The Girl
Lennon and I spent an hour that afternoon looking at pictures on Instagram and holding up swatches of colored strands of hair to my face to see what color would suit me best. Lennon preferred warm colors, often suggesting various shades of pink or red. Her favorite was a bright crimson, saying I’dlook just like a real-life Poison Ivy with red hair and those gorgeous green eyes.I didn’t want to look like Poison Ivy, though. I wanted to look like me. Feel likeme. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever felt like myself before. I’d always felt like maybe I wore someone else’s skin because nothing ever feltjust rightabout me. I wanted a color to help me feel a little more like myself. I just wasn’t sure what “myself” felt like.
“I like red, but it makes me feel spicy, so I don’t think I’d want my hair to be red all the time. No one should be fired up twenty-four seven. A girl needs to relax sometimes.”
“Spicy, huh? Ooookay, what about a shade of green?”
“Mold, peas, and boogers are green. Pass.”
Lennon sighed. “Okay, no mold, peas, boogers, or spice. You didn’t like any of the pics I found on Insta either, and those were mostly pinks…you said your favorite color was blue?”
I shook my head. “No, blue just makes me feel happy. My favorite color is kinda blue, kinda purple. It’s a comfy color, but it makes me feel happy too.”
Lennon rose from her perch on my bed and walked over to her case of hair supplies and rummaged through the contents. She hummed and tsked to herself while shuffling through bottles of dye before walking back over with two tubes in her hands.
“Okay, if we mix this ultra marine blue with this violet, it should make like… an indigo color. Does that sound good to you?”
I rolled the word around in my mouth like a marble. Indigo.Indigo. Innndigooo. Yep, that was it. Indigo sounded perfect.
“Oh yeah,” I replied with a grin.
TV shows and movies did me dirty. Like a major disservice. I had no idea it took solongto dye hair. You could probably add up the time from all the makeover montages I’d seen, and it wouldn’t even put a dent in how long I’d been waiting to wash this dye out. It had been eons, and I was impatient to see the results of Lennon’s hard work. The girl really had an eye for color and what would look good on whom. She showed me looks she had curated before, and I had to say I was impressed. I mean, I had no idea that looks could even be curated or what curated meant, so maybe it was easy to impress me. Still, I could tell that Lennon had an artistic flair that lit her up inside.
I couldn’t stop fidgeting, waiting for the dye to be ready to rinse off. Lennon couldn’t stand watching me fidget, so while we waited for thecolor to finish setting in, she painted our nails (a matte black with a silver accent nail on my middle fingers for me, and cherry bomb red for her) and then went through my meager wardrobe to help me find an outfit for our girls’ night. I hadn’t been shopping since I didn’t have any money, so I was extremely limited in my choices. My wardrobe mostly consisted of shorts, T-shirts, and workout clothes that were slightly too small for me. I had a pair of athletic shoes that a nice club girl named Winnie had given me, but I still usually wore my boots unless I was running.
Ellis’s old clothes sat, untouched, in the bottom drawer of the dresser in my room. She had fun taste, and I’d have loved to wear a few of her outfits, but it just didn’t seem worth upsetting Priest again. Underneath all his angry growls was a sea of pain, and I just didn’t have it in me to hurt him on purpose. Someone that sad should get hugs, not shoves…wearing his sister's clothes in front of him felt like a shove. Maybe the next time I saw him, I could give him a hug and let him know I got it. I sometimes got in my angry feelings, and I knew what it was like to be so mad and hurt and not be able to do anything about it. It fucking sucked balls.
“Okay!” Lennon’s voice snapped me out of my reverie, in which Priest whispered in my ear in his smoky, growly voice that I gave the very best hugs he’d ever huggled. “Time to rinse! Now, I want to do a big reveal at the end so I can see your reaction. Go ahead and close your eyes, and don’t open them till I tell you. I mean it, no peeking!” I obediently closed my eyes and allowed Lennon to lead me into the bathroom, where we could rinse the dye out in the sink. She had shown me pictures of a style that she thought would be cute and wanted me to try. As long as my hair was long enough for me to pull into a ponytail to keep it out of my face and off my neck while I exercised, I didn’t really care what style she chose.
I told her so, pointing out that I usually cut my own hair so I didn’t know what kind of styles there were. I trusted her opinion, but she talked me through the process as she trimmed and shaped my ends and added layers for volume. As she washed and cut and styled my hair, a feeling of relaxation and contentment washed over me. I sighed, tipping my headthis way and that as Lennon needed to style my hair. All the while, my brain hummed contentedly.
