Chapter 8
F our hours later, we left Irena’s house and navigated the winding streets of Enkelana toward the villa.
My feet hurt from all the dancing, and my head spun from the overload of foreign weirdness.
Since the Wi-Fi barely worked in my room, I excused myself from the group and ducked into an internet café.
I found a quiet computer in the back and made a video call to Karen.
She answered from her beachside resort in Dubrovnik.
“Winifred, darling, when are you going to get here?” Karen sipped from a glass with a paper umbrella. “Croatia is paradise. The sea is amazing, and the boys …”
“Don’t worry. I’ll catch the first bus out of here.”
“What’s Malegonia like?”
“Overwhelming. The trip was terrible.”
“I can relate. Our plane to London was delayed for two hours. Can you believe that? ”
I wanted to pour out the entire drama of our canceled flight, my near kidnapping, and getting lost in Pelagonia, but the internet café charged by the minute.
“So, how is Will?” Karen asked. “Is this bride as pretty as your stepmother drones on?”
“She must be marrying him for immigration papers. The girl is gorgeous but dirt poor.”
Karen clicked her tongue. “Could you imagine marrying a troll just to come to America? Anyway, hurry up and get here before the entire summer goes to waste.”
“Give me three days,” I said. “Three long days.”
***
I spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach with Dad, Elizabeth, and Will’s dorky friends.
I might have enjoyed it had I been with Karen.
No matter. I read fifty pages of vampire love triangles before Irena and Mira showed up.
They invited me to accompany them to “the best hairstylist in Enkelana.” I would’ve balked at spending more time with the Malegonians, but a little pampering in the beauty salon sounded appealing .
We crammed into Mira’s car. I’d always thought of Mercedes-Benz as a luxury car brand, but this one was old enough to get social security and drove like a tractor.
I suspected it had once been silver beneath the legion of scraps and dents.
The air conditioner didn’t work, and the tires made a high-pitch squeal at every turn.
Thankfully, the trip was short. We pulled to the curb in front of a storefront with a pair of scissors on the door.
The beauty parlor seemed small by American standards.
Of course, everything was small in Malegonia: the roads, the coffee, the bathrooms, the stores.
Even the people looked smaller. The hairstylist, Diana, shook our hands and went on a long spiel in her language.
Mira and Irena translated bits and pieces, but mostly, I sat there awkward and confused.
I’d hoped to get my nails done or trim my split ends, but Diana focused on the bride-to-be instead. It was a bit annoying, but she deserved special treatment for marrying Will, sort of like giving last rites to someone on death row.
The stylist took forever, and I was glad I’d brought my book.
I didn’t understand a word exchanged, but from the aluminum foil and smell of bleach, I deduced they were dying Irena’s hair.
I wasn’t sure this was necessary, as her honey-blond curls already made me jealous, but Diana spent the next twenty minutes applying chemicals to her head.
Afterward the ladies boiled a pot of that disgusting Turkish coffee and shared the latest gossip.
They didn’t translate much for me, so I sat reading about lusty vampires while we waited.
Another bride-to-be showed up with an entourage of young girls and old ladies in their wedding clothes, invading the tiny salon like stormtroopers.
The new bride blabbered nonstop and had a whistling voice that grated like a shard of broken glass in my eardrum.
Diana seemed to forget Irena was even there, until Mira said something.
The stylist laid Irena back in the sink and washed out the chemicals.
When Irena sat up, her hair glowed bright purple.
A general gasp resounded. I shrieked and covered my mouth.
She could have passed for a member of a punk band if she had a few more piercings.
Silent looks of terror covered every face.
The hairstylist shifted her weight back and forth nervously.
“Is it bad?” Irena asked.
“It’s … unique,” I said. A more forthright answer would have been that she looked like a neon snow cone. How such beautiful hair could be so completely destroyed was beyond me .
The Malegonians exchanged a flutter of nervous comments.
I sensed panic from the hairstylist, but the woman tried to play it off as if everything was under control.
She rubbed some more chemicals into Irena’s hair and set a timer—something she should have done before.
I was too stunned to return to my book, so I spoke with Mira instead.
“Was her hair supposed to turn out like that?” I asked.
Mira waited until Diana was on the other side of the room before she answered. “No, she left the bleach on too long. She’s trying to fix it by adding lowlights.”
“Lowlights? How are lowlights going to fix this?”
Mira shrugged. I gulped. Irena’s lips trembled on the verge of tears.
Ten minutes later, Diana washed out the new batch of chemicals.
To my astonishment, her hair looked even worse than before.
The purple hue had turned gray, and the addition of black streaks made Irena look more like the Wicked Witch of the West than a flowering girl on her wedding day.
I stared wide eyed and slack jawed. Mira rattled at Diana in an escalating tone.
Irena looked in the mirror and broke into a sob.
“Maybe we can get a wig,” I suggested .
Mira said something that caused Diana to sneer and raise her voice.
Mira erupted with a slew of heated words, all well deserved by the stylist. I didn’t need a translation to make out the catfight that followed.
Irena stared at her reflection like someone coming to grips with a severe medical diagnosis.
The other bride-to-be clucked nervously, as if Diana could turn her into a frog, and fled with her entourage.
