Starboys

by Jeremy Jenkins

  Starboys

  Jeremy Jenkins

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  A Note from the author

  Newsletter

  Also by Jeremy Jenkins

  Chapter One

  “Have you ever been in love?” asked the old woman in my chair.

  “I think so,” I answered warily. “Why, have you?”

  Clients usually didn’t ask me deep questions like that. The best course of action was to deflect the question and turn it back onto them; people were usually more than happy to talk about themselves.

  I gave the chair a few pumps with my foot, bringing her up to my height, then began picking at her wispy white hair with my comb.

  “Of course I’ve been in love, dear! A few times, actually. I’m as old as dirt. If I never found it anywhere in my life, it would be a tragedy!”

  The corner of my mouth turned up a bit, delighted by her sass. Luckily, she took the bait and would continue to talk while I worked on her hair.

  “Okay Hazel,” I said, pulling out my phone to peer at my client notes.

  I squinted and had to read twice in disbelief.

  “It says here that you want hot pink hair,” I said, my eyebrows coming together.

  “Oh yes, that’s why I booked an appointment with you. They say you’re the best colorist in the city.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said modestly, trying to hide my flattered smile.

  A few seconds passed in silence as I pawed through her hair, examining the roots. Usually, a woman of her age and skin tone had wiry gray roots, but all I saw was soft, pure white hair all the way down to the quick.

  “So… any particular reason you decided on hot pink?” I asked, thinking of what I’d have to mix to get that vivid hue.

  She made eye contact with me in the mirror and looked confused, as if I’d asked an absurd question. Then she shrugged and said, “I just felt like it. Decided on it earlier this week.”

  “Oh, alright,” I said, marveling at her pure white hair. “You know, once we go pink, it’s going to stay pink until it grows out. The dye I’m using is… it’s very permanent.”

  “Good,” she said with a determined smile.

  For a moment I wondered if she was in her right mind. The type of quirkiness she was showing me was almost like a flavor of Alzheimers mixed with confidence.

  She saw the look on my face in the mirror, and then her face crinkled into a bright smile.

  “You’ve never been in love before,” she concluded.

  I frowned. I’d hoped she was distracted from my diversion earlier.

  “I have,” I said, willing it to be true. But the way she was looking at me so kindly in the mirror was like she could see through all of my layers to the scared, insecure guy underneath. That guy had never been loved.

  “No you haven’t,” she argued.

  “How can you tell?” I asked with my hands on my hips.

  “Your aura is all off,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, as if that was a completely normal thing to say. “You’re all locked up like this!”

  She held her arms tightly to her chest in a protective motion.

  I pursed my lips and reached for the Barber’s Cape. “Well, not everyone is lucky enough to be like you, having loved multiple times,” I snapped.

  She looked unaffected, watching me carefully.

  “…sorry,” I said, “I hope I wasn’t rude.”

  “Not at all, dear. Not everyone likes to hear the truth. But it’s all I can see in people, so I don’t get the point of glazing over everything important with silly pleasantries. Rubs some people the wrong way.”

  She reached for my hand as I helped her out of the chair.

  When her warm, papery skin touched mine, it felt as if liquid happiness was spreading through me.

  Hazel gave me a knowing look as she stood up to her full height — only about five feet.

  Even though she was little, I could tell that I was in the presence of someone who’d burned a blazing path through her life. I was in the presence of someone extraordinary.

  Stricken by this… this strangeness, I couldn’t think of anything else to say except, “Who are you?”

  She smiled knowingly and simply said, “I’m your client, Hazel. And I want hot pink hair.”

  I shook my head, thinking maybe I was imagining this weirdness. Maybe she was just a normal client after all, but with a charming touch of madness.

  “N-nevermind,” I said, regaining my professionalism. “Let’s go wash your hair.”

  I sat her down at one of the sinks and she leaned her head back as if she’d done this a thousand times.

  Upside-down, she looked younger, more serene.

  As I tested the temperature of the water, I knew all of the right things a stylist should talk about. I could ask her if she had children; if she had pets. If it seemed like she was stylish, I would compliment her clothing and ask where she got it. I could gloss over this otherworldly quality about her and pretend that she was just like any other client.

  But my mind was picking at the oddity of her comment earlier; I couldn’t let it escape into the ether.

  “So you’ve been in love multiple times, hm?” I asked, fishing for more information.

  I had to have more of that realness; that authenticity.

  “Oh yes. The first one was a man that was so boring it was like he was dead before he was alive. Luckily I had the good sense not to marry him — he was always droning on about trying to get a promotion at this company he worked at… not an exciting or curious bone in his body. Bleh!”

