“She cut her hair short?” I said, feeling a pit of worry begin to grow in my stomach at hearing the familiar hair issue.
“Yeah,” Violet said. “It was kind of sad. She’d gone to a different salon and they just did what she asked without any regard for how it would look on her hair. And then there was the girl who for some reason put vinegar on her hair thinking it could get gum out. That was a bizarre one. We even had another girl come in with a dandruff problem and do you know what she did? She put peanut butter on her hair, thinking that would get it out!” Violet shook her head and laughed a little. “Actually, it sounds like someone got their advice backward. Peanut butter gets gum out, and vinegar can be used to help with dandruff. Anyway,” she said, “I wish these girls would stop believing everything they read online.”
“Wait… what?” I said. Peanut butter? Dandruff? Online?
“I guess there is a bright side, though,” Violet said.
“What’s that?” I asked, hoping it would be good news for me as well.
“Like I said, business is up.”
“Yeah,” I said, my heart sinking. “Interesting.”
The rest of the evening as I swept across the salon, I paid close attention to the clients who came in—and what they came in for: styling or fixing.
I was wiping down the mirror that lined the accessories shelf when Gina Rosin, a girl in my class, came in for a coloring on her brown hair, which was now a brassy orange.
“It said this was one of the best browns on the market,” Gina said to her mom.
“Not everyone has the same shade of brown, Gina,” her mom replied just as Devon greeted them and promised to take care of her.
“I was tired of my brown,” Gina said. “I just wanted a better one. It’s not like I went crazy and tried to dye it pink or anything.”
“With your coloring,” Devon told Gina as she looked carefully over the condition of her hair, “you really need a brown with some ash in it.”
“Well, I wish I’d known that,” Gina said.
“Don’t worry,” Devon said, leading her back to change into a robe. “We’ll get you fixed up.”
My head was spinning. We had given advice on this very thing just yesterday. I’d asked Violet if it was a good color but I hadn’t told her what color the question asker’s hair was or even thought to ask. I was having a harder and harder time convincing myself that this was all a coincidence. The very advice we’d given on our site for fashionable do’s were now walking into the salon as hair don’ts.
“What’d I tell you?” Violet said, passing me on the stairs going down to The Underground. “Crazy busy, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Crazy.”
On my break, I ducked into Mom’s office to check our site, and looked at the questions I’d auto-posted Saturday night before rushing out to meet everyone at the movies. Sure enough, I’d accidentally posted the dandruff answer to the gum question, and the gum answer to the dandruff question. No one had noticed the switch. Not even me.
I reposted the questions to their proper answers. Then I amended the answer to the brown coloring question. On each I wrote UPDATED so that people would know and not go by the old answer. I hoped that it would be enough, but kind of knew that it wasn’t. And I had no idea what we would do next.
CHAPTER 20
“Eve, call me,” I said, standing in the shadows of the back room at the salon. “It’s an emergency. A blog emergency.”
This was serious, and I had to act fast. We had to act fast. I held my phone for a moment, hoping Eve would call me back immediately. When a lifetime passed—really probably ten seconds—I decided to text everyone.
Blog emergency!!!
My SOS went to Eve, Kristen, and Lizbeth. We had to break this down. Was everything happening because of our posts? Or just my posts? Should we take them down? Would Ms. Carter find out and fail us? Probably not—she was too busy trying to get posted on Cara’s Many Ways to notice. Would my mom find out and shut the blog down and kick me out of the salon?
“Hey, girl,” Karen said. “We have an emergency down here. Can you come help?”
“Emergency?” I croaked. But we hadn’t even given any nail advice!
“Spilled nail polish,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said, dropping my phone into my pocket, relief flooding me. At least this wasn’t my fault.
As I helped scrub the floor in The Underground to clean up the nail polish, I kept checking my phone, making sure the volume was up so I wouldn’t miss a call, double-checking that the message went out to all three girls. Finally a response rolled in. Lizbeth.
In the middle of homework. Later?
With one hand scrubbing the floor, I used the other to type a one-handed text back. Totally bad form to do this right in front of customers and during an emergency, not to mention a stylist right next to me, but this was important.
Must meet come to salon
“Mickey,” Karen said, eyeing me.
“Sorry,” I said, dropping the phone back in my pocket. It buzzed again. I waited as long as I possibly could (three seconds) before I couldn’t take not knowing who it was. This time it was Eve.
Can’t. Night at Grandma’s. Sorry!
What part of blog emergency did they not understand? And what about Kristen? Did she even plan on responding?
As soon as we had all the polish cleaned up, I ran upstairs to check again. Nothing. When I texted Kristen again asking if she could come to the salon she wrote:
Can’t, sorry. Just painted toenails.
Seriously?
I tried to think of someone else who would care enough to listen and offer helpful advice. And then it hit me. My boyfriend! We were in a committed relationship and so, therefore, he was obligated to care about what I cared about and try to help. I’m sure that was written somewhere in the bylaws of boyfriend/girlfriend.
All I got was his voice mail. Frustrated, after the beep I screamed, “Aargh!”
