This is a work of semi-autobiography and therefore should be considered fiction. Names and events have been altered. "Seven Years Bad Luck" is an ongoing series. This is part three. Part one here.

I go back to the cat in the middle of the road while security guy stands in the parking lot entrance like a completely useless douchebag. I stare back at him, but he just gives me this wide, white-eyed look.

When I cross back over and ask again, he shakes his head immediately "no.:

“Woah, that’s a black cat.” He says this very uneasily, looking out into the road again, shuffling on his feet. “That’s bad luck, real bad luck. You shouldn’t touch it.”

Too late, I think, flexing my hand.

Cars continue to pass, probably further flattening the cat and making the problem worse.

Great, another unhelpful person, this time because he’s too superstitious to do anything.

It’s weird to find someone who’s legitimately spooked from superstition these days. Or maybe not that weird? Someone found it necessary to invent a Flying Spaghetti Monster after all.

We go back over to stand by Kelly, and the security guard guy goes back to staring at her with thoroughly painted concern. My exasperation is beginning to reach peak levels. Kelly has her face carefully made up with her waterproof eyeliner, which seems to be holding on so far, her hair pulled back, and her “gypsy” costume showing off her long, long legs. She’s prettier than I am, my best friend. The guard guy is just standing around so he can look at her. He doesn’t seem aware of what he’s doing.

Kelly has come a long way to look this pretty. She acquired the basics in high school but had the wrong ideas about what looked good. She possessed a general ignorance of our overbearing beauty lords: clothes, hair, and make-up. Maybe there’s more? F*ck if I know.

Kelly worked hard to learn how to present herself. While I’ve since learned the value of beauty since my white T-shirt days of high school, I still don’t have the experience to look pretty.

She’s sitting there, crying pretty tears, having no one to teach her how to cry like that, while I stand to the side, hair a mess, clothes slipshod, and barely any war-paint on me. One of my old middle school teachers saw me on the street the other day and asked, “You still going around looking like a Raggedy-Ann?” I didn’t say much in reply because it was true enough, in the spirit of the question: I don’t have red hair and feel uncomfortable in dresses.

Something about that, though. I never grew up bitter or resentful because of the way I looked. So many magazines talked about women feeling competition with each other, but I barely understood to what they were referring. One thing was not the other. Looks did not equal worth to me. When I walked down the street from the middle school with my girlfriends, and they’d talk about how dissatisfied they were with who they were, shadows in their eyes, I’d tangle a hand in the bottom of my long tangled hair, push my glasses up my nose, grin and say, “I like myself, actually.”

I could be friends with Kelly because of this. I could meet pretty women and not feel automatically threatened by them. We valued different things. Sometimes, even, we valued the same things, and I discovered anew that appearances really didn’t matter.

It’s one of those lessons that you have to relearn, over and over and over again.

As I join the security guard in staring at Kelly, my mind a long way from wherever I am, there’s the sound of a door scraping open. I glance up and see the hotel clerk shuffling out of the lobby. He’s carrying a sturdy looking broom and a long-handled dustpan.