Split Ends

by Kristin Billerbeck

  “They’ll never accept you there, Sarah Claire.” As though I’d been the pinnacle of popularity in Sable. Dateless since high school is not exactly bordering on accepted, am I right?

  If Scott hadn’t sent me airfare, I would have fallen victim to the guilt, just like I always do. Being here, actually seeing more people than I knew existed—and this just at the airport—has changed something in me. This is my chance to be something different, to be my own person with a real career. I’m not going back unless I’m taken kicking and screaming. I have fingernails and sharp shears, and I know how to use them.

  Scott opens the door to the little blue coupe for me, and I crawl inside to the supple leather seats in front of the shiny wood console. He jogs around the car, climbs into the driver’s seat, and stops to look me over. “Little Sarah Claire come to California. I can’t believe it.”

  My breath sucks in all the diesel the airport has to offer as Scott races toward the exit and the hazy sunshine, where my mouth drops at the concrete jungle and traffic before us. “I can’t believe it either, Scott. I feel like my life starts today.”

  Sable, Wyoming can eat my dust. Except for all the sweet people I left. But that makes me want to cry, so I stick with the first thought: Sable, Wyoming can eat my dust.

  chapter 3

  I never liked the name Eldred.

  Since nobody knew me in New York,

  I just changed to my middle name.

  ~ Gregory Peck

  We’re going right to the salon.” Scott stares at me. “After we get you a pair of jeans. What are you thinking? You’re not walking into Yoshi dressed in knockoffs.” He shakes his head. “And not even good knockoffs, Sarah Claire.”

  “You told me not to wear Lee’s, so I got these.”

  “You’re trying to tell me the whole of Wyoming wears “ Lee’s?”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying I don’t have many options in Sable, and I ordered these off the Internet.”

  “Right there, okay, that’s what we have to work on. If you’re going to order fakes, go to eBay and buy some real fakes. You’re not even trying here.”

  I slink into my seat. “They’re jeans, Scott. Denim is denim.”

  “You can’t really believe that. If you believe that, you’re in the wrong line of work. The beauty industry is not one where you walk into the salon in knockoffs and think no one notices. Is dye-at-home hair color the same thing as perfected highlights by a master?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “But nothing. If it’s not the same in your business, it’s not the same in mine. Clothes matter here.”

  “I wasn’t going to pay over one hundred dollars for jeans. That’s ridiculous.”

  He scratches his forehead. “Okay, we’re going to start at the beginning. This is a town where image is everything. If you thought Cindy Simmons made your life miserable in high school, you are about to encounter every popular girl who ever made girls’ lives miserable across the country. They all came here with the hopes of being actresses and making the country’s life miserable. The popularity contest only got bigger. Only now they all want to be on TV and on the cover of People and make your life miserable, all right?”

  “I want to change people’s lives who always thought they were nothing because of those girls.”

  “Then I’ll get you a job in the valley.”

  My face is heating up so I break off the conversation and look around our vehicle. “I only see three types of cars here. What are those ugly bubble things everyone’s driving?”

  “They’re hybrids.”

  “Why does everyone drive them?”

  “They save on fuel, you get to drive in the commuter lane, and they’re politically correct.”

  “Do they have another style? Or just that ugly one?”

  “That’s the most popular. Sarah Claire, we’re talking about jeans. Quit changing the subject.”

  “Why is that the most popular? It’s vicious ugly.”

  “They just are. It’s a way of making a statement you care about the environment. Many of my clients drive them.”

  “Because they want to?”

  “It makes a statement.”

  “Hey, I’m a country gal; I’m all for the environment. But I would rather commute with a friend than drive one of those things.”

  “No one’s going your way here. You’ll figure it out. You need a car and good jeans.”

  “Fine, but I’m not driving what everyone says I should. Until they make a hybrid that doesn’t look like that, I'm guzzler. Besides, don’t their private jets sort of ruin the point of that?”