  I chuckled a little.

  “Oh, you’ve had one of those,” she assumed, making eye contact with me upside-down.

  “…I guess I have,” I confessed, thinking of my first boyfriend.

  “There was stability there, but no fire! You were with an earth sign… earth and…” she stared intensely into my eyes as if she was searching for something. “Earth and metal!”

  “I… I don’t know what that means…” I said, moving the sprayer through her soft white hair.

  Concern pulled across my face as I examined the strands. Her hair seemed at least an inch longer than it did when she first came in. But it was normal for wet hair to look longer, especially if it suddenly got wet after being super dry for a long time.

  “It means he was boring as sin! Probably tried to drag you down into his boringness too!” she grumbled, crossing her arms and tutting.

  “He was… predictable. He liked routine,” I said carefully.

  “Routine… please! Routine is for squares. You, Charlie, have all of this sparkling creative energy around you. Being with a person like that is… well, I’m sure it was a waste of your time.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a little offended. Sure, my ex was predictable, but he was also stable.

  Something I was not.

  I decided to turn the subject back around to her. “So, the earth
metal guy was one of your loves,” I said. “What was the next one like?”

  “The next one? The next guy fancied himself an artist. One of those fire-types that was so full of himself, when he looked into my eyes it was clear that he was admiring his own reflection!” she said. “Him and everything he represented was nonsense.”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little. “I totally know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I know someone who looks at people like that.”

  “Oh, it’s the worst!” she exclaimed as I toweled off her hair. “Those types are pretty, and they’re magnetic, but they know it. It doesn’t give them anything to strive for. At least, the one I was with was like that. There are some good fire types, though.”

  Once I was done patting her head with the towel, she stood up and led me back over to the chair as if I was the guest in her salon, not the other way around.

  She settled back down into the chair with her legs crossed like a queen.

  As I gave her another pat-down with the towel, her steely eyes locked onto mine in the mirror. “You do realize that you have something in your aura that’s just waiting to come into your life, right? You must know. I’ve never sensed one this big.”

  I stopped patting. “What do you mean?”

  She rolled her eyes as if I was a simpleton missing something completely obvious. “Normally I can sense people that are close to you in your aura. They show up like tiny little pin-pricks of light that I can only see with this,” she gestured to a spot on her forehead above the bridge of her nose. “They show up with different kinds of brightness. Acquaintances are like sparkles, flickering in and out of your aura. Friends, now they’re a little brighter, a little more fixed. Close friends and family are like lightbulbs. And lovers, well, they’re even stronger. They flicker with this incredible brilliance!” She moved her hands in a fluttering motion.

  My eyebrows came together with disbelief, but I was enraptured nonetheless.

  “And you, Charlie… you’ve got what feels like a sun glowing in your aura.”

  I paused combing her hair, stuck on a tangle.

  “You haven’t met him yet. It’s a him, by the way,” she added slyly. “If you’d been touched by this already, your aura would be glowing a bright pink and purple. Right now it’s made of all these reds and oranges, like embers.”

  I inhaled sharply through my nose as I felt pain flicker at my thumb. When I held it up to my face to examine it, I saw that I’d picked the side of my nail a little too far.

  Hazel was regarding me with a knowing expression in the mirror.

  I knew I could have denied her. Written her off as a crazy woman who decided to come and sit in my chair. Changed the subject to more banal, boring things.

  But I wanted to pull at this thread, and from her expression, it was clear that she wanted me to, too.

  “When? When do I meet him?” I asked, my mouth going dry.

  Her eyes went down. “I don’t know when. Time is… different and difficult with these kinds of things. It could be in two years. It could be tonight.”

  My shoulders sagged a little. I hadn’t realized how much I’d gotten my hopes up. Then I reminded myself that this was silly; she was just a stranger in my chair. There was no way she could know my future.

  She cleared her throat, pulling my attention back to her. “Don’t worry, love. Meeting him — your heartmate — for you it’s inevitable.”

  “Heartmate?” I asked, “Don’t you mean soulmate?”

  She shook her head, her silvery eyes shining like dimes. “Soulmates show up in your life to teach you things. They could be close friends, family, or a stranger you meet on the street. A heartmate though…” her eyes widened. “Heartmates transform the very state of who you are as a person. True love, acceptance, happiness, all of that is the stuff of heartmates.”

  I busied myself with mixing the colors so that she wouldn’t see my shaking hands.

  “And this guy — my heartmate — I’m going to meet him for sure?” I asked, trying to sound like I was half-bored.

