Meanicures (13 page)

She looked a little shocked by my tone—shocked, and annoyed. “You underestimate my considerable powers. I could give you an updo. You wouldn’t even know what hit you, it would look so good, so fast.”

“Hm,” I murmured. “Aren’t you about to close, anyway?”

“Sure, I guess, but I’m always willing to make exceptions for special clients. Well, then, what
are
you here for?”

“I need help,” I said.

“Honey, you and me both. I’m shorthanded here today. Or should I say short-scissored.” She glanced back at her client, an elderly woman with curly white hair. “Tell you what. I’ll finish up with her and then we’ll talk. Have a seat.”

I did, and sifted through the magazines stacked on the table:
Cat Fancy, Fortune Tellers Monthly
, and
Mysterious Times
.

What was with this collection? Hadn’t Poinsettia ever heard of
People
, or
Glamour?
How about a copy of
Entertainment Weekly?

In a few minutes, she finished the elderly woman’s blow-out, and the older woman paid her bill and collected her coat. “You’re smart to wait. Stick with her,” she advised me as she zipped up. “Best stylist this town’s had in forty years.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She tied a paisley scarf loosely over her hair. “Take care now,” she said as she opened the door and exited into the rainy, windy late afternoon.

I walked over to Poinsettia, who was busy sweeping up. “Okay. So remember when you were coloring my hair, and you were telling that other girl about
cutting connections to an old boyfriend?”

“Me? No, I don’t think that would have been me.”

“Yes, it was!” I said. “The day of that rainstorm.”

She rolled her eyes. “Be more specific. Notice how it rains here nearly every day? Well, every day it doesn’t
snow.”
She laughed and patted her chair. “Have a seat and refresh my memory, why don’t you?”

“Right. I came in with green hair and told you I wanted to go in a new direction. While you were coloring my hair, you talked about writing a letter to that girl’s old boyfriend and burning it, along with his name.”

“Oh,
that,”
she said slowly, tapping her nails against the desk. “I guess.”

How could something so crucially important to me be like a blip on her radar screen? “How old are you, anyway?” I asked. “Your memory’s not great, is it?”

“Look. Why don’t you tell me your problem and quit being rude at the same time? And if this is going to take more than five minutes, you need to make an appointment for tomorrow,” she said, glancing at the clock, which was shaped like a movie reel.

“Fine, okay.” I spun around in the chair to face her. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry if everything sounds that way. That’s just how it is with me right now,” I explained. “It’s like I start to say one thing, but something else comes out.” I shook my head. “I actually don’t even know how it happens.”

“Maybe you should think about seeing a professional,” she suggested. “You know, a therapist.”

“I don’t need a therapist!” I cried. “If anything, I need a psychic.” I looked meaningfully at her. “Someone who’s good at uncasting spells. That sort of thing.”

Poinsettia held up her hands, scissors aloft. “I cut hair. I can teach you how to apply makeup and I’m very good at manicures. That’s it. I’m no psychic.”

“Please,” I said. “We went overboard. We burned our former friends’ names in the fireplace. We threw out some stuff we used to share with them—you know, like, mementos. Now their lives are disasters, and we’ve turned mean. What should we do?”

“Why should you do anything?” she replied. “That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “No! We didn’t want to turn
into
them!”

“Okay then. It’s simple. You put too much negativity into the atmosphere. You have to put something positive out there now. You’ve heard of karma, right?”

“Kind of,” I said. “My mom used to have a calendar, I think. She kept track of when good things happened, or she did good deeds—”

“Exactly. And yours is down here.” She pressed the chair lever with the toe of her black boot, and I dropped a foot. “Ground level.”

“You know, that kind of hurt.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Okay. So maybe we did bring bad luck on ourselves by trying to hurt them. How do we get the good karma back?”

“Simple. Be more than nice to them. Maybe they’re just the same as always deep down inside. What you
need to do is get to know them better, find out why they’re doing the things they’re doing.”