  “Never mind. You don’t have to drive a hybrid, all right? I’m not driving one.”

  “What’s the point of having anything if you have to bow to expectation? Everyone has the money to drive what they want, but the culture says they have to buy a hybrid? I mean, great for the environment and all, but it’s like being in high school all over again, only with a hypocritical point. Get a bicycle.”

  “You can’t drive a bicycle in LA. You’d be dead in a week.”

  We pull up alongside a red hybrid at the stoplight. “Look at that, Scott. They’re in cloth seats.”

  “Of course they are. Leather is bad for actors. PETA would get after them. Not that everyone’s an actor, but they set a precedent here.”

  “So basically you’re fine if you do everything that’s acceptable according to the unspoken rules?” Just like church.

  “It’s not that bad; it’s just not the era to drive a Hummer, all right?”

  “I’ve just moved three states to live in a perpetual hazing from the popular table? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I’m telling you that your cheap jeans will not cut it in Beverly Hills. If you want to turn it into a battle over the environment, that’s your issue.”

  “I’m not arguing the environment, but I lived in the country, Scott. I have yet to see something not covered with cement, so it strikes me as slightly hypocritical that you drive a small vehicle and suddenly you’re John Muir.” I raise my hands. “All I’m saying.”

  “Stop avoiding the clothing issue,” Scott says, clamping his hands around the wheel until his knuckles are white. Now he knows how I feel! “You want to work with the best, you have to dress like the best.”

  “Okay, I’ve got you. The jeans are not kosher. I won’t wear them to work.”

  “You won’t wear them anywhere. This is not a job where you leave your image at the salon.”

  “Scott, I’m going to cut hair not broker world peace. Could you get a grip?”

  “Where’d you get those things anyway? They have a seam on the back of the knee. Do you know that? Right across your knees is a line where some cheap two-bit company sewed your jeans together and ran out of fabric in the middle of it. You’re supposed to be from New York City, and right now you look like you got dressed in a third-world country.”

  “I’m supposed to be from where?” Instinctively, I grab my jeans at the knees and realize he’s right. I feel the lines across them, and suddenly making fun of the ugly-car-driving lemmings seems futile. Here I was thinking I’m runway material—okay, with the wrong squiggle—but instead I’m wearing quilted jeans. I’m like a walking denim patchwork.

  “New York. It’s a big city on the east coast. You know it?”

  “I know it, but I don’t think anyone will buy it. I’m not exactly Manhattan chic, you know?”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Now I know my cousin is a stylist. I know he’s put his reputation on the line for me. But I can’t believe in any world my jean choice could make this kind of impact. And if it does, that’s just frightening.

  “I’ll buy new jeans tomorrow,” I promise.

  “Life doesn’t mosey along here like back home. Everything is ramped up. Think of LA as a nickname for Life on Amphetamines. Got it? You’ve got to throw away the tomorrow’s-just-as-good way of thinking. You’ll die here.” He p
ulls his hands off the wheel and snaps his fingers. “Like this, or die, got it?”

  I hang on to the dashboard, thinking his driving is going to kill us and I’ll be a footnote in his obituary. Stylist to the stars Scott Weston died in a horrendous car wreck with an unknown woman dressed in sorry knockoffs at his side. Authorities say it may have been a homeless woman he helped off the street.

  “You haven’t been to Wyoming in a long time, Scott. It's not backwoods like you remember.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Sarah Claire, if you’re here to tell me Sable isn’t backwoodslook like he , you don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Malibu. You can just get back on the plane.”

  “I blew it on the jeans. Can we move on?”

  He shrugs and goes back to driving, and I take a moment to study him. In contrast to his country-bumpkin cousin, Scott’s the epitome of sophistication. He makes it look like he doesn’t have to work on it—although if I know him, about an hour of thought went into every detail before he laid it out the previous night. Growing up around a lot of booze, we are nothing if not anal.

