Blowout

by Taylor Morris

  “No!” she said. “Not at all.”

  “Thank goodness,” I said under my breath.

  “Do you like him?” she asked.

  What a weird question! “Of course,” I told her. It’d be crazy if I didn’t—I spent almost all my free time with him.

  “Oh,” was all she said, and then she turned back to her paper.

  As I wrote about how hard it was for a mouse to push a hockey puck across the ice, it dawned on me. Eve was trying to figure out if Jonah was available. She wanted to know if I liked him-liked him before she made a move. I’d missed the whole meaning of it.

  Later that day as I was heading to my last class, I saw Lizbeth and Kristen walking together. I decided to be brave and speak up. I was allowed to do that, wasn’t I?

  “Hi, guys,” I said.

  “Hey,” Lizbeth said when she saw me. I tried to think of more to say but . . . darkness . . . blankness . . . nothingness.

  “Hey, have you heard about any pop quizzes lately?” Kristen asked me.

  “No, not lately,” I said. Then I managed, “I’ll let you know if I do.”

  “Oh my gosh, your nails!” Lizbeth said, looking at the hand that clutched my books to my chest. They looked ridic.

  “So cool!” she said. “How’d you do that?”

  “Let me see,” Kristen said, moving closer to my hand. “Oh, yeah. Texture. Really cool. And I love the color.”

  “Love,” Lizbeth said.

  “Oh, this?” I said, looking at my nails. “It was kind of an accident. I went to sleep before they fully dried and I guess they got imprints from my pillow. If you see any gray in my hair, it’s not from old age.”

  They laughed. “Well, it looks really cool,” Lizbeth said.

  “Thanks.” I felt great. I was having a convo and making them laugh!

  “We better go,” Kristen said. “See you later?”

  This time, it was more than just a way of saying good-bye. Kristen said it like a question, like they wanted to see me later.

  “Yeah,” I said, acting all cool. “See you later.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Tuesday night, in my never-ending attempt to have hair that didn’t look like a worn-out Brillo pad, I decided to try the flat iron.

  We have a closet full of used supplies from the salon—old clips and barrettes that haven’t been cool since I was in diapers, hair dryers that barely work, and a variety of curlers and flat irons. I think Mom just can’t bear throwing out anything salon-related.

  I took a medium-width one with a leopard-print handle and plugged it in at my vanity. Once it warmed up, I started smoothing out sections of my hair, one at a time.

  “I smell death. With a side of vomit.”

  I looked in my mirror and saw Jonah looking back at me—half my hair sort of straight, the other half its usual frizz-ball self. “What’s happening to your head?”

  “I’m straightening my hair. What are you doing here?”

  “I had nothing to do so I figured I’d come over here to bother you.”

  He does this a lot.

  “Why are you changing your hair, anyway?” he asked. “It looks fine the way it is.”

  Obviously I like Jonah, but sometimes he just doesn’t get it. Not that he tried to or anything. He just kept on talking without even pausing to give me a chance to answer him. Something about a new video game he saw on TV and how he was totally going to get it.

  “And the game is, like, skateboarding meets bullfighting,” Jonah rambled.

  Taking hold of a section of hair at the back of my head, I pictured Eve’s face as she asked me if I liked Jonah.

  “It sounds like it might be even better than the new Warpath we’re getting on Thursday, so we’ll have to test them all out to see.”

  I thought I might try to casually bring Eve up to Jonah—test the waters a bit and see if he had any thoughts on her.

  Keeping my eyes on myself in the mirror and sounding as cool as ever, I said, “There’s this new girl in English class. I’m trying to get my hair to look like hers.”

  “And did I tell you I got a bullwhip? It is so awesome. You swing it around like this, and then it’s like—wha-bam! So cool. I tried it in the house last night and almost broke half of everything in the living room. It was so awe—”

  “She has really nice straight, smooth hair,” I interrupted. He obviously didn’t care about what I was saying, so I figured it was safe to keep talking over him. “Eve Benton—that’s her name.”

