CHAPTER ONE
Why did she loan her car to Grace? She knew better, she really did, Grace never did what she said she would but Kyndel had such a hard time saying no to her best friend. Now she was the one that had to walk all the way home, past the park, in the dark! She hated the dark! Had hated it ever since she was a little girl and her babysitters had thought it would be funny to make her watch “The Brain Eaters”. The 1958 Sci-fi horror movie where alien parasites landed on earth, sucked the brains from all the unsuspecting humans and then left them as mindless zombies. She remembered sleeping with the lights on, a hat pulled all the way down over her ears and the covers completely covering her neck for at least six months.
Now even at twenty-six she still hated sleeping without a nightlight. No matter how many times she checked before turning out the lights, it still felt like there were eyes staring at her. And then there were the shadows. They made things look longer and fuzzier, just plain scarier. Normal every day things always looked so different when there was no light. Anyone or anything could be hiding anywhere and there was no way to know they were there, no way to see what was coming. The longer she thought about it, the more scared she got until she realized she was making it worse. She was literally scaring herself. The mantra she always used when she was faced with these situations started going around and around in her head. “I can do this! I can do this!” Only a little over four blocks and she would be home. She could do it. God knew she felt like she had walking down to an art form. She had been walking on that damn treadmill at the gym every day for over a year now. It didn’t matter that she still had all her curves and weighed exactly the same as she had when she had started; she was now one hell of a walker.
Thud! She jumped and then stood completely still. “What was that?” she thought to herself. The longer she listened the more she wondered if she had really heard anything or if her imagination was running away with her. She waited a few more seconds, felt really silly for her overactive imagination and then chalked it up to the wind or a stray cat chasing a mouse. Hell, it might have even been a teenage couple sneaking away for some alone time. She snickered as she realized she could seriously use some alone time. It had been a long time since she'd been with a guy in any way, alone or not.
Come to think of it, the last guy she had dated had been a total jerk. Of course, she should have known better than to go out with one of the muscle heads from her gym. All she could think of was that her common sense had taken a back seat to her hormones because, well, he had a body to die for. It was just a shame that a brain was optional equipment on his model and he had not paid for the upgrade. She made it through three dates with the idiot. Three long dates that included him telling her about a majority of his body parts (not any of the good ones) but now that she thought about it that was probably shriveled from his use of enhancements anyway. Then there was the fact that when he did finally stop talking about himself, he was checking out every other woman in the place.
Kyndel was certain she would never be Miss America. Hell, she had never even entertained entering a beauty contest in her life. She had a few extra pounds and her curves were curvier than all the girls she saw in magazine ads but she knew she had a beautiful peaches and cream complexion with a spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks and a God given chest no plastic surgeon could duplicate. She also knew how to accentuate the positive and camouflage the not so positive. She was smart and could take care of herself, if need be. She had worked hard to convince herself that she was a catch and she was just not going to settle, no matter how good looking the idiot sitting across the table from her was.
She thought about how far she had come from her days in junior high when she was the chubby girl with pigtails and freckles. She had hated her freckles almost every day of her youth. Then just like that, she had an epiphany. It was just a regular old day. She was looking in the mirror getting ready for another day in high school; dreading putting on makeup just to go out in the hot sun and sweat it all off. That was when it hit her. Those little brown spots were part of who she was. They were just one of the many great things her parents had given her. Both her mom and dad had had freckles. She had thought they were perfect on their beautiful faces and realized they were just as pretty on hers. From that day forward she stopped hiding them and embraced her freckled self in all her glory.
Just a couple of days later, she was looking through a box of old pictures and came across a picture of her mom from when she was in high school. Carolyn Miller, later to be known as Carolyn Masterson, was an amazingly beautiful curvy woman even as a teenager. As Kyndel looked at the picture it occurred to her that she looked more like her mom than she had ever realized. It was in that moment that Kyndel vowed to accept her body just as it was, with all its curves and voluptuousness. She also decided that if a man could not or would not accept her for who she was, he could go screw himself. Along with all her other prayers, she added one asking for a man as awesome as her daddy and a relationship as special as the one her parents had shared. The moments or sometimes longer periods of self doubt still reared their ugly heads but little by little she got closer to being completely comfortable in her own skin all the time. Last year, she even started working out more regularly and eating right, for the most part. Her one big cheat had been and always would be Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia; she simply could not see a world without it!