Why I Let My Hair Grow Out (2 page)

 
“i hate you i hate you i hate you.” tammy sobbed, kicking the back of the driver's seat. Mom asked her to stop but she acted like she didn't hear. Clearly this would be the longest trip to Lucky Lou's ever. I didn't care. Mom had insisted I come along, I think because after the hair incident she was afraid to leave me alone in the house even for half an hour.

I ran my hand over my nearly naked head, with its screaming orange streaks in the two-tone stubble.
Time for a change.
That's what Raphael had said to me two weeks ago, in late June, on the last day of school.

“Time for a change, Morgan.” He wasn't looking at me; he was looking at the vending machine that stood between the locker room entrances by the gym, trying to decide which candy to buy. Boys on one side, girls on the other, candy in the middle. It's the kind of thing Sarah and I would have wanted to interpret, finding a symbolic and hilarious meaning in the placement of the vending machine. If I'd said something like that to Raph, he'd point out that that's where the electrical outlet was.

Just get the Twizzlers,
I thought as I watched him.
You always get those. Don't shop around for something better or the Twizzlers will feel really bad.
He jingled some change in his hand. “You know I'm going to camp for, like, practically all of July and August.”

“Yeah,” I said. Some part of me understood right away where this was headed but I thought I could fight it. “You'll have a great time.” Raph was very smart and good at everything, and he'd gotten accepted to an elite gifted-leaders-of-tomorrow camp at M.I. frikkin' T. That would be his summer of love. Raph and the gifted leaders of tomorrow. No surfer-dude he, no slacker, not Raph.

“I'm gonna be a senior next year,” he said. Like I'd forgotten how old he was.

“Look, they restocked the Butterfingers,” I said. If I acted like I didn't get it, I could buy myself some time. That was a favorite strategy of mine when under pressure. Stall, play dumb, grab another precious thirty seconds of happiness before my world came crashing down.

“Do you get what I'm saying?” Raph punched in the code for his candy and started talking louder, like I was deaf. “I'm gonna be away all summer, and next year is my last year before college, and I just think we could both use a change.”

Raph always knew what was best for me.

“I don't want a change.” My voice sounded small.

He scooped a Twix bar out of the machine and kept talking as if I hadn't said anything.

“It was fun going out with you this year. We had some fun, right? You'll have a great summer, Morgan. You'll meet people and, whatever.”

I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking I was too young for him, too boring, too dim to keep up with that sharp-witted brainiac banter he and his friends traded all the time. He was tired of explaining his physics homework to me and me not getting it. He probably wanted a whiz-kid girlfriend, some glossy, fast-talking, put-together girl like the girls he'd meet at camp, a girl who'd run for student council president next year and let him manage her campaign.

Raph would be good at that. Raph liked to pull strings from behind the scenes, and he was very concerned with people's “images.” He would sometimes tell me that my “image” needed work. I never knew what he meant by it, except that obviously he was somehow disappointed in me. It had been his idea that I dye my hair dark, so I'd have more of an “edge.”

All I ever noticed about people's “images” was how different they acted compared to what they were really thinking. For some reason, I could always tell what people were really thinking.

Time for a change,
Raph was saying. But what he was really thinking was,
I tried and tried to make you into a girlfriend who would be interesting to me, and it didn't work. I guess you just don't have what it takes.

In the rest of Connecticut two weeks had passed since we broke up, but in my own personal space-time continuum I was still standing there on the last day of school, watching Raph unwrap his Twix bar while his unspoken words took up permanent residence in my brain. They were loud and constant, like the crash of waves on a beach.

It was hard to hear anything else.

Case in point: Tammy was still sitting in the back seat next to me, crying, but I didn't hear her at all.

two

i stared at the shiny travel brochure my dad had handed me and all I could think of was the game I used to play with Sarah:
Come on, everybody! Let's play Name an Irish Town! Killarney and Kenmare and West Cork and, excuse me, Dingle.

