What is happening right now?

“Oh.” He smiles again. “I like it. You ready?”

“For what?”

“To… go bowling?”

Levi stifles a cough.

“Oh,” I say, dragging my eyes back to Matt. “No. I’m not ready yet.”

I’m not ready at all.

Levi nods at Matt. “It was good to meet you, man.” He scoots past us and hastily exits down the stairs. He doesn’t look back at me.

“Hey, you okay?” Matt tucks the loose curl behind my ear. I hate it when he does that. Maybe I like my hair all out of place and unorganized. My hair isn’t his goddamn desk.

Oh my God, I’m losing it.

I force out a smile. “I’m fine. Let me just get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

I don’t wait for him to agree. I just dart into my room and shut the door behind me, wondering why I’m on the verge of tears.

“But I don’t want to bowl!” The pudgy little girl in the lane next to Matt and me stomps her bowling shoe on the glossy floor as she speaks to her mother. “Bowling is boring and the balls are really heavy.”

Amen, sister.

The balls are ridiculously heavy. Fourteen pounds? What do I look like, He-Man?

“Quit making that face, Amanda,” says the girl’s mother as she sits with the small group of people they’re with. “It makes you look ugly.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, you should,” the mother says, raising her voice to be heard over the party music blaring from the overhead speakers. “You’re already fat. The last thing you need is an ugly face to match that body of yours. Don’t you want people to like you?”

I stare at the woman in horror as everyone within earshot shifts uncomfortably and looks away. The little girl bows her head in shame and silently collects her ball before rolling it down the lane. She keeps her eyes lowered as she makes her way back to her seat and the next person up gathers their ball. The little girl stares at her small hands.

I know that little girl. I was that little girl. Provided for, but unloved. Innocent, but resented. My mother was the queen of cruel words.

The first time I realized my mom hated me—and yes, I know that sounds dramatic, but the woman truly does despise me—was when I was five years old.

She was speaking on the phone to someone, I have no idea who, and I heard her say, “I hate being a mother. Sarah is so clumsy and messy and I swear she’s retarded. She’s scared of everything and cries all the time and she’s annoying as hell. And she’s not even pretty, so I can’t even look forward to a beautiful teenage daughter. She’ll probably be fat too.”

I was five when I heard this. Five.

I was so startled and confused by the words coming out of my mother’s mouth that I don’t think the true maliciousness behind them registered. I walked into the room where she had the phone to her ear and stared at her questioningly.

She rolled her eyes at me and spoke to her listener. “And now she’s eavesdropping on me like a little bitch. God, parenting is like a prison sentence.”

It was so surreal to feel hated by the person I loved most in the world. And that was just the first of many hurtful words that would fall from that woman’s lips. She didn’t physically abuse me—at least not often—but sometimes words can be more damaging than wounds.

So when I met Levi’s family, and his mother, Linda, loved me like her own and showered me with kind words and affection, I spent as many days and nights as I could in the comfort of the Andrews home. Linda and Mark Andrews were always trying to protect me from my miserable mother and give me what she wouldn’t. They showed me love and family and compassion and all the other things I was starving for.

My heart twists as I think back on all that happiness, that warmth.

God, I miss them.

“Striiike!”

I blink over to Matt, who has his arms raised in victory as he stares down the lane. He spins around with a giant grin. “Did you see that?”

I smile and clap and pretend I saw the whole thing. “Whoo-hoo!”

“Your turn,” he says.

Oh goodie.

I begrudgingly rise and lift my fifty-pound ball from the dispenser with an exaggerated grunt. I step up to the shiny lane—my feet sliding a bit on the polished floor so I have to catch myself like I’m baby Bambi—and halfheartedly throw the ball toward the white pins.

I knock over two. Thrilling.

I retrieve my ball for round two and knock over another three pins.

“Way to go, babe!” Matt says. “That’s your best frame yet.”

I pinch out a smile as we switch places and he prepares for his turn.

I hate this game.

As I take my seat, I glance at the neighboring lane and see the mother fussing with a barrette in the little girl’s—Amanda’s—hair. My mother always hated my hair. The curls drove her crazy. A disgusting rat’s nest, she’d call it.

By the time I was in seventh grade, the rat’s nest had grown to the middle of my back and I freaking loved it. It was wild and difficult to style, but it was my trademark, my identity. Pixie with the long blonde curls. Pixie with the happy hair. It made me feel girly and pretty.

My mom was always trying to get me to pin it back or twist it up into something that looked halfway respectable, but it was almost impossible to tame my unruly ringlets, so rarely ever did I cooperate.

One weekend I refused to pull my hair back and my mom threw a massive fit, but I didn’t care. It was my hair and I was going to wear it down. Nothing could stop me.

Except a pair of scissors.

Sandra Marshall grabbed a thick fistful of my proud curls and swiftly cut them clean off. I watched in horror as the front left side of my identity fell to the floor in a sad heap of golden spirals. Then I cried.

There was nothing I could do to rectify the damage except cut the rest of my hair just as short to match.

“Maybe walking around like an ugly boy will give you some perspective on properly caring for your hair,” she’d said.

I was thirteen and I thought I looked like a boy. I was thirteen and believed I was ugly.

I spent that weekend at Levi’s house, crying to his mom about how kids at school were going to tease me and how no boys would ever like me. Linda did her best to style my hair in the most feminine way possible, but it was a lost cause.

Monday morning came around and I cried all the way to school. Junior high is hell on girls—especially in a small town—so with my head hung in shame, I braved the front doors and steeled myself for the endless teasing and whispering that was sure to ensue.

But it never came.

It seemed everyone in school was too preoccupied with a certain eighth grader’s hair to care about mine. I traveled through the halls, listening to giggles and following wide eyes to the source of the school’s entertainment.

Levi.

His hair was longer back then and he had dyed it purple—neon purple—and spiked it up all over his head. The school’s star football player dying his hair a silly color wasn’t jaw-dropping or mind-blowing, but it was outrageous enough to keep any attention off of me.

Levi and I didn’t speak that day, but once, as we passed in the hall, he gave me a crooked smile and that’s when I knew.

I was his completely.

Bowling pins crash against the floor and the loud noise ricochets in my ears as Matt jumps in triumph over his eight-pin knockout.

I glance over at Amanda, whose head is still down as she and her group finish their game and leave the bowling alley.