Mom said I’d have to be a good kid for a while. Which meant that I had to look like a good kid too.

I went to my mirror, took out the small hoop around my lip, and put it in my dresser. My hair.. how could I make that look nicer?

Nah, I could leave that the way it was. It didn’t look like a bad-kid sorta thing; it was just black.

But now, the clothes.

I dug my hands into one of the drawers in my dresser, pulling up a peach-colored polo and some tannish khakis from the abyss. They were both wrinkled, but they would do for school.

Big changes, I know.

I put on the different clothes, which I’m pretty sure were hand-me-downs from my brother, who was the exact opposite of me, and stared at my reflection in the mirror.

The shirt was really long, the pants were baggy.. I looked like a hobo.

To today’s standards, you’d think the level of “bad” wouldn’t be judged as one of the more common styles out there. Emo’s.

I hated the word, yet I still used it.

In many ways, I was a hypocrite.