Tall, Thin and Blonde

by Dyan Sheldon

  I remembered Amy. Civil disobedience was not what high school was about.

  We turned off Main Street. Out of the corner of my eye I could see two familiar figures walking towards us on the other side of the street. At first I thought it was Amy and Kim. Then I thought it was Rosie Henley and Amber. We were almost parallel. It was Amber and Kim. They pretended they didn’t see us, but I saw them give each other a nudge.

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow?” Chris was saying.

  I looked up at him. “What?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow after school. We can talk some more about your demonstration, if you want.” He grinned. “Or I can introduce you to my bats.”

  “OK,” I said, sort of answering automatically, “I’ll see you then.”

  After I finished my homework that night, I locked myself in the bathroom to become a natural blonde. According to the instructions, all I had to do was apply a treatment every time I shampooed my hair, leave it for ten to fifteen minutes, rinse it out with warm water and, miracle of miracles, within a few weeks I would slowly and subtly become a real blonde.

  I washed my hair. I opened the first silver envelope and thoroughly rubbed the contents into each strand, starting from the crown. It made me smell like the chemistry lab and look like I’d had an encounter of the third kind. While I waited for fifteen minutes to pass, I sat on the floor of the bathroom, reading up on Schrödinger from a book I’d gotten at the library after I left Chris. It was a pretty interesting book. It was so interesting that by the time I checked my watch again twenty-five minutes had passed. After I’d rinsed out the treatment, I studied myself in the mirror. My hair was still brown. It looked almost darker, if you want the truth. “It’s because it works slowly and subtly,” I reminded myself. “Like nature.”

  After that, I went to my room to study The Ultimate Dieter. As far as I could figure out, the ultimate dieter was a person who didn’t eat. Or not much. The ultimate dieter didn’t let her body trick her into wanting chocolate or French fries. The ultimate dieter taught herself to love the things that were good for her – carrots and seaweed and boiled chicken, for instance – and to hate lasagne and double-cheese pizza. She drank diet soda and black tea and coffee. She weighed everything before she put it in her mouth. She knew that if she ate one slice of crispbread more than she was allowed, she’d be sorry. I read over the calorie chart and the fat chart and the fibre chart and the carbohydrate chart at the back of the book. I discovered the answer to my question at lunch the other day: how many calories are there in a tiny, infinitesimal piece of chocolate cake? Six hundred and thirty-eight! I nearly fainted. I collapsed on my bed. I didn’t have the nerve to look up milkshake. It was scary. Everything was out to get me. I shut the book with a sigh.

  It looked like I was going to be waging open warfare on more than Mr Herrera in the weeks ahead. It looked like I was declaring war on myself.

  Not only was my hair as brown as ever when I woke up on Thursday, but by the end of school I was so hungry that depression was setting in. How was I going to get through the rest of the day – never mind the rest of the week – when all I could think about was food?

  And then I saw them, standing in front of the library. At first I thought I must be hallucinating. There were two figures waiting for someone at the end of the path. One figure was tall and gaunt and all in black; the other was smaller and heavier and wearing a long purple dress, a purple scarf wound through her hair, and a silver and purple shawl. With all the kids hurrying past in their jeans and trainers, it was like coming upon visitors from another galaxy in the supermarket.

  It’s lack of carbohydrates, I told myself. That’s all it is, a carbohydrate deficiency. And then I realized that the figures were waving to me. Good grief, I thought, it’s Chris and Marva. I’d never seen the two of them together in daylight before. Not only were they waving to me, but I finally realized it was me they were waiting for. Between worrying about my hair and my lack of essential nutrients, I’d forgotten all about going back to their house this afternoon to plan my protest. I walked a little faster. Maybe it was just because they’d take my mind off pizza, but I was really glad to see them.

  “Dig this,” said Marva as I came up to them. “He’s actually going to be seen with me in public.” She made a face and nodded towards her brother. “The last time Chris walked home with me I was in fourth grade.”

  Chris made a face back. “I’m not walking home with you now,” he said, falling into step beside me. “I’m walking home with frog girl.”