Lennon’s hands moved confidently as she spoke about Ellis and the plans they had made to open a spa and resort one day, friends whom she had grown apart from after high school, a guy she met at the grocery store who flirted with her while in line at the deli, and how banana pudding cheesecake was her new favorite dessert. We had been getting to know each other for weeks, but this was the most Lennon had ever spoken about herself. Usually, she liked to ask me questions, so I enjoyed hearing about Lennon’s life. Especially when she told stories about Ellis. She looked so happy when she reminisced about her friend, and I took it as a sign of what a good person Ellis must have been for someone as awesome as Lennon to remember them so fondly.
“Hold your breath!” Lennon started spritzing my hair with spray, and I coughed as a sticky mist enveloped my head.
“Give a girl a second to inhale next time, damn!” Lennon snickered as she fluffed out my hair and fiddled with it, trying to make my unruly strands match the vision she had in her head. She must have been satisfied because I heard her taking pictures with her phone. Before and after photos were a must, apparently, for her project, so of course I allowed her to snap as many as she wanted.
“I don’t want to toot my own horn, but…..toot,toot, bitch, you look fabulous. Nope! Don’t you peek. I still have to do your makeup!”
I huffed impatiently. “Uhhg, spoilsport! Fine,” I whine. “I want something tasteful, maybe with a beauty mark on my upper lip in the shape of a heart? No bedazzling, rhinestones are so last season.” Lennon snickered and then proceeded to shlep about a pound of makeup to my face. She went all out, plucking my eyebrows and highlighting and exfoliating my lips before she painted them. Lennon even turned my back to the mirror when she applied mascara so I couldn’t sneak a look in the mirror. The heifer was thorough. No one could ever claim anything different.
“Alright, you’re done. Gimmie one more second before you look!” Lennon dashed out of the bathroom and returned holding a cobalt-blue Skyy vodka bottle. “Okay, Girl,” she said as she unscrewed the top of thebottle and held it up. “Here’s to new looks and new beginnings. Cheers!” She took a shot straight from the bottle and handed it to me.
“To new looks, new beginnings, and new friends!” I winked and tossed back my shot. Lennon turned me by my shoulders, and I caught my first glimpse of the new me. My eyes widened in shock and delight at the frickin’ art my hair now resembled. The bottom few inches of my wavy hair were a deep and vibrant shade of indigo. As my eyes roamed the length of my hair, I saw that Lennon had somehow pulled streaks of blue and violet up toward my face, like someone had dipped their hands into the last two arches of the rainbow and then run their fingers through my waves. My natural hair color was there too, more and more the higher my eyes rose—from the tips of my ears to the crown of my head was untouched. The entire effect was something Lennon called ombre, and it made me look like a mermaid. Not a nice one who saved drowning sailors but more like a siren who’d lure someone into rocky waters just so they could see the light leave their eyes up close.
I was so mesmerized by my hair that I was startled a bit when I finally met my own eyes in the mirror. My green eyes were luminescent, and Lennon's smoky shadow made them pop. Heavily lined with a cat-eye on my upper lid and a fringe of mascara-coated lashes, my eyes were accentuated and looked downright alluring. My lips were a glossy pink, giving me a plump cotton candy smile. When I asked her what look she was going for, Lennon had smirked.
Oh, honey. I’m giving you man-eater eyes and babydoll lips. The combo of innocent and sultry is like catnip to guys. You’ll be beating them off with a stick at the club.
Honestly, at the time, I was more focused on the whole beating people with a stick portion of her answer, but seeing the fruits of Lennon’s labor for myself, I understood what she meant. I looked girly, but I also looked like the kind of poison that made a man die with a smile on his lips. The mixture of danger and innocence perfectly encapsulated me. I was dangerous, but I was also relatively new to the world as a free woman, and I had yet to experience a lot. I wanted it all.
Lennon shifted her weight from one foot to the other behind me, nervously waiting for my verdict.
“Is it too much? I was going for a vampy nymph look, like a water sprite who moonlights as a hitman. Do you like it?” I turned to look at Lennon, who was biting her bottom lip and wringing her hands together.
“I don’t like it.” Lennon looked like she was about to burst into tears, so I hastily added, “I freaking love it! You’re a Bobdamn genius, Lennon!” Lennon squealed happily before enveloping me in a huge hug.
Pulling back, she fluffed my hair over my shoulders and said, “Indigo looks good on you.” Lennon gulped down another vodka shot before she returned the bottle and turned to the mirror. “My turn,” she said with a smirk.
