And I’m freaking out.
But hiding it really well.
Super well.
‘Blue or green?’ Carmen asks me. She holds up the swatches and I try to focus but I have one eye on the guy who’s going to be massacring my hair any second now. His name is Romano and I’m sure he’s sweet, but right now I hate him. He’s laughing with his previous customer by the cash register. Keep talking, guys. I really don’t mind. Take all day.
‘I think green,’ she says.
I nod. ‘Green is good.’
My hands are clasped on my lap under the hairdresser’s smock and even though I can’t see them I know my knuckles are white. Because my grip is Superman-level strong.
‘Maybe I’ll just get a trim,’ I say. I frown at myself in the mirror.
Carmen has a swatch in each hand and she’s looking at them one after the other, back and forth. ‘You could,’ she says.
‘Or, like, up to my chin. That could be fun, right?’
She nods. ‘Could be.’
Romano appears behind me, clamping his hands on my shoulders. ‘Right,’ he says and smiles with a mouthful of the most perfectly straight, white, square teeth I’ve ever seen. ‘It was a Twiggy cut for you, wasn’t it? How exciting.’ He begins pulling at my hair, flicking it this way and that, rubbing the strands between his thumb and fingers. ‘It’s going to look gorgeous with your bone structure.’
I compare my face with Romano’s teeth and, yep, same shade of lily-white. The only thing stopping me from jumping out of the chair and running away are Romano’s hands clasped on my shoulders again. He’s staring at my reflection in the mirror. Waiting.
Carmen is watching me too.
I suck down a couple of deep breaths and remind myself it’s only hair.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Twiggy.’
‘Excellent!’ Romano spins me around. ‘To the basin, my dear.’
Aside from being the happiest guy alive, Romano gives the best head massages. He chatters away while I’m lying back and I give small, strained answers, but he doesn’t seem to mind or maybe that’s why he doesn’t stop talking.
Maybe I don’t hate him so much.
When we’re done he leads me to the chair where Carmen is flipping through a magazine.
‘I decided. Definitely green,’ she says.
‘And how about that shoulder-length cut I’ve been nagging you about?’ says Romano.
Carmen grins. ‘Why the hell not?’
I stare at my reflection – I’m about four shades whiter than before and I was already looking Casper-ish.
Romano combs my hair and when he reaches for the scissors I just about jump out of the chair. But then Carmen slides a hand under the smock and grips my hand in hers.
She squeezes tight and smiles. ‘I’m right here,’ she says.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper.
‘Ready?’ says Romano. He looks at my reflection, scissors poised next to my head. My mouth is too dry to speak so I just nod. I might be freaking out but I know I do actually want this.
I think I might even need it.
All too soon I’m watching chunks of my hair fall to the ground and it’s getting shorter and shorter. Then he blow dries it and, holy crap, it gets even shorter, and then he’s styling it and trimming the little strays and then he’s saying, ‘How do you like it?’ and I’m wondering if there’s a way to say that I like it – I love it – that also lets him know how terrified of it I am because I don’t think I’ve ever looked more me in my life.
I bark out a laugh and then I press a hand to my mouth and I sob.
‘Is that good?’ says Romano. ‘Or bad?’ He frowns.
I nod and I keep nodding. ‘It’s good. It’s really good.’
Carmen squeezes my hand. She hasn’t let go the whole time.
‘I’m okay,’ I say, and I am. I turn to her and even though she’s smiling there’s a little crease between her brows and I wonder what she’s thinking. What’s worrying her brow like that?
‘Your turn,’ I say, and she nods slowly.
I wait for her to release my hand but she doesn’t. She holds on for as long as she can.
________
‘You don’t think this green is too Kermit the Frog?’ Carmen asks when we step outside. I can’t stop looking at myself in the shop window. I look like a stranger. But a familiar stranger, the kind who gives you deja vu. She digs her elbow into my side. ‘Stop checking yourself out,’ she says.
