The Art of Getting Stared At (26 page)

“What kind of dumb-ass question is that?”

“Breanne thinks so.”

“Like I said. Dumb. Ass.”

“You haven't answered the question.” Losing my hair has turned me paranoid.

“You don't look like a transvestite.” But she won't look at me.

My heart does a nasty lurch. “What
do
I look like?”

She's silent.

“Come on.”

“Like you're at the awkward first-date stage,” she blurts out.

Now
I'm
confused. “What are you talking about?”

We slow down. The coffee shop is only two doors away. “Like that first date when you like the guy a lot but you're not quite sure it's going to work out only you want it to so you try a little too hard.”

Huh?
Sometimes letting Lexi talk is the only way to figure out the puzzle of what she's saying. But this morning it's not working. “I don't get it.”

“It's like you've finally given up pretending you don't care what you look like.” We stop in front of the door. “But you're in that awkward ‘trying too hard and going overboard and messing up' stage.”

If she thinks I'm awkward now, how about when all
my hair falls out? I grab the door handle. “I'm getting tattooed.”

She follows me inside. “Are you
nuts
? Have you
seriously
lost your mind?”

Behind the counter, the barista shouts, “One large pumpkin latte, half sweet, double shot.”

I glance around the room. More than half the tables are taken. It's way too crowded. And too public. I can't tell her here.

“My God, Sloane, those needles can give you AIDS, hepatitis, even tuberculosis. The Mayo Clinic did this study—”

“Sssh!” I interrupt. Like I need the guy in front of us to hear. “You don't understand—”

“No,
you
don't understand!” Lexi raises her voice to talk over me. “This Mayo Clinic study found people got syphilis, tetanus, one guy even got flesh-eating disease from a tattoo parlour.” She stares at me like I've sprouted a third arm. “What is
wrong
with you? First you get a hat, which—” Her turquoise earrings bob when she jerks her head at my fedora. “I hate to say it but it's not your best look.” I open my mouth but she cuts me off again. “And don't say Tannis could have found you a better one because she couldn't. Then you pluck your eyebrows until they look like threads. Now you want a
tattoo
?”

The guy in front of us moves on. We step up to the counter.

“What's wrong with tattoos?” the server asks with a smile. Given that she has about a dozen piercings in her face, lime-green shadow framing her eyes, and some kind of twisty creature inked along the right side of her neck, she is not the best person to argue my case.

“I am trying to save my friend from making a ridiculous mistake,” Lexi tells her.

“It's not ridiculous if you go to the right place,” the server responds. “I know someone—”

Oh
man. Everybody
knows someone. I cut her off. “I'll have a tall strong to go, please.” We'll walk over to the playground; I'll tell her there. “And no cream, so top the cup up.” I probably should have started with the diagnosis and led up to the eyebrows but my run-in with the Queen of Skanks has left me somewhat—okay majorly—obsessed.

“I'll have a cinnamon dolce latte with a double shot of espresso and extra whipping cream.”

“To go,” I remind the barista.

Lexi pouts. “Can't we stay? It's cold out.”

“No. And FYI, a plain coffee would have been faster.”

“FYI back. When my best friend tells me she's about to indulge in potentially deadly behaviour, I need sugar.” She pulls out her cell, does a quick surf. “Listen to this. It's from the Mayo site. ‘Few states have hygiene regulations to ensure safe tattooing practices and—'”

I pluck the phone from her hand.

“Hey!” She lunges for it.

I put it behind my back. “I'm not talking about a body tattoo. I'm talking about my forehead.”

“Last time I checked, your forehead
was
part of your body. And who gets a permanent tattoo on their forehead anyway? That's just stupid.”

A middle-aged blonde in black sweatpants taps me on the shoulder. “You have to be eighteen to get a tattoo in the state of California,” she says. “At least from a place that's legitimate.”

Oh my
God.
Is nothing private? I shove Lexi's phone in my pocket.

Her jogging partner pipes up. “But your mother can write you a note, dear. I did for my daughter. She got a green and blue dragonfly.” She smiles. “It's pretty but I think she should have picked the ladybug.”

Lexi and I exchange glances. The server returns, rings in our order.

“I'm seriously worried about you,” Lexi whispers after we pay and walk over to the barista bar. At least she's whispering. “Do you have a vitamin deficiency or something? You're acting totally weird.”

“Skinny peppermint mocha,” the barista yells. I wait for a woman in a beige trench to take her drink and leave. “There's a reason,” I murmur.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You're the smart one and you'll never be pretty but you don't care what you look like because you're better than that and it's substance over style.” She waves her hands in the air. “Blah, blah, yada, yada.”

Her words jolt me. It's like listening to a tape of myself. A self I hardly recognize anymore. I wish I could turn back time. Be who I used to be.

“But I can't believe you'd get a tattoo just to make a dumb point about beauty.” Lexi's face is flushed with colour; her nostrils are flared. A total giveaway that she's slipping into what my mom calls her overwrought, histrionic state.

“Double espresso.” A guy in a yellow construction hat steps up to the counter. We take a few steps forward; our drinks are up next.

“Tattoos can lead to scarring.”

My God, if she's having a meltdown over a tattoo how
will she handle my hair loss? More to the point, how will I handle her? Maybe I shouldn't tell her.

“They can lead to dermatitis. Psoriasis even.” Her voice is starting to climb. The two women in jogging suits are behind us again. I motion for Lexi to tone it down. “They'll be a problem if you ever need an MRI,” she adds in a slightly lower tone. “One girl I know said hers set off the airport security alarm. And who wants
that
?”

