“I’ll pay better attention. Work faster.” Not spill sticky drinks on teachers’ legs. Avoid making nice stylists snap at me. Avoid certain stylists altogether . . .”
She nodded and said, “That’s the attitude!” before taking a bite from her shrimp.
I was all worked up over nothing, it seemed. But then, just as I was about to dig into a nice piece of shrimp myself, I felt her looking at me as if she had something to add.
“Honey, I know you were excited about your first day—”
Here we go . . .
“—and it was a lot to take in and learn. Just remember what your main job is, okay? Devon said she had to ask you twice to sweep up her station.”
Unbelievable! Devon ratted me out on my first day!
I slumped in my seat. All of my excitement over starting at the salon was now replaced by disappointment. I figured keeping my mouth shut and proving my mom wrong when I worked on Wednesday was the best thing to do.
Later, I was over at Jonah’s, and I was anxious to tell him how horribly things had gone. The Goldmans live right behind us and our dads are BFFs. They even built a gate in the fence that separates our backyards so they could go back and forth more easily.
“Here, this is for you,” he said, before I could say anything. “Happy birthday.” He shoved a long tin box into my hands. It was chipped yellow and had a little illustration of a girl brushing her hair on the cover.
“What is this?” I asked.
“An old pencil box. I got it at that junk store on Camden Way.”
“Loretta’s Treasures?” I asked. He nodded. Loretta’s was a really nice antique store that had been on some PBS program once because of its rare toy collection.
“My mom was there buying some table thing and I saw it. I figured you could put, like, those little black things in it for your hair.”
“Bobby pins?” I asked, knowing full well he knew what they were called but simply didn’t want to admit it.
“Whatever.” He shrugged. “Or clips or, I don’t know. Whatever. Sorry I didn’t wrap it.”
“This is really cool, Jonah,” I said, opening the lid. It was a little dusty inside, but it would go perfectly on my vanity set. And it really was the perfect size for bobby pins and small clips and hair bands. Score one for Jonah.
He started up Warpath of Doom, which I loved because I usually whooped his you-know-what when we played. I’d held the record for three months straight, and today, while I was slaving away, he’d taken away my record. I couldn’t change what had happened at the salon, but I could get that record back and set one thing right in the universe.
When I told him how horribly my day went, he responded by saying, “I bet it wasn’t that bad.” That’s what you get when your only friend is a boy.
“Yeah, well, what do you know?” I said. “You don’t have a job.”
“Why would I want a job?” He said the word job like he would say the word dolls when we were kids. As in, “I’m not playing with your stupid dolls.” “My job is to skateboard, play video games, and annoy you.”
“Glad to see you’ve been promoted to full time.”
“I have,” Jonah said. “In fact, I’m thinking of getting my PhD in it, ’cause that’s how awesome I am.”
I stifled a smile and said, “I’m sure you’ve made your mother proud.”
The game started up, and we jerked the controls through the first level. We both could have done level one in our sleep. “Did I tell you who came into the salon?”
“Who?” He shot down a bomber.
“Nicole Carter.”
“Who’s that?”
“Ms. Carter, my homeroom teacher, your history teacher?” I said.
“No way! What’s she like on weekends? Wait, I’m not sure I want to know.”
I smiled, snapping and pounding my controller to make sure I downed more enemy aircraft than he did. “And you’ll never believe what I did. I let a bottle of diet soda explode all over her.”
“Nice!” he said as he blew out an enemy bomb shelter. “At least it wasn’t someone like Coach Petragallo. He would have made you run suicides or something. Ms. Carter is pretty cool.”
“Yeah, well, she’s giving you a pop quiz on Monday. How cool is that?”
Jonah almost stopped playing. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “Heard her say it.”
He refocused his attention on the game. “Good to know.”
“I hear all sorts of things there,” I said, realizing just how much it was true.
“Yeah, well, if any more teachers come in announcing pop quizzes, let me know. Let the whole school know and you’ll be everyone’s new best friend.”
