WnW 5.6

I leaned against the back wall of the barber shop, staring over the top of Nell’s head at my own reflection.

Nell turned around in the chair, looking worried. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I roused myself and uncrossed my arms. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

Henry took Nell’s shoulders and turned her back around in the seat. “Now what are we doing today?” he asked while using his fingers to comb through Nell’s freshly washed and dried hair, which was surprisingly long when it was hanging straight. I could already see the natural curls start to spring back into place.

“Shorter. I wanna be able to see properly.”

Henry snipped the air with his scissors, looking disappointed. “Is that it?”

“I guess?”

Henry put down the scissors and reached for an electric razor. “We might as well just buzz it off if you have no preferences. Mkay?”

“Uh!” Nell’s eyes widened. “No. I have preferences.”

“Then stop stealing glances at your sleep deprived boyfriend and tell me.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Henry snapped his fingers. “Whatever, dear. Now spill it. I don’t do this job for the conversation. I do it for the art. The soul. I cut away at the bits of you that you dislike and transform them, like a gardener sculpting a shrub.”

That seemed to grab Nell’s attention. “I have preferences, but I don’t know if I have the words to express them.”

“I can tease it out of you if you just give me something to start with.”

Nell frowned. “There was this magazine I read once that had an old picture of some famous person. She wasn’t smiling or posing for the camera. But I thought she looked really cool. My hair has a mind of its own. But her hair looked kind of similar.”

“Hmm. Short hair?”

“Yes.”

“Show me where it went to.”

Nell pointed a little past the nape of her neck.

“You have intense eyes, dear. I can soften them with the right haircut.”

Nell paused for a moment. “No.”

“Right. Good. Show them off.” Henry tilted her head slightly down and started to cut with the scissors. “A little fae thing, you are. Wouldn’t want to be carried off into the woods by you.”

That got a smile out of Nell. Her eyes flicked over to me. “Are you sleep deprived?” she asked.

I sighed. “Cinthia’s memories aren’t playing nice. I had a nightmare about my mom dying in the hospital.”

“That… really sucks. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “I might have dreamed it anyway. Anxiety about her getting caught up in a war between Rings.”

“We won’t let that happen.”

“Which might mean showing off my Shape.” 

I could have kept going, about how ever since I’d seen Chase in that bathroom, everyone’s faces seemed a little off, like an alarm bell in the back of my head that kept ringing even when it shouldn’t. The paranoia that my eyes couldn’t be trusted to differentiate friend from enemy or stranger. But instead I fell silent.

Bunches of Nell’s dark hair fell to the floor of the barber shop.

AJ and Vanessa came down from upstairs, AJ stopping halfway and sitting so he could dangle his feet through the gaps between vertical posts of the railing.

“New cut?” he asked, shoving his head unsuccessfully through the gap, making his face stretch to the sides.

“AJ,” Henry said with a dangerous edge to his tone, “if you use your Shape to whisper snide comments like you did last time Graham was in the chair, I will throw my scissors at you.”

“He’s not kidding, that’s how I lost my leg,” Vanessa said, jumping into the chair next to Nell.

Nell stared at Vanessa’s hot pink prosthetic covered in anime stickers. “Really?”

Vanessa snorted. “No, dummy. I was just born like this. Want me to pop it off and show you?”

AJ covered his eyes. “Ugh, don’t. It’s weird.”

“Says the boy with a fucking tentacle growing out of the back of his neck.”

AJ let his arms go limp and let out an eye-watering yawn. “This is kinda comfy actually.”

“They have him pulling long shifts of surveillance,” Vanessa explained to Nell. “Seeing what the opps are getting up to.”

“And?”
“Quiet so far. Well, lots of movement, the anthills are swarming but no attacks have been launched. Sullivan’s been hush hush on his countermeasures but he’s been having me dig for dirt on some of the higher ups in Sillwood PD. Something to kick their asses into gear when he needs them. The Eyes Wide Ring are good at guerilla tactics and Sullivan has pull with the business minded rich folk that could sway the public narrative. I think he’s planning a media storm. With enough attention from the public, the Jiezhi Fedyaev alliance will have trouble moving while Sullivan can pull favors and not pull his punches.”