I raised my eyebrow and looked at her. “I know the answer to that. It’s because they’re mean. Deep down inside. Even if they’re temporarily not, and we are. They’re still the same people who make fun of us—they’re just taking a break.”

“Nobody ends up mean without a pretty good reason,” she said. “You’re going to have to go back to them, to reach out to them.”

“Reach out … to
them?”
I wrinkled my nose.

She nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”

I didn’t want to think about groveling to them. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Well, it depends. Do you want to go through life with bad karma, having everyone dislike you?”

“It’s not
everyone,”
I argued. “Just most people.” I pondered that for a minute. “My cat still likes me. I think.”

“Good luck going through life talking to your cat,” she said. “That can get you put in the loony bin real fast. I have a great-aunt like that. She’s locked up in Augusta now.”

“Well, it’s your fault if I do end up there. You’re the one who mentioned the stupid name-in-flames idea,” I reminded her.

She raised her eyebrow. “Do you expect to get back your good karma by talking like that?”

“Sorry,” I said. “And, um, how do you get your
eyebrows to look so dramatic? I love that. Of course, it’s a little
too
dramatic, really. Maybe you shouldn’t have plucked all—”

“It’s time to close up for the night,” she said, gently guiding me by my shoulders toward the door. “Think about what I said.”

There’s not
a lot you can’t work out over a basket of French fries at the Whale.

At least, that’s what I used to think.

“You’re late,” said Taylor.

“Sorry.”

“What’s with those jeans? They’re so skinny,” Olivia commented as I walked closer to the table where she and Taylor were waiting for me.

“Maybe they are skinny, but this is how people wear them in New York,” I said in my defense. Was it me, or were they almost identically dressed? Taylor was wearing a typical Taylor gym outfit—fitted black yoga pants, patterned tank top underneath a zip-up hoodie jacket, and a pair of suede slides. And now Olivia, instead of being quirky and interesting, looked exactly the same, except she was about six inches taller and wore pink Crocs.

“New York.” Taylor gave an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, please. Give me a break. I’ve heard enough about you and New York to last my entire life. You don’t even go there very much, okay? And who’s ever
heard of that place?” She pointed to my T-shirt.

“Nobody. That’s what makes it cool,” I said. “At least I try to be original. At least I’m not a clone.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Olivia demanded.

Wow. The three of
us
couldn’t even talk now without insulting each other.

I cleared my throat. “Let’s start over. The reason I asked you guys to meet me here … well, it’s probably pretty obvious,” I said.

“You desperately need a social life?” asked Taylor. “And you feel terrible that you sold my Shawn Johnson pendant?”

“I didn’t sell it!” I said. “My mom gave it away.”

“Right. Sure.” Taylor rolled her eyes.

“Ever since we had that sleepover and tried to break all our connections to the mean girls, our lives have been a disaster.”

“They have?” asked Olivia. “Mine hasn’t been. I’m in charge of the newest, most popular club at school—”

“Olivia, you and I are co-chairs,” I said. “Have you forgotten?”

“Now the Recycling Club wants me to run their club, too.” Olivia dragged a fry through a pool of ketchup. “You know, I’m not sure what you’re so worried about. I’m on TV every morning, I know more people at school than I ever did before—”

“And I’ve never had a better week. I’m the top gymnast on our club right now. It feels great,” added Taylor.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe there are some things to like. Cassidy’s been demoted at cheer, Kayley has a sprained wrist. Alexis can’t make it across the lunchroom without dropping her tray. She’ll have to start bringing her lunch.”

I continued. “Now, we might have thought all this was really great, you know, a couple of weeks ago, when things were really bad and I was publicly humiliated. Repeatedly. But do we really want to get ahead in life only because other people are miserable? That makes us as bad as the mean girls,” I said. “Or worse, even.”

“It does?” asked Olivia.

“Well, yeah,” I said.