I need to tell someone. I can't go through this alone. Especially not with people like Breanne staring at me and making my life miserable. And who better to hold my hand when I get inked than my best friend? The fact that she's a histrionic hypochondriac is a plus. She'll insist the needles are clean and she'll be the first to tell me if they're screwing up.

But now that I've thought through some of my anxiety, I realize the tattoo isn't my only worry. My more immediate worry is getting through the rest of today. Sitting through math. Seeing people. Breanne again. Isaac maybe.

“You need to rethink this, Sloane.” She holds out her hand. “Give me my phone back.”

I hand it over, and reach for my own. I can't say this out loud. I just can't. So I text her.

I have something to tell U.

She shoots me an “are you for real?” look. “Seriously?” she screeches. “You're standing right beside me and you have to
text
me?”

The blonde behind me says, “Oh, my daughter and her boyfriend do that all the time.” Her friend laughs.

I text:
That's why
.

Lexi answers:
R we 5 yrs old now?

My fingers fly over the keys.
I'm losing my hair.

She starts to laugh. “Right. Like I believe th—”

I pinch her arm.

“Oww!” she yelps.

The barista slaps our drinks onto the counter. “Tall dark, filled to the top. Cinnamon dolce latte, double shot, extra whip.”

“Get a lid,” I tell Lexi. “We're going for a walk.”

“So tell me. What kind of weird-ass disease makes your hair fall out?” Lexi demands when we're sitting in the park.

The picnic table is hard beneath my butt. I stare across the playground to the swings where a little girl in a bright red jacket is being pushed by her mom. Nearby, a boy in yellow rain boots claps his hands and runs after a black crow. I refused to tell Lexi until we got here, but now I can't bring myself to say the word.

She scoops impatiently at the whipping cream in her coffee. “Come on. What is it?”

Here goes. I sip my coffee for courage and then say, “It's called alopecia and I've been to two doctors and it's been confirmed so don't even think about suggesting I have something else.”

“And it makes you bald?”

My heart skips a beat. “Yes.”

Her stir stick stops moving. “Let me see.”

My stomach clenches. I glance at the mom and her two kids. They aren't looking. And even if they were, they're far enough away. I look back at Lexi. She's waiting.

I've come this far. There's no going back. I take off my
hat, run a finger through my hairspray-crusted strands, and slowly turn my head from side to side.

Lexi stares. Her eyes go wide and her mouth opens. Then it closes. And opens a second time. She looks like a guppy. “Oh. My. God.” When she leans forward to take a closer look, her breath is hot on my neck. “I think I read about that once. Don't you lose your fingernails and toenails too?”

What?
“No. Just my hair.”
Just.

“All of it?”

My throat constricts. I take a deep, steadying breath. “Yeah, apparently so. The question isn't
if
. The doctor's ninety-nine percent sure it'll all fall out. The only question is
when
.”

She blinks up at me, her face inscrutable.

“You can't tell anybody,” I say.

“Okay.”

“Seriously.
Not anybody
,” I repeat fiercely. “Kim called Peterson and told her and she's telling some of the teachers so they'll let me wear a hat in class.”

She groans.

“I know, right? And you know how teachers talk. This is
private.
Nobody finds out.”

She bites her lip. “Hiding it's going to be hard.”

“Yeah, well. I'm used to hard.” I look away, watch the mom lift the little boy onto the teeter-totter.

“No wonder you wanted a hat.”

“Yeah.”

Lexi continues to study me; my scalp burns under her scrutiny. Just when I'm about to tell her to quit looking, she says, “A bald model opened a fashion show in India last year. And one of my boss's favourite supermodels of the
nineties—I think she was Canadian—was bald with ink on her head.”

Lexi's trying to make me feel better. I bite my lower lip, fight the urge to cry.

“Being bald isn't the end of the world,” she adds matter-of-factly.

“Maybe if you're a famous supermodel.” But the knot in my throat starts to dissolve. She's not as grossed out as I expected. “Or a fat, middle-aged man.”

She giggles softly. Then her eyes widen. “You didn't
pluck
your eyebrows. You
lost
them.”

“Bingo. Give the girl a prize.”

“That means—”

“Yeah,” I interrupt. “My lashes are probably next. And that's more of an issue because, according to the doctor, that can lead to complications.”

“Like what?”

I shiver. Damn, it's cold. I put my hat back on. “Colds, foreign particles in your eyes, that kind of thing.”

“What about your body hair?” she blurts out. “Will you lose that too?”

I hesitate. Here comes another gross-out factor. But if I can't tell my best friend ... “They don't know for sure.” I clutch my coffee so hard the paper cup dimples. “But probably.”

Another nervous giggle. “Think of the pain you'll avoid from waxing.” She won't meet my eyes. Instead, she stares into the milky brew of her coffee. “So, like, will you ... are you ...?”

“I'm not contagious, Lexi.”

She flushes. “That's not what I meant.”

“But you were thinking it.”

The flush spreads down her neck. “No, I wasn't. I was wondering”—her voice starts to tremble—“if it's the sign of something more serious and you'll get worse and die.”

I'm touched. And surprised. I hadn't expected Lexi to make that connection. I've underestimated her. “I'm not going to die. It's not fatal. Just butt ugly, that's all.”

“Thank
God
.” Our attention is diverted by a howl of indignation from the teeter-totters. By the time Lexi speaks again, her voice is back to normal. “And it's good about the not contagious part too because eventually, you know, I would have wondered.”

I snort. “Eventually, as in maybe a minute from now.”