Chapter Five Burns, OR Present Day #2
“Of everything I’m going to miss, I’m going to miss champagne the most,” she said as she lifted the stem between forefinger and thumb and drank half in one gulp.
“Are you giving up alcohol soon?” Chrissie asked as she accepted her own glass and tentatively sipped. “Never say so. Your poor liver won’t know what to do with itself. It’ll probably go into shock.”
“Livers are replaceable,” the petite Clark Gable said with a wink. “Which one of you is Christina?”
“I am,” Chrissie said. Since it was her turn to drive after this, she set the glass of champagne back down on the tray. “But only my mother calls me Christina. I’m Chrissie to the rest of the world.”
“Well, Chrissie. You’re in for a treat. Bernice doesn’t usually take new clients on such short notice.” He winked in a way that felt like both an insult and a papal blessing. “If you’ll follow me, one of the salon assistants will wash your hair while another preps the studio.”
“Wait. There’s more than one person involved in this process?” Chrissie shot Scarlett an agonized look. “There weren’t this many people in the birthing suite when Kat was born.”
“I know. I was there, remember?” Scarlett laughed. “But there’s no comparison. That was just a soul entering the world for the first time. This is your hair.”
Chrissie would have stuck her tongue out at her friend, but she was being ushered into a dark, red-curtained room that looked like it moonlighted as a bordello.
The overwhelming scent of roses dropped on her like a robe—as well as a literal robe, which the man swept around her shoulders in one debonair swish.
“You’re in good hands with River,” he promised. He wrinkled his tiny mustache before adding, “Actually, she’s terrifying, but as long as you don’t show fear, you should be fine.”
“Are you serious?” Chrissie whirled around, but the man had already slipped out to chat with Scarlett in the waiting room.
She had no doubt that Scarlett would regale him with tales of Chrissie’s terrible haircuts and even worse sartorial style, but there was no time to dwell on that as a teenage girl with enough piercings to set off every metal detector in a three-mile radius entered the room.
Her black hair was cut at an angle that completely obscured one of her eyes.
The eye left exposed was ringed with an expert flick of eyeliner and the kind of smoky smudge that magicians spent their whole lives perfecting.
“Are you gonna sit, or do you want me to get up on tiptoe to reach your head?” the girl asked. She snapped her gum and jabbed a chipped black fingernail at the sink. “I don’t have all day.”
All at once, Chrissie felt her anxiety and discomfort melting away. Not because she was taking petite Clark Gable’s advice to heart and showing no fear, but because with River, she was facing the familiar: a sullen, annoyed teenager who wanted nothing to do with her.
“You have such lovely eyes,” Chrissie said as she settled into the seat and let River adjust her robe. “It’s a pity we can only see one of them.”
This was the exact sort of thing that mothers had been saying to their children from time immemorial, and it never failed to irritate. River was no exception. She yanked Chrissie’s head back and began mercilessly running her hands through her hair.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” she asked.
“No. Just an observation. I bet your mother hates it.”
River snorted. “Close but not quite. It’s my stepmother who used to throw a hissy fit every time I left the house.
You’d think I was walking around naked the way she carried on.
” She squirted a handful of rose-scented shampoo into her hands and began ruthlessly working it into Chrissie’s hair. “Ugh. You have, like, a ton of hair.”
“I know. It’s a pain to take care of. I only let it get this long so I can donate it.” Chrissie tilted her chin to look up at the girl. “Do you guys do that here? Save the hair by request, I mean?”
The girl blinked, her hands suddenly unmoving. “Is that something you want to do?”
“Yes, please. I can give you the address of the charity I usually send it to, or if you don’t have the right mailing supplies, you can just put in a ponytail for me and I can do it later.”
River started washing again, her movements much gentler this time around. “It’s fine,” she said. “I can mail it for you.”
They didn’t speak again for the ten minutes it took to shampoo and condition Chrissie’s hair.
Unlike Scarlett, Chrissie had always been comfortable with long silences, so she was happy to let the quiet settle.
She was, however, much less comfortable with the tipping guidelines in a place that boasted no fewer than four different staff members for a single haircut.
