Five
by Jane Goodall—”
“Jesus Christ, Elisha,” Efraín mutters.
“Hey.” Lola whistles, commanding the attention of half the diner, townspeople and tourists alike.
Two booths over, Mrs. Babbitt, my ninth-grade science teacher, tsks. She always had a fixation on what constituted an “inside
voice.” Lola, Efraín, and I all failed that character test.
“Naomi,” Lola tries, quieter. “Tell us what’s going on. Does this have something to do with Anya calling you into her office
after we clocked out?”
“What did management do?” Efraín asks, only quiet because he may be preemptively plotting murder.
“Why are you going to get fired?” Hysteria pitches my voice higher until it breaks.
“Because of this.” Naomi yanks her hair tie off, lets her ponytail down, and fluffs out her long blond hair.
There’s nothing visibly amiss, just another ironic reminder that no one can tell that Naomi and I are siblings from looking.
I’m the Ashkenazi stereotype, but the Nazis wouldn’t have clocked Naomi. She’s tall, thin, and wiry, with honey-blond waves,
while I’m short, curvy, and chubby, with auburn-brown curls. Her button nose is pert and petite compared to my prominent,
hooked proboscis. No one would remark on her eyebrows, but mine would make Eugene Levy proud. The most we have in common is
our medley of freckles and moles—we look like walking PSAs for skin cancer prevention.
We both have “weird loner” vibes, but where I’m budget soft butch geek chic, Naomi’s the granola-in-the-trail-mix lesbian.
The only feature out of place in the cliché is the messy DIY dye job from a few weeks ago, when she emerged from our bathroom
with kelly-green streaks in her hair. I didn’t understand what prompted my notoriously chemical-averse sister, who can’t swim
in chlorinated water without getting overstimulated, to slather noxious chemicals on her head, but—
Oh, right. I stare at those now-faded green streaks, a minty hue barely distinguishable from her natural blond. “Your hair—”
“Violates the dress code,” Naomi confirms.
“Your hair?” Lola asks, incredulous.
“My queer birding Discord server called them peekaboo highlights?”
“What the fuck do highlights have to do with the dress code?” Efraín asks, fully credulous but righteously indignant.
“The dress code prohibits ‘nonnatural’ hair colors,” I explain.
“I never thought I’d hear anything about ‘natural’ hair in a dress code that wasn’t about hair like mine,” Lola mutters, tapping
her corkscrew curls. “But, wait up. Anya’s red hair is more artificial than Red Dye No. 3.”
“Either she doesn’t see it that way,” Naomi says, “or the rules don’t apply to bosses. She said this was my one warning. It
didn’t matter that today was training because they emailed us the handbook.”
“Did you read it?” I snap, a tension headache coiling at the base of my spine. “Did it come up at your interview?”
“I hadn’t dyed it yet, and I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s just faded highlights and the underlayer. The rest of
my hair hides the underlayer really well.”
“Clearly, Anya disagrees.”
“Anya called it unprofessional,” Naomi states, “and said I shouldn’t bother coming back tomorrow if I’m not going to take the job seriously. She had the
chutzpah to tell me to just dye my hair a ‘normal’ color tonight.”
Lola and Efraín offer colorful expletives, but I just blink at Naomi as she stretches the hair tie over her fingers.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Which part of her ultimatum is unclear?” Naomi asks irritably. “Dye my hair or get fired.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“I agree. It’s completely arbitrary. Museum guests wouldn’t even notice—”
“No, I mean . . . you.”
“What about me?”
I glance at my watch. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“Eli,” Lola chides.
I know I’m being unfair. Delayed processing’s a bitch, and if I were in Naomi’s shoes, I wouldn’t be saying anything. I’d
be on my way to the drugstore right now, but then again, I’d never be in Naomi’s shoes in the first place because I understand
the dress code.
When Naomi shakes her head, her waves whirl around her, obscuring her face and tickling my arm. “Because I’m trying to fix
this. I just need a plan—”
“Okay, we’ll walk over to Foxglove Apothecary and buy a box of hair dye.” I lean close and lower my voice. “I can loan you
the money if—”
Naomi shakes her head—again and again—a negation and a stim.
“Naomi?” Lola is a soft touch, the only person at this table with a dose of bedside manner.
Naomi doesn’t answer right away, the words caught in her throat. I’m well-acquainted with the way strong emotions like distress can sever your vocal cords. No matter how fervently you want to speak, you can’t.
Naomi must not be quite over the event horizon of shutdown yet because she warbles, “It isn’t fair.” She says it like how I say things don’t make sense—when the world fails to compute, and neither the equations nor the checkbooks
balance.
