Lorelei who changes shape as fast as a cat can catch a mouse. Her hair, which was once a shiny straight golden brown down to her back, is now a dark blue that curls up at her shoulders. Soon she'll come to school once again and others will talk and talk and talk about her hair. She can change shape as fast as I can eat my pie. She looks in the mirror just to cry till dinner. People like to whisper about her as much as hawks like to circle their prey. People will talk and talk and talk. Till she comes with her hair golden brown once more. The golden brown hair, however, is not the only thing that changes shape. She changes how she does her makeup almost everyday. She taught me to do mine, just the other day, with her soft powder brush and her eyes that change shape. Brown with gold in the light, green with gold in the dark. Her eyes change almost every day. Not in a strange way, she likes to say. She says her eyes are hazel, meaning they are green, brown, and gold. Green like a patch of grass on a sunny day, brown like the soft fur of a brown bear, and gold like a patch of hay. The gold always stays, unlike the others. She says it's to have one thing about her to be constant. People talk about her eyes all the time. How they are a beautiful color, but they change as fast as she does. Making them strange, they say. They continue to talk and talk and talk. Like people like to do. She will cry and say she hates her eyes till they change shape once more. One day she invited me over to help her change shape. She opened the door and her stuff was all spread out ready to change shape once more. I touched her hair, which was fluffing up as I added magic to her strands. We washed it out with a soft glitter shine as we both smelled the crime of changing her shape once more. We waited and waited for the magic to take place as her hair turned a pink like the cherry blossoms in that tree way downstate. She said she liked the magic and she smiled like a gift from heaven. But as soon as I walked right out the door, the magic disappeared like it was never even there before. I can hear her cries as clear as the blue birds say hi. And soon she’ll change shape once more. Lorelei Who Changes Shape by Zoe Lunkenheimer ’31 27
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