  She nodded. “As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. It’s waiting there in your future for you to discover.”

  Suddenly I felt terrified. I wasn’t ready to meet the love of my life. I needed to go back to college, I needed to lose about fifteen pounds, I needed to make my apartment more presentable—

  “No, you’re ready,” she said as if reading my mind.

  I paused mixing the dye. The bland white paste was locked in a swirl and turning a vivid pink hue.

  She squinted at me, and then her face fell. “There’s something blocking you, though.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, continuing to swirl the mixture.

  “I don’t know… some fear, someone you’re not forgiving. It’s blocking all of the good from coming into your life.”

  As I dipped the brush and then began to paint her white locks, I racked my memory for anyone I was holding a grudge against. I couldn’t think of anyone that I needed to forgive.

  “I’ve forgiven everyone that might have done me wrong,” I said earnestly. “Can’t really think of anyone off the top of my head that I’ve been harboring a grudge against…”

  “What’s all this poison, then?” she asked, her eyes flickering around as if she was looking at invisible butterflies.

  “Sorry, poison?”

  She rolled her eyes again as if she was trying to explain something very simple to someone very dense. “Anger. Hatred. It poisons the aura. You’ve got a bunch of it here on the edges; it’s old though. Something that happened a long time ago.”

  I racked my brain, but still couldn’t think of anything. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Well, once you figure it out, know that it can be undone. Hatred in the aura leaves a mark, but not a scar. All you have to do is forgive the person that did this to you.”

  When I wrapped Hazel’s hair in foil, I led her over to the heat treatment chairs. She sat down and crossed her legs again, as if she was queen of the salon. I flipped the heater over her head and turned it on as she sifted through the magazines next to her.

  “Alright Hazel, I’m going to leave you under this for a few minutes so we can make your hair as pink as possible. Can I get you some water or tea?”

  “Nah, I’m good here,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a book with a naked man’s torso on the front. With a serene expression, she cracked it open and thumbed to a page in the middle.

  I lingered a little longer than was necessary, reluctant to leave the presence of this bizarre yet wonderful woman. How did she know all this… all this stuff?

  She could just be making things up to mess with me. There were worse ways to spend a retirement.

  But still… some of the stuff she was telling me rang true.

  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Of course I wanted to meet the love of my life. Of course I was desperate to be loved; most people were. It would be easy to hold that as bait, just to get someone to listen to you. And if you were a lonely old person… well, that would be a good way to hold court throughout a conversation.

  I grabbed the broom next to my station and swept up Hazel’s soft white hairs into a small, snow-white pile.

  There was definitely more hair in this pile than I cut from her mane.

  I snapped my head in her direction, half expecting her to have sprouted another limb. But she was sitting there innocently with a slight smile on her face, turning a page of that romance novel.

  My eyebrows came together as I tried to explain to myself how there was a huge pile of white hair on the floor. It was likely that there was another old person that came in earlier for a haircut from the stylists on either side of my chair.

  A few minutes passed as I cleaned up the area around the chair. All there was left to do now was blow-dry and style.

  Casting another look in her direction, I breathed a sigh of relief that she was still there. Part o
f me was afraid she’d up and disappear with no explanation, leaving me bleeding with questions.

  After the heat treatment was done, I guided her back to my chair.

  In the few minutes she’d been away, questions bubbled up in my brain, longing to be asked. But when she sat down in front of me, my mind went blank.

  She giggled a little as she watched my face. “Ask away.”

  I blinked. “Um… I was just wondering what he’d be like,” I said simply as I carefully unwrapped the foil.

  “What do you want him to be like?” She asked with a sly little smirk.

  “I— I don’t know, I didn’t know I got to choose.”

  “You get to choose,” she said with a laugh. “So, what do you want?”

  I was silent, thinking as I freed her vivid pink hair from the foil.

  “Write it down when you get home tonight,” she said, her silvery eyes dancing with delight. “Once you do that, everything will become clear.”

  I nodded, deeply pensive as I unwrapped each foil.

  “How would you like me to style it?” I asked.

  “Mohawk,” she said simply.

  I didn’t know why I was surprised.

  It was no time at all before her hair was blow-dried and styled into a spiky, yet gentle pink mohawk shape.

  I had to admit that on her with her silvery eyes, it looked stunning.

  “Ah, very good. Better than sex,” she said matter-of-factly as she stood up.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her as she came around the chair. It was like she had this weird glow around her; a movie-star quality that I couldn’t quite place.

  “Excellent work, just as expected,” she said, handing me two bills. “Here’s a tip for you. Use it to go get yourself some nice shoes.”