Skinny (17 page)

“She’s never liked you. You know that,”
Skinny hisses.

Do I know that? Thinking back, I can’t remember a time I’ve ever actually had a real conversation with Gigi. Was that my choice or hers?

On the first Saturday in October, Whitney pushes me out of the way and descends on the mahogany desk at the Headhunters Salon and Day Spa in the Galleria. I can’t believe I let her drive me all the way to Houston for a hair appointment, but I have to admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised by her previous makeover experiments on me. Briella is at her dad’s this weekend, but Whitney says we can’t wait for her to go with us. It’s too hard to get an appointment with Lawrence, her special stylist, and evidently Whitney had to pull a lot of strings for him to even consider taking on a new client.

“We would like to speak to Lawrence,” she says to the receptionist, with a determined glint in her eye.

“Do you have an appointment?” The woman at the desk is a gorgeous platinum blonde without a trace of a smile on her carefully painted bow lips. Her perfectly manicured fuchsia fingernail remains pointed at the appointment book to hold her place.

“He’s expecting us.” Whitney gives the receptionist a frosty response. “Just tell him Whitney is here.”

“I’ll see if he’s available.” The blonde sounds doubtful as she stands and glides off silently down a beige-carpeted hall.

“Come on.” Whitney walks over to the pink swivel chairs underneath a picture of purple irises. She settles in with two of the Godiva chocolates from the etched-glass dish on the coffee table.

“Looks like Lawrence is doing all right.” Whitney glances around the elegant pink- and beige-drenched room. “This is a long way from the Glory to God Laundry Mat and Beauty Parlor.” Whitney reaches for another treat.

I wait for a further explanation, but Whitney nibbles quietly on a third piece of candy with only an occasional sigh of satisfaction. My eyebrows go up in surprise. I’ve never seen her eat more than one bite of anything, but now she’s downed three pieces of chocolate in five minutes.

“Chocolate,” she breathes. “It’s my one fatal flaw. I’d offer you one, but, you know . . .” She pauses for dramatic effect.

“Dumping syndrome.”

Since Whitney took me on as her project, she also felt the need to become an Internet expert on gastric bypass surgery.

“Dumping,” as she now knows, is when food passes too quickly into the small intestine. It typically happens when a gastric bypass patient eats a sugary food. I “dumped” once in July when I tried to eat ice cream. Once was enough. My heart beat rapidly and forcefully while my body tried to adjust. I broke into a cold sweat and had to lie down for about thirty minutes.

It was a scary feeling and it ought to make me want to stay far away from anything sweet, but I still jealously eye the chocolate in Whitney’s hand. Old habits are so hard to break even when they make you sick.

“Who do you want to ask you to the Fall Ball?” Whitney’s eyes narrow with the importance of the question, as she waves around the half-eaten piece of chocolate for emphasis.

“It’s a trick question. She knows no one is going to ask YOU to a dance,”
Skinny whispers.

“I haven’t thought about it,” I say.
Jackson
, I think.

“Oh, I know you have,” Whitney says, with a sly smile. She pops the last bite of temptation into her mouth and then talks around the chewing. “I saw the way you looked at Jackson Barnett the other day.”

“He’s an old friend,” I say. I need to change the subject.

“What about you?”

“I’m thinking I’ll go with Matt Leland.” Matt is the tall, redheaded star basketball player who sends Whitney endless text messages.

“He’s cute,” I say. It’s an understatement and we both know it. He’s gorgeous.

“We should double-date.” Whitney claps her hands together in delight at this idea.

“He already asked you? I didn’t know you already had a date.” I’m obviously confused. Of course Whitney Stone would have a date to the dance. Stupid me.

She laughs. “I don’t yet, silly. It’s still three weeks away.”

“But you will,” I say, slowly.

“Of course.” She says it like I’m brainless. “And you will, too. You’ll see.”

“What about Briella?” I ask. Whitney and Briella are still best friends, right?

“I imagine she’ll go with Wolf.”

“No, I meant don’t you want to double-date with her?”

“She can come with us if she wants. . . .” Whitney’s voice trails off dubiously.

Am I replacing Briella as Whitney’s new BFF? When Whitney’s friend-spotlight shines on you, it’s a whole lot of work.