  I laughed. All of a sudden being called “frog girl” by Chris didn’t seem like such an awful thing.

  Marva winked at me. “Frog girl and bat boy,” she said. “What a pair!” Her long skirt swooshing, her shawl flapping and her bracelets jangling, Marva fell into step on my other side.

  Chris grabbed my arm. “You’ll never guess what I found in the attic last night.” He sounded really excited.

  “Is it black and hanging upside down?” I guessed.

  Chris laughed. “No, it’s my old telescope. It used to be my grandfather’s so it isn’t exactly modern, but it’s pretty good. I thought we could fix it up for you. Till you get your own.”

  I couldn’t hide my surprise. I’d mentioned in passing that I was saving up for a telescope, but the one that I wanted was so expensive I’d be lucky to have enough for it by the time I left high school, and here he was offering me one.

  “Oh, don’t start talking about planets,” said Marva in a bored voice. “Tell Jenny about the time Herrera tried to embarrass you in front of the whole school.”

  Chris grinned, but it wasn’t exactly a happy grin. It suddenly occurred to me that though I wouldn’t want to make an enemy of Mr Herrera, I wouldn’t want to make an enemy of Chris County either.

  “Which time?” he asked coldly. “Humiliating me is practically his hobby.”

  Marva reached across me and gave him a slap. “You know,” she said. “The time he was giving you that special award, and when you went up to get it he took one look at what you were wearing and asked if you were trying to be as peculiar as possible.”

  I was horrified. “Good grief,” I gasped. “What were you wearing?”

  Marva sounded a lot like a whooping crane when she was really laughing. “His endangered species coat!” she whooped.

  “Marva painted my old raincoat with animals like dolphins, elephants and jaguars,” Chris explained. “Since the award was for a paper I’d written on eagles, I thought it was appropriate to the occasion.”

  I tried to imagine what I’d say if Mr Herrera asked me in front of the school if I were trying to be as peculiar as possible. I figured I’d faint. “But what did you do?”

  Chris grinned again, but this time with humour. “I said yes. I said that if it brought attention to the way we treated other species, then it was worth it.” He did a little dance. “The audience gave me a standing ovation!”

  The three of us were still laughing as we left the school ground. There were a lot of kids on the sidewalk, talking and just hanging out. It was then that I noticed three curly blonde heads looking in our direction. I couldn’t decide whether I should nod or wave or something, you know, just to acknowledge the fact that I’d seen Amy. I mean, technically, she was still my best friend. But before I could do anything the heads turned away.

  Dawn gets lost

  My mother likes to tell me that “it’s always darkest before the dawn”. Whenever I get depressed or it seems like nothing in my life is going right, my mother will say, “Don’t forget, honey, it’s always darkest before the dawn.”

  By the end of my second week of self-improvement, I felt like I must be in the Land of Endless Night or something. How much darkness was I supposed to put up with? Where was this stupid dawn?

  Being an ultimate dieter was like being trapped in a black hole. It was just about driving me out of my mind. I was sick of measuring everything, and weighing everything, and counting every sin
gle thing I put in my mouth. According to The Ultimate Dieter, if every day I ate one teaspoon of hamburger relish over the numbers of calories my body needed to maintain itself, I’d gain thirty pounds in the next ten years! Thirty pounds just for a teaspoon of hamburger relish! Now I understood why Amy’s mother was always on a diet. What choice did she have if just one teaspoon of hamburger relish too many could turn you into a blimp? How did she stand it? When did it end? I wondered if I would have to have my lips glued together.

  When I closed my eyes at night, I saw a pair of scales floating in the dark. When I dreamt, I dreamt of bowls of spaghetti and platters of grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato and onion and pickle on the side. When I woke up, I woke up hungry. I was hungry all day long. I admit I had always been the sort of person who thinks about what she’s having for supper while she’s rating lunch, but I hadn’t been obsessive. I just ate a lot. And often. Now I ate a little and almost never. But I thought about food all the time. I thought about food when I was eating my three-hundred-calorie meals. I thought about food on the way to school and back again. I thought about food in every class. I nearly passed out in Spanish when the Riveras, the family in our textbook, stopped at a country inn for dinner and Senora Rivera ordered sausages and potato salad. I got hit in the head by the volleyball in gym because instead of paying attention to the other team I was thinking about a chicken burrito.