“So you see, kiddo, it's all set. It's a week-long tour. You'll have a blast.”

I still couldn't believe there was a town named Dingle, but there it was, right on the map. I wasn't paying too much attention to my dad at that point. Just staring at Dingle.

“So whaddya say? Sounds exciting, right?”

“Morgan?”

“Sorry, what?” If I pretended I didn't get it, I could buy myself some time. A brilliant strategy that had been working so frikkin' well for me in my life so far.

“I said, what do you think? About the trip?”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “I think I missed what you said. I'm getting a new bike or something?”

Mom was buzzing and whirring around the kitchen while Dad and I were having this delightful little talk, and I could tell what she was thinking from the careless way she emptied the dishwasher. “Why?” wailed the salad plates, as they clattered together in the cabinets. “Why did my firstborn child turn out to be such a loser?”

Stupid for her to pretend she wasn't eavesdropping, anyway, since you can't
not
eavesdrop in my house. Mom and Dad were dumb enough to buy one of those “open plan” houses, where the kitchen is part of the dining room and the dining room is part of the living room, and when Tammy puts on her frikkin' educational TV programs the whole house is one big Discovery Channel.

I'd sworn to myself a thousand times: When I grow up I'm going to have a house with rooms. With doors. That
close
.

Dad had spent far less time with me over the last sixteen years than Mom had, due to his working like a slave to pay for our fabulous open-plan house in North No-name, Connecticut. So he never developed Mom's psychic ability to know right away when I was yanking the parental chain.

Poor Dad. He took the brochure out of my hands and turned the pages for me, slowly, like it was story time in preschool.

“It's a bike tour, see? They give you a bike when you get there, and there's a tour guide and a van that drives along behind to carry your luggage or give you a ride if you get tired. And you get to ride your bike through all this beautiful Irish countryside. Can you believe these pictures, huh? Look how green the grass is!”

“No offense, Dad, but you and Mom haven't ridden bikes in years. And Tammy's just gonna whine the whole way. Did you consider Club Med at all?” Dad looked annoyed all of a sudden, but I didn't know why. I was just trying to participate and help plan the family vacation. Wasn't that what we were doing?

I heard a tense, warning jangle of silverware from the kitchen portion of the room. “The trip is for you, Morgan,” Dad said, sounding gruff. “Your mom and I, we think you've had a tough year. And sometimes a vacation is a good thing. Mentally, I mean.” Then he shut up. Whenever my dad gets out of his element, he clams up and waits for my mom to take over.

Cue Mom, who didn't even bother to pretend she hadn't been listening. “What your father is trying to say is, we both feel you need a break.” Mom emerged from behind the “kitchen island” with her hands on her hips. She always calls it the “kitchen island,” like it has palm trees growing out of it.
Hello, it's a countertop, Mom.
“A change, you said so yourself. We've been, frankly, a little worried.”

“I'm fine, Mom.” My eyes started to roll on their own, but when I realized I was doing it, I exaggerated it, just for the effect.

“I hope so, Morgan. But there has been some behavior lately, some
extreme
behavior. . . .”

“You mean, like, my hair?” I'd been waiting for this moment. Looking forward to it, in fact.

“Yes, that's one thing—”

“Wait,” I said. Time to turn up my attitude. “
Wait.
You want me, by myself, to go ride a bike across a foreign country with towns named
Dingle,
just because I cut my
hair
? Isn't
that
a little extreme?”

“You won't be by yourself. It's a group tour. There will be all kinds of people.” Mom faked a smile. “It'll be fun.”

“So
you
go, if it's so frikkin' fun! I'll stay home.”

“Watch the language, Morgan.” Language patrol was definitely Dad's element. Good to know he was still listening.

Mom dropped the smile and crossed her arms, and now she did not look very fun loving at all. “Let's talk about Raphael,” she said.

“No. Way.” I got up. One lousy door to slam behind me, that's all I needed, and there was none to be found.

“Morgan! We're trying to help you! You've been acting like, like—”

“A total bitch?” I sneered. Gotta throw Dad a bone now and then; it keeps him involved.

