I suppose, to figure out why, we need to pull this novel right back to the very beginning. My name is Lila Braun. My mother is Italian, and my father was… Somebody. Just somebody. My mum said he was probably from some tropical island somewhere, because he had these lengthy, beaded dreads and spoke with a weighted foreign accent. They met in Vegas. He wanted her to stay, but family was the most important thing to her, so she went back home. Then, surprise, surprise, I came along. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details of my upbringing. It’s all kind of fuzzy, anyway, kind of like my hair.
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There was this radio host called Fuzzy I really admired as a kid. I’d sit in front of the TV and she would speak to me with her eyes. I thought they gave her this specific sort of ambience. Free. Wild. A nature thing. I wanted to be just like her, yet somewhere along the way, between Hollywood’s magazine covers and watching as the boys I liked drifted towards those barbie doll replicas, I entertained the notion of the hair straightener. Whenever I’d listen to the sizzle of my hair beneath the iron, I’d hear Fuzzy screaming in agony. She was lost. I’d lost her.
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But enough about my hair. Let’s talk about boys.
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When I was six years old, a boy much older than me cornered me in his living room and asked if I loved him. I didn’t know why, but I was scared. With broadened eyes, I nodded my head, and he kissed me. He kissed me until the arrow turned around the clock three times. I thought if I just kept watching the clock, time would go faster, but it didn’t. Those were the slowest there minutes of my life, and then the front door chimed, and he pulled away.
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A lot more happened before the door chimed, but like I said, it’s kind of like my hair.
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Today, I wear it in two braids. And I like to count the calories in the food that I eat. Maybe then, I’ll shrink down to that fuzzy melody I can hear in my head sometimes.
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Maybe then, I’ll find her again.
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