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Dess Holiday was nobody. Sure she was the daughter of the mayor but it’s not like anybody liked the mayor. She was just something you accepted as needed like indoor plumbing. Nobody was attached to her. And nobody was attached to Dess.
Catty had been calling her Ness for years, Bratty sees her as nothing but a machine that handed out pencils, and while she was dreaming of the warm, fiery kisses she could get from the green flames radiating from Inferna, she still didn’t know her name.
Sure she had Azzy, but everyone had Azzy. They may have been next door neighbors but it sure didn’t feel like she was his first pick.
When whining about it in the car her mom just told her “Oh cheer up I put up posters of my face all over when I ran for student body president and people still didn’t know my name by the end of the year. I didn’t even get my first date until senior prom and I got stood up. Now look at me.”
She should’ve been a motivational speaker.
Her dad was a little better. “They just aren’t ready for you, Dessmizer. Give it a year or two and you’ll be right in the spotlight, knocking their socks off.”
But she wanted to be knocking their socks off now.
She sulks around the thrift shop as she waits for her mom to find the perfect new ugly santa doll to terrorize the household with. She gazes at all the ancient books and tacky ceramics when something catches the corner of her eye.
It’s a cd of a freaky, garish clown attached to a baby doll. It’s so weird and scary and off putting and cool as all fucking shit. She doesn’t know what kind of music would be on a cd like that. It’s definitely not “A Top 50 Holliest Jolliest Classics.” that’s for sure.
“Hey Dessmizer, check this out.” Her dad says shoving a giant doll with an ugly green outfit carrying some obnoxious sort of net. She stuffs the cd in her jacket.
“It’s a holiday treat catcher.” He explains
“What the heck is that?”
“Oh these were a big thing back in the 80s. You toss it a treat, like a gingerbread cookie or a cupcake, and it catches it with perfect aim.”
“Why would you…need that?”
“It’s a riot at parties.”
“It is. Your father has a good eye doesn’t he?” Her mom says with a small smile that means she’s bursting with delight. Wonder how she would react to attaching a creepy clown head to that thing.
She couldn’t honestly be related to them. Kris had it easy, they didn’t have to worry about the lame genes manifesting in them.
“Yep. He sure does.” She says going back to pretending to window shop.
When they’re exiting the shop she reaches into her pocket and feels the cd. She probably should put it back. But it was what, two bucks? Who would even buy it anyway, people in Hometown don’t listen to that kinda shit anyway.
At home, she puts the cd in her player. It’s so harsh, and mean and grim and she just loves it. This. This is what she wants to sound like. She knows what Hometown is like, most people would probably just dismiss it for obnoxious noise, but to sound like this makes an impact. And who cares about being obnoxious. It was better than being nobody.
Middle school starts tomorrow and that’s nowhere near enough time to turn herself cool. She scrambles through her closet, trying on every article of clothing trying to find the miracle combination that doesn’t make her look like a total loser. There aren’t any.
She remembers how she’d scroll through Sinterest and see all those people with cool, colorful hair and how she’d daydream of making her hair look like that. When she asked her mom for hair dye, she just upturned her snout. Well if she wasn’t going to buy it for her she’d provide it for her in other ways.
She won’t be home for another few hours and her dad’s working out in the yard. She sneaks into her parents bathroom. Most of her mom’s makeup is dressy and boring, all drowned in an ocean of blue. At the bottom of her box is a tube of eyeliner that looks like it hasn’t been open. She pockets it.
She looks through the shelves and grabs a bottle of pet conditioner. She grabs a tube of red gel food coloring from the kitchen then makes her way to the guest bathroom. The tutorials made it look so easy.
She mixes the dye and conditioner and waits. After several minutes her hair is only a darker shade of brown. This would probably go better if she bleached it but she doesn’t have that. She adds more gel. Then some more. Finally her hair comes out a perfect shade of…orange.
Why was being cool so fucking hard?
An unexpected visitor stands behind her. Right, she got home early today.
“What happened here?” Her mom says, staring aghast. Dess examines the rest of the bathroom and it does kinda look like some kind of massacre happened here. Badass.
“I don’t know what you were thinking but we can fix this.” Her mom says going over to her hair. She ends up staining her hands.
“No we’re not. I want it like this.” Dess answers with a boldness unusual for her.
Her mom looks at her intently. Her gaze changes, like she no longer recognizes the person standing in front of her and she’s trying to decipher who she’s looking at.
Dess doesn’t really want it like this. She wanted something much bolder, and more awesome, and well, red. But like hell was she going to let her mom undo all my hard work.
“You said I could dress how I wanted this year. This is what I want.”
“But…it’s your first day back tomorrow. It’s your first impression. Do you know how important first impressions are?”