I thought about that as I surpassed my all-time high score. What Jonah lacked in his ability to destroy even the smallest of tanks, he made up for with his (sometimes) clever ideas.
I didn’t want to be everyone’s best friend, but I definitely had room for a few more friends in my life, to say the least.
CHAPTER 5
“Good morning, Mickey,” Ms. Carter said to me when I came to class on Monday. Even though she was back in her teacher clothes—makeup on, arms and legs covered, and her new brick-red nails shining—I couldn’t get that bodybuilder image out of my head. I wondered if she’d had a glass of raw eggs for breakfast. “I hope you didn’t work too much this weekend.” She grinned like we shared a secret.
I glanced around the room to see if anyone had heard her. I was probably the only kid in school with a j-o-b, which made me suddenly feel way more mature than the other kids. Like, totally.
But, of course, no one even noticed Ms. Carter talking to me.
Later in the day as I walked down the hall, Jonah yelled my name as if I was about to open a door that had a fire blazing on the other side.
“Wait up!” he called. He was walking with his friend Kyle, who he sometimes skated with on weekends. “We have something very important to tell you.”
“Oh yeah? What?” I said.
Jonah smacked Kyle in the chest with the back of his hand. “Tell her, man.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“Uh, thanks,” Kyle said.
Kyle, for all of you wondering, has the greatest hair. Big, beautiful curls. I didn’t want to be envious of those curls, but I was. Oh, how I was. As for Kyle himself, he was . . . okay, if you liked people who spoke in half sentences, at best. Wait—I guess that’s me most of the time. Well . . . at times I’m not so crazy about myself, either.
“Yeah, Mick,” Jonah said. “Thanks for the heads up on the test in Ms. Carter’s.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re welcome.”
After Jonah and Kyle headed off to class, I made a quick stop in the bathroom. Lizbeth and Kristen were standing at the putty-colored sinks applying lip gloss and hairspray. I stopped cold and almost turned and stepped right back out the door. I wasn’t sure why, exactly. I guess I didn’t know if they’d talked to me yesterday at the salon because I was the help or because we were all in the same grade at the same school and I might be someone they’d consider hanging out with someday.
But I didn’t want to be a complete wimp and run away from them. I had just as much right to be there as they did. Maybe they’d even talk to me or maybe a miracle would happen and I’d open my mouth and talk to them.
“I’m just saying, it was kind of weird, that’s all,” Lizbeth said to Kristen.
“What’s the big deal? I was just being friendly.”
“I don’t care,” Lizbeth said. “I was just saying it was weird how you were suddenly all over him the moment I pointed him out.”
“Please, Lizzie. Not true,” Kristen said.
“Can we just drop it? It’s so not a big deal.”
Kristen shrugged. “Dropped.”
I stood in front of a mirror two down from them. Tra la la. I tried to look like I didn’t have a single care in the world. Was the him they were talking about related to the Matthew comment Kristen m
ade at the salon? I wondered. But really, the biggest question running through my mind was whether I should say hello first, or if I should wait and see if they might say something to me.
Should have known. Option C: They didn’t even notice my existence. Just kept right on talking.
“You’re coming over after school, right?” Lizbeth asked Kristen.
“After ballet,” Kristen said. She made a little gagging noise.
I watched as Lizbeth brushed her shiny hair. She always looked like she’d just stepped out of Violet’s chair, perfectly styled. I wondered how she did it on her own. I could style a doll’s hair to perfection, no problem. But my own? If I wanted to look like I’d just been electrocuted, then yeah, I was great at doing my own hair.
“Do you want to borrow my camera?”
I was looking at Lizbeth in the mirror, and it took me a moment to realize that Kristen was talking to me. She held out her cell toward me, eyeing my reflection in the mirror. “So you can take a picture—it’ll last longer.”
“God, Kristen,” Lizbeth said, looking embarrassed. I looked down at my bag, wishing I could crawl into it, zip myself up, and wait for them to leave. Lizbeth gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Mickey.”
