Red (3 page)

“I’m going to the gym after school. Coach says I should be able to bench about fifteen more pounds. Gotta work on my arms. Call you after.”

“Great.” Felicity gave him a quick kiss, then watched as he walked away. He already had really great arms.

The day passed in a blur of admiring looks, praise, and congratulations from her fellow students and teachers. Three giggling freshmen approached Felicity in the cafeteria and made her and Haylie promise to sign their yearbooks, which wouldn’t even arrive for another four weeks. Unlike Felicity, Haylie soaked up the attention. “Everyone needs celebrities to adore,” she announced. “We’re providing a valuable service to the school. We have to do our civic duty and let everyone gossip to their heart’s content.” Ivy responded with a sound that closely resembled that of a cat expelling a hairball.

Felicity tried hard to remember Haylie’s comment when she caught Sayuri Kwan and Marina lurking near her locker after school, stealing quick glances at her as they laughed and whispered.
They’re just talking about how much they wish they could switch places with me,
she told herself as she headed to the salon.
There’s no reason to worry.

Rouge-o-Rama was located in the Jefferson Building, where many of Scarletville’s dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents had their offices. The building’s main elevators stopped only on the first six floors. The salon was on the seventh, which looked like part of the roof from the outside. Felicity went to the third floor and waited until the hall was empty, then ducked into the women’s bathroom, marked
closed for renovations
. Once inside the room, which reeked of cheap floral air freshener, she approached a plain metal door near the back and pressed on a wall tile next to the doorknob. It flipped up to reveal a keypad, which always made Felicity feel like a secret agent. She pulled out her mom’s Post-it note, punched in that day’s salon code, and flipped the tile back down. The door unlocked with a click, and she pulled it open.

Behind the door was one of Rouge-o-Rama’s two private elevators. This one carried clients up, and the other, at the opposite side of the building, took them back down after their appointments. The other elevator let out on the second floor, which ensured that clients never accidentally met coming to and from the salon.

Felicity boarded the elevator and punched the only available button, and the car ascended to the top floor with its usual clanking and grinding noises. Rose opened the door almost immediately when Felicity rang the bell. “Hey, honey!” the stylist said, pulling her into an enthusiastic hug. “Congratulations on Miss Scarlet!”

“Thanks,” Felicity said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Of course you could’ve. You got in ’cause you deserved it, not just because of your hair. If it was
all
about red hair, they wouldn’t have chosen Ariel, right?”

“Yeah, but Ariel doesn’t have a chance. Is it even worth competing if you can’t possibly win? That’s so much work for nothing.”

“I think Ariel might disagree.” Rose shrugged. “Come inside. Let’s make you even more beautiful.”

Rose led Felicity into one of the salon’s two main rooms, handed her a smock, and went into the back to mix the dye. Contrary to all rumors, Rouge-o-Rama just looked like a regular hair salon. The walls of the main room were papered in a crimson and white pattern intended to hide errant flecks of red dye. The mirrors had decorative, low-wattage lightbulbs around the edges—Felicity had spent a lot of time posing in front of them as a kid, pretending she was a Hollywood starlet. It was a comfortable, warm space that made people feel optimistic about their hair, even if it wasn’t naturally red.

Felicity sat down in the chair and snapped on her smock, which had a big red rose printed on the front. After a few minutes, Rose came out shaking a plastic squeeze bottle, her gloved finger over the hole in the top. “So, are you excited about the competition?” she asked.

“Yeah, definitely. It’s going to be great.” Felicity tipped her chin up so Rose could smear Vaseline along her hairline to prevent accidental drips from dyeing her skin. It was slimy and cold, and she had to force herself not to pull away.

“What are you doing for your talent?” Rose started squeezing the dye onto the roots of Felicity’s hair, using a small paintbrush to spread it around evenly. The harsh chemical scent of it scratched at the inside of Felicity’s nose, the olfactory equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.

“I’ll tap-dance. That was Mom’s talent, too. I already learned a routine, just in case.”

“I can’t wait to see you strut your stuff. You’re all so talented. Katie, my youngest, is totally obsessed with the pageant this year. You should see her practicing her runway walk in the living room every night. It’s adorable how she idolizes you girls.” Rose grinned at Felicity in the mirror. “Is everyone treating you like a celebrity at school?”