I whirl around with a laugh and a comeback on the tip of my tongue, but she grabs my face in both her hands and frowns. ‘This is the best decision you’ve ever made,’ she says, her voice low and slow and serious. ‘I can see your face now. It’s a good face to see.’
My cheeks grow hot under her hands and I wonder if she can feel it. She keeps frowning at me. For a moment – just a fraction of a moment – I feel less like me than I ever have. I feel the leash pulling again, but that can’t be right. Being with Carmen is supposed to make me feel free.
‘Come on,’ she says and my moment of confusion passes the second she starts smiling again. ‘Let’s go eat our weight in chocolate.’
‘Oh my goddess,’ says Mum, staring bug-eyed at me. ‘Oh my goddess. Oh my goddess.’ This isn’t the first stream of ‘oh my goddess’ she’s uttered since I walked into Blissfully Aware. We’re well into double figures now. She reaches up and runs both hands through my newly cut hair. And when I say ‘cut’ I mean it in the most extreme sense.
I push her hands away and pat the top of my head and, yes, my hair is sticking up everywhere from all the yanking and pulling.
‘It looks okay, doesn’t it?’
‘It looks beautiful,’ says Mum. She bobs up and down on the spot and claps her hand. ‘It looks amazing.’ Things have been a bit cold between us since our ‘conversation’ at Yong’s, but my haircut seems to have thawed the ice.
I feather it with my fingers, trying to get back to a ‘just stepped out of the hairdressers’ shape, and it’s still a shock to find eighty percent of it missing. And the weird thing? Air.
Air against my neck, my ears, my shoulders. Air gets everywhere when you don’t have a wall of hair blocking its path. Air that reminds me with every shiver-inducing touch against my bare neck that I have nowhere to hide.
Mum starts shouting for Pip and Vivienne to come and look at my hair. ‘It will melt your faces,’ she shouts.
I smooth down my hair again and turn away. ‘I’m taking out the recycling.’
Mum grabs my arm. ‘Oh no, wait, please. I want to show you off.’
I wait.
She shows me off.
I blush profusely.
Vivienne nods her approval and Pip makes up a song. ‘Marlowe’s Got a New Haircut’ – it comes with a dance.
‘I can go deal with the bins now, right?’ I ask after Pip has performed his third encore of ‘Marlowe’s Got a New Haircut’.
‘Yes,’ says Mum with a wink. ‘And you’ll look fabulous while you’re doing it.’
Even though I walk away rolling my eyes at them all, I thought I’d hate this more – this whole being the centre of attention thing. And I do hate it, but I also kind of don’t. There’s a part of me that doesn’t mind being seen now. Maybe because this is the first time I feel like it’s actually me they’re seeing. The real me.
I head into the backyard with the recycling and I can’t help looking across at the yard next door, but it’s empty. There’s nothing in our backyard either – no offal, no dead fish, no horse heads. Maybe the prank calls were a step too far and now he hates me. That would make things simpler, but I hope it’s not true.
I reach down to grab the garbage bag but nearby voices make me freeze.
Two voices.
Two male voices.
They’re coming from inside the butcher shop but getting closer and closer to the back door and oh crap.
I need to hide. I suddenly feel shy.
Oh crap. Crappy crap crap cr
ap.
The fence between the two properties is waist height and wire link so it’s basically see-through. Panic re-animates my frozen limbs. I drop behind our bins, sinking low just as the back door swings open and angry footsteps thud through the yard.
‘I’m taking out the garbage,’ shouts Leo. ‘Like you asked. Except you didn’t; you demanded. Like always.’
The butcher shop back door smashes open and I guess it’s Bert who comes into the yard next. I sink lower, scrunching my whole body inwards, desperate to make myself smaller. Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me.
‘Don’t give me cheek, boy,’ says Bert.
‘Or what?’
‘You’ll get a clip round the ear is what.’
I hear bashing and banging as Leo throws garbage into their bins. My heart rate is about to reach light speed.
‘So you’re going to beat me up? That’s your answer? Wow, Dad, you never met a problem you couldn’t beat into submission, did you?’
‘All I’m saying is university is a bloody waste of time.’