  “Wha-pah! Wha-bam!” he yelled, still swinging his imaginary whip.

  He just wasn’t listening. “You know,” I said forcefully, “that girl who was in the salon on Saturday? Super blond hair, almost white?”

  He suddenly dropped his bullwhipping arm and took on an extremely casual manner, inspecting his palm like it held the secrets to the perfect whip-snap. “Oh, her. Yeah, I think I remember seeing her.”

  “Well then you must know how pin-straight her hair is.”

  “Haven’t noticed,” he said. “I’m a guy—remember?”

  Sometimes he made it too easy. “No, I guess I didn’t.” Looking at myself in the mirror, I decided my hair was so difficult that I’d have to go over it twice to really smooth it out. I glanced at Jonah and could tell he was thinking about something other than bullwhips. “Actually, it’s weird. She thought we were brother and sister.”

  “She mentioned my name?”

  “How would she know your name? She just moved here. Besides, aren’t you the least bit disturbed by that?”

  “Well, what’d she say?” he asked.

  “She asked if the guy with the skateboard was my brother.”

  “What else did she say?”

  Jonah was trying so hard to seem casual, but he was failing at it so miserably.

  “She asked me if I liked you.”

  “If you liked me? Well, what’d you say?”

  “I told her I was madly in love with you and our parents had already decided we would marry next spring. What do you think I told her?”

  “I was just asking.”

  “Why do you care so much, anyway? You don’t even know what her hair looks like.”

  “I do so—it’s long and so blond it’s white and it’s straight. Unlike some people’s.”

  Okay. Total low blow.

  I set down the flat iron and turned to look Jonah straight in the eye. “Do you like her?”

  “I don’t even know her!” Jonah said.

  Which would have been believable had he not contradicted himself immediately by saying: “Except she seems fun, like the way she trash-talked with me. Most girls are all stupid and giggly and stuff. Oh, hee hee hee! My hair looks less than perfect. But Eve is cooler than that!”

  It was true, she had acted kind of, I don’t know, brave at the salon, knocking Jonah around when she didn’t even know him. I could never be that way with a person I’d just met.

  “Well, tell me if you want me to say anything to her,” I said.

  “If you say anything to her, you’re dead,” Jonah said.

  Boy, he must have it for her real bad.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Well, look at you.”

  I quickly tried to analyze the tone of Mom’s voice the next morning, the flat look on her face. She liked it? She hated it? She thought I looked ultraedgy but not in a good way?

  “I used the flat iron,” I said, sitting down at the table for breakfast. Mom’s hair was mocking me more than ever, laying straight like a board down her back and tucked neatly behind her ears.

  “Where’d you get the iron?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

  “Found it in the closet.”

  “Honey, most of those should be thrown out. I’m not even sure why I keep them here.”

  Dad came into the kitchen to say good morning. He kissed my head, then paused and said, “Using new products or something?”

  Did he wrinkle his nose when he said that?

  “No produ
ct. I just straightened my hair,” I said, refusing to doubt the two hours of work I’d put into it last night.

  When Jonah popped over to walk with me to school, he didn’t say anything about my hair—not that I expected him to—but he did manage to ramble on the entire way about entering a new level of Warpath of Doom.

  “You’re coming with me to the store tomorrow night, right?” he asked. “I’m creeping up on your score, so you better watch out!”

  At school I tried to gauge the overall opinion on my hair. Was Stacey in history admiring it? What did Rebecca in science class mean when she said, “Oh. You straightened your hair.” Ryan Majors walked past me and said, “What’s that smell?”

  Eve was the only person to flat-out say something nice to me. At least, I think she was being nice. When she saw me in class she said, “Cool. I like it when people try new things with their hair.” Okay, it wasn’t the same as saying she liked it, but she was complimenting me on something, at least.

  I was walking down the hall after English class when I saw Lizbeth up ahead, kneeling on the ground. It looked like she’d dropped her bag, its contents splattered on the floor. I was about to bend down to help her when someone, some guy, went sailing practically over her leg.