“Lawrence will see you now.” Startled at the sudden interruption, I look up to see the blonde is back, waiting expressionlessly by the opening to a long hallway.

Suddenly I have no desire to see the mysterious Lawrence McIntire, but I’m committed now. All I can do is self-consciously tug down my comfortable, now oversized, brown sweater, pull up my baggy jeans, and follow Joy, the receptionist, down the long corridor.

The cream-colored carpet is so thick my tennis shoes sink into it with each step.

“You don’t belong in a place like this,”
Skinny says.

In the room off to the right, a red-haired manicurist adds the final touches to a white poodle’s toenails as the tiny woman holding him looks on in delight.

“I think you were right, Monique. Misty Rose is just the right color for both of us,” I hear the woman exclaim as we continue down the hall.

Farther down the hall on the left, a white lab-coated attendant in pink high-heeled pumps applies cucumber slices to a reclining woman in a giant pink smock. Her face is covered completely with some kind of green mud.

“The process has begun,” announces Lab Coat. The green goo cracks slightly in what I assume is a smile. “Just wait. You’re going to be simply amazed at the outcome.”

Lab Coat looks up at us as we pass and frowns.

“What is someone like you doing here?”

I’m starting to panic. Idon’twanttodothis. Idon’twanttodothis. It’s all I can do to keep from turning and running back down the hall and out the front doors.

We stop at the end of the hallway in front of two closed, elaborately carved wooden doors. Joy grasps the gold brass handles and looks back over her left shoulder to see if we are following. Unfortunately, we are. After throwing back the doors with a dramatic flourish, Joy waves us into the room.

A clutter of scissors, brushes, sprays, and gels are scattered across a single table on the wall opposite the doors. A large barber’s chair is placed right in the center of the room. On the wall beside the doorway is the only decoration — a six-foot stuffed shark mounted with a mouth wide open and full of teeth, ready to gobble up anything that swims, or walks, by. There are no mirrors. I feel my left eye begin to twitch.

“Please make yourselves comfortable. I’ll tell Lawrence you’re ready for him.” Joy glides out, leaving us standing in the middle of the room alone.

But only for a few minutes.

“Whitney, my dear! How wonderful you look.” Lawrence sweeps into the room with a whirl of a gray smock, gathering Whitney into his arms for a quick hug. As he pulls away, he fingers a strand of her hair. “I think you’re due for highlights.”

“Not today. I brought you a present.” Whitney nods toward me, and Lawrence turns to focus all of his attention on me. I stay by the door, hoping for a quick escape.

Lawrence is over six feet tall, with a biker’s build. The sleeves of his gray smock are cut away at the shoulders, revealing bulging arm muscles circled with a tattoo of barbed wire. His thick black hair is well past his shoulders and tied back into a pony-tail with a brown leather strip. Bright blue eyes contrast sharply with at least a day’s growth of stubble.

“Turn around please. . . .” His voice is strangely soft, almost a whisper. He continues his scrutiny while I comply. “Not so fast. Slow down.”

Suddenly he stalks across the room and grabs a handful of my hair. He feels the texture and weight with one hand, his face deep in thought. To my astonishment, his eyes suddenly fill with tears.

“Look up toward the light.” Lawrence’s voice breaks. Is he actually going to cry?

I obey. I see him out of the corner of my eye staring at my face, blinking away the emotion.

“You were right to bring her to me, Whitney,” he says, finally, with a sigh. “She is the perfect raw material.”

“Have I ever let you down?” Whitney asks. She waves to me, then leaves the room and shuts the door behind her.

“Have a seat.” Lawrence motions toward the beauty-shop chair in the middle of the room, and I sit down carefully. He immediately drops down on one knee in front of me, one hand on either side of the chair. I lean back away from him as far as possible.

“Those green eyes are so expressive,” he says, after a moment of silent staring. I blink back at him uncomfortably and wish I were anywhere else but here. He continues, “I can tell you are bigger inside than people know.”

“Now you’re big on the outside and the inside,”
Skinny whispers.

“Being called big isn’t exactly a compliment,” I say.

He surprises me with a deep laugh that seems to come out of nowhere. “Trust me, honey. It’s so much better than being small on the inside.” He winks at me. “I spent a lot of time with small-minded people when I was growing up. Being a hair stylist isn’t always considered the most manly of jobs in this neck of the woods. But a hairstylist is all I ever wanted to be. People looked right through me. Never saw me.”

