Not Pretty Enough (10 page)

“I have no idea what you’re
talking about.”

“It’s a family thing. Those
Clemenfields.” I fake a laugh.

Lloyd is looking at me like I’ve
got a screw loose.

“Well, it was great to see you,”
I say, hoping to get away before he can question me any more. “I should go and
find my uncle. He’s in, um, McDonalds. He’s waiting for me.”

“Do you know your way back to
town?”

I nod. “Enjoy the rest of your
summer.” I walk away as fast as I can. I have to get out of here before he asks
any more questions.

“Wait up.” He runs after me.
“I’ll walk with you.”

He will
?

Oh, God.

Oh, crap.

Yes, Lloyd Layton walking into
town with me is my idea of heaven, but Uncle Eddie is supposed to be waiting for
me and I don’t have an Uncle Eddie. Or Earl. Or whatever the hell my
non-existent uncle’s name is supposed to be.

Although it’s hard to do so, I
turn to Lloyd and say, “You really don’t have to, you know. I know my way
perfectly well.”

I can’t believe I’m voluntarily
giving up time with him.

“It’s okay. I need to pop into
the phone shop anyway.”

I nod. Okay. I guess I’ll just
have to get rid of him before we get to McDonalds. Not a problem. I think.

But I have no idea what to say
to him. I tell myself that it’s because I’m nervous.

“What are you up to for the rest
of the summer?” he asks.

“Nothing much,” I say. “Hanging
out with Debs and Ewan. You?”

“I’m going to Hawaii for two
weeks. I leave on Monday.”

“Oh, right. With your parents?”

“Yes.” He nods. “It’s awesome
there. Have you been?”

“To Hawaii?” Hah, not much
chance of that happening on our budget. “Er, not lately.”

“How many other places are you
checking out?”

“What?”

“Other places? To move to?”

“Oh, right. Um, a few,” I lie.
“We’ll probably stay where we are though. My mum doesn’t want the upheaval.”

“Yes, moving is quite a task, I
gather. We just paid people to do it for us.”

“Ah, well, some of us don’t have
it that easy.”

Lloyd smiles. “I know I’m
lucky.”

“You are,” I say.

We’ve reached the town by now.

“Well, it was great to see you.
I can take it from here.”

“No, no, I insist on making sure
you get to Uncle Earl-Eddie safely. I think I should give him a piece of my
mind about leaving young girls on their own in strange areas. It’s not safe.”

“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I’ll
tell him you said so.”

The yellow M is looming in the
distance, and I know I have to get rid of Lloyd pronto.

“You know, you should get to
your phone shop,” I say. “They must be closing soon.”

“Chessie, it’s not even four
yet. They’re open until eight.”

Oh. “Well, um, my uncle and I
have to get the bus home. I don’t think he’ll want to hang around chatting for
ages. He doesn’t like crowded places.”

“But he likes manholes?”

“I’m not sure that anybody
likes
manholes, but at least they’re not crowded.”

For some reason Lloyd finds this
funny and cracks up laughing. If I can make him laugh then surely he must like
me a little bit. I’ve read that boys like girls who can make them laugh.

“You know, I never noticed how
funny you can be, Chessie,” he says.

Wow. Was that a compliment? Did
Lloyd Layton just compliment me?

I love this. I love talking to
him, and laughing with him, but I have to get rid of him. It kills me, but I
have
to. Otherwise he’ll find out I was stalking him
and he’ll never so much as look at me again, let alone laugh at me.

“Well,” I say. “It’s been great
talking to you but I should really run into Superdrug before I meet Uncle
Eddie.”

“You’re not buying more hair
dye, are you?”

That stops me in my tracks. He
remembers that? Damn. I was hoping he’d forgotten the little axe in the head
hair disaster of mine.

“No,” I say cautiously. “Why?”

“Because I don’t like your hair
dark like that. You looked better as a blonde.”

Oh my god. He thinks I looked better
before? Oh my god. He thinks I looked better blonde. That means he has actually
noticed my hair colour and thought about it. I thought it had all been in vain.
Debs is going to die when I tell her.

Now I really do have to go into
Superdrug. To buy some bleach.

There’s just one problem.
Superdrug is right near McDonalds. In fact, it’s a bit too near.

As we approach I wonder what the
hell to do. I do have one idea but it’s not something I would say to Lloyd out
of choice. It’s not really something I would say to any boy out of choice, but
I know it will send him running for the hills.

First things first though, Uncle
Earl. I think fate is throwing me a bone, because right outside McDonalds there
is a forty-something looking bloke, who is looking at his watch.

