dos and Don'ts

by Taylor Morris

  “For the Head Honchos thing with Cecilia’s Best Tressed,” I said.

  “Since the show we’ve been getting lots of press,” Megan said. “One of the best things that ever happened to the salon.” She gave me a knowing smile, because everyone knew I’d been the one to text in to the show recommending Hello, Gorgeous!. My mom’s business savvy had totally rubbed off on me.

  “You need anything?” I asked Megan before getting started on my own workday.

  “Just a little sanity,” she said.

  I held up my hands. “Fresh out.”

  I headed over to Mom’s station, which was right in the front so she could keep an eye on the comings and goings. She was trimming an already perfectly trimmed bob on a chestnut-haired woman. I knew it was Clarisse Eisenberg. She owned a car dealership in town, and she came in every two weeks to have Mom touch up her always-perfect hair.

  “Hi, Mom. Hi, Ms. Eisenberg.”

  “Hi, honey,” Mom said, looking over her shoulder.

  “Chloe, since when did your daughter become a young woman?” Ms. Eisenberg said. I blushed and Mom grinned as she continued to cut.

  “I don’t know, but I’m thinking of taking her to the doctor for a checkup,” Mom said. “It doesn’t seem natural, how quickly it’s happening.” Mom gave me a wink.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Mom my idea for the school project. Then she’d really think I was a grown-up, responsible young woman with good business sense. And maybe Ms. Eisenberg would think so, too, and would want to promote my project at her dealership. Something like, what to do when the breeze in your new convertible tangles your hair. Ooh, clever!

  Megan came over to Mom’s station and said, “Chloe, sorry to interrupt. When you’re finished, the TV station said they’re ready to interview you for the makeover you did this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, Megan,” Mom said, never letting her focus shift from her precise snipping of the bob.

  “You came back just for me?” Ms. Eisenberg said.

  “Anything for my best client,” Mom said. I knew that Clarisse Eisenberg wasn’t her best client—Mom didn’t have a best because she treated them all as if they were the best. “Mickey, once you get settled, could you do me a favor and tidy up my station before I head out?”

  “Sure,” I said. I knew that was her way of saying, Get to work, young lady. “It was nice seeing you, Ms. Eisenberg.”

  “You, too, Mickey,” she said.

  I headed to the back of the salon to put on my uniform—a pink apron with the Hello, Gorgeous! logo across the front pocket—and grab my broom. I wondered if I could catch Mom to tell her about my new assignment before she left. She might have some suggestions about what we could do to make it more than just a school project.

  My friends hadn’t been able to come to the salon with me after school to hammer out the details, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. During the rest of the school day, in all my classes, I wrote out ideas for possible topics, sidebars, names of the blog, how it would look—everything. I hadn’t been this excited about something since the day I started working at Hello, Gorgeous!.

  When I came back out on the floor, a tall, imposing figure stopped me in my tracks.

  “Giancarlo!” I said to my favorite stylist. “You got glasses!” They were red and round and lacquered shiny. They also matched his flowing white shirt, which had red circles all over it. Giancarlo was nothing if not stylish, from his bald head to his pointy-toed shoes.

  “You like?” he asked, touching the frames.

  “They’re gorgeous. I should totally use them for my new Web site…”

  “Darling, back in my cubby is my orange bag,” he said, cutting me off. “In the inside pocket is a black pouch with a sharpened set of scissors. Can you bring them to me?”

  My shoulders sank. I knew the salon was busy and it was important to focus, but I really wanted to tell him—or someone!—about my new project. I tried not to let it hurt my feelings but, well, it sort of did.

  “My client is in a rush and my shears are dull,” Giancarlo continued. “Thanks, Mick!” He walked back to his client, combing out her wet hair and chatting with her.

  The salon was always busy so I was used to those sorts of harried demands from the stylists. I was essential to helping to make sure everything ran smoothly so the stylists could concentrate on styling while I did all the little things from sweeping to fetching.