As River clicked the chair to an upright position, her hands efficiently toweling off the drips from the nape of Chrissie’s neck, she even found herself feeling a little of that terror she’d been warned about.
“Um, should I tip you separately or just include it in the final bill?” she asked, trying not to wince as she thought about how much cash was in her purse.
Most of this trip was being financed by Scarlett—partly because the whole thing had been her idea to begin with, but mostly because Chrissie would never have been able to splurge on a two-week vacation otherwise.
She had a comfortable number of rotating massage therapy clients, and the flexibility the career allowed meant she could accommodate Kat’s busy schedule, but the gig economy was a tough one for a single parent even with the child support deposited into her account on the first of every month.
“I don’t want a tip from you,” River said, the words terse. She caught Chrissie’s startled expression and sighed. “Sorry. My bark’s worse than my bite. I only meant that you donating your hair is enough. It’s for cancer patients, right? For making wigs?”
Chrissie nodded.
River’s face set into a mask as hard as her piercings. At first, Chrissie thought she’d somehow insulted the girl, but she realized her error a few seconds later.
“My mom got one of those. Before she died, I mean. I tried to get her to wear some cool cosplay ones—just for fun, you know, bright pink and glittery—but she said she only wanted to look like herself again.”
The set lines of River’s face didn’t soften, and Chrissie recognized the struggles of a teenager who was doing her best not to cry.
Kat did the same thing any time the emotions under their roof got too soft.
Anger and annoyance and frustration were allowed to escape without a check, but the moment she felt anything that could be deemed as weakness, she shut down.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Chrissie reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder.
Then she said the only thing that had ever helped her when in the throes of her own grief.
Not platitudes about eternal life or promises that things would get better with time—not even an acknowledgment of the things she must have undergone.
“It’s not fair, is it? To lose someone before you’re ready to say goodbye? ”
A startled look flickered in River’s visible eye, but another thing Chrissie was able to recognize at a glance was a teenager on the verge of flight.
“Do I go through here?” she asked, indicating a gap in the curtain wall.
She spoke with studied nonchalance, determined to meet this girl on the safe, neutral ground she clearly preferred.
“You can probably tell that I’ve never gotten my hair cut anywhere as nice as this before.
I’m not even sure what I should ask for. ”
“You want a vintage horseshoe cut,” River said, the relief at her escape almost palpable.
“Just below the shoulders, I think. No bangs. Light on the layers. That way you can still pull it into a ponytail when you don’t feel like doing anything with it, but you can glam it up super easily. Like Katharine Hepburn.”
Very little of what River just said made sense to Chrissie, but she was willing to play along.
Especially when she took a seat in the chair offered her and rattled off the directions like she knew what she was talking about.
Bernice, who was equally terrifying in a six-foot-tall-and-built-like-a-linebacker sort of way, accepted Chrissie’s instructions with a nod of approval.
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. You must have an eye for this sort of thing.”
Scarlett, who knew very well that Chrissie had no eyes for anything related to fashion, watched with an amused smile as Chrissie’s hair was pulled, chopped, and stored in a Ziploc bag discreetly brought out by River.
“Okay, we’re definitely sending Walsh another proof-of-life photo,” Scarlett said as Chrissie was carried out of the salon on a cloud of hair spray.
She didn’t manage to get a look at the bill, but the disregard with which Scarlett had signed the slip indicated that it wasn’t beyond her friend’s means.
Scarlett snapped a few candid shots with Chrissie’s phone before she could think to put up a fight.
“And don’t argue with me, because I saw the way you conned that poor washing girl into sweeping up your hair when Bernice wasn’t looking. Have you ever been able to get out of a room without doing at least one act of selflessness?”
“I didn’t con her into anything!” Chrissie protested, but it was mistake. While she was distracted, Scarlett sent one of her photos off into the void. “Please tell me you didn’t actually text my daughter’s volleyball coach a picture of my new haircut. He’s going to think I’m deranged.”
“Um, what he’s going to think is that he can’t wait for you to get back from this trip.” Scarlett flipped the phone around to show Chrissie the picture she’d sent. “Did you even look in the mirror before you walked out of there? You look like a hot, modern-day—”