Chapter Five Burns, OR Present Day
Chapter Five
Burns, OR
Present Day
Chrissie sighed as she leaned back against the motel mattress, Scarlett’s fingernails raking over her scalp in a way that almost made it possible for her to ignore the body-shaped stain on the ceiling of their room.
“Don’t tell anyone, but this is the most intimate I’ve been with another person since…
” Chrissie scrunched her nose as she tried to remember the last time she’d touched someone who wasn’t one of her massage therapy clients.
“Well, let’s just say that Leonardo DiCaprio was dating a woman in her early twenties and leave it at that. ”
Scarlett’s laugh shook the whole bed. “That narrows it down a whole lot, thanks.” She switched from her fingernails to a brush that she ran down the length of Chrissie’s hair over and over again.
Since it went all the way to the middle of her back, this took some time.
“I’ll never understand how you get your hair to grow so fast. Do you just, like, suck collagen out of young virgins or something? ”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I do in my vast amount of free time.
Then I bathe in their blood to keep things interesting.
” Chrissie twisted her neck to look up at her friend, but Scarlett only tsked and forced her head straight again.
“It’s just hair, Scarlett, and not even a very pretty color.
I’ll never understand why you’re so obsessed with it. ”
“That’s because you forgot how much it bothered me when mine fell out.
I’d already lost so much by that point. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to take that, too.
In fact, the first time I ever saw you in the hospital, those long braids wrapped around your head like a halo, I thought I was being visited by an angel. ”
Chrissie snorted. Only Scarlett could make the grim, fluorescent-tinged memory of those days seem like something out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.
“I’m pretty sure my hair was down that day.
Besides, I knew even then that I wasn’t going to keep it.
I’m not going to keep this batch either, so don’t get emotionally attached.
I have a donation appointment for when our road trip is over. ”
All of a sudden, Chrissie felt her head being yanked back. It took her a short, stinging moment to realize that Scarlett had wrapped the long, hot-spring-dampened strands around her fist and was holding them like a horse’s reins until Chrissie was forced to look up.
“Absolutely not. I forbid you from going back to that chop shop and letting them loose with the scissors.”
“It’s not a chop shop,” Chrissie protested.
“Fine. A butcher, then. A hack with no sense of taste or style.”
Scarlett twisted her wrist to the right, pulling Chrissie’s scalp even tighter. Chrissie wasted no time in reaching over and pinching Scarlett’s calf. With a howl, her friend released her grip.
“Ouch, you beast! That hurt.”
“Then don’t call my hair stylist a butcher. I’ll admit that Monica tends to make everyone look like a medieval page boy, but that’s part of her charm.”
Scarlett snorted and swung her legs off the bed. Chrissie was about to ask where Scarlett was going when she unplugged her phone from the wall charger and started typing furiously on it.
“Okay, according to Google Maps, we should get to Boise by lunchtime tomorrow,” Scarlett said.
She reached down and absentmindedly rubbed her calf, where a bruise was already starting to form.
Chrissie hadn’t thought she’d pinched her that hard, and was about to apologize for the excessive force when Scarlett continued.
“It’s not Milan or my own beloved Jacques in San Francisco, but it’s the closest we’re going to be to a metropolis for the next week.
I’m booking you an appointment at the most expensive place I can find. ”
“Wait. What?” Chrissie scrambled off the bed and tried to snatch the phone away, but her friend had already anticipated her. Scarlett dashed around to the other side of the bed and kept typing.
“It’s my treat, so don’t pretend like you need the money for Kat’s braces or new volleyball shoes or cleaning supplies for that dratted cat you refuse to drown.
” Scarlett pressed one last button and tossed her phone triumphantly to the bedside table.
“There! It’s done. They have a twenty-four-hour cancellation policy, so there’s no backing out now. ”
“But I don’t want to go to Boise,” Chrissie said. Then, feebly, “And Kat hasn’t worn braces since she was twelve.”
“And you haven’t had a decent haircut since way before that,” Scarlett said. She pursed her lips and added, “You always look like you’re either getting ready to join Joan of Arc at the stake or popping out a dozen kids on a fundie compound. There is a happy medium, you know.”
Chrissie didn’t want to laugh, but she did. “It’s never that bad.”