“There’s a chance this turns into a cold war,” I murmured. “If the Jiezhi Fedyaev alliance don’t think they can comfortably win. But what’s bothering me is that Organ is quiet so far. Is this going the way they want? Or did Helen fail them?”

“I have another customer coming soon,” Henry said, threateningly waving his scissors. “So save it for the upstairs and shut that damn door.”

“Oh? I thought Nick would be next. He needs it,” Vanessa said, tilting her head and looking upside down at me over the back of the chair.

“Can’t Nell just do that for you?” AJ asked. “Shrink the hairs with her mind?”

Henry tutted. “Unlikely, she barely knows what she wants on her own head.”

“Hey!” Nell protested, turning before being stopped by Henry’s hand squishing her cheeks together. “I ‘hink I could. I reShaped his face, after all. And I liked what you said about it being like gardening.”

Henry released her and snipped at her bangs. “Our bodies are gardens. They grow constantly, even after puberty. You can get a good idea what one will look like in a decade if their environment stays the same. A guiding hand can make sure that certain qualities have the nourishment they need to flourish or be pruned away.”

“I like that.”

“That’s why you should be mindful about what qualities you want to have when you’re older. If you don’t, the odds you’ll be happy with the result are slim. Everyone wants a certain haircut, even if they’re too shy or tough to admit it.”

Henry grabbing Nell’s face somehow helped a bit with my weird feeling of false reality. Same with AJ’s funny face he was pulling while pushing his face against the bars. Nell giggled. The flash on Vanessa’s phone went off and microseconds later it appeared in a text on my phone. A selfie with all of us in it. Even Henry managed to lower his face into frame in time, looking stern.

“I shoulda brought my makeup kit,” Vanessa said, tapping her phone with a long nail. “A little eyeliner, some mascara, Nick already has the hair to be a cute girl…”

“Run,” AJ said solemnly.

I shrugged. “Not much of a threat. My mom used to practice on me when I was a kid. She was getting a cosmetology certificate.”

“Did you like it?” Vanessa asked.

“Sure… well, I did until I brought it up to the kids at school. That got me bullied a fair bit. I didn’t let her practice on me after that started.” It had been a while since I’d thought about that. It sucked, thoughtless actions bringing an end to something special between me and my mom.

“Aw, I want to meet your mom. She sounds sweet. My mom’s a bitch,” Vanessa said. “She couldn’t care less that I’m in the Rings.”

AJ nodded. “My mom wants to be a good mom, but she keeps messing up. Her addiction makes it hard for her to get a job or do anything productive.”

“What about you, Nell?” Vanessa asked. “What’s your mom like?”

Nell’s expression turned stony. “I… don’t have parents.”

AJ nodded. “Lots of my friends in the Rings don’t. I feel like they’re the most loyal.”

“Sorry,” Vanessa blurted out. “I’ll go put my foot in my mouth now.” She unscrewed her leg a half rotation so that she could bend the knee upwards towards her mouth.

Nell chuckled. “It’s okay.”

“Do you want to sign it?”

Her eyes widened. “Sure!”

Vanessa tapped her phone and then held it out. “Sign here. I’ll get it sprayed on later. Permanent. You can write an insult if you want to get back at me, I’ll wear it with pride.”

“You guys are like family to me,” AJ whispered.

“What was that, AJ?” Vanessa shouted, cupping her hand to her ear.

AJ pretended to be asleep against the bars but couldn’t stop himself from smiling just a little.

“Anyway, aren’t you guys supposed to be staying away from the action right now? What are you doing here?”

“Just a quick cut and then we’re gonna go to a library,” Nell said, kicking her feet.

“Just finishing up, dear,” Henry said, making a few final snips. “Annnnnd there. What do you think?”

Nell examined her new haircut closely, turning side to side. She smiled. “Yeah. It’s good.”

We said our goodbyes to the crew and headed out.

Nell zipped up her sweater against the cool breeze. “They’re so funny, Vanessa and AJ. Is that what siblings act like?”

I thought of Cinthia’s sister. “Yeah, I think so. Squabbling with love.”

Nell laughed.

“You know, I was thinking I could show you the namesake of the town.”

Nell turned to me, then looked towards the sill of Sillwood.

“Up close. There’s a gondola that brings people to a lookout at the top.”

“Sure,” Nell said. “But books. Books first.”

“Books first,” I agreed.