Today, he was cutting Dara’s hair.
“I don’t understand how you managed to screw it up this badly,” Leo said, dragging his fingers through Dara’s uneven curls and tugging his head to one side. Dara could see Leo’s expression reflected in the mirror over his dresser: baffled but amused. “Were you using a hatchet?”
Dara hated the way he looked when he blushed, which wasn’t often. Blushing always made him look younger. “Just scissors. Those scissors.”
“Those are kitchen shears, Dara.”
“Well, that’s what I could find on short notice, considering I’m not allowed to leave this building.”
“I would have gone out and got you something better, if you’d asked.” Leo tugged one of Dara’s curls almost straight, then let go, watching it bounce back toward his head.
Dara made a face at him in the mirror. “Stop playing with my hair.”
“Sorry. It’s justreallybad, you know.”
Dara did know. He had eyes. He could see how he looked, hair longer on one side of his head, cut far too close in other patches. But he’d woken up this morning and looked at his reflection and decided he couldn’t live one more day like this. His hair was too long, messy—andnotin a good way—sweater overlarge with a hole in the sleeve, designer but two seasons out of date. He didn’t recognize himself. The boy in the mirror lived in a tiny one-room apartment off Geer Street, uneaten takeout rotting in the sink, his magic decayed and blown away with the last of his dignity. The boy in the mirror wasn’t killing Calix Lehrer anytime soon.
“Can you fix it?”
Leo picked up the kitchen shears, snapping the blades together twice. “Think so. It’s probably still not going to look good, though—I’ll be honest. This isn’t exactly my wheelhouse.”
He went slowly, at least, considering for several seconds before he clipped. Dara had his teeth gritted so hard his jaw hurt, almost flinching each time the shears snapped shut.
“I used to go to a specialist,” Dara said a few minutes in, as Leo frowned at the side of his head. “Someone who knew how to do curly hair. They used some new fancy technique from France. I don’t know how much it cost—I always put it on the card—but it was a lot.”
He held his breath, braced for the inevitable reaction: for Leo to look up or stiffen with anticipation, waiting for Lehrer’s name. Notthecard.Hiscard. But Leo just clipped another lock of hair and didn’t even glance away from his scissors.
“Lucky you, then,” Leo said. “I’ll give you the friends-and-family discount.”
Dara clasped his hands together in his lap, digging the edge of one thumbnail into flesh. He wished he had telepathy. He wanted to dip his fingers into Leo’s mind and trail them through all those thoughts, opaque now and hidden behind Leo’s skull. It used to be so easy to know what people wanted. To give them what they wanted.
He’d thought he’d known, with Leo. He’d tried. And he’d been mistaken.
Now, there was no way of telling if Leo was thinking about what Dara said—thinking about Dara using Lehrer’s card, Dara having the kind of life that meant hecoulduse Lehrer’s card.
And maybe Leo didn’t want to hear any of this ... but the confession rose in Dara’s throat all the same. Like bile.
A black apprehension rippled through the pit of Dara’s stomach. He gripped his fists tighter and held the words on the tip of his tongue, heavy as coins. Leo snipped another curl and ran his fingers through Dara’s hair, mussing it enough to check his progress.
“I want it short,” Dara said at last, because it was now or never. Now, or he didn’t think he’d ever muster the nerve to say it. He lifted a hand and touched one of the longer ends of his hair, twisting the strands around his knuckle.
“How short?”
Now or never.And Dara was tired of staying silent.
Dara wet his lips. “When I was fifteen, I started getting drunk early. I’d open my first bottle around three in the afternoon. It meant I was wasted by the time he got home.”
Leo’s gaze caught his in the mirror, his hands frozen with scissors still in grasp. Dara looked back at him.
“Well. Eventually, he got sick of waiting for me to sober up. So one night he grabbed me by the hair”—Dara tugged at that lock twisted round his finger, tugged until it hurt—“and he dragged me into the bathroom, and he held my head under in a sink of cold water until I couldn’t breathe. Until I was choking. He only let go after I stopped fighting, that moment right before I would’ve passed out.” Dara lifted one shoulder, dropped it down. “But I guess it worked. I wasn’t drunk anymore.”
Leo was still staring at him. He didn’t say anything. Dara’s lips curled in a bitter smile.
“Cut it short enough he couldn’t do that again.”
He heard Leo inhale, deeply enough his shoulders visibly shifted. His knuckles had gone white around the handle of the scissors. The current running through Dara’s body felt lethal—but he stayed where he was, sat there in the chair, holding Leo’s gaze, until Leo looked away first.
Dara shut his eyes, just for a moment. And for once, the black undersides of his eyelids weren’t painted with images from old memories. It was soft and quiet. When he opened them again, this small room didn’t feel quite as suffocating as before.