“It’s okay,” I muttered.
“You’re so rude,” Lizbeth said in a low voice to Kristen.
“I was just joking. Sorry,” she said to Lizbeth.
I couldn’t explain why, but I wanted them to like me. Well, right then maybe not Kristen, especially since she thought Lizbeth was more deserving of an apology from her than I was. But more than wanting anyone to like me, though, I didn’t want to be intimidated by them. I didn’t want to be intimidated by anyone.
“I was just trying to remember,” I said, in effort to cover. “Don’t you have Ms. Carter for history?” I had no idea if they did, but it seemed like a good comeback after getting busted for staring.
Lizbeth said, “Yeah. Why?”
Whoa. Ten points for random guessing. “Have you had her class yet today?”
“No,” Kristen said. “Why?”
I could feel my face burn with embarrassment. What was I doing? I was acting like we were all friends just chatting away in the bathroom when in reality they barely recognized me. From yesterday. I hadn’t felt humiliation this deep since Andrew Zimmer yelled “Jonah loves Mickey!” during an assembly in first grade. Into a microphone! “Well, you know how I was working at Hello, Gorgeous! like, yesterday?”
Kristen stared back at me, her long, auburn hair laying across her shoulders with delicate comma curls at the ends. It was Lizbeth who spoke up and said, “Yeah, of course.” She held up her Peppermint Shake nails. “I’ve already gotten two compliments today.”
“Oh, cool,” I said. “Well, um. See, Ms. Carter was in yesterday, too. I heard her say she was giving a pop quiz today.”
“A pop quiz?” Kristen asked. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what she said,” I said.
Kristen nudged Lizbeth. “Great. I’m totally going to fail.”
“No you’re not. We’ll study at lunch,” Lizbeth said. She turned to me, “You are such a lifesaver. Thanks a lot.”
I smiled. “Good luck.”
“Come on, we gotta go,” Kristen said to Lizbeth. Just before they left, Kristen turned back to me and said, “Hey, do you get free stuff at the salon? Because I love this nail polish you recommended.” She showed me her Cornflower Blues. “But I feel like at any moment it’s going to chip along the ridge of my nail.”
“Oh yeah,” Lizbeth said, examining her Peppermint Shake. “Me too.”
I knew it was solid nail polish—we didn’t use flaky stuff—but the truth was we did have a couple of bottles of each new color. Violet had probably already taken inventory of the extra bottles and stored them on the shelves, leaving the bottles the girls had used at Karen’s manicure station.
“Yeah,” I said. “I kind of get free stuff.”
“Do you think you could get me a bottle for touch-ups?”
“Yeah, sure,” I heard myself saying. I was pretty sure that Mom didn’t want me giving stuff away, but maybe just this once—as long as it didn’t become a habit. And it was pretty safe to assume no one would miss these colors too much—most of the salon clientele were chic adult-type women who would never be caught dead with mint-green or cornflower-blue nails. “I’ll bring you some later this week. I don’t work again until Wednesday. Is that okay?”
“Awesome,” Kristen said. “Thanks!”
“See ya later,” Lizbeth said as they left.
I stood staring at the door after it’d shut. Lizbeth and Kristen were grateful to me. I felt amazing—the salon was already working its magic on me, transforming me into someone who talked to people—popular people, even!
Now all I had to do was not blow it—which for me was not as easy as it seemed.
CHAPTER 6
On Wednesday morning, I put on a black-and-white striped T-shirt over leggings with a gray self-belting cardigan and lace-up booties and planned to fully redeem myself at the salon later that day. I went through my normal styling routine of washing, conditioning, and applying defrizz balm. Then I set the hair dryer on low and used the round brush to work my hair into big, gentle curls like Violet had done. Unfortunately, the round brush was my kryptonite. (Notice the words you learn having a boy for a best friend.) I was determined to master it one day, but today wasn’t that day. Also, Mom was yelling for me to hurry up, so I had to bail. I cranked up the power on the blow-dryer and blasted my hair. And then, like most other days, I pulled it back into a fuzz ball ponytail.