  When Lizbeth realized the guy was Matthew Anderson, her face turned pink and she looked stunned, paralyzed. She just sat there staring at him with wide eyes and a pack of spearmint gum in her hand. Tobias Woods, baseball stud and Matthew’s best friend, stood by looking at his friend on the floor. He burst out laughing.

  “Dude!” was all Tobias said.

  If anyone knew how horribly embarrassed Lizbeth must have felt, it was me. The only difference between us was that I’d never made such a klutz of myself in front of my crush. That made it ten times worse. I had to help the girl out.

  “Oh my gosh, I am such a mess!” I said to Matthew as he stood up, dusting off his perfectly pressed khakis. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  Matthew looked at me and then back to Lizbeth, like he wasn’t sure what was going on. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He looked down at Lizbeth, still paralyzed on the floor.

  “Did I get you, too?” I asked Lizbeth. She started to open her mouth, but nothing came out. “I am such a spaz. Two people at once—come on, guys, that’s real talent! Let me help you.” I bent down to help her. “Go with it,” I whispered as I picked up the rest of the stuff from her bag—several pencils and tubes of lip gloss, a black, cloth headband, mint Tic Tacs, and scraps of paper.

  “Hey, you okay, Lizbeth?” Matthew asked. She looked up at him and nodded. Apparently she’d lost her voice. “ ’Kay. Well, see you.”

  Tobias clapped Matthew on the back and laughed some more as they walked away.

  After he’d left, Lizbeth let out a deep breath and said, “Oh my gosh, that was totally embarrassing! It was bad enough I let my bag spill out all over the freaking school, but then I totally tripped Matthew! I am dying!”

  She paused for a second and then gave me a quizzical look. “Why’d you cover for me like that?”

  I shrugged, thinking of my spectacular fall at the salon. “I have lots of experience with falling, unfortunately. I know how it feels. Except, I guess I’ve never sent someone else to the ground. You were like a human bowling ball taking down his pin.”

  Lizbeth laughed, putting her hand over her face. “Awful. But thanks. I owe you.”

  We finished putting her things back in her bag and then we stood up. “No, you don’t. Sometimes you just gotta take one for the team.”

  “Thanks, Mickey,” Lizbeth said as she pulled me in for a quick hug.

  At the end of last period I spotted a huddle of girls with their heads together. When I got closer I saw that they were crowded around Cara Fredericks, who was showing them something—something that glowed a light blue in her face. It was—

  A cell phone!

  “You got it!” I said without thinking as they gathered around to take a picture. Really, I couldn’t believe it. Cara’s mom actually got her a phone. Could it have been because of what I had said to her?

  Cara and her friends turned to look at me, no doubt wondering what I was talking about.

  “Oh, um,” I began. “I saw your mom in the salon. Where I work. At Hello, Gorgeous! She was asking about cell phones and stuff.”

  “Mickey, hey,” Cara said. “My mom said she talked to someone from school. That was you?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. I tried to act cool and casual when I said, “We talked about it—phones and stuff.” Like a superhero, it was Mickey to the rescue!

  “Thank you so much!” Cara said. “I seriously thought I would be the last person on earth to get a cell phone.”

  “Don’t forget me, Cara,” her friend Maggie Williams said. She had sunset-red hair, a perky nose, and long lashes. “I still don’t have one. Hey, Mickey, do you think you could talk to my mom, too?”

  “Um, well . . .” What had happened with Cara’s mother could have been a fluke. There was no guarantee it would work on someone else. “Is your mom coming in or something?”

  “Well, no,” Maggie said. “But maybe I can tell her to get an appointment. What do you say? Your mom would get a whole new customer out of it.”

  I could have said no to Maggie since I barely knew her, but if I did her this favor it’d be a way to get to know her, right? Plus, I was pretty much on a roll, first with helping out Lizbeth and then with Cara. Now both of them seemed more interested in me. “What does your mom look like?” I asked Maggie. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  She held the ends of her hair. “She’s a redhead, like me. People say I’m a mini version of her.” Maggie rolled her eyes, like she was pretending not to like it but maybe sort of did. “Oh my gosh, thank you so much!”

