It was a hand-me-down, of course. Almost everything I owned – clothes, toys, even many of my books, belonged to someone else before they landed in my hands. So, the curling iron on the bathroom sink was no different.  It once belonged to one of my sisters, and it showed its history. The handle was dented, and the tube was stained brown with burnt Aqua Net.

But I didn’t care. This little steaming tube was going to save me.

For weeks, Nikki Barnett, a girl in my seventh-grade gym class, had been harassing me. Nikki had dirty blonde hair that she crimped, sometimes spiking her bangs high. She wore blue eyeshadow and thick black mascara. Shiny lip gloss too. “Strawberry,” I heard her say once while she smacked her lips, admiring herself in a locker room mirror.  She wore tight jeans and sweaters that sagged from her shoulders, showing off bra straps that were, shockingly, not always white, but pink or bright blue. She ditched classes to smoke in the school bathrooms or underneath the football bleachers. She was wild, especially by the standards in my small town.

But she was also a bully, and I was her target.

I couldn’t do much about my clothes. I lived in discarded Lee jeans and sweaters with frayed sleeves. My attempts at wearing lipstick made me look silly, so I had also given up on blush and eyeshadow.

Still, I could do something about my hair. I picked up the curling iron.

I parted my shoulder-length hair into strands and twirled the ends around the tube. Letting go, I was pleased to see that my normally limp hair held a curl. I repeated the process again and again, and then, finger combed the strands. Finally, I sprayed my hair, hoping the curls would stay in place.

In gym class that day, Nikki stopped short and snorted.

“You finally have learned how to take care of your hair,” she said, snapping her gum. She stood with her hands on her hips, her jean shorts inching up her thighs, defying school dress codes.

I stared at her.

She reached out, touching my curls that were soft, in spite of the hairspray. I didn’t flinch.

“Pretty,” she said. Then she turned away.

Nikki never said another word to me. She faded from my memories until nearly 20 years later when I read on a social media post that she had been killed when her boyfriend ran her over in his truck.

I hate that now I remember her hardness.  I just want to remember how she reached out to touch my hair, as if realizing the world did not have to be all sharp and crimped edges.

Karen J. Weyant's essays have been published in the Briar Cliff Review, Cream City Review, Crab Creek Review, Lake Effect, and Rappahannock Review. She is an Associate Professor of English at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York. She lives, reads and writes in northern Pennsylvania.