Mom drives me to school on Friday, and at lunchtime, I get called to the office because there’s a message for me to phone her at work. When I get through, she tells me that she has made arrangements to work through her lunch hour so she can get off an hour early. She won’t make it to the school until almost four, but she says I can wait in the library. That’s not a place where Brandy is likely to be hanging out, so I give a big sigh of relief.
When we get home, Mom makes homemade pizza so that all Siobhan and I will have to do is pop it in the oven. After Siobhan arrives, Mom walks the dog and then goes over to see Mrs. Warren. When she comes back, she says Mrs. Warren will watch out for me, and if I have any problems, I can call her.
About six-thirty, Jake shows up. He looks like he’s just had a shower. He’s dressed nicely. I hate him. See, that’s another sin, and I’m not even going to finish my penance from last week until bedtime tonight.
“He is so hot,” Siobhan says as soon as they leave. She can’t take her eyes off him. I’m surprised she doesn’t press her nose right up against the window and stare like a kid looking into a candy store.
“Get a grip,” I say.
I check the clock. It’s 6:35. Mom says she’ll be home by nine. She better be.
It’s a good thing Siobhan’s over. It’s hard to keep worrying when she’s around. She is a very distracting person, in a good sort of way. She says she has plans for us, a surprise. She won’t tell me until we finish eating and cleaning up. Then she goes into her backpack and pulls out a white plastic bag.
“Look what I bought.”
She opens the bag and a box of Born to be Blonde hair dye and two packages of strawberry-flavored Kool-Aid fall out onto the table.
“We’re going to do makeovers.” Siobhan’s got long, wavy hair. It used to be really blonde, but it’s getting darker. “You can put in highlights for me.”
I read the instructions. It doesn’t sound hard. There are plastic gloves in the box. I get out the bleaching gel and the bottle of toner. There’s a plastic cap and something that looks like a crochet hook. I look at the instructions again.
“Should I wash my hair first?” Siobhan asks.
“No, just sit down. We have to get this cap on your head.”
It takes me quite awhile to pull little strands of Siobhan’s hair through the holes in the plastic cap. I try to be gentle, but with long hair, it snarls sometimes, so I have to tug a bit. Siobhan is gritting her teeth. Her eyes are red and watery.
Once we think we have enough hair pulled through the cap, I paint the strands with the gel and set the timer on the stove. When it goes off, we rinse out the gel and put the toner on. Getting the cap off is another major production. When we’re finished, Siobhan washes her hair and uses the blow-dryer. It looks so cool. It’s a really professional-looking job, if I do say so myself. Siobhan loves it.
“Now it’s your turn,” she says. “Look, I bought Kool-Aid. We can give you pink streaks. It will make your hair way more interesting.”
“I wouldn’t mind being blonde too,” I say.
“Well, I couldn’t afford two packages of the real hair color. This is the best I could do. Are you going to try it or not?”
“I’ll try it.”
“We need hair conditioner.”
I go to the bathroom and come back with the bottle. Siobhan pours a little bit into a saucer and mixes in the packages of Kool-Aid.
We don’t use the cap or the crochet hook for me. Siobhan just brushes the colored paste she’s made through a strand here and a strand there. When she’s finished, I check it out in the mirror. I don’t like it as much as Siobhan’s. Hers looks natural. Mine looks kind of fun, though, and it will wash out after awhile.
There’s some of the Kool-Aid mix left over.
“We should give the dog some streaks too,” Siobhan says. “She’s feeling left out.”
Anytime anyone says dog, the dog gets all excited, so now she is bouncing around my legs. I pick her up and hold her while Siobhan puts pink streaks in her fur. The dog panics when I try to use the blow-dryer on her, so we just leave her to dry on her own.
Mom comes in at 8:45. We’ve cleaned everything up and we’re just watching TV.
“How did it go?” I ask.
“It was okay. He was a good sport about it. He said he was just disappointed he’d changed his sheets for nothing. Can you believe that?”
“Mom!” I’m totally shocked.
How can she say something like that to me, especially in front of Siobhan? I turn to glare at her, but she’s staring hard at me. The room is pretty dim. We only have one lamp and the TV on. She switches on the overhead light in the kitchen.
“Oh my God!”
“Mom, you shouldn’t say God like that.”
She looks at Siobhan. “Your mother’s going to kill me.”
Still, Mom doesn’t look that worried about it. Actually, she looks like she wants to laugh.
Then she notices the dog. “Not you too!” And then she really does laugh.
Siobhan’s mother, whose name is Colleen, does not kill my mom. What she says, though, is that Siobhan can’t come over anymore because my mom is single and dating and she isn’t able to properly supervise us.
Siobhan tells me the news when she calls me early the next morning.
My mom gets pretty annoyed when I tell her.
“What a hypocrite,” she says. “They leave Siobhan there on her own with those kids all the time. You’ve been over at Siobhan’s when her parents have gone out.”