Across the table, Lola’s eyes are wide and shimmery, while Efraín’s are narrowed and pitch-black. I can’t check the feelings
wheel key chain on my backpack, but I’d guess Lola is concerned and Efraín is angry.
Of course, Efraín is usually some flavor of angry. It’s just a question of which microexpressions draw the worry line between
irritated and irate—and at whom he’s directing his ire.
Naomi buries her face in her hands. “I don’t want to re-dye my hair. I shouldn’t have to. It isn’t fair.”
“No, it isn’t.” See? I am not without empathy. However, if my one day as a member of the workforce has taught me anything,
it’s that working means compromising your personal comfort. Watering that sentiment down for my sister, I translate, “But
you need this job. Moms can’t afford to hire extra help here, and all the other summer jobs around town have already been
scooped up. So if you want to keep saving up for a car—”
“This is fucking ridiculous,” Efraín grumbles. Spoken like a guy who woke up on his sixteenth birthday to find a brand-new electric SUV with a bow on the hood. According to Lola, the Rivian’s maiden voyage was to the dealership, where he tried and failed to return it.
But if there’s one thing you learn growing up lower middle class, it’s how to MacGyver your way through crises the other half
solves with cash.
I can fix this.
“If we get the hair dye,” I propose, turning to better face Naomi, “can you just dye the green parts, not everything?”
“That would still be erasing—” Naomi swallows whatever truth she was about to spill and washes it down with a gulp of ginger
beer.
“You don’t have to.” Lola coos a promise she can’t keep. “We’ll think of something else.”
Naomi squirms, understandably uncomfortable with the way we’re studying her like a science experiment.
“When you wear your hair down, the peekaboo layer is totally hidden,” Lola says thoughtfully, “and we can style your hair
so the highlights up top are practically invisible. Just give me some barrettes and bobby pins, maybe a headband—”
“This is fucking bullshit, is what it is.” Efraín scowls. “Naomi’s not going to dye her hair. We should dye ours.”
What the actual fuck?
“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. Auditory processing issues. I thought I heard you suggest that we should all dye our hair, but that can’t be right because we’re discussing how to prevent my sister from getting fired, not how to get all of us fired.”
“You heard me right.”
“You’ve got a real dark sense of humor—”
“This entire situation is a joke,” Efraín interrupts. “The dress code is a joke, so let’s make management the punch line. They can’t fire us.”
He’s wrong. This isn’t a joke; it’s a prank. This is some reality TV show designed to make me look like an absolute moron
in front of morons who spend their time watching lowbrow TV and probably got fired from their summer jobs.
“That’s exactly what Anya said would happen if Naomi broke the dress code again.”
“If Naomi broke the dress code alone,” Efraín corrects me. “But the four of us together?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Tourist season. The museum switches to summer hours on Saturday. You really think they can find four new grunts on two days’ notice? Dan
said Anya hates hiring.”
“Gee, I wonder why she would hate hiring when, after less than twelve hours on the job, her new grunts are discussing mutiny.”
“It’s not mutiny.”
“Enough. Boys, compare your testosterone lab levels on your own time, okay?” Lola cuts in. “Now, Ef, before I break out my brightest clip-in extensions, can you please explain your plan here?”
“There’s power in numbers,” Efraín replies. “If all four of us show up with ‘unnatural’ hair colors—extensions, temporary
dye—the museum can’t afford to fire all of us.”
Maybe that’s true, and maybe it’s not; my ticket-seller account doesn’t give me access to the NSX accounting books. “It doesn’t
matter whether the museum can afford it,” I object. “We can’t afford the risk.”
“Don’t you get it? The problem is bigger than hair dye.” Efraín licks his lips. “We have to stand on principle.”
Doesn’t he get it? I can’t afford principles in this economy. Not if I want to pay for my top surgery down payment. Not if I want to keep this job and land
the paid internship to earn enough for the surgery itself. I can’t deposit my pink slip in the bank.
“Not everything is some crusade in waiting. Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck—”
“You’re living rent-free in your moms’ house. They’re the ones who want to fire a teenager for exercising her right to self-expression.” Efraín smirks, as if that’s checkmate.
I’m not even sure who “they” are. I don’t think Efraín knows, either.
This is just how he talks. It’s always us against them or institutions pitting them against us, and never have I ever heard him use proper nouns.
It’s the museum, the school, the town council, always some generic Big Bad, nebulous and ill-defined.
He’s the boy railing against injustice when he, himself, has never
experienced injustice.