“Yeah, and this is the impression I want to make.”
Her mom once again looks like she doesn’t recognize who she’s looking at but whoever she is she doesn’t like her. Yet she says, “Fine. You made your bed and now you have to sleep in it but I forbid you from doing anything else until you clean up this mess.”
The next morning Dess still doesn’t know what to wear. Everything she wears just makes her feel more and more invisible. Suddenly she gets an evil idea. She takes a pair of scissors and cuts holes at the top of her jeans. They’re a really old pair, so hopefully her mom will only kill her a little when she finds out. She decides to wear a long top to cover the rips and when she gets to school, she’ll tie it up, revealing the holes.
She got makeup for her birthday but searching through the sea of candy cane red and holly greens she finds nothing that’s giving her the look she wants. She grabs her mom’s unused eye liner. She runs it over her eyelids, giving them a bold look. She’s pretty sure she read on a forum somewhere that you can use eyeliner as black lipstick. It’s glossy, liquidy, and stains her teeth.
It rules.
She runs the eyeliner over her snout too and with just one tube of eyeliner she looks more badass than she ever has before.
When she reaches the dinner table, she takes in everyone’s surprise. Noelle looks at her in awe, her dad seems more confused than anything but she can tell he’s trying to keep his face supportive, and her mom’s usually flat face has downturned ever so slightly to a frown.
“When I said you’d be allowed makeup this year, I thought there was an unsaid assumption that it would remain a reasonable amount.”
“Don’t you wear enough makeup that we could peel off a whole nother face off you?”
Her frown turns to an outright scowl but before she can speak Rudy juts in, “Okay now, we’re at the family dinner table and we don’t say mean things to each other at the family dinner table.”
That still left room for saying mean things outside of it.
He continues, “Let’s turn this energy around. How about we all say one nice thing to each other? I’ll start, Noelle you sang beautifully at choir at church.”
Noelle beams, “Thanks Dad. I think you make the best eggs in the world!”
“Thanks, sweetheart. Now Carol?”
Her mother looks her straight in the eye and says, “You’re a lovely, talented, intelligent young girl who’s going to grow into a mature young woman.”
Dess is taken aback at the high praise. Of course her mother just has to keep talking, “If you continue to apply yourself that is.”
“No snide remarks.” Her dad says.
Her mom sighs, “And your violin sounds beautiful dear.”
“Now Dess, it’s your turn.”
She turns to her mom and says, “You smell nice.”
Her mom seems confused but replies, “Thank you.”
She does smell nice, cool and minty with an undertone of pine. Dess can still remember breathing in her scent when she would fall asleep in her arms when she was younger. She’d recognized it wherever and in a way, it smells like home.
“That’s how we should talk to each other at the dinner table. Isn’t that so much nicer than being at each other’s throats?” Her dad says.
Only Noelle cheerfully cries, “Yes!” then awkward stares down at the table when she realizes no one has joined her.
When she greets Asriel at school she can’t tell if he’s scared, amazed, or baffled by her. “How’d you do that?”
“They invented these things called hair dye and eyeliner.” Dumb, sweet, perfect Asriel.
“Whoa! You look kinda like that one character in Smashing Fighters, the bad guy I think?”
She’s choosing to take that as a compliment.
“Oh my god, since when was there a redhead in our class? Oh wait, is that Dess?” Bratty says a few feet behind her.
“You bet your ass it is!” Dess says as she turns around and launches into an air guitar solo.
Bratty stares at her like she’s a circus freak before putting on a smile and says, “It’s kinda cute the thing you did with your eyes.”
Attention. Actual seconds of people’s times. This was already going great.
As she’s walking into class she bumps into someone and immediately feels heat rising all through her fur. Oh shit, Inferna.
“I’m so sorry.”
She only smiles and says, “It’s fine. Your hair is really cute by the way.”
This day is going great.
When she enters the classroom her teacher actually does a double take. Which is better than the barely glance she usually gets.
The class is tasked with getting into partners for an ice breaker gamer. She’s about to tap Asriel’s shoulder when Catty comes up to him.
“Hi Azzy, won’t you be my partner. I think we should get to know just everything about each other.”
“Uh, sure.”
That little bitch. He knows no one will be her partner. She looks around the classroom but everyone’s already partnered up.
“I’d like to be your partner.” She looks up and sees, Niceys has come to her desk. Well, he’s not the worst partner.
“Fine,” She says defeated.
“We just have to fill out the worksheet with each others answers. Okay, first, what’s your favorite color. Mine is blue.”
“I hate blue.”
“Oh, sorry, your antlers are a nice shade.”
“They’re lame. My favorite color is red. Like the blood of my enemies.”