“Yeah, most people.” But her brunette classmates’ cold stares were still fresh in her mind. She tried to figure out how to ask Rose if anyone could possibly know who frequented the salon, but she couldn’t think of a way to phrase the question that didn’t sound paranoid.

Rose brushed on one final squeeze of dye and stretched a plastic cap over Felicity’s hair. “Come on, it’s time for the dryer.”

Felicity tried to concentrate on reading
Macbeth
for her English assignment while the dye set, but it was hard to focus with so much on her mind. There was also something very disconcerting about reading the “Out, damned spot!” scene while her hair was drenched in blood-colored liquid. Eventually she just closed her eyes and listened to Rose’s radio, which informed her that Ruby Johansen, Scarletville’s fiftieth redheaded baby of the year, had just been delivered. Rose did little chores around the studio until the timer on the dryer went off, then led Felicity to the sink and started scrubbing out the dye.

“Rose?” Felicity asked timidly. Now that she couldn’t see her stylist’s face, it was easier to say things that might sound accusatory.

“Yes, honey?”

“I don’t want you to think I don’t trust you or anything, so please don’t take this the wrong way. But you would never tell anyone whose hair you dye, right?”

Rose’s fingers stopped moving against her head. “Of course not, Felicity. You know that. I signed a contract with your mom when you were just a little kid. I would never violate client confidentiality.”

“I mean, I didn’t think you would. I know you’re a professional and everything. But there’s no way that someone could accidentally find out who comes here, is there?”

Rose sighed. “I know you’re nervous because of the pageant, but you don’t need to worry, okay? Your hair looks so natural. If I didn’t color it myself, I’d think it was real.”

“Okay. You’re probably right.” Felicity started to relax a little as Rose resumed scrubbing at her scalp with strong, competent fingers. They were both careful. Nobody was going to unearth her secret.

When Felicity’s hair was clean and conditioned, Rose spritzed it with sandalwood oil to hide the smell of the chemicals and blew it dry. She carefully inspected Felicity’s hairline for runaway flecks of dye, then removed her smock and gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze to show there were no hard feelings. “Good to see you,” she said. “I’ll email your mom the bill for today. Congratulations, and don’t stress, okay? You look beautiful. I’ll see you in two weeks, and we’ll recolor all the way to the ends.”

“Okay.” Felicity gave her roots a quick check in the mirror. They looked bright and coppery and natural. She smiled at Rose. “Thanks a lot. I’ll see you soon.”

She boarded the down elevator and rode it to the second floor, where it opened onto a small room made up with mops and brooms and a large corroded sink. The only way it differed from a normal supply closet was that under a sliding section of dirty wall tiles, there was a concealed screen showing video feed from two security cameras in the hall. Felicity saw three men in suits passing by, and she waited in the closet until they were out of sight.

Just as she pushed the door open to leave, her sunglasses slipped off the top of her head and clattered to the floor. She ducked back into the closet to retrieve them, and that was when she noticed something on the monitor that she hadn’t seen before.

There was someone else lurking in the shadows near the stairwell.

Felicity frantically pulled the door closed again, swearing under her breath as it made a louder click than she’d expected. How could she have been so careless? Even as a preschooler, she had known the rule about the video monitor: check twice, sneak once.
The door was only open for a second,
she told herself.
They probably didn’t see you. Just wait here for a minute, and whoever it is will go away.

But the person didn’t leave. Felicity stared hard at the grainy footage, trying to figure out who it was, but all she could tell for sure was that it was a dark-haired girl. For ten agonizing minutes, as she paced around the tiny closet and tried to calm her racing heart, the mystery lurker stayed right where she was. It almost looked like she was watching the closet door, waiting patiently for Felicity to emerge.

Finally, just when Felicity thought she couldn’t take one more minute, the girl pushed open the door to the stairwell and disappeared.

Sweaty and shaking, Felicity slipped out of the closet and hurried out of the Jefferson Building as fast as her legs could carry her. She was still trembling all over by the time she reached her car. She tried to believe there was no reason to be afraid; someone could have been lurking in the hallway for any number of reasons. Maybe she was waiting for a friend. Maybe she was looking something up on her phone. Why assume the worst?