“Morgan!” he boomed. “What did I say about language?”

“Forget it, Daniel.” She turned back to me. “Yes, in fact! Since you and Raphael broke up, you have been acting very mean and hurtful, to us, to Tammy, and most importantly, to yourself.”

Oh, please. “It's just
hair
!” I said, in my most mean and hurtful tone. “And it's
my
hair. Anyway, it has nothing to do with you or Dad or Tammy or”—for some reason it was hard to say Raph's name—“or anybody!”

Mom was on a rescue mission now, though. There was no stopping her with logic.

“You're upset and it's completely understandable, honey! But you're taking this really hard and there are things you can do to help yourself
move on
. Get some new experiences under your belt, meet some new people. It will put the whole Raphael thing in perspective.”

“Never liked that boy, anyway,” muttered Dad. “Too cocky.”

That did it. He had no right to say that. And, excuse me, like I didn't know Raphael was cocky. Of course he was; that was one of the things I loved about him. Raphael never seemed to have any doubts. He had confidence in his opinions, and so what if most of them involved putting other people down?

And come to think of it, what difference did it make where I spent the summer? Connecticut, Ireland, the dark side of Dingle or the rings of Saturn? I was not going to be Raphael's girlfriend in any of those places anymore.

I picked up the travel brochure, the one with the map on it. As if it mattered where a person was. I tore it into two shiny pieces. I didn't look to check, but I was really hoping that
Din
was on one side and
gle
was on the other.

“If you don't
want
me here,” I snarled at my white-lipped parents, who'd probably already spent a ton of money booking me on the bike trip, “then it will be my pleasure to cross the frikkin' ocean and spend my summer
anywhere
but this frikkin' house!”

Only I didn't say frikkin'.

three

girls With Orange-streaked buzz cuts should stay the hell out of airports.

Not once, but twice, once at JFK and once at Shannon, did I get chosen for the extra special attention of a personal body search by the aromatic airport personnel. The woman at JFK smelled worse. She smelled like BO and minty gum. The one in Shannon smelled like cigarettes and supersweet floral perfume.
I guess that's why people travel,
I thought.
To enjoy the exotic smell of foreign hands, I mean lands.

And not once, but twice, did my carry-on luggage have to endure a hand inspection. Cigarette-and-perfume woman had a fine time unloading my overstuffed backpack, unzipping my toiletry bag, complimenting me on my blue lipstick and poking around in her cheerful, nosy way through my underwear and personal hygiene products. “Yes,” I wanted to yell. “I have explosive pantiliners and I'm not afraid to use them!” But why waste a temper tantrum on someone I'd never see again?

Colin, however, was another story. Him I would be seeing a lot of, though I didn't know this at the time.

When I first saw Colin I was tired and stiff from the flight, wearing my hastily repacked backpack and wheeling my suitcase behind me, hungry and wondering what to do next. I was supposed to get picked up at the “Meeting Point,” but where was that? It sounded like a figure of speech, like the Point of No Return or the Last Straw or the Last Place You Look, where all lost objects eventually turn up. But the “Meeting Point”: that's what it said on my now-crumpled itinerary, carefully printed out by Mom in multiple copies and tucked in my suitcase, my carry-on and the pocket of my denim jacket.

“Just in case you get separated from your things,” she'd said, the big worrywart.

I pulled out the jacket-pocket copy one more time and skimmed it as I walked, wheeling my big suitcase behind me. “The Meeting Point is near the Information Desk, in the Arrivals Hall.”
The Last Straw will be found at the Point of No Return. If you reach the Last Place You Look you've Gone Too Far.

I was walking and following the signs and amusing myself by mentally riffing on this figure of speech idea and what do you know, I finally reached an open area with a big sign overhead that read, MEETING POINT. Right underneath the sign was a tall, beefy, basically okay-looking guy leaning against a column, and he was holding a much smaller, handwritten sign of his own. It read: