Part 2: Cruel and Pretty

In high school, I was sort of the geek, the ugly duckling, and the late bloomer. I was anorexically skinny, although I lacked the eating disorder that usually accompanies such thinness. I had terrible acne that covered not only my face, but my arms and back, as well. My glasses were large, thick-framed, and I preferred it that way because it covered my pimple-prone face. I was in marching band, maintained a 4.0 GPA with all honors classes, and actually enjoyed our assigned readings in both history and literature. I was an obvious tomboy, and my parents hated the way I clothed and presented myself; they wished I could be more like the popular girls at school, with their mini skirts, smooth skin and large breasts. But I just wasn't like that, at all. Even if I had wanted to be.

Boys at school had no interest in me whatsoever, and some of them were even cruel enough to play pranks on me by writing love letters and slipping them into my locker, snickering from their hiding places, watching me blush as I traced the words with my fingers and clutched the page to my pounding chest. Yes, this stuff happens in real life and not just in the movies, and unfortunately, I was the butt of these malicious jokes.

...

By college, my skin had cleared, my hair had grown long, I discovered contact lenses, and my sense of style improved... You would not have recognized me at all, and it happened almost overnight. The boys who played pranks on me in high school were falling over themselves to ask me out on dates, and I was finally able to exact my revenge by turning each of them down. (They had all flunked out of college half-way through our first year, anyway.)

I looked a hundred times better on the outside, but inside, I still felt like that lanky girl from high school who constantly hid her face as she pushed her falling glasses back up the bridge of her nose.