“That’s Uncle Earl,” I say to
Lloyd. I wave in the man’s direction. He sees me waving, looks around blankly
to see who I am waving at and then point blank ignores me. “Oh well, he didn’t
see me. But at least I won’t lose him again. Anyway, thanks for your help.”

Lloyd is staring intently at the
bloke waiting outside McDonalds. I have to make him leave before whoever the
bloke is really waiting for turns up.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” I
say. “But I need to go in here. I need to buy some, um, you know, women’s
things.”

“Huh?”

“You know…
Unmentionables
. Time of the month and all that.”

The effect is immediate and
exactly as I expected.

“Oh, right,” Lloyd says,
instantly backing away. “Well, it was good to see you. I do need to get to that
shop before it shuts.”

“Have a good holiday,” I say.

“You too. Bye.”

With that, he is practically
running down the street as fast as his legs will carry him.

I slip into Superdrug and start
looking at the hair dye.

Could this day have gone any
better? I mean, apart from the whole thinking my uncle was trapped down a
manhole part. That aside, I not only got to talk to Lloyd Layton and have an
intelligent adult conversation with him, but I have a clear mission as well.

I have to go blonde.

It can’t be
that
difficult, right?

CHAPTER 18

September.

Now that I have my brand new blonde hair – I still can’t
believe it went right, by the way – I’ve decided that I am going to be a little
bit more experimental with it. I’m going to be more daring. Not a single teacher
ever commented about my brown hair or the fact that I’d dyed it, so maybe the
school rules aren’t as important as they used to be.

Debs and I just happened to have
found some semi-permanent bright coloured hair dyes on sale on our last
shopping trip before school starts again, and I got one of each colour.

It’s September, the year is
nearly over, and so far I haven’t achieved a single thing I set out to achieve.
Okay, Lloyd Layton knows who I am, but he knows me as
The
Crazy Girl
(and that’s being kind) rather than
His
Future Wife
, so there is work to be done. I have to do something bold.
Something daring. Something that will make him notice me. Plus he’s been to
Hawaii on holiday, probably surrounded by hot, blonde surfer chicks for weeks
on end, he’s hardly going to notice me after them, is he?

So, I am going to dye my hair
blue.

Only the ends though. About two
inches or so up from the bottom. It’s not like it’s going to be that drastic or
anything, but I need an edge. Just a little something to make me stand out from
the crowd and make Lloyd look at me. Make him think that maybe there’s more to
me than he thinks there is.

He sits right behind me in
French, which is our first lesson tomorrow morning, so I know he will get the
full effect of my hair.

Those hair dyes were such a
bargain. Debs and I were shopping in town last week, and there’s this new shop
opened up. They had loads of these hair dyes for a few quid each – the
shopkeeper mumbled something about trying to get rid of them quickly – so I bought
one of each colour, spent all my money and had to borrow the bus fare home from
Debs. I don’t know why Debs didn’t buy any herself. All she did was say, “I
don’t know why you need to mess with your hair all the time, Chessie. It looks
normal for a change, leave it alone.”

But all the girls in our school
leave their hair alone. I like changing mine, and I want Lloyd to realise that
I’m not like all the other girls. If he thinks I’m like all the others then
he’ll never like me, because he could go out with any one of them, and they’re
all much prettier and much smarter than I am. I have to give him a reason to
choose me.

I have to be different.

I saw a popstar on TV a few
months ago with blue-tipped hair, but my hair was brown at the time, and I knew
that blue would never show up on brown hair. I want it to be striking, so now
my hair is blonde again, it will stand out. I know I’ve had some hair dye
related disasters in the past, but I’m convinced that this isn’t going to be
one of them. It’s not rocket science. All I’ve got to do is pour dye into a
bowl, pull my hair forwards and dip the ends in. Even I can’t make a disaster
out of that.

I’ve locked myself in the
bathroom, amid threats from my mum that if I get expelled from school for this
tomorrow not to expect any sympathy from her.

This hair-dyeing thing is really
simple. I don’t know why I’ve had such trouble with it in the past. I’ve
stripped down to my underwear, and I’ve got a bath run ready. As soon as my dye
is on, I’ll clip my hair up and then jump in the bath while I wait for it to
develop. I’m not only dyeing my hair, but I’m saving time too.

I have my bowl full of hair dye
resting on the toilet seat, and I bend over it to dip my hair in. Really, what
could be easier? If I’d have known that dyeing the ends of your hair was this
easy I would have tried it years ago, back when my hair was naturally blonde
and not something out of a bottle.