  After I got Giancarlo his scissors I walked over to Mom’s station, where she was dusting off the now-empty chair. Ms. Eisenberg had just walked out the door, her hair looking almost like it did when she came in, except even more perfect.

  “Mom, guess what?” I said as she tidied up her area. “Here, let me help you,” I added, reaching for the towel she was using.

  “Thanks.” She handed me the towel then brushed off her linen pants. She checked herself in the mirror, smoothing back her long black hair, which she had pulled back in a low ponytail. “I can’t believe this station scheduled me to talk about the makeover two hours after the makeover. Guess I still have some learning to do when it comes to television.” She dabbed on a sheer, pink lip gloss.

  “What makeover did you do again?” I asked. She’d been doing more and more side gigs since the airing of Cecilia’s Best Tressed and I was having a hard time keeping up.

  “For channel seven,” she said. “We made over a preschool teacher in Great Barrington. I think it airs tomorrow—I can’t remember.”

  She started back toward her office and I followed her, rag in one hand, broom in the other.

  “We got a really cool assignment at school today,” I said, standing just inside her office as she shuffled papers around at her desk. “Kind of like Career Exploration but even better.”

  “Really? That’s nice. Honey, please make sure you keep up your schoolwork while I’m out of town,” she said without looking up. “I know I sound like a broken record, but I feel like you’re always teetering on the edge of some grade catastrophe and I don’t want to see you have to dig yourself out. And I know you don’t want to lose your privilege of working here.”

  “Mom, I’m not going to mess up,” I mumbled, hurt that she instantly went to that assumption. Sure, I’d made a few (dozen) mistakes in the past, but I’d learned from them and paid the price. When would I get the trust back?

  “I know, sweetie. Just make sure, okay?”

  “Mom…”

  “Have you seen a yellow folder? I thought I left it right here.” She shuffled through the stacks on her normally pristine desk. “Ah, here it is.” She slid a yellow folder out from under a pile of invoices. She grabbed her purse and started out the door. I trailed after her, still hoping there’d be a good time to tell her about my project. “There are fifteen thousand things to do before I leave at the end of the week,” she said to me. “I need the whole team to pull together to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “We’re always a team,” I said, because it was true. It was one of the things that made working at Hello, Gorgeous! so wonderful—we always stuck by one another.

  At the front of the salon, near her own station, Mom handed the yellow folder to Violet, who was about to start working on a young woman’s bangs. “Here’s the list of vendors we talked about. Please make sure to go over them this week and on Thursday we’ll look at inventory together to see if there’s anything we need to order before I go.”

  Violet took the folder and slid it onto her counter. “You got it, Chloe.”

  Then Mom turned on her loafer heel and started for the front door.

  “So I’ll see you at home,” I called pathetically as she left. The door puffed shut behind her, the bell tinkling softly, assuring me she was gone. I stood there for a moment feeling totally rejected until someone called my name.

  “Mickey. You okay?”

  I turned and was surprised to see Violet looking at me with concern. She was the manager of the salon and always kept a professional, respectful distance from
me. Unlike Giancarlo, who was practically my BFF. But he was busy focusing on his client.

  “I’m okay,” I said, even as I dragged my feet back across the floor. I wanted to tell someone who would appreciate the great idea I had while I was still freshly excited about it. Dad would be happy for me, but he got enough of the hair biz as it was between me and Mom.

  “It’s just, well, I have this school project,” I said, stepping over to Violet’s station.

  “Another one?” she asked. “You guys just did that one where your friend Lizbeth worked here.”

  See what I mean? School really did pile it on, and if nonparent adults noticed, you know it was bad.

  “Yeah, but this is different,” I said. Violet’s short, Peter Pan–style hair was never a strand out of place, and the golden highlights done by Mom always shimmered perfectly in the salon light. “It’s actually pretty cool, I think. Want to hear about it?”

  She stood up straighter and looked at me square on. “Of course I do,” she said.