As I swept the salon that evening, I started to understand. Sometimes in a girl’s life, there comes a time when no one but her very best friend will do. Jonah had helped with salon and friend problems before, so I hoped he’d have an answer for me on this one.
When I called his number it just rang and rang until his voice mail finally came on. I left a message that I needed him desperately and to please call me back.
“Like, immediately,” I said into the phone. “Call me. Soon.”
I ended the call and turned to go back to sweeping, when I almost ran right into Violet.
“Mickey,” she said, looking down at me carefully.
“I was just about to head back downstairs and see what Rowan needs,” I said, clutching my phone in my hand, hoping she hadn’t seen.
“You’ve been distracted all evening,” Violet said, folding her arms over her cream jacket with black stitching.
“No, I haven’t,” I said.
She fixed me with a look. “Mickey. Don’t even try. You’ve been glued to your phone and generally haven’t seemed present. It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not mad. But you can head out a little early if you want.”
“No, I can stay,” I said, suddenly feeling awful. I didn’t want her to think I felt like I could slack off with Mom gone.
She smiled. “Really. It’s okay. I know you’ve got your project to work on.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking. I had so much investigating to do. And as long as Violet was being nice… “Okay if I go on the computer in Mom’s office one more time?”
“Sure,” she said. “Do what you need.”
“Thanks, Violet.”
I spent about an hour online, looking at the questions we’d answered and making sure nothing else was incorrect. Kristen had posted a new Do of the Day that was really cute. It looked like she had taken the picture at the mall. After that I couldn’t help but go to Cara’s blog and see what new things she had. I was on her site for a while, just looking at the design. They had a new Many Ways on
how to wear a necklace—aside from the traditional way, she showed it wrapped around her wrist as a bracelet, in her hair as an accessory, and draped and pinned on a jacket.
After I’d done as much as I could stand, and when none of my friends called or texted back, I left the salon. I realized I had just about run out of people to talk to about this very real problem. I decided to try calling Kyle again, basically out of desperation.
“Thank goodness!” I said when he answered his phone. Apparently not everyone was screening my calls. “You will not believe what’s happening,” I said as I walked down Camden Way. I could feel the early evening sun setting on my back. I turned off the main street and headed toward home. “There is some totally weird and uncomfortable possible links between the answers we’ve given on our blog and the hair emergencies that have been coming into the salon this week. Like, a very uncomfortable correlation. I mean, I don’t think it’s related—well, maybe it is, but I’m not sure yet and nobody will call me back. I mean, what’s up with that? Do I have to do everything myself?”
“Are you on your way?” he asked.
“To professional and educational disaster?” I said as I passed some elementary school kids playing soccer in the street. Oh, the simple life. I wondered if they knew how easy they had it. “Yes, I am well on my way.”
“No, on your way to Warpath?” Kyle asked.
I stopped on the sidewalk as the soccer ball rolled right up to my feet. Warpath?
“Hey, over here!” one of the kids yelled. I kicked the ball but way over into a yard across the street. “Come on, man!” the kid yelled.
“Warpath, yeah,” I said, cringing, remembering that Kyle and I were supposed to meet at six and play video games. It was now way after six. Turning back the way I’d just come, I said, “I’m walking now!”
“Mickey,” Kyle said, and it was obvious that he knew I’d forgotten all about our plans. Again. The second time in one week.
“Be there in, like, ten!”
I ran all the way there. I called Dad midrun to tell him that I’d be a little late for dinner, and thankfully he was fine with it. “Call me when you’re on your way home,” he said.
I was gasping for air by the time I got there and saw Kyle waiting on a bench outside. He leaned forward on his knees, messing with his phone. I tried to slow my breathing as I walked up so it wouldn’t be so obvious that I’d rushed over there.
“Hey,” I said, standing in front of him. “Ready to go in?”
“Sure,” he said, getting up. He did open the door for me, but I felt like he was purposely not looking at me. “Want to do The Experience or just play some video games?” he asked. The Experience was this live-action game based off one of my and Jonah’s favorite video games, Warpath of Doom. Eve had even done a local commercial for it.
“We can just play video games,” I said, knowing I couldn’t focus on the whole game thing: wearing a vest, holding a laser gun, and stalking the enemy in a darkened theater with explosions and flashing lights. I followed Kyle to the coin machine and checked my phone for messages from… well, anyone. “I have a legit emergency with the project and no one is helping me. Can you believe that?”
He barely shrugged. “I don’t know.” Coins dumped into the tray.
“I mean, it’s not just my project,” I said, following him through the games. “They said so themselves that I shouldn’t be doing all the work but now somehow, when things get tricky, everyone has disappeared. How lame is that?”
“Want to play Skee-Ball?” he asked.
“I guess.”
He dropped some coins into two lanes side by side. As Kyle rolled the wooden balls up the lane, I wondered aloud if what was happening would affect our grade.
“And what will my mom say?”
Kyle finished his game and noticed that I hadn’t even started mine.
“Oops, sorry,” I said, rolling the balls in quick succession. I bombed out and only got three tickets, which I think they give you just for putting coins in the slot. We left the Skee-Ball area and walked through the games again.