  Scott’s suit is impeccable: gray striped with an open pink-collared shirt. He screams new and fresh, like a newborn in the hospital. I am stained with stale air greasy-chip essence, and probably a whiff of hard liquor from my nearest seatmate. I am Courtney Love without a stylist. Queen Esther before the beauty treatments. I am raw. A complete clod beside a Brooks Brothers’ mannequin.

  “I’m sufficiently humbled, all right?”

  He loosens his grip on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Sarah Claire.”

  “You don’t want me to embarrass you. I understand. I don’t want to embarrass you either, Scott.”

  “It’s not tagging along to one of my friend’s parties, Sarah Claire. This is serious. No one knows where I’m from, and I don’t want them to. Just please do what I ask of you. I brought you out here.”

  My cousin’s facade of steel melts in his anxious expression. The same one he’d use before his father belted him one across the face. With dread, I realize his fears are all still there. And here I thought he had it all together. If he doesn’t have it all together, there’s no hope for me.

  “You won’t mess up. We can’t afford it. This is not a nuclear disaster. You bought cheap jeans, a natural amateur mistake. We just need to work on image before we let you loose in Beverly Hills, all right?”

  “Shouldn’t it be natural to me if I’m going to do this? Like how I cut hair?”

  He sees my lower lip trembling, and his tone reverts to the big-brother cousin I know. The one who is trustworthy and not completely mental about jeans. “There’s just a few secret ingredients necessary to stir the pot of image. The main course is confidence. If you can wear a sack with confidence, it can become the latest rage tomorrow.”

  I nod, sucking on my wobbly lip. If I was looking to my cousin for mental stability, I think I’ve sorely under estimated the situation. My family gene pool is looking more like the cesspool I’ve known all along. Only in a better outfit.

  “Thank you for getting me out, Scott.” Even if you are as mentally unstable as my mother. I can do crazy. I know crazy.

  “I promised you.”

  “When you were twelve you promised me. I never expected you to keep it. I’m just nervous about meeting Yoshi.”

  “He’s fantastic. A true artist. You won’t have any trouble bowing to his greatness. I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t trust you, but you’ve got to trust your instincts a little bit.”

  But my own instincts told me to buy third-world jeans, so for now I have to learn to distrust my instincts. And to vow that my goal in life is not to drive a hybrid—and that my vehicle will sport leather. Real leather.

  I throw my shoulders back. “If I can suck a pollywog up a rubber tube for biology, I can do this.”

  “Sarah Claire, I forbid you to ever mention that again.” His gag reflex kicks in, and he makes a horrible retching sound.

  I crumble into laughter. “You always were an incredible wuss.”

  “Who’s making an incredible salary because of it, so don’t knock it. If I’d been good at dirt things, I wouldn’t have left home.” He holds up a manicured hand. “So remember, you’re from the Upper West Side in New York. Didn’t I mention this in my e-mails?”

  “I thought you were kidding. You don’t want me to lie. Trust me on this: I’m terrible at it, and I’ll make fools out of both of us.”

  In case it’s not obvious, Scott has a strange relationship with truth. If he believes it in his own mind, it is truth, and any information to the contrary doesn’t enter into his equation. Therefore, if Scott believes I’m from the Upper West Side, so will everyone else—that is, until I enter the picture. I feel guilty lying to a telemarketer.

  Not to mention that it goes against my faith, but Scott is not exactly open to the idea of God. And I imagine my “dream” about Cary Grant hasn’t helped him see his way clearly back to the truth.

  “Do they really look like knockoffs?” I ask, incredulous that anyone would look that closely at such a utilitarian piece of clothing. “Or are you just being snotty?”

  He raises his eyebrows, “They scream knockoff. Quality jeans are soft, Sarah Claire. Those things look like the old Sears Toughskins my dad used to make me wear.He ” shakes his head. “Painful. They had to stitch it together behind the legs? It reminds me of those old rabbit-fur jackets they pieced together in the seventies.”