Still, Felicity couldn’t help feeling as if the mystery girl had been trying to catch her in the act of emerging from the closet. And if someone knew she would be in the supply closet of the Jefferson Building after school today, that person probably knew why.

W
hen Felicity arrived at Scarletville High the next day, she ducked her head and hurried inside as if she were fleeing from the paparazzi. Her experience at the salon yesterday had spooked her. She told herself it was just a coincidence and that nobody was following her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

She slowed when she saw a brown-haired boy leaning against her locker. Though she couldn’t tell who it was from the back, he couldn’t be a friend of hers—Felicity didn’t have any brown-haired friends. Perhaps he just wanted to congratulate her on the pageant. She wasn’t in the mood for gushing this morning, but she remembered Haylie’s comment about doing her civic duty. So she put on her best magnanimous smile and approached.

But when the boy turned around, Felicity saw that it was only Jonathan Lyons, the senior who was curating the student art show with her. He was tall and wiry, and he wore glasses with thick dark frames, walking the fine line between nerdy and trendy. Jonathan was an impressive painter, and the smear of green acrylic on the shoulder of his T-shirt indicated that he had already spent time in the school’s art studio that morning. He was probably trying to finish his piece for the show by the submissions deadline. When Ms. Kellogg, the art teacher, had appointed Jonathan and Felicity as curators, she had also guaranteed them spots in the show. Felicity wondered what Jonathan was working on; he was in the other art class this year, so she hadn’t seen any of his recent paintings. Whatever it was, it was sure to be spectacular.

Her forced smile turned into a genuine one. “Hey, how’s it going?” she called.

Jonathan nodded, his glasses slipping down his nose a little. “Pretty good. I just checked the art show cubby in the main office, and we have a ton of submissions. Like, a
ton
of them. They wouldn’t even all fit in the cubby, and there were CDs piled up in this whole separate box on the floor.” He talked rapidly, as if he were worried Felicity might find something better to do before he finished. “So we have a lot to choose from, which is really great. Do you want to go through all the stuff after school on Wednesday? I mean, if you’re free.” His hands fluttered around like nervous birds, straightening his glasses, slipping into his pockets and out again. They seemed unwilling to settle anywhere.

“Yeah, sure. I can do Wednesday.” Felicity set her coffee cup on the floor and opened her locker door, the inside of which was plastered with postcards of paintings and sculptures by Cézanne, Rodin, and Picasso. A small red envelope fell out and landed at her feet, and she picked it up. It looked like some sort of invitation.

“Okay, great,” said Jonathan. “So, do you want to meet at a coffee shop, maybe? We could go through the submissions on my laptop.”

A coffee shop was a bad idea. Felicity liked Jonathan, but being seen with a non-redhead outside of school would be a crushing blow to her red cred. “Maybe we should just use the computer in the art room,” she said, trying to sound casual. “That way, we won’t have to lug all the CDs out of the building.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. That makes sense. I’ll probably finish my piece in class today. Are you almost done with yours?”

While Jonathan was talking, Felicity tore open the red envelope and pulled out a small card. Handwritten in the middle of the creamy stationery were the words

I know your secret, artie.

For a few seconds, Felicity’s heart completely stopped beating. She clutched the card to her chest so Jonathan wouldn’t see what it said. Maybe this was just another version of The Dream and she was actually safe in her bed.
Wake up,
she urged herself.
Everything’s fine. You’re just asleep
. She pinched her arm, hard. But nothing changed, and Felicity could only conclude that this time, her nightmare was very, very real.

Images rushed through her mind like a slide show gone haywire, showing her everything she would lose if her secret got out: her boyfriend, her popularity, the respect of all her peers. Even her closest friends probably wouldn’t stand by her if they found out she’d been lying to them about something so important. She might be kicked out of the pageant for having “questionable morals.” Ginger would be crushed, and she might even lose her job in the mayor’s office.

“Felicity?” Jonathan reached out to touch her shoulder, but his hand stopped a few inches short of her and then retreated. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Felicity shoved the note into her back pocket. Jonathan was still looking at her expectantly, but she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.

