HUTCH: Was there a lesson here? I think it was that AD needed to date someone who could keep up with her. There’s no way a relationship would last with someone who couldn’t handle her packed schedule. He’d hightail it out for the nearest ashram before the week was out.
Editor’s Note: Waylon did not join that ashram because of me. He went with his mom. Also, he clearly loved it, so if it was because of me, I did him a favor.
WAYLON: Adherents to the House of Light can leave at any time—it’s not a prison. But why would I want to go anywhere else? I was so happy that Avery was thinking of joining us here. I think it would do her a world of good.
AVERY: I’d forgotten about my yurt-booking slash little-white-lie-about-going-there. I told him to expect my dad in August, shouted, “Namaste!” and hung up.
HUTCH: It was a fittingly unenlightened end to the conversation.
MARGAUX CLARK, stylist/owner of Margaux Clark Salon: You could say I’ve been cutting Avery’s hair since before she was born. I remember when Pam was pregnant with her.
PAMELA DENNIS aka MOM, mother, CFO of Brightstar Assets LTD: I’ve been seeing Margaux for a cut and color every six weeks for … oh, I don’t know, the past twenty years?
MARGAUX: I did Avery’s very first haircut. All those little blond curls … so sweet! And I’ve done every one since. Oh, except for the time Avery’s friend cut her bangs. Not her finest moment.
COCO: The bangs. Oh, the bangs. I’m sorry about the bangs, okay? It was a mistake! I know it was a mistake! I watched a YouTube video, and I thought I could do it!
MARGAUX: When Avery told me what she wanted me to do to her hair, I thought she was joking.
MOM: Avery’s always been fussy about her hair. When she was fourteen, she destroyed all photographic evidence of our weekend trip to Big Sur because her hair was “doing a thing.” An entire family vacation, expunged from the historical record. Forever.
MARGAUX: In the past, Avery had cried when I trimmed her hair. On more than one occasion. Anytime she thought I’d taken off more than an inch, cue the waterworks.
Editor’s Note: Patently untrue. She was probably confused because my eyes are so sparkling.
AVERY: It was time for a change. Maybe the most depressing thing about interviewing my ex-boyfriends was the fact that the major thing they remembered about me was my long blond hair. How could my hair be my most memorable trait? The last thing I wanted to be remembered for was a collection of dead cells sprouting out of my head. More importantly, the Avery I had been wasn’t the Avery I wanted to be anymore. The whole point of doing this oral history and my dating hiatus was to figure out who I really was—without a boyfriend and without an admittedly gorgeous head of long naturally blond hair. I was tired of being the girl who was never alone. And I didn’t want to be the girl who had dumped Liam Padalecki just because he loved goblins.
MARGAUX: When Avery said, “I want this look to say, ‘I am totally cool with goblins,’” I decided to ignore that and focus on the picture she’d provided.
AVERY: Maybe some of what Waylon said had stuck with me. About lightness. And letting go. I needed to let go and be lighter. Besides, I needed a new look for when I showed off my new self at the prom. I needed a haircut that said I was happy dancing on my own. Luckily, my lock screen background is a picture of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. So I showed Margaux exactly what I wanted, closed my eyes, and held my breath.
MARGAUX: I put her hair in a ponytail so we could send it to Locks of Love, and snipped. Almost two feet of hair. Gone. I kept cutting, shaping, and trimming Avery’s hair, determined this was going to be the finest pixie cut of my career.
AVERY: I opened my eyes, and a stranger stared back at me from the mirror. I smiled at her.
NATALIE WAGNER, random freshman: This was the haircut heard ’round the world.
BECCA HORN, random freshman: I’m sorry, I will not comment on Avery Dennis’s haircut. I will not comment on anyone’s haircut. I have standards.
BIZZY STANHOPE: Avery looked like a boy. Like a twelve-year-old boy. And only days before prom! For the first time, I really believed in the power of The Secret. I had put it out into the universe, and it happened. Avery was ruined. No one was going to put a prom queen tiara on that freshly shorn head. She looked like Anne Hathaway in Les Miz. But with slightly better teeth.