  “Sure,” I said. Then I turned to Cara. “Want me to take a picture for you?” I asked her.

  “Totally,” she said, handing over her shiny, new phone to me.

  I pointed the camera at them and got ready to click. “Now everybody say gorgeous!”

  It was hair as usual at the salon that afternoon, but I couldn’t get the polishes off my mind. The good news, though, was that no one seemed to be thinking about it but me.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, what is that smell?” Giancarlo asked as I walked past his station. He’d been drying a woman’s hair, her blondness blowing around her face. All she needed was a mic and a stage and she’d have been pop-star ready.

  For a moment, I thought Giancarlo was talking about me and that weird flat iron smell. But no. It would have been impossible for him to smell with me just drifting by. No way.

  “Mickey, darling, is that you?” he asked, his nose wrinkled.

  “No!” I said. Loudly. And defensively. “I mean, ha-ha, no, nope, nu-uh, not me. Why would you think that? I mean, what smell? I mean, what?”

  Spiraling, spiraling, spiraling . . .

  “That acrid, chemical smell that has completely offended my senses,” he said, turning off the dryer and taking a step toward me in white, patent boat shoes. Looking more closely at my hair he said, “It smells like burnt hair. Did you burn your hair? Wait, what did you do to your hair?”

  And suddenly I wanted to cry from embarrassment. The straightening had been a total bust and it was obvious to everyone. But I was still too embarrassed to admit it.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  It was Devon, listening from all the way across the salon. She was the only one not working, sitting in her chair like she owned the place. Actually, not even Mom would ever sit in her own chair. And she certainly didn’t allow her stylists to laze around like that. So where was she now to tell Devon to chop-chop?

  “You flat ironed it,” Devon oh-so-helpfully informed me. “And it smells like burnt hair and your hair looks like, well, like you tried an iron on it, an iron that’s either old or not very good in the first place. Or maybe you used it on too high a setting.
What setting did you use?”

  “None,” I said, heading to the back to get changed and get to work and away from all the prying eyes.

  “You know, Mickey,” Devon called as I left the floor. “I know you don’t believe me, but I could solve all your hair problems with just one sitting in my chair. I’ve got my scissors all sharpened and ready!”

  Yeah. She wished. Anyway, I wasn’t letting her or my hair get me down. By the time I snapped on my smock and got back out on the floor (after pulling my hair back in a messy bun and spritzing it with a nice raspberry hairspray), I was ready to work. No mistakes, no mess-ups, nothing. I’d had too many already and it was time to be totally perfect.

  And you know what? I pretty much was. I swept but didn’t get in the stylists’ way. I kept the accessories counter and drinks area neat, clean, and shiny. At around seven thirty, Megan felt like it was time to do a drawing and had me draw a name from the fishbowl. She cheered when I read the name—Julie Acton—even though the winner wasn’t there and no one knew who she was. I even gave some advice to one of our oldest clients (in age and in loyalty) about adding a pink streak to her hair. Violet said it was a little extreme; I said she’d look awesome. She went with it and left the salon happier than she’d been after any other visit.

  I just might go so far as to say the day was one of my best yet. Aside from my hair debacle, I was on a roll.

  CHAPTER 13

  The next day I admitted defeat (but only to myself) by doing nothing more than washing and drying my hair. As Jonah and I walked down the tree-lined sidewalks of our neighborhood and turned left onto the long narrow road to school like we did almost every morning, I felt better than I had in a while. The night before, as Mom and I left the salon together, she’d bumped my hip and said, “Nice job tonight.” I’d grinned a big, crazy grin and felt so proud that she had noticed.

  “Tonight’s the night,” Jonah said as we approached school. “We’re going to pick up the new game and christen it, so don’t forget.”

  “Mickey! Hey! How’s it going?” Maggie Williams waved from across the school lawn, her flaming red hair fluttering around her face.