Mom (Short Story)

Mom

As a 47 year old mother, Kathleen wanted nothing more than to relive her high school glory days.  After marrying her high school sweetheart, settling down, having a daughter, and growing older and fatter with her cookie cutter life, Kathleen watched as the best years of her life as a cheerleader dating the quarterback faded before her very eyes.  In the real world, her lifestyle of bullying and cat calling the other kids was not exactly appreciated in her job as a receptionist.  As her looks deteriorated, and her layers of makeup and wrinkle concealer piled on, and her thigh fat went from “fab to flab”, and her sandy blonde hair wilted to grey, Kathleen became merely a poorly done caricature of the queen bee she used to be as a teenybooper.  Settled down in a grey suburban mini-mansion in a wealthy neighborhood filled with mostly retirees, she gave up her hope of reconnecting with her inner youth as she watched the small amounts of joy and excitement in her life die.

When Kathleen’s daughter started to have her own spotlight in high school, with attention from all the guys and fashion compliments from all the gals, Kathleen grew green with envy.  She began to change her image to match her daughter’s.  Although Kathleen’s first nose job just used her daughter’s perfect slim snout as a picture reference, Kathleen soon transformed her entire aging face and body into her daughter’s image.  Four nose jobs, two chin fat suctions, a face lift, a few hair bleachings, three lip injections, and two tummy tucks later, Kathleen looked like a hideous Botox monster to everyone- except her and her drunken beer-bellied husband.

The caterpillar that was the frumpy middle-aged suburban mom broke out of her cocoon into becoming the preppy pretty-in-pink high school girl-or at least she looked like one from a few yards away or in dim lighting.  Kathleen was ready to begin the transition back into the cliques, backstabbing, and gossip of high school.

Walking in the freshly-mowed high school courtyard to her first hour class, Kathleen stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to the practically baby-faced teenagers frolicking and texting their friends on their cellular devices. High-pitched laughs of kids happy to see their long-lost friends after the summer filled the large sunny and grassy entrance to the school.  The high school itself was modern, large, and luxurious-only the best, because Kathleen also sent her daughter there.   The kids displayed newly sprouted dangerous fashion trends and wacky new hair colors, ready to have a brand new start this year.  Needless to say, none of them had as big of a comeback as Kathleen.

Intimidated but determined, Kathleen fastened her bleach blond hair into pigtails with her frilly pink scrunchies.  She was ready to have the best second first day of high school in her life.

At her first hour class, Kathleen, of course, arrived fashionably late for roll call.  The classroom had colorful, almost childish posters telling students to “do what is right, not what is popular” and other worn-out phrases told to high school students.  Posters and pictures from students adorned the bright yellow classroom walls.  At the front of the class of barely pubescent high school freshmen stood a smiling teacher.

“Paulina?” called out Ms. Honey, the thirty-something sweet and mild-mannered English teacher.  She was well meaning and believed that all students were inherently good-her biggest mistake.  “Is Paulina Gomez here?”

“Who the hell keeps calling my name?” retorted a short girl with abnormally large golden hooped earrings sitting in the back of the class, as she took out the dangling headphones from her ears.  She had a big mouth and even bigger, sharper teeth for a bite to match her bark.

“My apologies!” said Ms. Honey, “It will take me a few days to get to know all of my student’s names by heart.”

In walked 47 year old Kathleen with her black miniskirt and pink purse.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kathleen sneered sarcastically, chewing her bubblegum.

“That’s okay!” Ms. Honey exclaimed.  “I know that it can be difficult to find all of your classes on the first day.”

Kathleen laughed at Ms. Honey and strolled to the back of the classroom, right next to Paulina, who was blasting Eminem from her iPod. As time went by, Paulina and Kathleen became B.F.F.s despite the generational gap between them.  They went out to the downtown mall on Friday nights to eat pizza, color coordinated their outfits and accessories for the day, and even fought over the same guys at the high school.  However, the new friends also shared a love of tormenting others.  Like two peas in a strange and somewhat deformed pod, every day Paulina and Kathleen took advantage of Ms. Honey.  They removed the screws from her chair, locked her out of her own classroom, and even stuck gum inside of her hat, leaving a prominent bald spot on the top of her scalp.  Unfortunately, their rampage did not stop there.

After they had had their fun harassing the teacher, Kathleen and Paulina moved on to the general student body-or at least the portion that couldn’t defend itself.  They tripped the kids in crutches.  They mocked people who spoke with a stutter.  They gossiped about how “loose” the other girls were that seemed interested in “their guys”.  The Kathleen and Paulina duo dominated the high school social hierarchy like Kathleen used to in the old days.

One day, Paulina and Kathleen were eating their processed chicken tacos in the busy high school cafeteria.  The lunchroom was too bright, too crowded, and too loud. Like a can of sardines, the kids were packed, but it was better to swim with the herd rather than be isolated. Still, the two queen bees isolated themselves from the cafeteria with a small group of faithful and thoughtless minions amidst the jungle of lunchroom chaos. 

“Do you see that blonde a few tables across?”  Paulina asked Kathleen scowling, pointing to a relatively friendly girl talking with her group of friends a few tables away.  Kathleen nodded yes, although she wasn’t sure if she had met the girl herself.  “That tramp was flirting with the linebacker I had my eyes on today.  What should I do to get her to back off of my territory?”

“Allow me!” Kathleen grinned.  Public humiliation was one of Kathleen’s specialties.  Ever since she took up bullying as a hobby when she was back in high school for the first time, she had loved pantsing her latest victims or bringing their darkest secrets to light in front of a live audience. 

Kathleen grabbed her bright red plastic lunch tray from the table, and marched to the blonde, who was turned around, laughing with her friends.  Kathleen dumped the brown chunky mixture of a taco salad, spaghetti, and cheese soaked in chocolate milk on top of the unsuspecting girl’s long blonde hair.  Milk and unidentifiable chunks of solid food dripped down from her head onto her face and down her spine.  The girl turned around, showing her smeared mascara and tomato red embarrassed face.

“That will teach you, hussy!” laughed Kathleen, finally feeling the same powerful wrath that she had held back when she was a teenager in high school.  The girl started to cry loudly as all of the eyes of the lunchroom were staring at them.  Kathleen looked into the eyes of the girl, which actually looked a bit like Kathleen’s herself.

The girl wiped a few spaghetti noodles from her face multi-colored with cafeteria goo, looked Kathleen in the eyes, and sobbed, “Mom?”