CRESSIDA SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN: I couldn’t imagine a less interesting topic of conversation than Avery Dennis’s hair. And yet, it was all anyone could talk about. Incredibly annoying.
NATALIE: I swear to God, when Avery walked into school, it fell completely silent. Jaws dropped. People stared.
COCO: It was so brave. It was so fierce! She completely pulled it off. Her cheekbones looked amazing.
CRESSIDA: Did I care about Avery Dennis’s haircut? Absolutely not. I had more important things to worry about—like trying to beat out Hutch for valedictorian. Everyone knows salutatorian is Latin for “not quite good enough.”
HUTCH: It looked good. I think AD hides behind her hair sometimes … It was nice to see her face. Her whole face. All the time.
CRESSIDA: You should have seen the way Hutch looked at her when she walked into bio. It was … well. As I said before. Annoying.
Editor’s Note: I don’t know what she’s talking about. Hutch barely looked at me and all he said was, “I hope you remembered your notes for the open-book quiz,” so I pulled them out and waved them in his face. What kind of amateur does he think I am?
COCO: One time I cut my hair shortish, like in a bob, and Nana Kim said, “Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts.” Which turned out to be a Jim Morrison quote. I kept my hair long after that.
NATALIE: Avery had this, like, wise smirk on her face the whole time, like she knew exactly what everyone was thinking. Like she had made them think it. My God, she’s a genius. If I cut all my hair off, I’m completely sure no one would care.
BIZZY: Everyone knows men prefer long hair. It’s in, like, every issue of Cosmo ever printed. Sometimes they even show pictures of celebrities and ask men which look they prefer, and it’s long hair. Always. Every single time. Avery must have realized there was absolutely no way she could find a date for the prom. She did the smart thing and gave up. It was time for her to get some pleated pants and a subscription to Cat Fancy magazine.
Editor’s Note: I already have a cat named Fromage, and he is a delight. And if Bizzy knew anything about cats, she would know that Cat Fancy rebranded itself as Catster, and all their good content is online. SO WHO NEEDS A SUBSCRIPTON ANYWAY, BIZZY?!
HUTCH: What did I like better? You mean the short hair or the long hair? I don’t know. AD was still AD. Hair is just hair. The short hair, I guess, if I had to pick? At least now you could see her face.
TRIPP GOMEZ-PARKER: Was she still hot? Good question. But actually, no question. There are certain kinds of hotness that cannot be dimmed. It would take a lot to make Avery Dennis un-hot. Like what? Um, I don’t know. Rabies?
Editor’s Note: Maybe Coco should go to the prom alone, too.
NATALIE: It was absolutely and completely insane. Avery’s hair was her thing. Her signature look. Her trademark. Like, who even was Avery Dennis without her long blond hair?
Editor’s Note: That is exactly what I was hoping to find out.
AVERY: The haircut may have been my present, but it was time to dig deeper into the past and head back to another time of rebirth—ninth grade. One of the downfalls of going to a K–12 school is that you can’t reinvent yourself as a hot new freshman. Although I’d basically crushed middle school, so why would I have wanted to reinvent myself anyway?
COCO: After we graduated from middle school, Waylon moved away, and Avery headed back to Camp Kawawa and straight into Charlie’s tanned arms.
CAMP KAWAWA CHARLIE: The summer after eighth grade? I don’t know, man, was that the year orange finally won the color war?
Editor’s Note: Thi
s well had clearly run dry.
COCO: That summer was fun, but Avery and I could not have been more excited to start high school.
CRESSIDA SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN: Ninth grade was the year Avery Dennis ruined my life.
BIZZY STANHOPE: Mrs. Schrobenhauser-Clonan had volunteered to host the ninth-grade back-to-school party, which was ridiculous, because their pool is insanely small. Our pool could be used to host Olympic qualifying trials, if necessary.
Editor’s Note: I’ll be sure to let the Olympic Committee know they can count on the Stanhopes in a time of need.
CRESSIDA: I had so many issues with that party. First of all, why does the school insist on mandating outside-of-school forced social interactions? That’s not normal. Secondly, a back-to-school pool party? Come on. I should have asked Mom to hand out souvenir tote bags with I’M PRIVILEGED printed on them. Thirdly, why did we have to get to know each other? We’d known most of each other for the better part of a decade! I’m sure we could have gotten to know the handful of new freshmen at school.
