THE FRONT

I get up early and prepare myself for school. My looks are not bad maybe a little on the skinny side, but isn't that the way models look?

Can't afford a perm so I cut my own hair short up under my ears sort of boyish. I'm good with color coordination and have learned to sew. Clothes and shoes so expensive. At school I breeze through the day. The boys like the way I look and try to date me. Can't go there. The girls think I have my clothes tailored because they can't find anything like them at the mall.

School is out for the day, so I catch the nearest bus and ride an hour to work at a DQ till closing. Waiting tables and collecting tips from hungry eyed boys. That's what the short skirts are for, the tips. On my day off I haunt the thrift stores and second hand shops. Goodwill gets a lot of my meager wages, then I'm back at the hovel cutting, sewing and reading style magazines.

I've made it almost through senior year running this scam. It's hard work keeping up the front. Then Ricky came along. Dreamy handsome, kind and gentle, big blue eyes, football build, curly blond hair and when he offered to drive me home after work he stayed on his side of the car and always looked in my eyes when speaking to me. I had him drop me between two mansions and I hurried between them and out the back hedge and across the tracks to the skid row shack Mama called home.

Mama gets disability and its enough to care for her needs, but there's none left for extras, so I work. I've built a fashion portfolio over the years with drawings of clothing styles I'd love to create. Ricky asked me to the Senior prom at his school. I sewed my own dress. It worked. Next week I graduate and I'm off to New York to work in fashion. Ricky's school is a high class finishing school and he lives there. I'll probably never see him again.

I find the fashion district. I wear my best creation, Goodwill alamode, up the stairs, in the doors and there sits Ricky behind the receptionists desk. His folks own the place.
"I'm here, you don't have to be cool anymore."