Katerina Vorontsov
November 05, 2020 4:12 PM
It's a brand new me. by Katerina Vorontsov
Katya had always made a point of maintaining good posture, and done her best to carry herself with dignity at all times, despite her small size. On the second day of school, this was not a thing which changed. It was, however, perhaps just a bit more prominent than usual as she walked into the Cascade Hall, though this was not something most of her classmates were likely to notice, given another, rather more dramatic difference between her old appearance and the one she had today: her long blonde hair, which for five years had hung down her back, was partially braided and all pinned up into a neat updo.She could not, of course, wear it this way every day, not now that she was back at Sonora. It had not taken Katya long to conclude that, even amidst the excitement of learning how to put her hair up, and getting ready for her ball over the summer. American girls did not seem to wear their hair up all the time even after they came of age – there were seventh year girls every day wearing their hair down – and while Katya was at Sonora, she was one of them. She had considered putting her hair down right away, but she had just not been able to bring herself to indulge in that level of conformity. For one more day, at least, she was going to revel in having reached grown-up status by her own home’s status and let anyone who knew what it meant see this as well.
Accordingly, she had gotten up early, brushing her hair until it was as smooth as humanly possible, then spent entirely too much time in front of her mirror, putting it up and taking it down twice before she had been satisfied with how it looked. She had snapped in new earrings she had gotten as a birthday present, each with a diamond above a round, softly lustrous white pearl, put on the enamel floral brooch Sylvia had once given her along with her prefect’s badge, and had, with a touch of guilt, taken a tiny bit of the clear ointment meant to go on her hands at night, to keep them soft, and rubbed it over her lips, giving them a touch of glossiness, like girls who were allowed to wear cosmetics often seemed to have. She was a little tired from getting up early, and her shoulders ached courtesy of all the time she had spent with her arms in the air wrestling with her hair, but she smiled broadly, genuinely pleased with herself instead of just because that was what American girls did, as she joined one of her friends at breakfast.
“Good morning,” she said. “May I join you?”
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Katerina Vorontsov
It's a brand new me.
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