‘Yeah,’ says Leo, and for the first time I hear defeat in his voice. ‘I heard you the first time.’
I peek around the edge of the bin and spy Leo with his back to his dad, hands on hips, glaring at his scuffed Vans. I place a hand over my skipping heart.
‘Listen, kid. You stick it out here and you’ve got a guaranteed job for life,’ says Bert. He’s shorter than Leo, but he’s one of those people that just seem big. ‘You take over the shop when I retire. I’m bloody handing you a business on a platter, kid.’
Leo brushes his hair out of his face, squinting through one eye as he looks back over his shoulder at his dad. Bert glares back, short arms folding across his chest.
‘Maybe I don’t . . .’ starts Leo.
‘Maybe what?’ says Bert. ‘You think you’re too good for this? You think you’re better than me?’
‘I’m not saying . . . I’m . . .’ Leo’s chest heaves as he draws in a huge breath before settling his gaze on his sneakers. ‘It’s nothing. Just forget it, okay? Forget I said anything.’
From inside the shop, the front bell jingles and Bert looks over his shoulder. Leo looks too.
‘Work calls,’ says Bert. ‘Real bloody work.’ He says it with a laugh but the kind that’s at you, not with you. Leo thinks so too because his shoulders flinch and he turns away.
Bert disappears inside the shop with the back door slamming shut behind him. The minute he’s gone, Leo kicks the ground and swears. The super bad kind of swearing that even my mum, who’s the most sweary person I know, would blush at.
I watch him standing there. Eyes on the ground, breathing hard. And I pity him. I can’t help it. Even though I know how awful it feels to be pitied. It just flows from me in radiating waves. Maybe because I know what it’s like to feel powerless. To feel like everybody else gets a say in your life – everybody except you.
It’s a good thing he can’t see me because if I talked to him in this state I’m not sure I’d be able to –
‘You can come out now,’ he says.
Holy radioactive crapballs. What? What?
I press back hard against the wall and hold my breath. He is not talking to me. He cannot be talking to me.
It’s his dad, right? He’s come back?
‘I know you’re there, Ray,’ says Leo. ‘You’re small but not that small. I saw you duck behind your bins when I walked out.’
Bugger.
The bin wobbles as I use it to pull myself upright. I wait for my hair to flop forward, blocking my face from view. But it doesn’t. Because it’s all gone.
‘Hi,’ I say, but he doesn’t look at me.
He stares at the ground, shoulders hunched and hands on hips. ‘Actually,’ he says. He picks up an old cricket bat leaning against the back wall and weighs it in his hands. ‘Just got to do something first.’
‘Are you –’ Before I can finish, Leo lunges for a green waste bin, thrashing at it with the bat over and over. I cover my ears and every muscle in my body tenses.
He keeps swinging, harder and harder, until I’m scared he’s going to hurt himself. He thrashes until the bin crashes to the ground and then he kicks it until it’s caved in and crumpled and crushed.
When he stops kicking and swinging the bat, he stands over the bin, breathing heavily.
Because this isn’t really the kind of moment you can save with talking, I say nothing. We both say nothing as the leaves flutter in the wind and Leo’s breath softens.
He tucks the cricket bat under his arm and pulls a cigarette out of his pocket. ‘I might have got a bit carried away,’ he says.
‘I take it you’re angry.’
He laughs and steps back. ‘Just a bit.’ He lights his cigarette and finally turns to look at me. ‘Holy shit,’ he says, eyes wide. ‘Your hair.’
I reach a hand up as though I don’t know what he’s talking about, like I don’t know what I’ll find up there. Will I ever stop being surprised?
‘It looks good,’ he says. ‘Not that you need me to tell you that. Who cares what I think, right? But it does. Look good. You can see your . . .’ He draws a circle in the air with a finger. ‘Face. I can see your face.’
‘Thanks.’
We both stare at random spots on the ground and wilt in the silence.
Leo clears his throat. ‘Why were you hiding?’
‘Oh.’ I step out from behind the bin. ‘I, ah, dropped something.’
He looks at my hands. My empty hands.
