Voted Most Likely To Need Therapy

Look this way, tilt your head just a bit, a bit more, turn a little here, chin up, smile. The lights warmed her already dewy face, brought pink to her cheeks, made her crimped 90’s hair glow highlighter yellow under their harshness. The first shutter. A hushed voice from the back. Look at Haley. Laughter from a shadowed chorus of third-grade boys with sticky mouths and spiky hair all in a row behind the camera man like a police lineup. Led by their mob boss Logan, a lanky hockey hopeful from Nebraska with a prejudice against big-haired big girls who just want a memorable school picture. The second shutter caught her biting her lower lip to keep the tears behind her eyelids. I’ll punch him right in the nose. Her mother’s threat rang hollow. No adult woman is going to punch an eight-year-old jackass in the nose. She needed her to say anything else, needed her not to put her on a diet at seven years old, needed her to show an ounce of positivity toward her own body, needed her not to add to the chorus of laughter, hushed criticisms. She’s going to be called a land whale on the internet in twenty years by a man who has outgrown the sticky mouth, spiky hair, but not the general jackassery. You could’ve at least paid for the therapy.