We joined the rapid exodus, Irena keeping a towel over her head to hide her brutalized hair.
My heart broke for the girl. Not only was she going to marry Will, but she was also stuck with the Chernobyl of hairdos.
***
We drove to my stepbrother’s apartment after the disaster with Diana.
His place was hidden off a main road, behind a fast-food restaurant and a tiny convenience store.
The building looked like every other drab gray flat in town.
All the glass was broken out of the common windows, and someone had spray-painted a swastika on the first-floor exterior—not appealing, but a slight improvement over how Will had kept his room in high school .
I followed the girls up the stairs to the fifth floor, wishing there was an elevator, and met Will at his front door. He noticed the towel immediately.
“Why are you wearing that on your head?” he asked.
“Can we come in?” Irena said, a waver in her accent.
Will nodded and opened the door for us. His place was spartan, to say the least—a tiny studio apartment with old furniture, unadorned walls, and a refrigerator that didn’t work.
An acoustic guitar lay across his bed, and a disorderly stack of books stood on the coffee table next to a laptop computer and a jumble of cables.
The room screamed bachelor pad. Still, the inside looked nicer than the outside.
Will moved his junk and pulled out two chairs so we could sit down. Irena wrapped her arms across her body and stared at the floor. Will glanced at her expectantly.
“Tell me I’m beautiful,” Irena said, lips quivering.
Will frowned and lowered his brow. “Of course you’re beautiful. What’s wrong?”
With a sigh, she pulled the towel off her head, revealing the barbarism inflicted on her innocent hair. Will’s chin nearly bounced off the floor, and his eyes opened so wide that I thought they’d fall out of his head .
“Are you sure I’m beautiful?” Irena asked on the verge of tears.
“Of course. What happened?”
Irena threw her arms around him and spat a rapid-fire volley of strange words.
Will listened and nodded, holding her against his chest as she sobbed out the details.
I could tell they cared about each other.
Maybe she wasn’t just marrying him for a visa.
He also responded with a tenderness I’d never seen from him before.
Perhaps he wasn’t such a goon these days … maybe.
“We’re gonna fix this,” Will said defiantly.
“But no time,” Irena said.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll find another hairdresser if we have to visit every beauty parlor in town.”
Irena gave a painful smile and nodded. Without another word, we raced outside to find a stylist who could fix her hair.
We soon discovered that every place within walking distance was closed or booked solid.
As twilight darkened behind the mountains, despair set in.
If we didn’t find a solution fast, Irena would have to walk the aisle with a hairdo that would make Boris Johnson blush.
I suggested a wig again. The others grumbled but admitted that might be the only option.
We marched through a maze of side streets toward the bridal shop, hoping they’d have one in stock.
On the way, we noticed an open salon with no customers inside.
I shot an optimistic glance at Will and Irena, and we stepped through the front door.
A dark-haired stylist in her twenties introduced herself.
Irena pulled the towel off her head to expose the catastrophe.
The stylist covered her mouth and shook her head.
Irena’s lip quivered, but the stylist stiffened herself and spoke in a reassuring voice.
Irena nodded and slumped into a salon chair.
“She will try to fix it,” Mira explained. “But all she can do is bleach Irena’s hair white.”
“Can you do that?” I asked. “She already bleached her hair twice today.”
Mira shrugged. I gulped. Irena sat stoically in front of the mirror as if facing down a firing squad.
The stylist got to work applying more bleach while Will paced back and forth through the tiny room.
We waited for the next thirty minutes, wondering if her hair could possibly come out worse than before.
A burden in my chest ached for Will and Irena.
They didn’t deserve this on the eve of their big day.
I’d never liked my stepbrother—and still didn’t—but he and Irena seemed right for each other.
I grudgingly admitted he wasn’t such a bad guy.
He was still a dweeb, of course, but at least he’d matured a bit since his rebel-without-a-clue phase.
Irena squirmed anxiously in the chair. She was a lovely girl, even if I could barely understand her.
She was far too young to get married at nineteen, but she looked happy with Will.
I was rooting for them, even if I thought my stepbrother was borderline criminal for marrying a girl six years younger than him.
I said a silent prayer that the stylist could save Irena’s hair … and the wedding.
A timer sounded as the moment of truth arrived.
Irena lay back in the sink to wash the bleach out.
I watched over Will’s shoulder, half terrified that the bride would be bald or worse.
The stylist turned off the water and patted Irena’s head with a towel.
The bride sat up, her hair glowing angelic white.
For a moment I thought I’d witnessed a miracle.
A smile spread across my face as relief rushed over me.
“Is it better?” Irena asked.
“You look wonderful,” Will said.
He turned the salon chair so that Irena could see her reflection. The bride’s face brightened, her eyes watering.
Will ran his hands through her hair. “It feels like steel wool. ”
The stylist responded in Malegonian. I looked to Mira for an explanation.
“Her hair is fried,” she explained. “But Irena will look fine for the wedding.”
I nodded and looked over the bride. You could still faintly see dark streaks where Diana had tried to “fix” her first attempt.
The new stylist worked Irena’s hair into a bun to hide the damage.
When she stepped away, Irena’s face radiated with joy.
She threw her arms around the stylist and muttered something I assumed was thanks.
The wedding was saved … so long as nothing else went wrong.