When I got to the salon after school that day, I snapped on my smock, then grabbed my broom and gripped it tightly in my hands as if it were an extension of my body. I was determined not to let go of it all day.
Wednesday evening may not have been as busy as Sunday, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t crazy. Violet was still working a packed schedule when I got there. Rowan had facials lined up till closing. Piper, a college-age strawberry blonde, was on shift and so was Devon. The smell of product wafted around me, a combination of sweet and chemical, and the warm lights gave a sense of serenity to a place that was otherwise a whirlwind of activity.
In my mind, I was calm and competent, a true professional; on the floor, however, sweat still beaded on my upper lip as I did an Olympic speed-walk from the back of the salon to the front, carrying fresh cotton balls and extra buffing blocks for Karen’s manicure station.
I kept such an eagle eye out that I noticed every dust mite drifting through the air. I was so concerned about keeping Devon’s station clean that I practically held the dust pan under her poor clients’ heads as she clipped. “Uh, yeah, thanks,” Devon said. Today she wore cuffed dark denim jeans with a form-fitting plaid shirt and Doc Martens. “But could you please hold off until we’re done here?”
“Sorry,” I muttered. I hated to admit she was right, but she was. I wasn’t supposed to sweep when clients were sitting in the chair. I just got a little carried away with myself.
I moved over to Violet’s station just seconds after she was done with her client. My timing was perfect and I managed to pick up every speck of dust. Then, just as I was congratulating myself for perfecting my technique, my foot caught the edge of Devon’s styling trolley. Time stood still for exactly one second and then, chaos. I flew forward and landed with a giant thud on my knees. Next, I heard the scattering and clattering of style supplies on the shiny marble floor. Devon’s trolley had come down with me, blowing the entirety of its contents of brushes, butterfly clips, and hundreds of tiny bobby pins all around me. I slowly regained my balance and got back up on my feet, only to slip again, calling everyone’s attention to the disaster I had caused.
“Mickey! Are you okay?” Violet asked, rushing over. Everyone looked at me like the train wreck that I was.
I stood up as quickly as I’d gone down, trying to act like it was just a little tumble. My knee throbb
ed, but I tried to play it off. Devon had already started picking up her loot, but not before she shot me a look and apologized to her client.
“Well,” I said to Violet but loud enough for the others to hear, “it was a great trip. I’ll see you next fall!” I tried not to limp to the back, but when I got to the break room I rubbed my knees as tears popped out of my eyes like tiny little geysers. I couldn’t have held them back if I wanted to.
“Honey, what happened?”
I looked up from rubbing my knees and saw through watery eyes Mom standing in the doorway. Had that been so loud that she heard it from her office? And then I realized I hadn’t even stopped to help Devon clean up the mess I’d made. Great. Another reason for her to hate me.
I kept my back to Mom as I quickly wiped the tears from my face. “Nothing. Just a little spill,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “I’m cleaning it up right now.”
I got up to go back out and face the floor, but Mom stopped me, putting her hand on my shoulder. She gave my cheek a little pat. “You’ll pull through it,” she said. I wasn’t so sure, but I left the back room with my head held high.
I tried to help Devon finish cleaning, but she snapped under her breath, “I’d just organized this.” She then seemed to remember that I was an actual human because she said, “You okay?” I quickly nodded yes and squeaked out an apology. Anything more and I was sure I’d start boo-hooing like a baby.
“Mickey,” Violet called from her station. “Come here for a sec.” I’m sure she was just trying to get me out of the spotlight and away from Devon’s menacing eyes.
Violet stood behind Alicia, who I knew was a longtime client. Her hair was down to the middle of her back, thick with tight curls. “You want to get me one of those new headbands from up front for Alicia? Maybe the one with the peacock feathers?”
“Sure,” I said. Even though I’d told myself I would only concentrate on sweeping, I couldn’t exactly say no when a stylist asked me to help with something.
Blowout Page 3