“On the plus side, it’s making me really popular,” she said, almost bouncing on her seat. “I know a lot more people than I used to. People come up and compliment me. Me! Which they should, you know.”

She sounded so much like Alexis and Kayley that I had to cringe.

“In a way, everything’s been fine. Everything’s been great,” Taylor argued. “Nobody’s made fun of us, nobody’s pulled pranks on us … I mean, honestly. Do I have to remind you how bad things were, Madison? Chocolate bra, anybody?”

I blushed at the memory. “No, I remember. I remember that very clearly. But things are even worse now, don’t you think?” I asked. “I don’t know what’s going on, if it’s something supernatural or coincidental or what. But I think we have to try to undo what we did.”

“Undo?”
asked Olivia, as if it were the craziest idea in the world. “How? Why?”

“Because, don’t you see? We’re turning out to be just like them. Do we want that?” I asked. “That’s not what we wanted when we started out. We just wanted to cut our connections to them, not switch places with them.”

Olivia swished a fry back and forth on her plate. “True. I guess.”

“I have been kind of worried about Kayley. It’s not like I wanted to ruin her whole season,” admitted Taylor.

“And as much as I’m glad Cassidy got what was coming to her, I think it’s enough already. So I’ve been thinking …” I paused, unsure. “I don’t know, but I guess we have to have another ceremony. And I think in order to make it work, we’ll have to invite the original mean girls. OMG,” I said.

“Yeah, exactly!” Olivia agreed. “OMG, we can’t. Because if we invite them we’ll have to confess what we did, and that will be a total disaster, and they’ll make things even worse for us than they were before.”

“No. As in, OMG are the initials for Original Mean Girls,” I explained.

“Oh. Well, OMG OMG then.” Olivia laughed.

“You’re crazy,” said Taylor. “Invite them? They won’t hang out with us.”

“Sure they will. They want to talk to us right now. They’re dying to, in fact,” I said.

“True,” Olivia said.

“You know what? It wasn’t just the ceremony that started throwing things off. Your dumb haircut started everything,” said Taylor. “Don’t you think? It was the haircut, and then you got the idea from that stylist to have the ceremony and burn names—”

“Wait. That’s it. The haircut,” I said. “And Poinsettia, too—she was key. Poinsettia said we needed to reach out.”

“Who’s Poinsettia?” asked Olivia.

“Oblivia, she just said it was
her
salon,” said Taylor. “But seriously. You’re getting all your advice from a hairstylist?”

“Beauty consultant. And she’s kind of, like, a friend,” I said. “Sort of. Anyway, I have an idea. What if we offer to take them all out for manicures?”

“I don’t get it. How will that help?” asked Olivia.

“It’s called a mani-
cure
. Cure. Get it?” I said. “It’ll fix things.”

“Actually, it would make more sense if it was called a girlicure,” Taylor said.

I thought about it for a minute. All of a sudden, the perfect word came to me. “No, no—we’ll call it a meanicure!” I cried.

“We will?” asked Taylor.

“Yes, it’s the perfect name for what we’re trying to do,” I said.

“Seriously? You think that’s perfect?” asked Olivia in a condescending tone.

“Well, at least I don’t believe in voodoo dolls,” I shot back.

The three of us glared at each other. There we were again: the mean girls in the room.
Us
. OMG.

“Where do we have the mani
—meanicure?”
Taylor asked at last. “The mall?”

I shook my head. “No. I know just the place. Combing Attractions.”

Taylor rolled her eyes. “What kind of a name is that? How ridiculous.”

“Are you sure about this?” Olivia asked.

“I have to be, I guess,” I said. “Anyway, it’s the place where I got my haircut, remember?”

“Who’s going to invite all of them? And who’s going to pay for it all?” asked Olivia. “I don’t have any extra money sitting around.”

Taylor chimed in. “Neither do I. And I don’t have time to figure this out—I have a meet to practice for.”