Something Wiki

by Suzanne Sutherland

  It was cool.

  I was floored.

  They were playing really loud music, I guess it was metal, but it mostly just sounded like we were walking through a wall of distortion and feedback as we entered, and I could see from my mom’s face that it was already starting to give her a headache.

  Correction: it was giving her one of her world-famous migraines that has to be treated immediately with tomato juice.

  She handed me off to the woman at the front desk (who looked dangerously cool with bleach-blond hair, rings in both sides of her nose, and shaved-off eyebrows) and told me she had to go find some of her miracle drink, but that she’d be back soon to see how I was doing.

  The browless woman looked me over. “So,” she said, totally deadpan, “what do you want?”

  “You know …” I started to speak, but her gaze was way too intense, so I stared down at my sneakers instead: Converse high-tops, black with mega-scuffed toes. “Shorter. Like —”

  “It’s fine,” she interrupted. “We’ll do something fun.” The way she said fun was like a bullet flying straight out of her mouth. Direct and probably lethal.

  “Oh, great,” I croaked.

  “Sure.” She blinked a few times. I realized that when I’d lifted my eyes from the floor, I’d let them rest on the pale blank space above her eyes. I was totally staring.

  “Take a seat,” she said. “Marco will be with you in a minute. He’s good.”

  I said okay, even though I’d never had a man cut my hair before. It made me even more nervous than I already was.

  Chloe says that all men who cut hair are gay, it’s one of her dozens of totally unproven theories. I don’t think that’s true, though. Or maybe it is, I don’t know. Chloe thinks she knows everything about being gay because one of her cousins came out last year. Then again, she probably knows more than I do.

  Anyway, ten minutes later, Mom still hadn’t come back and a guy walked up to me where I was sitting and stuck out his hand to say hello.

  Okay, he wasn’t just a guy.

  He was a completely gorgeous man.

  He was this manly, amazing-smelling person, with perfectly ripped jeans and a plain white V-neck shirt with a little button stuck on the left side of his chest and a thick brown leather cuff around his right wrist. He was tall too, so much taller than me. He must have been over six feet, and he was perfectly skinny. A total rock star–looking guy, in the flesh.

  “Hello,” he said, as he reached out his hand, “I’m Marco.”

  And in that moment I was pretty sure I had died, I just couldn’t figure out if I’d gone to heaven or hell. Sure, Marco was the most heavenly beautiful human man I had ever seen up close; that was undeniable. But seeing him standing there, smiling, with his hand stuck out and a pair of silver scissors barely peeking out of his pocket, I felt like the ugliest girl who’d ever crawled the earth. I could practically feel my pimples vibrating all over my face, underneath my hideous, greasy bangs. Even my zits were embarrassed to be seen next to this flawless specimen of a dude. I was red all over.

  We shook hands (mine was completely clammy, ugh) and then he put his left hand on my shoulder, leading me over to his station. I was floating. Seriously. I couldn’t feel my sneakers touching the linoleum floor. I’m pretty sure my shoulder had gone completely numb, too.

  “Okay,” he said as he sat me down in the big salon chair and checked out my hair. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know.” I said. I squeaked, really.

  “You want it short?” He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Sure” I said, “whatever. Just make me look … ummm …”

  “Cool?” He smiled and showed off a line of glistening teeth that would make a dentist weak in the knees.

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Um, I think so.”

  “Trust me, that won’t be a problem.”

  I just nodded; I’d completely run out of words.

  Marco brought me over to the sinks lined up against the back of the salon.

  “Just relax,” he said, pushing my shoulders down from where they’d migrated: just below my ears.

  Oh sure, just relax while this male model runs his fingers through my nasty oily hair. No problem.

  Marco wrapped a towel around my neck and turned on the faucet. He tested the temperature carefully, and when he was sure it wasn’t too hot or too cold, he guided my head back into the sink and gingerly took off my glasses and set them aside. I sat there trying hard not to squirm as he pumped some shampoo from a big bottle on the counter into his hand and started massaging my scalp.

  My legs — thighs — started tingling. I was terrified, trying so hard just to stay still.

  “How does that feel?” he asked. His voice was rich and warm. It was chocolate, it was velvet.

  “Fine,” I peeped.

  “All right,” he cooed, “just let me know if it gets too hot.”

  “Sure.” I couldn’t manage to make a sound louder than a whisper.

  When we were finished with the wash, he wrapped the towel around my hair and gave it a quick tousle.

  “You’re going to look great,” he said. “Trust me.”

  Then we went back to his station and he went to work. He held his scissors like a jousting knight with a lance (or something equally manly and tough, I don’t know, my brain was pretty shaken up at this point — it still kind of is).

  I really hope that Chloe was wrong about men who cut hair. I just kept staring at myself in the mirror to try to stay calm — and to try to avoid staring at Marco. I breathed slowly and counted the pimples on my face while he worked.

  When Marco had done most of the cut — it was so short I felt like I was practically bald, but I was too embarrassed to ask him to stop — he pulled out his electric razor from the drawer at his station.