  “Well, see, it’s like a salon online,” I started. “Like hair advice and stuff, I mean.” I went on to tell her the ideas we’d worked out so far, about how our site would give real girls practical advice, like how to do a home color job and making do-it-yourself accessories. “We want it to be something girls our age can really use because even the stuff in the magazines gets a little crazy-expensive.”

  “Interesting,” Violet said, nodding her perfectly coiffed head. “I think it sounds like a fantastic idea.”

  I stared back at her for a moment. “You do?” I asked. I mean, obviously I did, but to finally get confirmation from a real stylist, I was practically bursting with excitement again.

  “Absolutely. I don’t know of any hair blog that’s aimed specifically toward girls your age. And I love that it’s being done by kids—not some adults telling kids how they think they should be styling their hair.”

  “Exactly!” I said, because even though I’d never thought of it like that, it was totally true.

  “What’s the first thing you’ll do to get started?” she asked.

  “Well, I guess we’ll design the blog first,” I said, thinking out the details as I spoke. “Then we’ll probably try to post a couple of ideas and some advice.”

  “Have you thought about taking questions from girls?” she asked. “I’m sure there are a lot of girls in your school who have style questions that they’d love to have a little guidance on.”

  Wow. That was brilliant! “I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah—that would be really cool.”

  “I think you’re on the right track,” she said and smiled. “You’re going to do great on this assignment. And I’ll help with any answers, even though I know you’re an expert.”

  “Thanks, Violet,” I said.

  For once in my life, I couldn’t wait to leave the salon so I could get home and really start working.

  CHAPTER 5

  “That is a great idea, Mickey!” Lizbeth said the next day when I told them that we should get questions from our classmates about stuff they wanted to know.

  “It was Violet’s idea, actually,” I told the girls as we sat down in the grass outside for lunch. It was a sunshiny day with clear skies and a light breeze. We’d told the guys we had important work to do and couldn’t be distracted, so they had to entertain themselves.

  “We’re entrepreneurs,” Kristen had told Tobias.

  “Did you just learn that word?” he’d asked her. That’s how their “relationship” worked—they were either making out or snapping at each other.

  The girls settled into their lunches while I opened up the three-ring binder I’d put together last night.

  Kristen leaned back on her hands and turned her face toward the sun. She also pulled the hem of her skirt up higher on her thighs as if she’d get a tan in thirty minutes. “This was a great idea, Mickey.”

  I was pretty sure she meant having lunch outside rather than anything to do with the project. I was a little worried that this was actually a distracting setting for working, but I pressed on.

  “So I was thinking,” I said, “of how the actual blog should look. I went through a few last night and printed out some ideas that I liked.” I placed the binder in the center of our circle and turned it toward the girls.

  Eve flipped through the pages, which I had printed in color and inserted into plastic sheet protectors. “Wow, Mickey. You’ve got like fifteen different sites in here.”

  “Seventeen,” I said, blushing.

  “Oh yeah,” Kristen said, leaving her sunglasses over her eyes. “We’re going to rock this assignment.”

  “Mickey’s not going to do all the work,” Lizbeth told her. “Besides, I have lots of ideas, too.”

  “So do I,” Kristen said, sounding offended.

  “Let’s start with the look of the blog, since we have to actually set it up tomorrow,” I said, taking a notepad out of the binder and clicking on my purple ballpoint pen. “What kind of vibe do you guys want?”

  “Something fun, for sure,” Lizbeth said as she flipped through the pages of the binder, folding down corners of the ones she liked.

  “Yeah, I think it should be girly and exciting,” Eve said. “I mean, if we’re doing a do-it-yourself hair blog, we might as well go all out, right? Unless you think we should also target guys?”

  “No way,” Kristen said, the sun reflecting off her turquoise-framed sunglasses. “Let’s stick with girls. Guys don’t care about this stuff, and besides, I wouldn’t know what to tell them.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Let’s stick with what we know. Girls only.” I wrote this down on my notepad.