“Have you seen the trailer for the new movie about ghost children living in fireplaces?” Kyle asked.
Just then something caught my eye—or rather, someone. Cara Fredericks was over by the vintage machines playing Ms. Pac-Man. Seeing her set something off inside me. She was probably loving watching me fail on my blog—I had basically proven her right by giving bad advice. Thank goodness I hadn’t sullied her pristine name. She caught me looking at her, and came over to me and Kyle.
“Hey, guys,” she said. She had a gold necklace laced through a small braid in her hair. My blood boiled.
“Hey, Cara,” I said. “So how’s it going?”
“Oh, good,” she said. “So glad the project is almost over.” She rolled her eyes like this was such a pain, doing her perfect project. “I bet you’re glad, too, huh?”
“Why would I be glad?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, looking from me to Kyle. “It’s just, I saw you had some problems with yours—I mean, I saw that you had to update a couple of your answers and plus Becky is a friend of mine, so…”
“So now you’re reading my blog?” I said. Perfect—now that I was doing a terrible job, she was reading every word.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “After Becky put peanut butter in her hair because she thought it would help with her dandruff, I went there to see what else was going on.”
“Oh, like you’re our teacher and you have to check up on us?” I said, my skin getting hot.
“Mickey,” Kyle said. “Come on. Calm down.”
“We fixed that entry, anyway,” I said, steadying my shaking voice.
“I know,” Cara said. “Hey, it’s fine. Forget it.”
She turned like she was about to start walking away.
“And why don’t you leave the hair stuff to us?” I said, pointing to the jewelry in her hair. “I thought you wanted to stick to your own thing?”
“Come on,” Kyle said, gently leading me away like I might go truly mad at any moment. “Sorry,” he said to Cara—like he was on her side. We walked to the other side by the hoops games. “Man, Mickey,” he said. “You have to calm down about this stuff. It’s just a school project.”
Oh, great. Now he sounded like Eve. I had all these friends and people around me but I felt like no one understood what it was I did and loved. “No,” I said, measuring the word carefully. “It’s a hair project.”
“Okay, fine,” he said. “It’s a hair project. That doesn’t give you permission to act all crazy about it every second of the day.”
“I don’t!”
“And what’s your problem with Cara?” he asked. “Why did you go after her like that?”
“You should have heard what she said. I never did anything to her and suddenly she’s talking smack about my mom’s salon? That’s not cool.”
“You still need to calm down. You’re all worked up,” Kyle said. “Jonah told me that Eve told him that you’re even kind of pushing your friends around on the project.”
“What? What has Eve been saying?”
“They feel like you’re bulldozing them on this whole project,” he said. “They don’t want to work with you anymore.”
“Hang on,” I said, shifting my weight. “They? I thought you said just Eve. Which is it?”
He sighed, watching two guys toss basketballs. Finally, he looked at me. “To be honest, Mickey, it’s all of us. We’re all getting a little tired of how crazy you’ve been about this.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d finally thrown myself into a school project and now I was getting backlash for it?
“Don’t be mad,” he said, reaching for my hand. I wanted to stay angry, but that small touch was helpful. I looked away so he wouldn’t know. “I know you haven’t done it on purpose, but you’ve been kind of bossy since you started this project. It’s all you think about. At least it’s all you talk about.”
&nb
sp; For some reason, I suddenly had a thought—he was going to break up with me. It was coming any moment. That’s what all this had led to, all my craziness with the project and not paying attention to anyone or anything except that. Why would he stay with someone who didn’t pay any attention to him, who couldn’t even remember she had a date with him? On multiple occasions?
“I was just really excited about it,” I said, my heart racing. “Especially when I saw actual people writing to us and using our advice. Until our advice turned bad, that is. I didn’t mean to be mean to anyone,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “We know.”
“Is that why you wanted to see me tonight?” I said. “To talk for everyone and tell me what a jerk I’ve been?”
“No,” he said.
My heart raced. Reject City, here I come.
“I really just wanted to see you, hang out with you—do something away from school and our friends and especially our projects.”
“Really?” I said, starting to feel myself relax a little. “That’s all?”
“Yeah, that’s all. I thought this place would be the furthest thing from salons and school projects as possible.”
I looked around at the blinking lights and people having fun.
“Look, Mickey,” he said. “We all know how much you love styling. I promise we know. But that doesn’t mean you have to ignore your friends or, like, be so focused on beating some other girl as the best in class. Or yelling at them in public.”
“I didn’t yell,” I said. “And Cara did talk dirty about Hello, Gorgeous!—I have to defend my mom and her business and prove how good we are.”
“But that’s the thing,” he said. “We all know how good you and your mom are. Your friends know. You had some mix-ups that you fixed—why do you care what some other girl thinks?”
“I don’t care,” I said, looking down at the patterned floor.
“You do care,” he said. “But don’t forget about the people who care about you while you’re trying to prove other people wrong.”
He squeezed my hand, and I finally realized he wasn’t going to break up with me. He was just trying to show me, in as sweet a way as possible, what a maniac I’d been.
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