I Made Her Pretty

Kim Mabe was fucking hairy. It will be my forty-third year at this school this upcoming October and from all that time and experience here I have seen some unusual looking kids. She takes the cake. The students concluded that her arms and legs must have been invisible since no one had ever seen any sign of her skin, and it was surely a wonder how she kept her balance, only occasionally tripping over the hair that flowed off her toes. Her face was the home to even more hair. She had a Pringle-man mustache and excruciatingly enormous Elvis Presley sideburns that would surely make a bald man cry, whether it would be due to hair-envy or the dandruff that would tickle the insides of his nose they were unsure. She also sported a unibrow, but it was not just a unibrow; it was a monster that took up a good portion of her forehead that started somewhere along her hairline and raggedly made its journey across to the other side. During break, one guy joked that someone could use a curling iron on any part of her body. Later, they auctioned off which parts they would style; one red-headed boy with about five-hundred too many freckles called her legs, and a preppy dumb cheerleader with saggy breasts much larger than her head laughed while claiming ownership to her knuckles. The entire lunchroom went into an intergalactic uproar, pounding their tables with sweaty fists, sounding uncannily like hyenas, and knocking down all the mops and brooms.

Many gave Kim the nickname "The Mother of All Hobbits," going as far as writing it on bathroom walls, poles and bus stops that I had to scrub off daily. An all girl rock band in our school later adopted the name; her face in a maladjusted, awkward turn to the left while showing a little teeth was their logo. In the class, when any sign of dust balls rolling on the ground were present, it would only be a matter of time until someone would jump on a desk and bark out loud that “the Hob” was shedding again, leaving footprint marks where the next student would have to sit next period. When everyone laughed and the spotlight shone down specifically on her, she would simply take out her little blue notebook and jot something down. Everyone picked on the Mabe girl. Hell, I am pretty sure the teachers in their esteemed teachers' lounge had a good howl about her at least once or twice. It was just too tempting and definitely way too easy for everyone since she would stand there totally lifeless taking it as if she were either deaf or like she absolutely, positively did not care.

“Did you hear? The hairy chick's missing,” whispered some boy just close enough to be in my hearing radius.
“Maybe her parents took her back,” the second boy replied.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the wolves.”

One boy burst into laughter, the other gave an uncomfortable half grin and forced out a little noise from the pits of his stomach. By the end of the day, the whispers exchanged across the room turned into the talk of school, and not soon after, the talk of the town. The detectives came by and randomly asked students if she was popular, who would want to harm her, who bullied her, and who she hung out with. Just typical, expected questions, really. I doubt they had gotten much details out of anyone, and it would not surprise me one bit if they simply put every student on their list of prime suspects.

Eventually the case was dropped. No one cried for Kim except for her drugged up foster mother because she would no longer receive monthly payments from the government. No one cared except maybe for the school counselor who knew almost nothing about her other than the fact that she liked to write poetry; even she went out to a fun little cocktail party the night of her disappearance. No one searched for her body aside from the detectives who gave up a measly two weeks later because they had more “high-profile” cases elsewhere. Kim Mabe was now in peace, left deteriorating under the leaves of our school garden and had since become the new enriched fertilizer to exotic flowers that had magically begun growing in its entryway. This was Kim's new home.

It remains ironic to me how beautiful it is in this one spot that while no one remembers her, everyday, everyone looks, smiles, and is thankful for such a beautiful view. It is ironic that in this spot where they find beauty, lies her ugly remains.

Exactly where I left her.