Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [70]
It was close to an hour before Cassie returned. I was a little flustered by then, partly because I didn’t know if/when she’d be returning, but mostly because I needed to know how I looked. Cassie just smiled and told me to be grateful my hair had started out blond; otherwise she’d have needed to bleach it before applying the pink. And then she tormented me further by turning my chair around again so I couldn’t see the mirror as she removed the plastic cap.
“What’s the cap for, anyway?” I asked.
Cassie laughed and knelt down so I could see her. “Nothing. It was just to stop you from sneaking a peek.”
Before I could pretend to be annoyed, Cassie led me over to a basin, where she placed a soft brown towel on my shoulders. Once I’d removed my hearing aids, I leaned back and closed my eyes. She shampooed the gunk out of my hair and massaged my scalp. The combination of warm water and silence was so blissful that I almost dozed off, but then she turned off the shower and wrapped the towel around my head. She dried my hair and led me back to her station, where she removed the towel like a magician. Which, it turned out, was completely appropriate.
I felt the need to pinch myself. No matter how familiar my face seemed, there was no way on earth that the person before me could be Piper Vaughan. Apart from getting taller and growing boobs, Piper Vaughan had remained unchanged for almost a decade. But the girl in the mirror was holding up her middle finger to that person.
I saw Cassie trying to communicate with me via the mirror, but I couldn’t hear a word. I put my hearing aids back in and smiled.
“What do you think?” she asked.
I watched my smile grow into a laugh. “I think it’s . . . amazing.”
For a moment Cassie’s cool exterior cracked and she seemed to exhale. Then she was back to business, picking up her scissors and snipping away entire waves of hair, while I watched her intently. She resembled a grown-up Tash, but without any of the hang-ups. She was, I realized, easier to like than Tash.
Suddenly she was smiling at me. “Thinking deep thoughts?”
“Oh.” I blushed. “I was just thinking about Tash.”
I regretted saying it immediately. What if she asked me what I was thinking? But Cassie was too kind—or too professional—to do that.
“She’s changed since you became manager.”
I opened my eyes wide. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.” The scissors paused midair. “For two years she’s mooned over Will Cooke like he’s the center of the universe, and I’ve told her over and over she just needs to forget about him, move on. I don’t know what his deal is, but I do know that his interest in Tash is definitely limited to her guitar playing.”
It’s not like what she was saying was a secret, but I was afraid that Tash might hear her.
“Don’t worry, they can’t hear me,” said Cassie, reading my mind again. “Anyway, Tash only joined Dumb to get with Will, but since you took over, she’s started talking about the music, and new chords she’s learning, and stuff like that. I think she’s finally decided the band may be more important than he is.”
She resumed snipping from where she’d left off, but her words stayed with me. She was saying I’d made a difference in Tash’s life—a positive difference. Basically, she was thanking me. And I was so grateful to her for that.
It took Cassie thirty minutes more to reduce my hair to an artful mess, with dagger-like bangs and a don’t-mess-with-me vibe. Then she blow-dried my hair in layers for another twenty minutes. I couldn’t believe how meticulous she was. The last time I’d used a hairdryer was for the family’s Christmas photo almost a year ago.
The new style showcased my hearing aids in all their glory. Only they were no longer Barbie pink, but rather Atomic Pink—not a relic of my former self, but a statement of my new identity. I didn’t even try to cover them up.
When she was done, I glanced at my watch: 2:10 p.m. The last period of the