Oh, right—the art show. The whole thing suddenly seemed totally unimportant. If someone at school knew she was an artie, she could be a social outcast by the end of the day. The art show would be the least of her worries.

But she couldn’t very well lose it in the middle of the hallway, so she smiled and tried to look normal. “I’ll be done by then. I’ll see you Wednesday, okay?”

“Great, okay. See you later.”

As soon as he was gone, Felicity scanned the hall. Whoever had left her this little gift might be lurking nearby, waiting to see her reaction. Gabby was most likely the one who had discovered her secret, considering her mom’s connections with the artie population. But she could have told her friends, and any one of them could have decided to use the information to her advantage. Felicity’s eyes flitted from brunette to brunette, searching her classmates’ faces for signs of guilt or hostility.

Unfortunately, that was no help—Felicity found hostility on the face of
every
brunette. Marina and Sayuri were chatting happily at their lockers, but they looked up and glared when they caught her staring. Amanda Westin and Sarah Lowes rolled their eyes at her and turned their backs. Gabby shot her a “What are
you
gaping at?” look. Did the entire brunette population of Scarletville High know her secret? Or had these girls always given her dirty looks, and she’d just never noticed before? Was this note the only step the culprit had taken, or was a widespread announcement on the way? Gossip at Scarletville High spread faster than head lice at a day camp, so if even a few people knew her secret now, everyone would know by lunchtime.

Everyone
.

Felicity stumbled through the morning in a fog of panic. She didn’t hear a thing her teachers said about radians, Hemingway, or light refraction, and she completely botched her pop quiz about Vikings in History of Redheadedness. Every time she walked into a room, she expected to be greeted with wide eyes and horrified whispers. But class after class, nothing happened. Felicity felt as if she were in the dentist’s chair, listening to the high-pitched whine of the drill as it approached a cavity. She almost wished the actual drilling would begin, just so she would know how much pain she was up against. Right now, she could only imagine the worst.

The drill touched down just before fifth-period lunch. When Felicity opened her locker to retrieve her books for the afternoon, a second red envelope landed at her feet, and her heart leapt into her throat. She snatched up the incriminating message before anyone could see it, then locked herself in a bathroom stall so she could read the contents unobserved.

Starting right now, you will act like you want every brunette in this school to be your best friend. Fail to impress us, and everyone finds out what you really are.

Felicity swallowed hard. It would be difficult to make that look natural, but she would have to find a way to make it work. The good news was that nobody had spread her secret around yet. Sure, she was being blackmailed, but at least she had the opportunity to protect herself. The situation could be infinitely worse.

The first thing Felicity saw when she entered the cafeteria was Lorelei Griffin and a crowd of her theater friends standing menacingly around the table where Gabby, Marina, and Sayuri were sitting. That particular table was prime real estate: close to the windows and the vending machines, far from the chaos of the lunch line. “What are
you
doing here?” Lorelei was saying to the girls. “This is our spot. Get out.”

Gabby made a big show of inspecting the surface of the table. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see a reserved sign with your name on it.”

Lorelei’s eyes widened—nobody ever talked back to her. “Do you seriously want to mess with me? You’ve had your little joke, and now it’s time to go back where you belong before I get really pissed.”

“No thanks, we’re good here,” Marina said. “But I see a free table for you over there.” She pointed at a table near the trash cans, right under a banner proclaiming
red is rad!
Gabby and Sayuri snorted with laughter.

A dark cloud passed over Lorelei’s face. Then she very deliberately removed the plastic lid from her soda and tipped it off her tray, directly onto Marina’s white shirt. “Oops,” she said sweetly as Marina jumped up with a shout. “
So
sorry about that. But look, your shirt matches your hair now!” Lorelei’s friends laughed as ice cubes cascaded from Marina’s lap and skittered across the floor. From the far corner of the room, a copper-haired lunch monitor glanced up disinterestedly, then returned to her gossip magazine.

Felicity took a deep breath. Then, praying her blackmailer was watching, she grabbed a handful of napkins and headed straight into the fray. “Hey,” she said, dabbing at Marina’s shoulder. “Let me help you.”