‘I couldn’t find it.’
‘Ah. Bad luck.’
I nod. ‘I notice there aren’t any animal parts in my backyard. Thank you.’
‘And there aren’t any . . . Tofus? Mung beans? Whatever you vegans eat in our backyard. Thank you.’
‘Vegans don’t need to eat. We survive on the satisfaction of being morally superior.’
He rubs the back of his neck. ‘Damn,’ he says. ‘That’s a bad case of sass you got.’
‘Terminal.’
He stares at me, a little frown and then a little smile and then a little bit of both.
‘What?’
‘Just thinking.’
‘About?’
He looks down at the smashed bin. ‘About how come your mum bought the shop next to a butcher. Why your brother wears all that crazy stuff. Why you’re so angry. Why you cut your hair.’
‘I’m not angry.’
‘Me neither. Why aren’t you angry?’
I make to brush down the front of my pinafore but my hands hesitate mid-stroke. They tremble, hovering just over my sternum. Why am I angry? At first I think I could list reasons forever. but then I realise it’s all pretty much the same thing, just different ways of saying it.
‘My heart was broken. You?’
He holds the lit cigarette between his fingers but he hasn’t once brought it to his mouth. Like he’s forgotten about it.
‘You don’t want to be a butcher.’ I say. ‘You want to go to uni.’
He doesn’t look away from me and doesn’t answer.
‘What do you want to do?’ I say.
‘Stuffed if I know.’ A rueful laugh smothers his words with bitterness. ‘But I know it’s not this. Can’t tell Bert Stanek different, though. Because he “knows what’s best”.’
I nod. Not because I agree – I know his dad isn’t right, not about his son, that’s for sure – but because I feel what he’s saying. I feel it deep in the centre of my being like it’s part of me and always has been.
Leo looks square at me, his eyes squinting in the sun. ‘You ever feel like everything that’s happening in your life has nothing to do with you? Like, it’s a movie and you’re just the actor – somebody else wrote the screenplay and somebody else is the director and you didn’t even get to read the screenplay before they started shooting the film?’
‘Yes,’ I say, and it’s all I have to say. All it takes is a look and he gets it.
And I like that. He nods at me, and for a long while we don’t say anything but it’s okay. We don’t need to say anything.
I’m not sure I could speak anyway because a sudden realisation has knocked the wind out of me: I don’t just have a crush on Leo. Leo and I are friends. I like him. He is someone I want to know. He is someone I want to know more.
‘There’s this party,’ I say and then stop, partly because I’ve never actually asked a boy to hang out with me before but also because someone set fire to my insides and raging fireballs of embarrassment are eating up my words.
‘A party?’ says Leo.
‘Yes. A party. I’m going to it.’
‘Good for you.’
‘And you could . . . If you wanted. You could. To the party. If you wanted.’
He raps his fingers against the doorframe and frowns. ‘Are you asking me out, Ray?’
‘No!’ Maybe.
‘Oh.’
I rap my fingers against the fence, matching his pattern. ‘I mean, it’s not a date but you could still come.’ It’s totally a date.
‘Like friends?’
I nod. ‘Friends.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Friends.’
We stare at each other until it grows uncomfortable.
‘Do we spit on our hands and shake on it?’ he says.
‘Ew. Gross.’
He grins. ‘Maybe we’ll just start with swapping numbers. But no prank calls, okay?’
I hand him my phone. He types his number in, hands it back with a smile and then walks away.
‘Later, Ray.’ The wire door screeches open and he disappears inside. And I can breathe again.
‘Later, Butcher Boy.’
The next morning when I get up, Pip is sitting at the top of the stairs outside my room.
‘Now?’ he says. ‘We’ve got time before school.’ He’s dressed in an eighties-style pinstripe suit, sparkly gold brogues, devil face-paint and a Mr Monopoly hat.
‘Who are you supposed to be?’
‘Corporate greed.’
Huh. Not bad.
‘Areyoureadythen?’ He takes a breath. ‘You pinkie promised.’
Tin Heart Page 19