  “I think the site should have lots of pinks,” Lizbeth said. “Like, really fun, flashy colors. Maybe oranges, too. The vibe should be for girls who want to have fun with their style.”

  “I like that,” I said, also writing it down.

  “Yeah, like, people take style too seriously sometimes,” Eve said. “But if you just loosen up and have fun with it, you end up looking great!”

  Looking over my notes, I read back: “Okay, so we want the look of the blog to be fun and girly with lots of energy. Right?” Eve and Lizbeth nodded eagerly while Kristen repositioned herself to get the best rays.

  “Wait,” Kristen said, lowering her face from the direct line of the sun. “What are we going to call it?”

  “The name is the most important part of it all,” Eve said, looking at me and Lizbeth.

  I didn’t disagree. It needed to be something that summed up what we were all about—easy, on-your-own hairstyles for girls who didn’t take themselves too seriously.

  “How about Hair Apparent?” Kristen said.

  We all looked at her blankly.

  “It’s a play on words!” she said. She took off her sunglasses to look at us more closely. “Like heir apparent? Like the next in line to the royal throne?”

  “Oh,” we all said in unison.

  “It’s a really cute play on words,” Eve said. “But I’m not sure people will get its meaning right away.”

  “How about Gloss and Glow?” Lizbeth suggested. “Or Gloss and Go, for shiny hair that you can do quickly and easily? No, never mind,” she said, nixing her own idea. “I think that may be the name of a floor cleaner.”

  We kept thinking as we munched our way through our lunches. Turns out that deciding on a name for something is really hard to do. The name was our whole image—the make-it-or-break-it piece of the project. With the wrong name, we’d be done before we even got started.

  “Let’s think of other ideas and regroup on the name later,” I suggested. “Who wants to do what? We should start with the noncreative stuff, like who is in charge of designing the blog—or choosing the design from the list of options.” I wrote our names out with wide spaces between.

  “I’ll do that,” Eve offered. “I mean, we should all agree on it but I’ll help get it started.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Eve gets
the blog started. And we’ll need an e-mail address to get questions from readers.”

  “We need the name of the blog before all that,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Okay, after this, our first order of business is to send each other three possible names by eight o’clock tonight, and tomorrow in homeroom we’ll pick one. Agreed?”

  The girls all nodded.

  “I’ll take a stab at doing some easy-to-make accessories, if that’s okay,” Lizbeth said.

  “Perfect,” I said, writing that down. “And we can all help answer the questions we get. We can divvy them up to answer and then everyone can check them before we post,” I said. “I was also thinking of posting a bunch of pictures of inspirational looks that I found in magazines.” I turned to that section of the binder. “Just to add a little bit of fantasy to the whole thing. If someone wants to know how to do one of these looks I can always ask Violet or Giancarlo. I’ll also take the first try at any curly-hair questions since, you know… ” I held out the ends of my own very curly hair.

  “Sounds good to me,” Eve said.

  “Kristen,” I said. “Is there something you want to focus on to get the blog started?” I didn’t want to admit it, but I had a feeling she’d try to skip out on any major responsibilities. It probably had a lot to do with the way she’d been tanning through lunch instead of helping to plan our assignment.

  “Whatever you guys want me to do,” she said.

  “You have to pick something,” Eve said. I could hear a slight edge in her voice—she didn’t want Kristen slacking off, either.

  “Maybe you could do something with getting the word out about this. Like promotion,” Lizbeth suggested. “That way you can be bossy and tell people they have to go to the site and ask us good questions.”

  “Hmm, I do like telling people what to do,” Kristen agreed. Eve and I exchanged a smile. “Okay, I’ll be the marketing expert and work on getting girls to send in their questions.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder to show us she had it covered.

  I added this to the list. Then I set the pad on the grass in front of me, looking it over. We were off to a great start. My only concern was that we didn’t have a lot of time to get this blog up and running.