5. Not Another Unnecessary Makeover
Indigo took a deep breath, resting her hands against a tree and stretching her muscles. She looked at her phone to see that she’d ran about six kilometres in forty minutes. Her sport bra was drenched in sweat; Indigo wiped her forehead with an armband and took a sip of water.
She looked around. The workout brought her to a remote part of the park, where a sandy path was disappearing between the trees. There was a road nearby; she could hear the cars passing by. The sky was red, but Indigo didn’t care. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d run back home in the dark.
She looked back at her path and shrugged. She rarely ever chose the same way to get back home, but the only alternative seemed to be the side of the road and Indigo didn’t like the perspective of being hit by a car and left in the ditch to die. Nevertheless, she walked across the grove of trees and looked around. The road was almost empty and, as far as Indigo remembered, it’d soon lead her to the district filled with small, cosy houses inhabited by old widows and jaded hipsters.
Indigo put on her headphones and started to run. The music blasted in her ears, becoming one with her heartbeat. She sped up, feeling a pleasant pain in her muscles.
Suddenly, a sound of a car horn found its way through the layer of drums assaulting Indigo’s ears. She saluted the driver with her middle finger and continued to run. It wasn’t long before the black SUV caught up with her, the driver waving at her.
“What?” Indigo exclaimed, looking into the car. She slowed down before stopping completely. “Sunny Flare? Since when are you driving a car? And how did you find me?”
“Mom doesn’t know that I took it.” Sunny Flare looked at her bracelets. “Also, I hacked the satellites to be able to watch you all the time from outer space.”
“Is that legal?” Indigo asked.
“No, but actually I just checked the internet. You know your phone posts your training results to all the social media? Complete with a handy map.”
“Damn.” Indigo shook her head. “But why are you stalking me instead of doing something useful? Like, preparing a new school uniform?”
“About that,” Sunny said. “Lemon Zest called me and said that a certain guy is on your mind, but unfortunately he now considers you one of the boys.”
Indigo shook her head and smacked her hand against her forehead. “And you believed her?”
“Well, if you want it to be serious, a little change won’t hurt,” Sunny said.
“I don’t want it to be nothing,” Indigo muttered.
“So you want it to be something?”
Indigo groaned and started to run. She heard the engine of Sunny’s car roaring and saw her friend catching up with her again.
“What?” Indigo asked.
“You’re running away from me again,” Sunny said. “Maybe I’ll at least drive you home?”
“I’d rather run, thank you. You drive like a kamikaze.” Indigo turned between the trees. Running through the bushes was hard, but at least Sunny couldn’t reach her there.
It was already dark when she reached her house. She walked into the living room to see her parents sitting on the couch.
“Hi,” Indigo said. “I’ve been running, I smell, and I know that I should’ve gotten back home earlier. I’m gonna take a shower and eat some supper. Did I miss something?”
“Your friends were here,” Indigo’s mother said. “They want to see you tomorrow about some dresses.”
“Oh hell…” Indigo muttered under her breath.
“Yeah, that’s what I said too,” Indigo’s father replied. “You and dresses? When we were buying you a school uniform, you threw a tantrum because you wanted trousers.”
Indigo chuckled. “Well, I was young and dumb…”
“You were thirteen.”
Indigo groaned. “I really preferred pants…”
Indigo’s mother chuckled. “To the point that you once went to school commando as a form of protest.”
“I’d better go and take a shower before you find more embarrassing things I did.” Indigo rushed upstairs. Before taking a shower, she checked the bathroom in case Sunny Flare was hiding there.
While pouring warm water all over herself, Indigo thought that hiding in some improbable place would be more like something Lemon Zest would do. This made her shudder; Lemon wasn’t usually into hiding from the others, but when she did want to disappear, she was pretty good at that. Indigo could never forget Sugarcoat’s expression when they were playing airsoft and Lemon suddenly emerged from the pile of leaves to shoot her in the back.
Luckily, Lemon wasn’t hiding anywhere, although when Indigo left the bathroom, wrapped in a pink and fluffy bathrobe, she saw that someone had tried to call her. Seven times. At first, Indigo wanted to call back, but then she decided it could wait. She went downstairs.
Food definitely couldn’t wait.
“Hi, Indy!”
Indigo gasped, waking up. She looked at her phone lying on the nightstand and realised it was 11 AM. She usually slept long on vacation, but this time she outdid herself. This wasn’t, however, an issue. The real issue was that Lemon Zest was sitting on her windowsill, waving her legs, adorned with striped socks.