Niceys is taken aback but continues, “What’s your favorite food? Mine is ice cream.”
Dess puts on her evilest grin. “Dust.”
“Maybe you should take this a bit more seriously. I don’t want us to get in trouble.”
“I am. My favorite food is dust. Doesn’t have to be my enemies but that’s a bonus.”
She stares behind her at Asriel, who’s giggling away with Catty. It was the first day. He could have at least stood beside her for the first day.
She got to hang with Asriel at lunch.
“You have to come over to my place. I wanna show you this album I st-found.”
“Yeah, I wanna listen. You should check out this album I got to. See it’s ska but get this, it’s all about being nice to each other and following the guidance of the angel.
“Aren’t you too old to be acting this lame?”
“It’s not lame to love the Angel. Some might say it’s the coolest thing you can do. I can’t come over today though. Track tryouts are today.”
“Fine when you’re done with the lame outs, come hang at my place.”
“I’m not lame. Just because I don’t have fancy instruments or get cool ice skates every year doesn’t mean I’m lame.”
“Azzy, this is exactly why you’re lame. All of that is the lamest shit ever.”
“No, it's awesome. I’d kill for all that. No, I wouldn’t but I would really like it. Anyway, I think you’ll really like the ska.”
Dumb, sweet Asriel one day she’ll make him cool.
So that might not have been the coolest first day back ever. She got complimented by Inferna, a couple of students laughed at her “dust of her enemies” comment, and her teacher said she seemed like a vibrant character despite her having some potential concerns. Which was more concern than she ever got from a teacher.
So what Asriel basically ditched her. She didn’t need him. Day by day she’d just get cooler and cooler and he’d beg her to teach him how to be as badass as her.
Once she and Noelle have made it home, their dad greets them. “Hey kids, did you deck the halls today or what? Dess…did something happen to your pants?”
Oh fuck.
“Yeah they just got ripped on the fence.”
“Uh huh.” Her dads says in a way that clearly doesn’t believe her. “You are showing a lot of midriff, don’t you think?”
She probably was pushing it with how high she tied her top up. “Only perverts care about that.”
“As a non-pervert I assure I care.”
“Uh-huh, yeah whatever.”
“Dess. Let’s lose the attitude, alright.”
This was so fucking lame. Still there was a lot she could get away with with her dad. She plasters on a big smile and with as much gingerbread icing sweetness she can muster says, “Sorry Daddy, next time I won’t dress like such a slut.”
“Do you want me to get your mother involved?” He says, his voice losing some of his softness.
“No!” She shouts with more fervor than expected. She’s not scared of her mom. Really she’s not. But who wants to deal with all that?
She unties her shirt, “I’m sorry. I won’t wear it like this again.”
She was cursed to be lame no matter what.
Noelle cheerfully follows her up to her bedroom. “Dess! Dess! Play that song you were playing yesterday!” Noelle asks.
“‘Course Elly.” She answers and takes her guitar to the living room. She wished she realized how fun guitar was sooner. She liked all her other instruments but something about her guitar felt like it was meant for her hands. Maybe she was just playing the right songs now but she didn’t think she’d get this feeling if she tried it for any of her other instruments.
Noelle looks up at her with stars in her eyes, swaying around the living room. No matter what she did she’d probably be cool in Elly’s eyes. Still she wants to give her something worthy of looking up to.
They’re dancing together when a familiar chill enters the living room. Her mom gets home, doing her long sigh and shake of her hair as she slams down her keys like she does every time she gets home.
“December when you get a moment, I need to speak to you.” She says as she walks upstairs.
Shit.
It’s better to get this over with quickly. After finishing a couple more songs for Noelle she goes up to her parents’ room.
Her mom’s already taken off her blazer and wiped off her makeup but that doesn’t make her any less intimidating. She wonders if she’s noticed the missing eyeliner.
“You know what’s expected of you this year. Your grades must remain excellent along with your performance in all your extracurricular. I trust that nothing will get in your way.”
“No, of course not.” Dess says without a hint of defiance.
“Good. I trust you not to embarrass me. You’ve taken quite the charge with that new look of yours. I allowed you more control over your appearance this year but there’s something you need.” She hands her a pack of makeup wipes. “You can play this silly dress up game all you want but remember what I expect of you. There’s a charity auction this weekend. I trust that you’ll remember whose daughter you are.”
She unceremoniously sends her off, leaving her with the makeup wipes. Dess stares at them. She knows once she takes them to her face exactly who she'll look like. Like she could ever forget.
Her mom is so annoyingly right sometimes. This is all just silly dress up and she can’t change who she is. If that’s the case her only chance might be to escape it, escape to somewhere it didn’t matter. There’s no way for her to even do that now.
It’ll be a long time before she can make her real debut.