“Promise me you won’t laugh at me.” I say in a very serious way. I watch as Aimee continues to paint her nails with such focus and patients. she dips the brush back into the bottle, still not looking at me.

“What is it Kara? Is this about that rash?” She lightly begins to blow on her pink nails.

I sigh. “God no! and that went away thank you.”

“Well get out.” Aimee shoos me towards the door.

“can you just look at me for two seconds. I need to talk to you.”

“Can’t you see I’m doing something. talk to mom.”

I throw the purple teddy bear sitting on her floor, hitting Aimee right in the head.

“Fuck okay. Okay. You have my attention.”

“Promise you won’t laugh.”

“Kara.”

“Aimee.”

“Fine I promise.”

I pull my hair back revealing my truth.

“HOLY SHIT. What did you do!” Aimee reaches out and touches the big bruise on my forehead. her touch feels hard and it makes my face suddenly begins to burn.

“Okay how the hell did you do this.”

“I was trying to talk to Andre about homecoming, and as I was trying to get his attention I face planted in front of our entire gym class and a rubber ball hit me in my face. “

Aimee holds her breathe and exhales really quickly. “I can see the lines…from the ball. Jesus.”

She begins to laugh.

“ITS NOT FUNNY! Andre saw it.”

“Fuck I’m sorry.”

“I couldn’t see, Halle had to walk me to the nurse it was so terrible. Everybody was laughing.”

Aimee pulls me in for hug, and squeezes me tight. silent tears roll down my cheeks, my face begins to sting even more.

I sniffle. “I need help covering this. it just looks even more stupid.”

Aimee takes a towel off her bed and dabs my face. The foundation comes off and she chuckles again.

“Sorry I’m trying it’s just this foundation does not work for this type of thing.”

she takes me into the bathroom and puts a cold rag on my face.

“I will make sure it’s covered, did you even get to ask him to homecoming?”

“No i was too embarrassed. How can I recover from that.”

“Two days from now, he should forget about it.”

“Ugh great.”

“Just hold still.”