“What the hell?” Indigo muttered. “How did you get here?”
“I climbed,” Lemon replied. “Hurry up, Sunny is waiting for us.”
Indigo was about to get up from bed, but she realised that due to a hot night, she’d gotten rid of her pajamas. “Get out,” she said. “I need to get dressed and eat something. Didn’t you hear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?”
“At this time, you may as well eat lunch for breakfast.” Lemon jumped off the windowsill, grabbing the branch of a tree in Indigo’s garden. Indigo waited till she disappeared from sight before rushing to the closet.
Twenty minutes later, fully dressed and still a bit hungry, she was sitting in Sunny Flare’s car. She noted that it was a red convertible rather than a black SUV, but she chalked it up to her family’s inability not to show off their wealth.
“You know I’m doing it only because you two wouldn’t stop, right?” Indigo asked.
“You’ll thank me later,” Sunny Flare replied, looking at Indigo’s knee-long camo trousers and a black t-shirt with a drawing depicting a teenager on fire, standing in some suburb. “What are you even wearing?”
“I have one with a crossbuster, but it’d be awkward if I ran into Principal Cinch enjoying her last days before seeing us again,” Indigo said. “Where are we going?”
Sunny Flare smiled. “You’ll see…”
The room Sunny Flare used for working seemed pretty crowded, despite its enormous size. Half of it was littered with various bits of dismantled electronic devices. There were a couple of computers there, some of them much older than the host of this place. On the other side of the room, behind a battered pool table and a few empty wine bottles, there were bales of fabric stacked on the top of one another. A sewing machine, a large closet, and a locker full of utensils were nearly buried under them.
“If this whole thing revolts, it’ll be the most fabulous Skynet in existence,” Indigo muttered, pointing at the electronics. Sunny walked towards her and took a look at her hair.
“I can’t do much with that,” she muttered. “Unless you agree for hair extensions.”
“Let me tell you where you can stick your hair extensions…” Indigo raised her fist. “Touch my hair and you’ll have to sell your soul and half of this house to pay your dentist.”
“That’d be Sugarcoat’s mom,” Lemon said. She opened the locker and grabbed a pair of pliers. “Will we need that?”
“Later.” Sunny Flare grabbed a measuring tape and wrapped it around Indigo. “That’s some weird proportions…”
“Nah, I just have more muscles than a mosquito, unlike you,” Indigo replied. Sunny’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything.
“How about this?” Lemon raised her hand, holding a circular saw blade.
“If Indigo behaves, we won’t need that.” Sunny threw the measuring tape on the table and went to the closet. “First, try that.”
Indigo eyed the pink miniskirt and a top unsurely. “Do I look like a slut to you?”
Sunny opened her mouth, but Indigo continued, “If you try to make me wear that, I’ll make you eat that top. Just so we’re clear.”
“Okay.” Sunny rolled her eyes and grabbed a navy blue dress. “How about that?”
“But I really wanted to see her in that pink thingy…” Lemon said.
“You didn’t,” Indigo muttered. “It was all a hallucination caused by your blood test results.”
“My blood test results were fine…” Lemon blushed.
Indigo smirked. “Well, the sight of me wearing that outfit could give you–”
“Indigo!” Sunny exclaimed.
“Nevermind.” Indigo rolled her eyes and looked at the blue dress. “Give me that.”
A few minutes later, Indigo stood in front of a big mirror, looking at her reflection. The blue dress looked fine on her, although Sunny insisted on shoes with heels higher than anything Indigo ever wore in her life.
“This guy is almost two metres tall, how would you look next to him?” Sunny asked.
“Why would I care?” Indigo asked. “It’s not like we’re together or anything…”
“We’re working to change that, aren’t we?” Sunny chuckled.
Indigo frowned. “No?”
Sunny didn’t hear that. “I have a better idea! He needs to see you as someone he can take care of! And we can achieve that by making you look like a–”
“– nerd.” Indigo narrowed her eyes. “I look like a nerd… I think.” She took the orange glasses off. “Pardon my French, but I can’t see shit in those.”
Sunny smirked. “You’ll look helpless to him…”
“But I don’t want to!” Indigo exclaimed. “On a side note, did you steal those glasses from Sugarcoat or what?”
