Next was Mary, an incredibly shy but sweet girl when we met her, her confidence had been crushed from years of being overweight. She had once worn her beautiful strawberry blond hair to her shoulder blades, but after being told by a school bully that this made her face look fat she had traded in her locks for a short, chin length bob. Being the only girl in our group who didn’t play sports (I myself was quite adept at soccer while Jennifer and Nicole were both veterans of volleyball) we encouraged her to find a sport that appealed to her and she obliged, picking swimming. Before long she was losing weight by the barrel-full, and as her weight continued to melt off her hair grew quickly back to past her old style and now hung beautifully like a thick curtain of brilliantly soft and shining satin to the small of her back. By senior year she possessed the sculpted sun bronzed body of a Greek Goddess, and decided to accentuate her long mane by cutting thick bangs into it which always managed to fall perfectly and completely covered her forehead from her hairline to just above her eyes.
Then there was Nicole, the most intelligent of our group with a GPA that never dipped below 4.2 since she was in 7th grade. Unfortunately, jealous kids who envied her brilliance were cruel to her, making fun of her smarts, her skinny, gawky frame, and her worn out clothes handed down from her older sister. At the time we met Nicole her hair was a dark chocolate brown, almost black color, and it was also the shortest of all of us, cut into a short, pixie like style to help keep her hair maintenance cheap for her poor, but hard working family. As a group we encouraged her to flaunt her gift, and even though the first semester or so was hard on her because the other high school students continued to tease her initially, four things happened that helped her really grow out of her shell.