HUTCH: Oh, I remember that party. That was my first experience with my new classmates at San Anselmo Prep. What about my old school? No, we definitely did not have back-to-school pool parties there. I had no idea what to make of any of this. After my mom dropped me off, I almost chased her down the street, demanding to get back in the car and go back to our old neighborhood and my old school. But I figured running down the street after my mommy would be more embarrassing than just going to the party, so I bit the bullet and rang the doorbell. Cressida’s mom showed me down to the basement. I could see the pool and a swing set through the sliding glass doors, but there was no way I was going out there. I stood in the corner, drinking a soda alone, until Liam noticed the twenty-sided die I’d turned into a key chain and hooked onto my backpack.
LIAM PADALECKI: Michael and I had been drinking sodas in the corner when I first saw Hutch drinking his soda in a different corner. You could say it was fate.
MICHAEL FEELEY: Alex didn’t make it to the pool party—that evil genius faked a stomach illness. But at least I can say I was there for the day we met our once and future Dungeon Master. When Liam pointed out that key chain, I just knew we’d found someone special.
Editor’s Note: Maybe the real love story here isn’t me and my exes, but Hutch and his wizarding dungeon friends.
LIAM: That was such a sweet key chain. Later, Hutch helped me make one the first time we hung out at my house. It’s still on my backpack.
HUTCH: Man, I brought a backpack to a pool party. I was screwed from the start.
Editor’s Note: So weird that Hutch was drinking a soda alone in a corner of Cressida’s basement, just like Robby Monroe. But seriously. Who brings a backpack to a pool party?
LIAM: No, I didn’t go swimming. Have you ever seen me shirtless? I’m practically translucent. Seriously. I’m so pale I would glow under a black light. Swimming at a school pool party would be like sending Bizzy Stanhope an engraved invitation that said, “Please mock me.” I would like to cling quietly to whatever shreds of dignity I have left.
MICHAEL: I don’t own a bathing suit. Swimming is for chumps.
COCO: I was sooo happy. You know how much I’d loved Cressida’s birthday parties! When my mom got the e-vite to the ninth-grade back-to-school pool party, the sadness I’d felt when the birthday parties ended was replaced by a beam of pure joy! Plus, I’d gotten a really cute new swimsuit and giant sunglasses. I had just discovered the magic that is Jackie O, and I started with the sunglasses.
CRESSIDA: I was so mad at my mom. I could make her stop throwing birthday parties, but there was nothing I could do when she decided to start volunteering for school activities. So I locked myself in my room and started rereading Discworld. Big mistake. Huge. What I should have done was watch Avery Dennis like a hawk. And possibly handcuffed her to the refreshment table.
HUTCH: Do I remember seeing Avery at the pool party? Sure. I didn’t know who she was, but she was hard to miss. Really long, really blond hair, and a hot-pink bikini. Oh, no, wait—I can’t believe I’d forgotten this—Liam pointed her out! “That’s my ex,” he’d said, shrugging nonchalantly. He mumbled some nonsense about how he’d ended things because he couldn’t be tied down. I’d thought he was lying. And possibly crazy. But he was interested in tabletop RPG, so I figured he was my best shot at having someone to sit with in the cafeteria when school started.
LIAM: Yeah, people always think I’m lying when I tell them I dated Avery. I’m used to it.
Editor’s Note: I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times I’d shrieked with disgust when someone reminded me that I’d once been Liam Padalecki’s girlfriend. And I couldn’t even pin it all on middle school Avery. High school Avery had done her fair share of shrieking, too.
HUTCH: I guess we technically met for the first time a couple days later, when Avery sat next to me in bio. But I remembered seeing her at the pool party.
Editor’s Note: I have zero memory of seeing Hutch at the pool party, which makes me feel bad.
COCO: The pool party ended up being even better than any of Cressida’s birthday parties. You think Robby Monroe was drama? Please. I’ll give you drama. This was the party where Avery met her older man.