Lemon smiled sheepishly. “She left them in the changing room when I met her at the swimming pool…”
Indigo smacked her hand against her forehead. “That’s it. Give me back my clothes, I’m leaving.” She turned to Sunny. “I appreciate your efforts, but I’d rather go to Bulk as me, not as a slutty nerd or whatever you have in mind. Get it?”
“Umm…” Sunny backpedalled.
“I’m glad you understand.” Indigo grabbed her t-shirt. “Now, show me the way out of this place…”
Sugarcoat grabbed the metal ladder and climbed out of the swimming pool. She looked around, squinting; everything around her was blurry, but she could more or less tell that the green wave nearby was that young lifeguard with dreadlocks, or that a bunch of kids were completely ignoring the “no running” signs. She tried to focus her gaze on the electronic clock on the wall, but she had to walk to it anyway to see that she had just enough time left to dry her hair and get dressed.
Sugarcoat walked to the dressing room and opened her locker. She wiped her face and grabbed the sport bag with her clothes.
“No way…” she muttered, opening it. “Damn…” She looked around and her gaze landed on someone light blue. “Sunny Flare? Is that you?” she asked. “Some son of a skunk and a jackal stole my glasses…”
“Ms. Sugarcoat, I’m afraid I’m not Sunny Flare. And I don’t think I can help you with your glasses.”
“Shit.” Sugarcoat froze, realising that the blue shape in front of her was most definitely Principal Cinch.
“I also don’t think such a vocabulary is necessary.”
“I’ll be right back,” Sugarcoat muttered, running across the changing room and back to the swimming pool. She slipped on wet tiles, waving her hands to regain balance. She saw some green blur in front of her and then she rammed into something, falling with it into the water.
“What the hell are you doing?” someone shouted. Sugarcoat stood in the water, blinking. After a while of guessing, she realised she’d knocked the lifeguard into the swimming pool.
“Someone stole my glasses, I ran into my principal and made a fool out of myself,” Sugarcoat replied. “Also, I fell into the swimming pool with… Wait, aren’t you that stoner Indigo told me about? Something about sandals?”
“Sandalwood, yeah,” he replied. “And you’re that girl who destroyed my birdhouse during the Friendship Games.”
“I merely gave it a coup de grâce,” Sugarcoat said. “It was made with duct tape and loose branches. Would you help me get out of this pool? I can’t see anything.”
“Maybe I should give that foie gras thing to you?” Sandalwood asked.
“Holding my head underwater for four minutes wouldn’t go unnoticed, especially since you’re a lifeguard here.” Sugarcoat swam to the edge of the swimming pool and crawled out of it. “Hope you don’t swim better than you build birdhouses.”
“My rats would like it.” Sandalwood got out of the pool in a much more dignified way than Sugarcoat.
“Well, they have a really weird taste…” Sugarcoat muttered. “Wait, you have rats?”
“Five,” Sandalwood replied. “Cheech, Chong, Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles.”
“I have a hairless rat called Meitner, and a hooded RCS rat called Rosalind,” Sugarcoat replied.
“What rat?” Sandalwood raised his eyebrows.
“Royal College of Surgeons,” Sugarcoat replied. “They’re blind by default and used in research. I saved one from the medical college.”
“Yeah, a blind rat fits you...” Sandalwood chuckled. “Can we save more of them?”
“I don’t think so,” Sugarcoat replied. “They’re hard to breed and I guess they discontinued the research. But I have a friend who needs to give two young rats to someone.”
“Really?” Sandalwood asked. “I always felt my herd needed Dante and Randall.” He looked at the clock. “My shift ends in an hour. If you wait, we can go there together.”
Sugarcoat sighed. “Well, it’s a choice between that and smashing into every lamppost on the way home. Not sure what’s worse.”
“Well, I can always drive you home so you can get spare glasses,” Sandalwood said.
Sugarcoat thought for a moment. “Okay. Just tell me if Cinch already left the changing room. I need to get my clothes.”
“Don’t worry, I saw her on the slide,” Sandalwood said. “There’s a cafe downstairs if you want to wait for me.”
Sugarcoat nodded and walked to the changing room.
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Man, I need to watch this movie some time.
Principal Cinch on a waterslide...
That sounds less like something that would happen and more like a startled exclamation.
8842400
"Principal Cinch on a waterslide! Aliens are coming!"
Hmm, maybe it's good Sugarcoat didn't get to see it.
That is something I didn't expect these five to do, but given their more affluent backgrounds, I can totally see it.