Chapter 9
Willow
New look
Make new friends
“Hey,” someone called from the neighbor’s driveway. “You look familiar. Did you just move in?” She strode across the grass, and I felt the familiar panic of being recognized, pulling my hair forward immediately to hide my face.
“Just house-sitting,” I said, dipping my chin and clutching the mail I’d grabbed from the mailbox.
“Oh!” Her voice brightened. “You must be Cruz’s sister!
That’s why you look familiar. God, you guys could be twins, I mean except for him being taller and all muscled and, you know, the facial hair.
” She paused next to me and held out a hand to shake.
“I’m Hollis—I live next door. Well, my parents live next door and I’m staying with them, which I guess is the same thing.
” She shook my hand without really taking a breath and kept talking. “Anyway, hi!”
“I’m Willow,” I said, taking her hand and really looking at her for the first time. Hollis looked about my age, and her blue hair was swept to the side, half of it shaved close to her head and spiky against her pale skin. “I like your hair,” I added, tugging self-consciously on my own curls.
“Thanks!” She ran fingers through the blue strands. “I’m kind of bored with the color. About time for a change. Maybe pink or red? Like a real red red.” Hollis pulled some blue strands down over her eyes. “What do you think?”
Hollis reminded me a little of Zoe, and her energy eased the need I’d felt to escape quickly.
“Red’s a good color,” I shared. I’d had the same hairstyle for years since Spencer told me I looked really pretty with my hair down.
No one had ever called me pretty before him, not like that, like someone who I wasn’t related to.
I’d felt special, so I kept it the same, and the long curls had been helpful to hide behind lately.
“Red it is,” she said brightly. “My brother’s in cosmetology school, so he does it for me. I bet he’d do yours if you want!”
“Oh,” I said, waving away her offer and pushing my hair off my face. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I thought about it—even opened my mouth to give an excuse, but I didn’t have a good reason.
“I mean, it probably took a long time to get your hair that long.” She motioned to the curls falling down my back. “And Blaine’s a student, but he’s good. Plus he needs the practice, so I usually just pay him in beer and pizza.”
I didn’t know this woman or Blaine, and I never even cut my hair more than regular trims, but for some reason her offer pulled at me. I slid my fingers through it again, stretching a long curl down in front of my face, assessing.
“At least come over for the beer and pizza.” She motioned to the house behind her. “Everyone in this neighborhood is like eighty, and not a fun eighty. I’m bored.”
I finally shrugged my shoulders and agreed, perhaps for no other reason than Hollis didn’t seem to recognize me from the meme and a new look would mean checking off an item on my list—this was going to be easier than I’d thought.
I’d watched Blaine work on Hollis’s hair all afternoon—stripping the blue and making conversation with me over the sound of the water spray and his sister’s chattiness.
She was admiring the new red color in the mirror when he turned his gaze to me.
“You ready, doll?” In the last few hours, I’d heard about their moms retiring early and embarking on a backpacking trip around the world, Blaine’s decision to drop out of law school in favor of cosmetology, and Hollis’s recent experience dating a magician who was “dirty sexy” and made her sexual inhibitions disappear.
At this, her brother covered his ears with a laugh.
Blaine and Hollis both talked to me like they’d known me for years and not hours.
How else to explain why I’d voluntarily told them both about Spencer and the Drowning Girl video?
“Yes!” Hollis nudged me forward. “It’s time for something new. That’s your whole thing now, right? New you? Gotta start with a new look!”
Blaine ran his fingers through my hair once I hesitantly sat in the chair, his touches intimate but professional. “You have a lot of hair. What would you think about shorter?”
I gulped. “How short?”
He looked back at my hair, and I studied his expression in the mirror. “Maybe shoulder-length?”
“Shorter,” Hollis chimed in. “Like this?” She held up her phone, and I sucked in a breath at the model whose curls looked like mine but fell around her head loose and light. “With those honey-colored highlights. You’d look so good.”
I held her phone and tried to imagine my own face in place of the model’s.
“That shape fits your features better than what you have,” Blaine offered.
I looked at my face in the mirror again—my mom’s eyes, the same dimples as Cruz, and the little scar near my temple I’d gotten after colliding with Spencer during eighth-grade gym class as we both dived for a volleyball.
