Why I Let My Hair Grow Out by Maryrose Wood

Morgan,” said Patty, immovable as a tree. “You’ve got a lump on your head like a pigeon’s egg. You’ve got to be checked. And where’s your helmet, come to think of it?”
    â€œMust have come off when I crashed,” I mumbled. “I guess I didn’t buckle it right.” I made a lame effort to pretend to look for the helmet, but moving just made my head hurt, so I stopped.
    â€œNever mind it; we’ve got plenty more,” Patty said, more kindly. “You go see the doctor with Colin. I’m going to call your parents and tell them what’s happened.”
    â€œYou don’t have to do that,” I said, quickly. Who wanted to deal with the trans-Atlantic hysteria? Not me. “I just fell off my bike, okay? It’s not an international incident or something.”
    â€œWe’ll talk about it when you get back from hospital,” said Patty, and that was that. She put on her helmet and walked back to her bike.
    Lucia was still standing there, holding her bike next to her, her lips pressed together, silently watching Colin help me to the van. She’d said nothing this whole time. Maybe she was pissed about not having the happy afternoon of Irish scenery and tearful buddy-to-buddy reminiscing she’d been expecting. Maybe she was pissed I lied about the helmet—she’d seen me riding without it. Like it mattered. It was my head, after all.
    â€œFeel better, Morgan,” she said at last, as she slowly mounted her bike. “I’ll see you later.”
    Â 
poor lucia. all alone on the world’s saddest vacation and she has to be buddies with the one person more miserable than her. But those are the breaks, I thought, as I gingerly maneuvered myself into the van. If other people had the power to make my life suck so much, it was only logical that I must be an essential part of making other people’s lives suck. It was like that law of physics Raph tried to explain to me once: the Universal Theory of Sucking.
    Honestly there was no reason for me to feel one bit sorry for Lucia Faraday. This was a woman who’d actually mated with her soul mate. Now he was dead, which of course bites, but how many people even get to have a soul mate? I was positive I would never find mine. I could barely get to know people before they started hating me.
    Case in point: Colin. Just two days ago he was merrily chatting and teasing and telling me how we’d be friends. Now, as he turned the key in the ignition and shifted the van into gear, he looked mad enough to spit.
    â€œGuess what I found back at the inn?” he said, abruptly. “Your helmet. Bloody stupid, Mor.”
    Meaning: He’d also known I was lying. So he’d covered for me, but he wasn’t happy about it. He’d lied to his boss and now he had to take me to the hospital even though he probably hated me and wished I’d been found dead by the roadside, my remains already being devoured by animatronic—well, cows don’t eat people, but maybe killer sheep or something. The details didn’t matter. The whole situation was a perfect example of how my mere existence introduced suckiness into the lives of all who crossed my path.
    No wonder Raph wanted “a change.” If I were Raph, I would have dumped me too.
    The most fun I’ve had on this whole vacation so far was when I was unconscious , I thought. No wonder that dream felt so real. I must have been in a coma or something. This trip sucks, Colin sucks, I suck suck suck. . . .
    â€œWhat is that?” I asked, trying to break this awful mood. “That lump on top of the hill?” I pointed in the direction I’d been riding when I fell, at the strangely symmetrical bump in the not-too-distant landscape.
    Colin whipped the van through a three-point turn on the narrow road so hard I thought we’d end up in the ditch again. Now the lump was behind us and I couldn’t see it