  So a complete waste of thirty-nine dollars plus shipping. “I liked Toughskins, you know? They lasted forever and they were different from the Lee’s that everybody wore. They made me unique.”

  “They really didn’t. They made you look like you couldn’t afford Lee’s, which was, in fact, the case. First rule of thumb: we do not pick our clothes based on their half-life.” Scott continues to stare at me, even though he's driving about eighty miles an hour a mere five feet behind the car in front of him. I grip the armrest, digging my nails into the leather. “Listen, if you think Yoshi is going to hire some girl from Wyoming—worse yet, the Hideway Bar & Grill slash Hair Salon—you’ve had too much happy punch on the plane.”

  “The bar was next door; it wasn’t part of the salon.”

  “Was it in the same building?”

  “Well, yeah, but a totally different space.”

  “Did you share the same parking lot?”

  “Yeah, but we weren’t open at night. So technically, no, we didn’t.”

  “Sarah Claire.”

  “Yes,” I answer, crossing my arms.

  “It doesn’t really matter that the bar and dart house were only open at night, all right? You’re missing my point.”

  “Oh, I’ve got your point, Scott. You want to beat my past out of me.”

  “With a ball-peen hammer, if necessary.”

  “Lovely. I thought you were on my side. You wouldn’t have recommended me if you didn’t think I could do this, right?”

  He looks toward the traffic.

  “Right, Scott?”

  He exhales savagely, like he used to do when I was about to tattle. “Sarah Claire, this job is not about talent. I’m not saying you don’t have any, I’m just saying it’s important to know the truth going in.”

  I laugh. “What do you mean it’s not about talent? I’m on my way to Beverly Hills to learn from one of the very best.”

  “This job is about image, Sarah Claire.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you got hired because you’re hot, Sarah Claire. You look like Angelina Jolie, you’re a size 4, and you’re hot, all right? Yoshi can teach a monkey to cut hair, but he can’t make a monkey something people want to emulate. People want to look like you.”

  This silences me. “I sent him videos of the cuts, photographs, and all the awards I won at the hair shows.”

  “I sent him an eight-by-ten glossy. That’s why you have the job.”

  “I got this job because of the way I l
ook?” I don’t know why this gives me chills, but it does.

  “The way you look after Photoshop in good clothes with an elegant salon in the background, yes.”

  All the fire has left me. I wish I could go right back where I came from and none of this had ever happened. But then I think about Cary. “‘I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.’”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Let’s get this over with.” Cary Grant could look like Angelina Jolie with Photoshop, if I’m honest. I’ve got dark hair and dark eyes, but as far as lips go definitely not Angelina. As far as my bust goes, definitely not Angelina. But with a little practice—and maybe some wadded-up toilet paper—who knows? If my cousin can do it, then so can I, right?

  My cousin gives the impression of being effeminate. On purpose. He walks with swaying, long strides in expensive slacks, and his hair is flat-ironed into the latest style while his wrist boasts an expensive European watch. In Sable, Wyoming, his manhood would be completely questioned by his amount of time spent on grooming alone.

  He’s not, in fact, gay. He simply works hard to create an aura of the unattainable. In Sable, he was known for being quite the womanizer. Apparently, that’s not a good thing for a male stylist.

  But if he were back in Sable, he wouldn’t act or look like he does now. Scott’s a chameleon who can easily shift into whatever persona he needs for the moment. If came home, I’m sure he’d appear more rugged than even the toughest member of the professional bull-riding circuit. But we’ll never know, since he hasn’t been back home in the six years he left.

  “I’m jet-lagged. I hope this goes well. Fifth Avenue. New York City.”

  “Is it possible to be jet-lagged from just Wyoming to California? Anyway, you know I think you’re gorgeous, Sarah Claire. If you weren’t my cousin, I might even date you.”

  “Be still my heart.”