  “Okay if I buzz the back?” he sang, holding the razor like a microphone. “It’ll look cool.”

  “Uh-huh.” We’d already gone this far. I really was going to be walking out of the salon bald. How could I have let this happen?

  “So,” he said, as the razor nipped the back of my neck and I tried earnestly to blink myself invisible, “that’s a great shirt you’ve got on.”

  I tried to remember what I’d picked out of the laundry hamper this morning. I was wearing a giant hairdressing bib over my clothes and I was surprised Marco had even noticed what I was wearing.

  “Didn’t I see a Nirvana shirt under that smock?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah. It was my brother’s. They were his favourite band in high school.”

  “You like them?”

  “Sure, they’re okay.”

  “Yeah, what’s your favourite album?”

  Oh no. Oh no no no. Why did beautiful Marco have to ask me a skill-testing question about my T-shirt? As much as I love wearing Z’s old shirts, I don’t actually know a lot of the bands all that well. I mean, the Ramones, sure. “I Wanna Be Sedated” and all that, and Taking Back Sunday are great. But Dead Kennedys? The Cramps? To be totally and completely honest, I kind of just thought the shirts looked cool.

  Does that make some kind of wannabe rocker loser?

  Nirvana, I remembered, had a singer who killed himself, and they had a song called “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” But an album? I had a couple of their songs on my iPod, but that was it, I had no idea what albums they were from.

  “Don’t really have one,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Marco, “I like ’em all, too. You a Foo Fighters fan?”

  “Uh-huh, yeah.” The back of my neck was impossibly itchy, but I couldn’t scratch it with my hands under the bib. “They’re good.”

  “Yeah, I love Dave Grohl,” Marco said, nodding. “That guy rocks.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Dave Grohl?” He stopped buzzing. “Come on, you know Dave Grohl.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” I coughed. “Dave Grohl. I think so.”

  “What,” he said,
“don’t tell me you’re a poser. You listen to the radio? You like 4EVR?” He said, naming a one-hit-wonder, C-list boy band that pretty well only kindergartners listen to.

  He was joking. He was kidding around, I’m sure. But I sat there frozen, totally defenceless, just praying he would finish with my neck and I could get out of his chair.

  “Come on,” he said, “sing with me!” And he sang their only single to himself, perfectly off-key, “Baby, baby, baby, come to me, me, me. You’re all I see, see, see, just you and me, me, me.”

  Turning to one of his fellow hairdressers, a girl with a bleach-blond pixie cut, Marco said, “This girl loves 4EVR! Why won’t she dance with me?”

  I was trying so hard not to cry that my face felt like it was going to explode. Marco just kept laughing and doing his little dance as he brushed the stray bits of hair off the back of my neck.

  A million years of embarrassment later, he finally took off my bib.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. The haircut was cool — J’s style of cool, definitely not Stacey’s — short in the back and shaggy in the front, but it made my goofy, pimply face looked totally out of place. I wanted to be cool enough to pull it off, but I knew that I wasn’t, and I just felt awful.

  Marco smiled at me in the reflection. “Great, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” I faked a smile. “Great.”

  Finally Mom showed up, with a can of tomato juice in one hand and the plastic bag with our discount glass set in the other.

  “Wow,” she said, gawking at my head, “it looks terrific, sweetie. Very funky.”

  I shivered. Funky wasn’t at all what I wanted. Least of all coming from my mom.

  Mom paid the girl at the front desk and then slipped five dollars into my hand.

  “Go give your hairdresser a tip,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Please don’t make me,” I said as quietly as possible. My eyes were back down on my shoes.

  “Okay,” she said, rustling what was left of my hair, “whatever you say, sweets. He did a great job.” She walked over to give it to Marco herself. Even she started blushing when Marco talked to her. He really was that beautiful.

  I turned around fast to leave; I couldn’t wait any longer to get out of the salon, this total monument of humiliation. But I turned around so fast that I didn’t notice the guy who had just walked in until I literally smacked right into him, my right shoulder colliding with his chest. I jumped backwards and was about to blurt out an apology when I noticed who it was I’d slammed into.

  Declan. Walsh.

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

  Declan Walsh, who I hadn’t seen since the final campfire last summer. His parents had come early to pick him up that night, so I’d never had a chance to say goodbye (well, technically it would have been more like hello since we’d never actually spoken, but I’d spent all week psyching myself up to say something, anything).

  And now he was right in front of me.

  And even cuter than I remembered.

  Which only made me feel worse.

  And of all the dumb coincidences in the universe, that afternoon in the salon we were wearing identical Nirvana T-shirts.

  Declan looked at me. He blinked. He said nothing.

  My mouth had gone completely dry. I put my hands up to try to hide my freshly shorn head. “Sorry,” I mumbled, willing myself to say anything else. But today my mouth wasn’t working on behalf of my brain.

  Declan looked at me. He blinked. He said nothing.

  And I ran.

  I ran out of the mall and through the parking lot until I found our car and collapsed on the hood. And then I started crying. That humiliating, hiccupping kind of crying where you can’t get any words out and you’re a total blubbering wreck, unfit to be seen by any human being except possibly your mother.