I glance down at the thick muscles of his biceps. “I can’t imagine anyone would ever look past you,” I say.

“You learn to trust your insides and it gets better,” he says, standing up quickly and twirling my chair around. “Much better.”

“How do you know,” I ask, “that people have something big on the inside?”

“It’s a gift.” Lawrence snaps the cape behind my neck and pats me once on the shoulder. “I recognize people hiding inside themselves. I see it and I help others see it, too.”

I take a deep breath.

“Then let’s do it,” I say quietly, and I’m rewarded with another huge laugh from Lawrence.

It’s almost an hour later when Lawrence spins the chair back around to face him. I still haven’t seen a mirror and have no idea what the results are of all the cutting and spraying and clipping and blow-drying. He doesn’t speak. He only stares down at me in silence, his expression narrowed, and I can’t tell if it is bad or good. Finally, he nods solemnly.

“It’s done,” he says.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, so I don’t say anything.

Suddenly he starts yelling over his shoulder and I almost jump out of the chair. “Come in here!” He stalks over to the wooden doors and throws them open with a flourish, calling out down the hallway. “Whitney!”

I see her walking down the hall toward us with two chocolates in her hand, still chewing. She stops just inside the door and stares at me.

Her mouth falls open. “Wow,” she says.

“I know, right?” he says.

“You’ve outdone yourself,” she says to Lawrence, then to me, “Have you seen yourself?”

I shake my head.

“Get the mirror,” Lawrence shouts out, and Joy comes running down the hall with a tiny handheld mirror.

I’m afraid to look, but they both stand waiting for my reaction. Hesitantly, I peer at the reflection. I have to admit it, I like what I see. I look different and, after every thing I’ve been through, different feels good. A faint, wistful smile slowly lights the face of the girl in the reflection. Long-buried hope starts to stir. Terrified, I push it back down. I quickly hand the mirror back to Lawrence. If I don’t stare too long, I can almost ignore the something sad that shifts darkly just behind those green eyes.

“You’re still fat and ugly. Ugly. Ugly,”
Skinny’s voice echoes in my ear.

Love
the new haircut.” Chance Lehmann runs to catch up with me after algebra. “The layers and bangs make those green eyes of yours sparkle.”

“It was Whitney’s idea.” I smile at him. “We drove all the way down to Houston this weekend to meet with a stylist she knows at the Galleria.”

“I knew it wasn’t anyone in this town. Wow. Just wow.” He picks up a handful of my brown hair in one hand. “I wish my hair was this thick and straight. Gorgeous.”

I laugh. “And this is the part you’re going to like the most.”

I hold out my hands, palms down.

“Jammin’ Jelly!” He grabs my hands in his, leaning down to take a closer look at the newly polished nails. “My favorite!”

I spread my fingers wide and fan my face. “Thanks.” I grin at him.

“So what did Rat say about all this?” Chance asks.

“About all what?” I say, all innocent sounding. I open my locker and stick my head inside, hiding my face. “You know, Rat’s never been one to focus much on girly stuff.”

“Rat isn’t saying anything at all these days. Not to you, anyway.”

Chance frowns and opens the door of his locker next door. He rummages around in his locker and finally pulls out a worn baseball glove. “So, you and Whitney are all BFFs now?”

“I wouldn’t say that, but she’s been really supportive.”

“Right,” Chance says, his eyes narrowing. He slams his locker shut with a clang that makes me jump. “I’d watch that if I were you.”

“What do you mean?” But I’m asking it to his back as he disappears into the after-school crowd.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and turn to see Jackson standing by my open locker.

“Hey,” I say, my heart instantly responding with rapid beats. “What’s up?”

“Nice new haircut,” he says, and I blush. God, I’d missed looking into those blue-green eyes. “It looks almost like how you used to wear it. You know. Back when we were . . . friends.”

“You remember that?”

“Of course,” he says. He reaches out to pick up a strand of my hair from my shoulder. “Hanging out back then was amazing, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was.” An excited hum starts up in my ears. Something’s happening. Something big.

“So, anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to go to the dance?” Jackson asks, slowly twisting the strand of hair around his finger. He’s standing in front of me and his lips are moving, but I must be misunderstanding what he’s saying. He couldn’t possibly be asking me out.