  I couldn’t watch television because of the ads. Soup, salad, cereal, waffles, pizza… How was a person supposed to be thin when she was always being told to eat? Sometimes after supper I’d just stand next to the refrigerator, with my head against the door, imagining the leftovers on the other side. “Eat me” they were shouting. “Eat me! Eat me! Just one bite!” I suggested to my mother that it might be a good idea to tape the door of the refrigerator shut. You know, just in case I started sleepwalking or something. There was an absolutely terrifying story in The Ultimate Dieter about a woman who gained fifty pounds in her sleep. Every night, she’d sleepwalk into her kitchen and eat peanut butter and jelly by the spoonful. In the morning she’d find empty jars and dirty utensils in the sink, and sometimes there’d even be crumbs, but she’d have no memory of eating anything at all.

  My mother didn’t believe in my diet. She thought I was being ridiculous. “I suppose we should be grateful you haven’t decided that your nose is too big,” she said, “or you’d be down in the basement, sawing it off.”

  And if that wasn’t dark enough, the really tragic thing was that for all my suffering and agonizing, I wasn’t losing any weight. In fact, somehow, as I discovered on the second Saturday after I started my diet, I’d gained a pound. How can you live on twelve hundred calories a day for nearly three whole weeks and gain a pound?

  “Water,” said my mother. “That’s all it is. Just water.”

  “Water?” I repeated. “How can water weigh so much?”

  “Trust me,” said my mother. “It’s water.” But if all that wasn’t dark enough, that same day my hair turned green.

  I’d been putting the Natural Blonde in it every time I washed it, just like the instructions said, but nothing much happened. I guess I was too nervous – you know, in case my hair fell out or turned white or something and my parents grounded me for the rest of my life – so after that first time I never left it in for very long. If I stood in direct light you could see a few glints of gold among the muddy brown, but otherwise it looked exactly the same. I think I was kind of relieved. And then, I went swimming as usual on Saturday, and by the time I got home my hair was green.

  The first clue I had was when I walked into the house, and my father sort of squinted at me and said, “Jenny, is your hair always that colour?”

  I thought he must be working too hard or something. “Brown?” I asked.

  “Not brown,” said my father. “It looks kind of green.”

  I laughed. “I think you’d better have your glasses checked, Dad,” I said. “My hair’s not green. It’s brown.”

  My mother came into the room. She stopped dead in the doorway. “Jenny Kaliski,” said my mother, “what on earth have you done to your hair?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing my frozen yoghurt,” said my mother. Her voice went up an octave. “It’s green!”

  My father said it was probably a chemical reaction between the bleach I’d used and the chlorine in the pool. He said the best thing to do was just to let it grow out.

  “Can’t we dye it brown or something?” I begged my mother. It was green like grass or parsley, it was green like pond scum.

  But my mother is a woman of principle. “Serves you right,” she said, “putting that junk on your beautiful hair.”

  By Saturday night, I was pretty sure the dawn was never going to come. But then came Sunday and two tiny glimmers of light.

  On Sunday afternoon Chris called to say that Marva had finished my frog costume and it was ready to try on. I wasn’t quite sure how or when I’d agreed to this – but I had. There was something about Chris and Marva and their enthusiasm for everything they did that made all my objections seem small and petty. Marva was sitting on the front porch with the dog when I arrived. The first thing she said when she saw me was, “Jenny, why are you wearing a scarf? You look like a Russian peasant.”

  I marched up the stairs. “I’ll show you when I’m inside.”

  “Wow!” said Marva when I took off the scarf. “That is wild! I wish I’d thought of that! What made you decide to dye your hair green?”

