7: Bless your heart

"There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie."

~Cornel West

Ten hours later

I open the door of my bedroom and throw myself onto the head burying my face as far into the pillow as I possibly can. Anna took me to one of her beautiful resident the penthouse which she acquired not very long ago which had lots of room and space where she and I were the only ones present. I thought my legs were going to give up on me after the intense seven hours training I took on how to walk on heels, a characteristic that Anna told me she is most famous for. I also got taught the gestures and the manner of approaches which Anna uses from her greetings to her casual commentary and flirts with Eli, all the while walking around in a four-inch heel. There were small breaks in-between the training and we ate the food Anna had brought along. She said we will keep this routine up for as long as we train this week.

Being discovered isn't going to be the death of me, this training will be.

Tomorrow Anna would be calling in her stylist to change my coarse brown hair into a curly blond hair. Also after I get my nails done, Anna will be giving me an extensive breakdown of her relationship with Eli. A part of me wants to hear about this because I want to know more about the blind man marrying her and since there is not much choice I have in this agreement, I have to pray that their love story isn't a boring one.

"I hope you bear in mind that you will be wearing the heels tomorrow as well as throughout the training." She reminds me.

I groan into the pillow, for a moment, I thought I was finally alone. "I hope I die in my sleep."

"For both our sakes, let's hope you don't." after that said, she takes her leave. I do not even try to follow and lock up after her before, but I forced myself to before finally drifting to sleep, not bothering to go over the files or the #31 dos and don'ts.

The knock on my door makes me raise my head from the pillow immediately and getting up from the bed only to fall flat on my face and I blackout.

Coldness grips me to the core and my body begins to feel moist-no not moist, more like wet like rain was falling on me on except only my face is wet as I somehow manage to rub my left hand together and they seem to be dry. How is that even possible? The coldness returns, this time more than the first as not only my face gets wet but also my neck and chest.

My eyes open and I see the figure with blond hair, red jean and blue sweater towering over me with a plastic bowl of water in her hand.

"Anna!" I groan my new cuss word out and roll onto my stomach, my cheek burning from both anger and shame.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes, it's time for me to get up from the floor I am on." I pull myself up then turn to say, "for someone who wants others to stay out of their life, you do make a habit of intruding on other people's space."

I get up to my feet before going into the bathroom and I brush my teeth and I cover my hair with the plastic shower cap before taking a bath so I don't get my hair wet because wet hair isn't really my friend.

Today seemed like it's going to be worse. I stare at myself in the mirror, looking at my black coarse and tangled hair in a bun; looking at it for the last time because it would be gone after today and I won't be seeing it for the next three to four weeks.

I make my way into the bedroom to dress up and Anna is in the room, sitting on the bed and I begin to feel uncomfortable and nervous. I don't have a problem changing in front of the same gender, I did it when Sharon and I were friends.

Friends.

This lady isn't a friend and that goes again the getting naked code of Quynn Hudson.

"Can you excuse me, please? I need to get dressed." I request and wait for her to take her leave, and for someone who isn't overweight it takes her a long time to get out.

Once out of my room, I dry myself applied my body cream and get into the clothes I picked out which are a white striped shirt and grey trousers. I put on my black sneakers and for my hair I let it stay in the bun it has been on since yesterday.

I step out of the room into the parlour where Anna is and I notice her holding a magazine and reading it with her signature unimpressed look on her face.

"I'm done," I announce, making my presence in the room known.

She drops the magazine onto the couch and carefully inspects me for a minutes before saying, "Your sense of fashion is ancient, thank God I took my time to draw out a calendar for you."

I almost felt insecure about my look, but I shrug it off at that moment and asks instead, "Are we going or not?"

She stands up and picks up a file before dropping it on the centre table and then looking up at me. "This is the contract edited to fit the demand you made yesterday's, I need you to sign it so I can take and make a copy for you."

I pick the contract up not trusting her claims of making adjustments and wanting to check myself while having at the back of my mind that there's no way I'd be able to check through a whole 20 paged document before we leave. I decided to scan through it and after seeing the adjustment on the monetary areas, I assure myself that the rest has also been changed.

"You need to sign and let us go?" She asks, almost impatiently.

I bring out the pen tucked into the outer part of the document and sign on the three places where my signature is required on the documents and hand the document back to her.

"Yes, we can go now."

We were going back to Anna's resident which is a two hours and thirty minutes drive from my house and Anna's driver a man in his late sixties with lots of grey hair and he's the same man who drove us yesterday.

She had the perspex glass up yesterday so the driver would have no idea what was happening at the back seat until we reached our destination and then she handed me a red blindfold which I covered my face with. When I asked why, she said she was just taking precautions.

"Are you going to take it or not?" She demands and I snap out of my thought to see her holding up the blindfold I'm yet to take.

I take the blindfold and cover up my face and wallow into silence.

Finally reaching our destination, Anna instructs me to uncover my face. I do that and step out of the car and towards the beautiful penthouse where she is also heading. Anna told me yesterday that the house was a gift from Eli on her twenty-fifth birthday as well as the Mercedes Benz which she drives around in after her last car broke down. The house was still under reconstruction and she was hoping to change q few designs before finally putting it up for rent. It was the perfect place to train and we wouldn't be seen because of the location and privacy the house had.

"Mike is going to be here any minute with all the things your hair need, I have called and told him what I needed, but I told him he was making my hair and so you're going to meet him and make him believe you're Anna, put everything I taught you yesterday to use."

I stare at her wondering what the hell she's talking about. "The practice was just one day..."

She raises a brow, "And you have a talent of impersonating people behaviour, I believe you got this."

This woman knows all the wrong buttons to push.

Just as she said, Mike arrives twenty minutes later in red trouser and white T-shirt, his hair is nearly combed and arrange so it covers the upper side of his face. He's also with a box which probably contains all the styling, washing and dying equipment he needed and I approach him and the first thing that his eyes pick out are my clothes and then my hair and there is a furrow of a brow that clearly shows something is wrong.

"Anna, what the hell happened to your hair and why are you wearing those?"

Because I'm not Anna, would be the answer, but that won't be the best one. "I allowed Eli pick the clothes out for me today," I reply with a smile that doesn't sit well on my face. I am already lying on a man I haven't even met yet, I am slowly becoming Anna, my nemesis but I am not done. "And I was trying out some of the hair recipes I saw on TV, I should know better." I completed with a roll of my eyes.

My hair is beautiful to me, I don't know why Anna and Mike disagree.

"Oh, bless your heart." He says giving me a pitiful look then proceeds to laugh aloud. "The things we do for love. Alright come along we have a lot to do."

The process of styling my hair takes me nearly three hours and in those times I spent hearing gossip from Mike about women I have no idea of but Anna might. I did my best to contribute as much as I could, Anna didn't seem like one who gave in to gossips so I just said a few words each time. Once done, I paid him the money and he took his leave and as he exited the penthouse, Anna climbed down the stairs with a narrowed look. I remained quiet wanting to hear what she had to say.

"Mike didn't suspect a thing, that's impressive." She remarks sounding a little impressed.

"Like you said, I learn fast," I reply wittily.