usually always seen a tired face with a slightly large nose, a pale face from lack of sunshine and long dark hair, she now saw something else. Looking back at her from the mirrors now was a face that seemed more alive than faces should seem in the morning, due to creams and makeup she hadn’t removed yesterday, although most things were rubbed off some. The face had multiple piercings… ugly, flashy ones too. Oh and a shockingly blonde hair colour to go with a wacky haircut where some hair was long and other parts were short. The new girl in the mirror seemed shocked by what she saw. Wait, Fran seemed shocked by what she saw.

No matter how much Fran tried, she couldn’t identify with the person in the mirror. It was weird, since she knew it was herself, she could recognize the nose, the eyes and the general features. It just didn’t look like her.

“Oh right. Yes. Busy. Have to hurry. What to do about this? Stay home from my lectures or try to make it work well enough to be able to go out in public?” She asked the girl in the mirror, before rushing off to find her new makeup and try to get her face too look less like she slept with the makeup on. Fran thought to herself after a few minutes’ work with these makeup things she didn’t even know the names of, that makeup sure suited this new person better than it had ever done her. Usually makeup had looked silly on her, as though she was an 8 year old having found mummy’s makeup kit. However now, all of her seemed silly anyway, so the makeup did little difference but to help complete the look.

Fran picked out some of the clothes she had bought the day before and nearly fell over laughing by looking at what she’d bought. She got dressed in them and felt sillier than ever. Her new high-heeled shoes would need a lot of practise to get used to, she realized. Before walking very slowly and carefully out her door, she picked up her school bag and an apple for breakfast. Fran couldn’t help wondering how messed up this day would end up. She feared the worst; that everyone would point and laugh of her. Really, how could they not?

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Somehow Fran managed to get there in time, despite of her walking difficulties, which must have looked completely ridiculous, she thought, but felt at the same time proud that she hadn’t fallen. What expected her in the auditorium where her lecture was going to be held, shocked her. She could feel herself go red, which probably didn’t look too good, but hey, there was a reason to why she’d always kept to herself. Fran really sucked at being the centre of attention, where she currently found herself.

Seriously, everyone stared at her. It was Fran’s worst nightmare. Girls did the archetypical girl thing to do; in small groups they leant their heads towards the others to gossip silently about what they saw. Fran didn’t even want to start imagining what they were saying, as she suspected she’d just run while crying out of the room. She went and sat down on her regular seat. Oh screw them. It wasn’t as though any of them had talked with her anyway. Or well, some had admittedly tried the first couple of days of the semester, but she hadn’t noticed. Her mind had been on this great novel she had been up reading all night long.

What now? A group of girls came over to her. Now, THIS was strange, Fran bewilderedly thought to herself. Were they really so inhumane that they’d kill her spirits even before the lecture? How cruel. Although, she supposed she had expected it – being mocked for attempting to look ‘cool’. Of course, they were coming over to tell her how terribly she had failed at it. What did they expect from a grey mouse?

“Hi! I’m Amber. I really like your hair. I haven’t seen you around before, did you just start the study or have you just ditched the lectures and study at home until now? I sometimes wish I’d have done that. Some of these lectures are so dull.” One of the girls said. Fran had to look around to be sure that she had just spoken to her. All that was going through her mind was: “What the fuck is this girl doing talking to me? Did she just compliment my hair?!”

Fran suddenly realized that she was actually expected to come with an answer, or even a greeting. The girl seemed to think she was new. Did she really not notice that it was Fran? Although, she had changed her looks to the opposite of what she had used to look like, she still looked like herself, didn’t she? She still had the same facial features, right? No one had taken her nose during the night or something? To pretend to be a new person, to admit to the makeover or what else to do?!

“Er, hi, I’m Fran. Um, yeah, that last thing you said. Studying at home.” She mumbled. It wasn’t as though any of them would know who Fran was anyway, so why not pretend to be new as well as looking new. It’d be like a social anthropological research into how other people lives, pretending to be someone else, she supposed.

“Cool! Well, now that you’re here, why don’t you come join the girls and me over there? We don’t bite all that hard, you know, so there’s no need to sit on your own here.” The girl laughed a little, which made her friends laugh some too. Fran tried to smile at the friendly gesture she’d never have been asked if she was her old self, and joined them over to the other side of the auditorium. Luckily none of them paid attention to her walk.