I never realized how much bullshit is bound to the bottom of your hair. How it carries with it the years and experiences, all it has witnessed, has endured. The reason you can’t let go of your past is that it’s still attached. That weight on your shoulders, the strain on your back and neck. It’s your dead ends.
Cut your hair! I’m going to scream it from the rooftops and while running down the street, all across America. Cut your hair!
“I love it. Sophie! I love it.”
“Here,” she says. She takes one of the many crystal bottles from the vanity and pours a drop of yellowish liquid into her palm, then rubs her hands together. She moves her hands through my hair, giving it some texture, some shine.
“You’re the best,” I tell her. “You’re everything.”
“Please,” she says, blushing.
When I get home the next day and show Ralph, he holds his face like Macaulay Culkin did in Home Alone.
“You like it?” I ask him.
He nods. He’s wearing a new hat Sophie made for him. It’s green and pointy and has a teeny pom-pom at the tip. He looks very, very cute.
“You’re such a good boy,” I tell him, tickling his chin. I sit on the couch and he climbs onto my lap. I pet his back with my index finger. I like the way his fuzz feels.
“I’m happy,” I say to him or maybe to myself. Then I say it again because it’s true and because I like the way it sounds.
VALENTINE’S
“There’s something different,” Oskar says, his eyes catching on mine. It’s early the next morning, and he’s rolling up the sleeves of his flannel while the espresso machine whirs behind him.
“My hair,” I say. “I cut it.”
He doesn’t say anything to this, just grunts and begins to steam milk.
“A compliment is common courtesy,” I say, delighted by my own audacity.
“Do you care what I think?” he asks, wiping a hand on his shoulder rag.
“No, not really.”
He grunts again. “Latte?”
“With honey.”
He taps the cup on the counter and pours the milk. Concentration wrinkles appear on his forehead.
“The cut looks good,” he says, still focused on the latte. “But it’s not the hair. It’s something else.”
“Oh,” I say.
He puts a lid on the cup and slides it toward me.
I hand him cash and wait for him to meet my eye again, but he doesn’t. A customer comes in behind me.
“Morning, Ed,” Oskar says. “Usual?”
I walk out to my car, considering the possibility that Oskar was flirting with me. Stranger things have happened.
I sink into the front seat and remove the lid from my latte to sip at the foam.
There’s a perfect heart. He made a heart with the milk.
He was flirting with me!
I’m smug in this belief until I get to school, where there are hearts all over the fucking place. Pink and red streamers. Paper roses. Everywhere.
Valentine’s Day is Friday.
I’d forgotten.
I’m not thrilled to be reminded in this manner.
The halls are unceremoniously undecorated in my wake. Tape unsticks. Streamers rip. A cardboard cupid gets decapitated.
Several students and a custodian bear witness to this mysterious instantaneous destruction.
“Looks like they, uh, need to use better adhesive,” I mumble as I do my best to pretend my subconscious is not wreaking havoc on the hard work of the student council.
I take shelter in my classroom, locking the door while I interrogate my emotional state.
I’ve always fancied myself a gold medalist in mental gymnastics. If there’s something that’s difficult to process, I’ve typically got no problem split leaping right over it. But that’s not going to work anymore, at least not if my avoidance manifests itself in very public supernatural tantrums.
I sit at my desk, running the sleek, blunt ends of my hair through my fingers. I close my eyes.
I grant myself permission to think about Sam.
I think about our first Valentine’s Day together. We decided to stay in and order Chinese food. He said it’d be romantic to spend it at home, where we were most comfortable, but I wondered if he’d waited too long to get a reservation. I wasn’t disappointed. Not really. I liked to be home with him.
After we finished eating, I went to dive into the box of chocolates he got me, but he insisted we have fortune cookies.
When I cracked open the first cookie, I realized why.
He’d written the fortunes. They said things like I love your smile and You’re the funniest person I know.