“It’s always that bad,” Scarlett countered.
Her own expression was much more sober than Chrissie’s—a thing Chrissie didn’t understand until her friend spoke again.
“You know you don’t owe anyone your hair just because it grows quickly, right?
Not your hair, not your platelets, not your internal organs… ”
“I’ve never given anyone an internal organ,” Chrissie protested. “And donating platelets is really easy. They take your blood out one arm, and then—”
Scarlett held up a hand to stop her. “I know how platelet donation works, thanks.”
“Besides, I’ve gotten a ton of reading done in those chairs,” Chrissie added. “It’s one of the only times I get to just sit and relax, you know? I read the whole of Anna Karenina that way.”
Scarlett’s sober expression didn’t lighten. If anything, it darkened even more. In Kat, an expression like that would only look petulant and sullen, but Scarlett looked like a silent film star—a French one, naturally.
“I want you to write down what you just said.”
“What? Why?”
Scarlett grabbed a pen and notepad from the bedside table. The logo of the motel—Royal Mills—was emblazoned across the top in bright green. “I’m serious. Put it in ink and read it back to yourself.”
Chrissie knew from experience that no good would come of playing Scarlett’s games. Since the day they’d become friends, she’d found herself constantly twisting and turning and tying herself in knots before they even made it to the starting line.
But this was supposed to be a vacation, after all.
“Fine.” Chrissie grabbed the pen and started to write.
I like donating platelets because it gives me time to sit and read without interruption.
“Good girl.” Scarlett took the pen from her and liberally scratched out half of what she’d written.
I like donating platelets because it gives me time to sit and read without interruption.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at,” Chrissie said. “Lots of people like to read. It’s not an exciting pastime, I’ll admit, but—”
“But nothing. If you want to read a book, then read a book. Don’t bend over backwards to justify it to the world.” Scarlett paused a beat. “And if you want a kick-ass haircut from a place that costs two hundred dollars just for a consultation—”
Now it was Chrissie’s turn to interrupt. “It costs what?”
“Then you can get a kick-ass haircut from a place that costs two hundred dollars just for a consultation,” Scarlett finished in a hard voice. “You can still do the hair donating and bloodletting if you want to, but as a separate thing. A different thing.”
Chrissie swallowed, doing her best not to notice how bitter the taste of her own saliva was on her tongue.
That bitterness could have been a figment of her imagination—or the aftereffects of a bottle of wine that seemed to have been delivered to the grocery store straight from a tannery—but she suspected its true source.
It was easy for Scarlett to lecture her about how she used what precious little free time she had, and even easier for her to throw money around like it meant nothing.
But Chrissie had more than just herself to think about.
She had a daughter and her massage therapy clients and a cat that liked to look her straight in the eye when he copped a squat and peed on her favorite throw.
She had bills to pay and four years of college to plan for, not to mention the crushing guilt that was affixed to her like the second head of a freak-show cow.
“Sure, Scarlett. I’ll read a book for you if it’ll make you happy.”
“Not for me. For you.” Scarlett peeled the top page off the pad of paper and folded it neatly in half. Tucking it carefully in Chrissie’s palm, she gave an exaggerated yawn and started to flip off all the lights. “Hold on to that, okay? I get the feeling we’re going to need it.”
“Scarlett,” Chrissie began, but her friend had already clicked off the lamps and was preparing to slip between the sheets. The hour wasn’t terribly late, but if they were going to make it to Boise tomorrow in time for her hair appointment, they’d need to get an early start.
Besides, knowing Scarlett, they’d be up well before the sun, one of them bright-eyed and ready to face the morning, and the other with a terrible red-wine hangover and even worse regret.
* * *
“Oh, geez. You weren’t kidding about this place, were you?”
The moment Chrissie walked through the door to a hair salon that had a bona fide bouncer at the door, his meaty arms crossed against anyone who tried to slip inside without an appointment, she knew she was going to hate every minute of this experience.
A young man, who stood only a few inches over five feet and had one of the neatest pencil mustaches Chrissie had ever seen, came forward to greet them with a silver tray holding two glasses of champagne.
Scarlett sighed happily and reached for one, but she was delayed by a soft tsk as the man plunked a raspberry into each one.
The popping fizz of the bubbles only made Scarlett sigh louder.