Marina jerked away. “I don’t need your help.”

“Well, here. At least take these.” She put the napkins on the table, and Marina grudgingly grabbed several. As she blotted at her shirt, Felicity turned her attention to Lorelei. “What is your problem?” she hissed, making sure all three brunettes heard her. “They didn’t do anything to you.”

“They were sitting at
my table
. I asked them to move very politely. It’s not my fault if they’re too dumb to follow directions. Why do
you
care, anyway?”

Felicity bit back the “I don’t” that was forming on her lips. “You don’t have to be such a bitch about it,” she said instead.

Everyone was looking at her now, probably wondering why someone with hair as red as hers would stick up for a brunette in a fight. This could be a serious blow to her red cred, and it was time to get out while she was still ahead. She turned away quickly, face flaming, and hurried toward the table she always shared with Haylie and Ivy. Hopefully her blackmailer had seen her selfless act, and everyone else would forget about her strange behavior by the end of lunch.

But then Gabby, Marina, and Sayuri fell into step beside her, carrying their lunch trays.

“That was surprisingly decent of you,” Gabby said.

“Yeah, well, I— You’re welcome,” Felicity muttered.

They reached Felicity’s table, and Haylie looked up. “Hey, don’t you think Ivy should—” She broke off as she registered that the three brunettes weren’t just walking
near
Felicity, but
with
her. A tiny crinkle of confusion appeared between her eyebrows. “Why are you—”

“We can sit here, right?” Marina said. She looked straight at Felicity, her eyes steely. It was clearly a test, and Felicity’s stomach turned over. It was one thing to stick up for someone when she’d just had a Coke dumped on her and quite another to spend the entire lunch period with a table full of brunettes. But Marina might be her blackmailer, which meant that turning her down could have unspeakable consequences. Felicity knew what she had to do.

“There’s not really room—” Haylie started, but Felicity cut her off.

“It’s okay. We can squish.”

Haylie and Ivy both shot her perplexed looks, but she pretended not to notice. She grabbed another chair from a neighboring table and tried to get everyone seated as inconspicuously as possible.

Felicity hoped the brunettes would talk amongst themselves and leave her to talk to her own friends, and Marina and Sayuri did exactly that. But Gabby dug into her mini pizza, then looked at Felicity expectantly, clearly waiting for her to say something. “I like your sandals,” Felicity finally said, at a loss for any other common ground between them.

“Thanks,” Gabby said. “They were on sale at Flame Footwear. Pretty much everything in there right now is covered in glitter and rhinestones, what with prom and the pageant coming up. It’s absolutely vomit-inducing.” She wrinkled her nose as if she’d just found an unexpected anchovy on her pizza. “But I guess that’s all you guys are thinking about right now, huh?”

“Not really,” Felicity snapped, before she remembered the note.

Act like you want every brunette in this school to be your best friend.

She softened her tone. “I mean, there’s still a lot coming up before that, like the art show.”

“Right, you’re curating that. Must be nice to be in charge of something, huh?”

Felicity nodded, letting the irony of the statement sink in. She had never felt less in control than she felt right now.

Sometimes Felicity had dreams in which she was performing in a play but had forgotten all her lines, and that’s exactly what the rest of lunch felt like. Her stomach clenched into a tight knot that left no room for her sandwich, which she threw out after only two bites. When Amanda Westin passed their table on her way to the vending machines, Felicity complimented her new haircut, and Amanda stared at her as if she’d sprouted several additional heads. Gabby continued to make disparaging comments about the pageant, and Felicity couldn’t refute them, just in case her blackmailer was listening. She prayed she was getting credit for her self-sacrifice. It was possible her rival didn’t even have fifth-period lunch, in which case she was doing all this for nothing.

When the bell finally rang, it sounded sweet as a chorus of angels. Felicity finally allowed herself a sigh of relief after the three brunettes had gone.

“What was
that
about?” Haylie asked as soon as they were alone. “Since when are you all buddy-buddy with Gabby Vaughn and her weird friends?”

“I’m not,” Felicity said. “I just felt bad ’cause Lorelei was being so awful. She dumped her entire drink on Marina.”