  Mom found me like that, seventy thousand years later when she’d finally finished blushing at Marco. She wrapped her arms around me, rubbed one hand slowly up and down my back, whispering, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t, and it only made me cry harder, but it felt good just the same.

  Twelve

  Friendship

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  Friendship is a relationship and concern between individuals and provides positive emotional support. Friends care for one another and look out for each other or sometimes they act really weird to each other for no good reason. In order for a deep understanding to occur between friends it requires opening up about personal things, listening carefully, and being loyal to one another, and not refusing to forgive someone for a dumb accident they tried really hard to make up for.

  I showed up early to school Monday morning, hoping I could talk to Chloe alone before first period and give her the glasses.

  Mom and Dad both gave me a kiss before I left the house, which is sort of unusual for them. Not that they don’t love me and want to wish me a good day and everything, but the house is always kind of hectic in the morning with Mom and Dad racing around to get themselves ready for work. Apparently they had all the time in the world this morning, though. Dad packed my lunch and Mom helped me fix my hair with some fancy styling gel she bought from Dye, Dye, My Darling while I was busy sobbing on the hood of our Honda. I had to admit, with it spiked up just right, I looked almost cool enough to pull it off. Or I would when it grew out a little. I’d been freaked out at how short it was at first, but it was going to be fine. I could totally rock it. Maybe.

  I waited for Chloe by our lockers, but by the time the bell for first period rang she still hadn’t shown up. Stacey was late, too, but that was pretty normal; she always complains that it’s because Becca takes forever to get ready and her mom drives the two of them together since Becca’s school is in the same neighbourhood as ours. So I put the glasses on the top shelf of my locker, away from the rest of the mess, and headed to class with Trisha.

  “Cool hair,” she said, as she grabbed her backpack and closed her locker. “We’re going to have to take band photos soon.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I joked, secretly relieved that Trisha thought it looked good. “We’re ready for the big time now.”

  We were more than a little surprised to see that Stacey and Chloe were already in class when we got there, sitting at the back of the class with a bunch of the popular girls. We took our usual seats at the front, and when the bell rang for lunch, I went back to talk to Stacey.

  “Whoa,” she said as I walked up to her. I’d already almost forgotten about my new haircut — class had been an almost-welcome distraction — and I self-consciously reached up to try to tousle my hair just the right way to make it match the almost-cool look I’d achieved briefly in the mirror that morning.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, “what do you think?”

  “It’s, like, really short.” Stacey sat back, appraising me. “But it’s cute. It suits you.”

  “Yeah? Thanks. Hey, where were you guys this morning? I didn’t see you at the lockers.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Maylee told me that there were two spare ones by where hers is — you know, right by the gym? — and I figured that since it’s such a pain to change clothes and everything after gym that it would be easier if I just used the locker there.”

  “Oh,” I said. Huh? Did that even make sense?

  “Yeah, and I told Chloe I was going to move, and she said it sounded like a good idea, so we both moved. Plus, I mean,” she whispered, “Chloe’s really wanted to switch lockers after, you know, the thing.”

  “Yeah, right.” That did make sense.

  By this point everyone had left the classroom apart from me and Stacey, and Trisha and Chloe, who were waiting for us. Even Vilaney had taken off for lunch.

  “Lunch?” Trisha suggested, nodding her head toward the classroom door.

  “You guys go,” Chloe said. “I want to talk to Jo for a sec.”

  “We’ll meet you guys in the lunch room,” Trisha said.


  “Actually, I’m going to go meet up with Maylee. She’s helping me with my math homework,” said Stacey.

  “Yeah, I’ll meet you by our lockers,” said Chloe.

  As Trisha and Stacey left, Chloe closed the door behind them.

  “I’m glad you wanted to talk,” I said. “My mom and I bought a couple of glasses to replace the one I broke the other day. I mean, I know they’re not the same, but they’re pretty nice. They’re in my locker, let me just go grab them.”

  “This isn’t about the glass,” Chloe said.

  “Then what?”

  “I think you did it.” Her face was deadly serious. It was freaking me out.

  “Did what?” I said. I already knew the answer.

  “The locker.”

  She didn’t sound all that upset. She sounded like she had totally rationally solved the mystery and that she was one hundred and ten percent sure that I was the criminal mastermind behind the graffiti job. She almost sounded smug.

  “What are you talking about? I’d never do something mean like that.”

  “Oh yeah? Just like you wouldn’t get me in trouble with my parents by smashing their property.”

  “You know that isn’t what happened.”

  “You’re jealous,” she said, “that Stacey and I have been spending so much time together. That we’re best friends. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Stacey’s still my —” I stopped myself. Did I really believe that she was still my best friend?

  “Just admit it.”

  We stood there for a second just looking at each other. I started to wonder if Chloe was going to hit me. She looked like she was seriously considering it. I wished I’d listened to Dad when he suggested I take karate last year. At least then I’d know what to do if Chloe’s fist came flying at me.

  But she didn’t punch me.

  She didn’t do anything.