Maybe it was obvious to everyone. Maybe I was trying too hard.
"I think we're all set." Jen appeared behind me, the mirrors splitting her into multiple views, full hangers swinging from one hand. I took them from her, regressing to when Mom used to take me shopping, and equally unsure of the result.
"Are you sure we couldn't just disguise ourselves as waiters or something?"
"Yeah, right. That is so Mission Impossible." (By which she meant the original TV show and not the movie franchise, so I'll allow it.)
She reached up to ruffle my hair, checking out the angles in the mirror, and smiled. "Take one last look, Hunter. By tonight you won't recognize yourself."
Chapter 13
"THIS IS GOING TO STING,” JEN SAID.
It did. Of course it did.
Bleach is acid, the great destroyer. You see, each of your hairs is protected by an outer layer called a cuticle, which holds in the pigment that gives the hair its color. The purpose of bleach is to destroy these cuticles so that all the pigment falls out. It's quick and dirty. Like smashing a bunch of fish tanks to release the fish, it leaves a mess. That's why if you go on to add coloring, a little bit swims down the drain every time you take a shower. Your fish tanks are broken.
I had known all this, but only in theory, because I'd always dyed my hair blacker, not lighter. (I was just adding more fish, not getting rid of the old ones.) So when Jen started daubing toothpaste-consistency acid into my hair, I wasn't prepared.
"That stings!"
"That's what I said."
"Yeah, but… ow."
It felt like many thousands of mosquitoes were visiting my scalp. Like a bald man who'd fallen asleep at the beach. Like my hair was on fire.
"How's that?"
"A lot like… having acid on my head."
"Sorry, but I maxed out the solution strength. We're going for major transformation here. It won't hurt as much next time, you know."
"Next time?"
"Yeah. Your scalp loses a lot of feeling after the first bleach job."
"Great," I said. "I was looking to get rid of some of those extra scalp nerves."
"No pain, no gain."
"I'm feeling the gain."
She covered my head with a piece of aluminum foil—saying helpfully, "This makes it hotter, to strengthen the chemical reaction" — then flipped another chair out and sat down across from me.
We were in Jen's kitchen, which was small but clearly the workplace of a committed cook. Pots and pans hung from the ceiling, clanking lightly in the breeze from an exhaust fan working to remove the smell of hair acid. Two thousand dollars' worth of recently purchased non-Hunter party-wear hung among the pans, still covered in plastic to make sure my next credit card bill wouldn't kill me.
Jen lived here with her older sister, who was trying to break into being a dessert chef. Many of the blackened iron pans suggested the shapes of macaroons and ladyfingers, and there was a series of sifts for refining flour down to invisible dust.
The kitchen was retro or maybe just old. The chair on which I quietly writhed was vintage chrome and vinyl, matching the table's green-and-gold-speckled Formica. The refrigerator was also 1960s era, with a stainless-steel door handle shaped like a giant trigger.
As the acid slowly flayed my scalp, I found myself desperate for distraction.
"Has your sister had this place long?"
"It was my parents' when they first moved in together. We lived here until I was twelve, but they kept it after the Day of Darkness."
"The Day of Darkness?"
"When we moved out to Jersey."
I tried to imagine a whole family living here, and my melting-scalp discomfort was tinged with claustrophobia. Off the kitchen were two other smallish rooms with air-shaft windows. That was the whole place.
"Four people in this place? New Jersey must have looked pretty good."
Jen made a gagging noise. "Oh, sure. Great for my parents. But everyone out there thought I was a freak, with my kiddie-punk purple streaks and homemade clothes."
I thought about my own big move. "Well, at least you weren't too far away from home to visit."
She sighed. "Might as well have been. By the time I was fourteen, my Manhattan friends had all dumped me. Like I'd turned into a Jersey girl or something."
"Ouch."
I remembered my peek into Jen's room when we'd arrived. It was classic Innovator: furniture collected off the street, a shelf overrun with notebooks, a dozen half-completed projects in paper and cloth. Three walls were covered, one by magazine clippings, one by a collage of found photographs she'd picked up off the street, and the last by a bulletin board painted to resemble a basketball court, on which magnetic Xs and Os held up pictures of players male and female. The loft bed made a cave for a small desk, where a laptop flickered in invisible communion with a wireless hub hanging on the wall. All the frantic clutter of a cool girl trying to make up for the Lost Years.
"When did you move back?"
"Last year, as soon as they let me. But it's hard to get your cool back after you lose it, you know? It's like when you're walking down the street, perfectly dressed, grooving to some excellent sound track in your head, and you trip on a crack in the sidewalk? A second ago you were so cool, and suddenly… everyone's just looking at you. You're back in Jersey." She shook her head. "Is that hurting?"
"How could you tell?"
"Something about the grinding teeth."
"When does it stop?"
She weighed invisible objects in her hands. "Depends. We can stop it anytime. But for every second of pain now, you'll be blonder and less Hunter-like when you come face-to-face with the bad guys tonight."
"So, it's pain now or pain later."
"Pretty much." She pulled the fridge's giant trigger and reached in for a carton of milk. From the jangling metal overhead, she acquired a mixing bowl and poured some in. "This is ready for when you can't stand it anymore."
"Milk?"
"It neutralizes the bleach. It's like your head has an ulcer."
"That feels accurate." I steeled myself, eyes on the undulating white surface of the milk settling in the bowl. Blonder was better, safer. But the route to blond was long and hot.
"Distract me more," I pleaded.
"You grew up in the city?"
"No. Moved here from Minnesota when I was thirteen."
"Huh, the opposite of me. What was that like?"
I chewed my lip. It wasn't an experience I talked about much, but I had to talk about something. "Eye-opening."
"What do you mean?"
A finger of acid was making its way down the back of my neck. I rubbed it.
"Come on, Hunter, you can make it. Become one with the bleach."
"I am becoming one with the bleach!"
She laughed. "Just talk to me, then."
"Okay, here's the thing: Back in Fort Snelling, I was pretty popular. Good at sports, lots of friends, teachers liked me. I thought I was cool. But my first day in New York, I turned out to be the least cool kid in school. I dressed from a mall, listened to total MOR, and didn't have the first clue that people in other places did anything else."
"Ouch."
"No, this is ouch. That was more like… being suddenly erased."