Scars

Valerie hated her skin, everything about it: the color, the complexion, the greasiness, and most of all the zits. She had an okay body as long as she limited her Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey intake. She'd even heard some basketball players comment on her ass the other day before she had turned around and they'd realized who they were talking about. But then they saw her face and any lascivious yet flattering comments about her bootie just dried right up. Conversation generally stopped when people took in the minefield that her face had become.

She essentially was one big "before" picture for a ProActiv campaign. Unfortunately, she had tried ProActiv, along with every other miracle acne cure out there, but had not had the same success as Jessica Simpson. Her face usually had at least 10 large pimples on the forehead, cheeks, or chin. They were red, inflamed, and impossible to ignore. She spent hours in front of the mirror trying to pop them and when she succeeded, the relief was intense. The aftermath wasn't pretty though. The first few days the zit became a crusty crater and then became a scar. She had dozens of these white scars all over her face, a roadmap to loneliness, a guarantee that she would die a virgin. On bad days, even her best friend Maggie had trouble looking her in the eye!

Valerie had one last hope. There was a little clinic just over the border in Mexico that specialized in these desperate acne cases. They had some sort of weekend treatment based on face masks from some sort of illegal plant extract followed by intense chemical peels. Normally Valerie was skeptical about these types of things, but the testimonials she'd read were so powerful. It really seemed like it was extreme enough to make a difference. Her parents, of course, had refused to help. They just didn't get it. So, she had saved all her babysitting money for the last six months and finally had enough: $1000. Her parents believed that she was going camping with Maggie for the weekend, they'd even given her a little extra allowance to buy camping supplies. She couldn't wait to see their faces when she returned transformed. But she was even more excited to see the basketball players faces on Monday morning!

This fiction was inspired by the Fiction Friday challenge: scars.