He had a matching scar—he’d always said it was a sign we were forever changed by each other.
I traced a finger over the tiny faded line.
Forever changed didn’t have to mean forever unchanged.
If I was going to commit to this idea, I wanted to start big.
“Okay. Let’s do it now before I change my mind. ”
Blaine and Hollis had similar smiles—wide and toothy. He gathered my hair into a loose ponytail before holding up a pair of scissors.
“Girl, seriously, it’s gonna be hot,” Hollis said. “You ready?”
The scissors gleamed in the sunlight shining in through the small window, and I dug my fingers into the cushion of the chair, squeezing my eyes shut. “Yes. Do it.”
Hollis cheered and Blaine patted my shoulder. When the scissors sliced through my curls, I felt something even better than the weight of my long hair disappearing. I felt like I’d added two new people to my small circle of friends.
As I walked Gus toward Deacon’s place, I couldn’t stop touching the curls brushing the back of my neck and moving my head from side to side to feel the bounciness from the shorter cut.
A text came through from Hollis, a selfie of both of us in our new styles with Blaine between us.
Her new bright red hair color was bold and caught the light of the sinking sun.
My own highlights were pretty subtle, but for as different as I felt, it might as well have matched Hollis’s color.
As we approached, I saw Deacon on the porch of the house next door with a young teenager with big glasses and a low fade. Both were hunched over a table, and as I approached, I saw it held a chess set.
“Who’s winning?” I waved from the sidewalk, pulling Deacon from his concentration.
“Always me,” the boy called out. He looked maybe twelve or thirteen and had a walking boot on his left leg. He pushed the glasses up on his nose. “And the ladies love a winner!”
“The ladies love an adult,” Deacon said, pushing back from the table and standing to meet me.
“And you’re not winning yet.” He wore a T-shirt with a chicken outlined in bright yellow and “Cluck around and find out” printed across his chest. “Jayden, this is my friend Willow. Willow, this is Jayden.”
He waved and said, “Hey.” Jayden motioned to his side of the board where I saw a number of Deacon’s pieces lined up. “Willow, you be the judge. Who is winning here? It’s clear, isn’t it?”
I chuckled and held up a hand. “I plead the Fifth.”
“We can finish this tomorrow,” Deacon said, holding out a fist to bump with the kid. “You need anything until your mom gets home?” Jayden shook his head, and they went back and forth in a way that seemed to be normal for them both before Deacon led me down the walkway behind Gus.
“And you’re clearly winning,” I called out to Jayden over my shoulder as we rounded the front gate.
“Traitor,” Deacon said, running a hand through his hair.
“His mom works late, and he broke his leg. Try to keep him company when I can,” he added.
“He’s kicking my ass at chess.” Deacon’s laugh was a low rumble, and I grinned.
“And look at you! What’s all this?” He motioned to his own hair, which fell thickly over his shoulder, and I tried not to notice how his gaze swept over me. “Looks amazing.”
I raised my face, planning to tuck hair behind my ear, but pulled it back, turning from side to side instead. “Long story, but I made some new friends and one of them is kind of a hair genius.”
“Cruz will have to update his description of you. Different hair. No glasses. No teenager here.” He held out a palm, and I had a wild moment of fantasy that he was going to pull my face to his for a kiss, but he raised it again, motioning for a high five.
“Never thought I’d be arranging dog playdates,” he said. “You excited to see your friend, Gus?”
At the sound of his name, Gus’s tail wagged furiously. “You ready?” Deacon scratched behind his ears, and the dog barked in response.
I followed Deacon into their backyard, where a wiggling pit bull with white around her snout lumbered toward us.
“Meet Cupcake,” he said, as the dog made it to the space next to Gus, who bounced on his feet at the sight of the slow-moving dog, whose own tail wagged furiously.
“She’s an old girl, but these two are friends.
” Gus lowered his chest to the ground in his play stance, and Cupcake gave a yip and a shuffle.
Gus sprinted to the middle of the yard then doubled back for his friend who was jogging along, her thick rump wiggling.
“They’re pretty cute together,” I said as we settled into chairs on the back patio. The sun was sinking in the sky, turning everything a golden color that reminded me of Colorado. But it seemed different here, calmer and quieter somehow.