  “Nothing,” I said glumly. “I was trying to become a natural blonde.”

  Chris came into the hall with Geronimo on his shoulder. “What for?” he asked. “Your hair has all that red in it, it’s much nicer than blonde.” He raised his eyebrows. “Well, it used to have all that red in it.”

  “I think the green is great,” said Marva. “It’s very original. And appropriate for someone who’s dressing up as a frog.”

  She picked up my scarf with two fingers. “Well, you can’t go to school looking like a potato picker,” she said.

  Chris shrugged. “So cut it.”

  “Cut it?” I repeated.

  “Of course! Cut it all off!” Marva clapped her hands. “He really is a genius, you know.”

  I wasn’t so sure about this. My hair wasn’t really long, but it wasn’t really short either. “Cut it all off?” I asked again.

  Marva grabbed my hand and started yanking me towards the bathroom. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do it now before you change your mind!”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “I haven’t said I’d do it yet.”

  “Of course you’ll do it,” said Marva. “It’s better than spending the next six months wearing a turban.”

  Chris followed us. “Don’t worry, Jen,” he said from the doorway as Marva sat me down on a stool in the County’s enormous old bathroom and threw a towel around my shoulders. “You’ve got the face for really short hair. It’ll look great.”

  The funny thing was, it did look great, it really did. Marva said it made my eyes look bigger. And it was so short that you could hardly tell it wasn’t brown.

  “You see?” said Chris from behind me. It had been a long time since I’d worn any, but I was trying on some of Marva’s silver hoops to see what the effect of three earrings in my right ear would be with my new haircut. It was OK. Chris smiled at me in the mirror. “What’d I tell you? You look terrific.”

  Marva put her head on my shoulder. “Chris is right,” she said. “It’s very you.”

  Then on Saturday night, Amy Ford called me up.

  “I thought maybe you’d want to walk to school together tomorrow,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “I really miss you, Jen,” said Amy quietly. “Remember when we used to go to school together every day?”

  “Yeah,” I said, hiding my surprise and playing it cool, “I have a vague recollection.”

  Amy laughed. “That’s what I mis
s the most,” she said. “Your sense of humour.”

  To tell you the truth, I was more than surprised by Amy’s call. I was shocked. Staggered. Knocked over the head with a ten-pound salami. I mean, you tell someone all her major flaws, you pretty much stop speaking to her except for an occasional “Hi, there!” or “Hello!” when you pass in the hall, and then you suddenly call her up and ask to see her. Not only to see her, but to be seen walking into school with her. Why? That’s what I kept asking myself after she hung up. Why? I’d been doing my Spanish homework and thinking about fried potatoes with gravy, but after her phone call all I could think of was Amy. Whywhywhywhywhy? Because she misses you, I told myself. That’s why. That’s what she said. She misses you and your great sense of humour.

  To tell the truth, I’d forgotten about Amy over the last couple of weeks. To begin with, I was seeing a lot of Chris and Marva. After that Thursday when I went home with them, it was just sort of taken for granted that we’d all walk to and from school together. Most afternoons I’d go back to their house, and Chris and I would work on the telescope while Marva sat near us, reading out loud. Or I’d bring over one of my dad’s nature videos and the three of us, and Geronimo, would watch it together. Chris really admired my dad’s collection.

  But besides that, I’d been spending more time with the rest of the Martians, too. We had more in common than I’d thought. We liked a lot of the same things, and we found a lot of the same things funny. Maria was helping me with my Spanish, and it turned out that Joan’s great passion was planets. “Plants, planets, bats,” Marva liked to grumble. “I don’t understand why I’m surrounded by all you science types. It makes me nuts.” In fact, except that I was starving, I was having an OK time. One day after school the six of us had gone to the mall, and Tanya had us all in stitches, trying on clothes. The Saturday before, we’d all gone to a movie, and Sue cracked us up by shouting out instructions to the heroine whenever she was about to get into trouble. “Don’t trust him!” Sue yelled. “Oh, no, don’t go in there!” I thought I was going to choke I was laughing so much.