Sally's, a beauty store, is located in the decrepit strip mall behind Micah's McDonald's. The inside smells like hairspray, and, mixed with the gaudy product labels and searing fluorescent lights, I'm given the sensation that I've been teleported directly to the 90s. I said a resounding no to dyeing my hair, but agreed to help Micah dye his. My mother is exuberant. I never let her touch my hair anymore, so Micah's desire to dye his has come as quite a treat to her. Meanwhile, I'm standing apart from everyone else, my overlong bangs fall into my eyes so no one has to look at my brokenness.
A million miles away I can hear my mom helping Micah choose a hair dye and explaining what effects it's going to have if he doesn't bleach it, he's afraid of the bleach. My mom buys the dye for Micah, this wouldn't be notable but he puts up a fight until she steps her entire tiny body in front of his towering form at the counter and pays while the cashier laughs.
"I like you, Micah." She says as we leave the shop, "I think I'll adopt you as my third son." He laughs.
"Thank you, Mai." He motions toward her with the tub of vivid purple hair dye.
She smiles.
"Will, you drive us back." She says to me.
"Absolutely not." I reply.
"Can I?" Micah asks.
"Do you have a license?"
"Of course."
Micah drives. And sings. And makes eye contact with me in the rearview mirror.
They tease me from the front seat about being 17 years old without a drivers license. I don't care. Vaguely I wonder how Micah acquired the license, but I don't ask with my mother present. The question more than likely will spin him up into a tangent, and I can't keep up the conversational front with my mom watching.
After that, mom has to show Micah how to apply the hair dye, and I have half a mind to go eat a brownie and stare unseeingly at a wall while they do that, but then she's got me by the wrist, stuffed a sort of cheap plastic paintbrush tool into my hand, and begins instructing me on how to section off and paint hair dye into Micah's fluffy hair.
"I'm going to ruin his hair." I say dispassionately.
"This stuff is so mild, the worst you could do is not dye it at all." She tells me, and then she vanishes. Alone, I now have to stand behind Micah in total silence, painting his hair and avoiding occasional eye contact with him in the mirror.
"What are you thinking about?" He asks after a few minutes of this.
"I'm thinking about not fucking this up." My mom literally does hair and nails for a living, she didn't have to assign me this job. She probably had ulterior motives.
"That all?"
"Yep." Nope.
"Are you lying?"
"Yep... wait."
A loud laugh bursts out of his mouth and a bit of purple goop flies from the end of my brush.
"I mean no." I grumble
"Will, have you ever heard of a Freudian Slip."
"Please be quiet."
He chuckles while I blush. After a long and messy process of trial and error, the application of purple gunk to Micah's hair finishes, and he gets to wear this incredible plastic hair net that I don't hesitate to make fun of.
"I'm putting this on my Instagram story." I taunt, even though the occasional twinges to my ribs are reminding me that association with Micah online at this particular moment are probably not the best thing I could be doing.
STAI LEGGENDO
The Way This Feels
Teen FictionWill Young is shy. He wears all black, and he would rather live in his thoughts than in the real world. Micah Simon-Anders falls in love way too easy. He's loud, and larger than life. Everyone in town knows him from his for-no-reason-at-all wildly...