Oh. Wait a minute. That can’t be
right. I pull one section of hair out of the bowl, and it’s not looking very blue.
In fact, it’s looking decidedly green. Oh dear. The rest is the same. This
can’t be good. My hair looks like seaweed. I can’t have it looking like this.
It’s meant to be blue, not puke-green.

I do the only thing I can think
of. I jump straight into the bath. The dye isn’t permanent, so if I wash it off
as quickly as I put it on, hopefully it hasn’t had any time to develop yet, so
it will wash out straightaway. I panic a little as I jump in the bath and throw
my head under the water. I begin scrubbing the ends of my hair together with
shampoo, and I’m so pleased when I realise it’s actually working, the dye is
coming out. The water has turned blue, but when I’m satisfied that all the dye
is gone, I lay back and relax in the steaming water. Disaster averted, for
once. Who says I’m not good in a crisis?

In my panic to get the dye out,
I realise that I’m still wearing my bra and knickers. I unfasten my bra and as
I go to slip it off, I realise something. My white bra is blue. Actually, now
I’m looking, my hands seem a little blue too. It’s not cold so it must be from
the dye. I try to wipe it off but it doesn’t move. Uh oh. I had better get out
of this water before I dye my entire body blue. I jump out almost as fast as I
jumped in, wrap myself in a towel quickly and try to scrub some of the dye from
my body. When I pluck up the courage to look down at myself and check, I’m glad
to see it’s not as bad as I’d thought.

I may have wanted to make Lloyd
see I’m different, but turning myself into a Smurf would not be the way to do
it.

I still look a little cold, but
I don’t think it’ll be noticeable tomorrow, and at least the blue-green dye
came out of the ends of my hair. I think that was a little bit of genius to
jump right in the bath. It’s just lucky that I had one already run, otherwise
the dye would have had time to develop, and then it would never have come out.
I get dressed and pull the towel off my head, then I pick up my brush and hair
bands, and eventually look up at myself in the mirror.

At first, I think my mum has
replaced our bathroom mirror with one of those fairground things that make you
look all wonky, but this one makes you look like you have green hair. Hah.
That’s really clever. It must be her idea of a practical joke.

I start brushing my hair out
when I realise something. It’s not just in the mirror. I pull my hair across my
shoulder to have a proper look.

Oh. My. God.

My hair is green.

It’s not a joking mirror. My
hair is actually green. All of it. All over.

Oh crap.

It’s because I washed the blue
out in the bath and put my head underwater, the dye must’ve taken to all of my
hair. I hadn’t thought to check my hair. I just thought it had taken to my
skin.

Oh God, what am I going to do?
It’s eight o’clock on a Sunday night, I have to go to school tomorrow, and the
only other hair dyes I have are pink, red or green. I can’t dye over it. I
wonder if it will come out with another shampoo? The dye is semi-permanent, and
it’s not like it’s bright green, it’s more of an off-green, in fact, it looks
like I dyed it green on purpose, and now it’s faded.

I scrub the bath around like my
life depends on it, making sure there is no dye lingering in there this time
and I set about running another bath. This time, of course, like anything is
ever going to go right for me, I’ve used all the hot water up in my first bath,
so it’s cold water or nothing. I’ve lost all feeling in my legs approximately
three seconds after getting in the bath. Now I can’t tell whether they’re blue
from hair dye or because they’re about to drop off from frostbite. But I grin
and bear it, because the only thing that I can think of is far from the fantasy
of Lloyd sitting behind me tomorrow morning and being impressed by my blue
ends. Instead is the reality of Lloyd sitting behind me and laughing because my
hair is the colour that you go when you’re about to throw up.

No wonder that shopkeeper wanted
to get rid of these quickly. I’d thought he’d meant that he wanted to make
space for new stock, but obviously he meant because they make your hair go the
colour of pea soup.

I scrub at my scalp and lather
my hair until I can’t take the cold anymore, then I jump out and wrap myself in
a towel while I shiver. I pull my clothes on because no matter how bad my hair looks,
there’s no way I can get back into another cold bath. I take the towel off with
trepidation.

Oh. It’s faded a little. Not as
much as I had hoped, but at least you can see little bits of the blonde through
now. It’s less of a seaweed green. Now it’s more of a seasick green.

“Che—” My mum cuts off abruptly
as I come downstairs. “Do you know your hair is green?”

I nod brightly. “I meant for it
to be this way.”

“Oh, right.” Mum looks at me
sympathetically. “So, what went wrong?”

I shrug. “The blue went green so
I washed it off in the bath and my whole head went green instead.”

“That was clever.”

“Ha ha,” I say, sarcastically.
Like I intended to dye my hair green. I don’t even like the colour green.