My alarm blasted much to early on the first day back from Christmas break. I hated that sound so much; I just wanted to smash the stupid thing. Unfortunately, my alarm happened to be my $200 IPod touch so that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Plus, I wouldn't be able to handle losing Star Wars Angry Birds.
Blurry eyed, I frantically began swiping my fingers in every direction across the screen, trying to make the awful sound stop. As I finally succeeded, my older sister Christina walked into our bedroom. "Oh good, you're up." She said, "First day back to school, Marty! You'll want to look nice and make a good impression."
"Why?" I asked, "The kids there already know me, they already know what I look like."
"Well, it's a new year. You can be different, you can be a new Marty."
"So, you really think that people expect me to have changed in the two days since New Years."
"Well, not unless you show them."
"Riiiight, Chris, whatever."
I got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Maybe Chris was right. Maybe I had changed over break. What if all the Christmas cookies I ate were magic and contained some substance that turned you into the person you always wanted to be. When I got to school, people would notice I was different than before. It would be like in Cinderella when she shows up to the ball and no body recognizes her because she's so beautiful. People would whisper as I walked down the hallway in slow motion with my hair whipping out perfectly behind me, like in the movies. People would ask me what I'd done differently and heap loads of compliments on me. I would smile, thank them, but then humbly shrug it off and not let it go to my head.
I looked in the bathroom mirror at my short, shaggy, chestnut hair, the tired circles under my eyes, and then down at the bathroom scale I was standing on. It read "210 lbs."
"Sh*t."
I was still the same old me.