CRESSIDA: I didn’t think I needed to keep an eye on my brother. Why would I have needed to keep an eye on my brother? He was in his room, playing guitar. He’d expressed no interest in crashing a ninth-grade pool party. He was older than I was. He knew what he was doing. Or so I thought.
COCO: Avery was a naïve freshman. Ben was a worldly, experienced sophomore. I worried there was an insurmountable imbalance of power that would create an uneven relationship dynamic. A dramatic age difference like that can cause real problems.
AVERY: I reminded Coco that JFK was like twelve years older than Jackie O.
COCO: Whenever Avery dropped some all-too-convenient Kennedy knowledge on me, I felt confident she had just surreptitiously googled it on her phone to prove some stupid point. And also, as much as I love the Kennedys, that relationship was not without its fair share of problems.
Editor’s Note: Of course I had just googled. What are smartphones for if not to win arguments against the people we love?
HUTCH: I didn’t know Cressida had an older brother. I didn’t even know Ben existed until he was waiting outside of bio to explore AD’s tonsils every day after class.
BENVOLIO “BEN” SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN, ex-boyfriend and rising sophomore at UC Santa Barbara: Oh, sure, Avery Dennis and the hot-pink bikini. I remember. I was hiding in my room from all the kids in Cressie’s class. Come to think of it, I’m sure Cressie was hiding in her room from all those kids, too. But I was a sophomore, man. I was sitting in my room, playing Phish on my guitar, very poorly. I thought I was so cool.
COCO: Avery had been talking about this party all summer. Well, writing me letters from Camp Kawawa all summer about this party. About what swimsuit she was going to wear, about how she was going to straighten her hair, although it’s honestly naturally very straight, wondering if there would be any cute new boys … but then the big day finally arrived, and she vanished like two minutes into the party! Poof ! Gone! Disappeared! I looked around for a bit, then gave up and went to put my feet in the pool. I was busy ignoring Tripp from behind my sunglasses.
TRIPP GOMEZ-PARKER: Coco was into me, man, she was so into me. Even back when we were little freshmen. But I made her wait for it.
COCO: Yeah, I know Tripp is … well. He’s an acquired taste for sure.
Editor’s Note: How I rue the day Coco acquired that taste.
AVERY: I was bored. No cute new boys had shown up yet. So I decided to go exploring.
CRESSIDA: That sneaking little snoop decided to just parade through my house like she owned the place. And then she stole the only thing that really mattered to me. What, Ben? No, not my brother! I don’t care about him! I mean, I do, but, well—you know what I mean. Avery
stole my one place of peace and quiet. My place of freedom. My escape from school. She invaded my home.
Editor’s Note: Cressida should clearly have been in drama club.
AVERY: I heard music. So I followed it.
BEN: I looked up, and there was this girl with long blond hair and a heart-shaped face in a pink bikini, leaning against my doorframe. I had no idea how long she’d been standing there.
AVERY: I’d been standing there for a while. But you know what they say: Time flies when you’re watching a cute boy play guitar.
HUTCH: “They” don’t say “Time flies when you’re watching a cute boy play guitar.” AD says it—more often than one might think it would be possible to fit into conversation—but “they” certainly don’t say it.
BEN: I just stared. I was at a loss for words.
AVERY: He was seriously cute. I was aware of Ben Schrobenhauser-Clonan as an entity, as a sophomore at my school, as Cressida’s brother, but I wasn’t really aware of him until that moment. He was tan from the summer. His hair was a little long, curling at the back of his neck—he for sure needed a haircut, but it was cute. He was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a hemp necklace, and I thought he was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. The guitar in his lap sure didn’t hurt.
HUTCH: AD should have put on a T-shirt or something. This whole thing sounds indecent. Is this why we didn’t have a back-to-school pool party in tenth grade?
AVERY: I was very decent. It was an extremely sporty bikini. I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms, trying with all my might to be as cool as I could possibly be.
BEN: She asked, “Does that song have any words?” I nodded. “Sing it,” she commanded, and I obeyed. I should have started playing something romantic, but I couldn’t think. So I just kept playing what I had been playing, which was “Farmhouse.”
AVERY: The song was totally weird. It was about flies and stuff. But he had such a nice voice, and he could play guitar, and he was just, well … cool.
It's Not Me, It's You Page 7