Zack—
My dad said in his letter that you sent me a really cool postcard from Disneyland. I didn’t get it yet, but when I do, I’m going to put it up on the wall of my bunk. Wesley put up a postcard from his cousin in China, and my friend Ashley sent me one from Boston (she went there with her family) and I put it up. Soon we’ll have a whole wall of postcards!
* * *
Gabe stood with the pencil in his hand, staring at the activity list. Just sign up for it, he coaxed himself. He peered down the cabin to the far back wall, where the reading rocks poster was hanging. This is just what you need.
Wesley was still doing the play, and Nikhil—he moved his finger to Nikhil’s name and followed the code for the activity number he’d selected—was registered for stargazing. None of the other options were calling to him, and there was no way Amanda would guess that he’d pick this one.
Wesley poked his head in the door of the cabin. “Hurry up and pick your activity, Gabe! David’s going to show us how to throw a Frisbee overhand!”
Wesley disappeared as quickly as he’d come, and Gabe was left alone with his thoughts and the list. He pictured Zack’s spiky, gelled hair and how cool it looked. I can’t change everything nerdy about this place, but I can change myself. I just have to do it, he thought.
With a deep breath and a burst of confidence, he signed up for activity choice four: “Try new hairstyles.”
Once he’d signed up, he didn’t back down. Not when David pulled him aside at dinner and asked him to confirm his choice on the sign-up sheet, and not when he was the only boy in the “Try new hairstyles” room.
A line of mirrors hung along one wall, and a cluster of desks in the center of the room were covered in hair products and accessories. There were brushes, combs, head-bands, and barrettes, plus bottles of mousse, canisters of spray, and tubs of gel. The girls talked excitedly and pointed to various items on the desks. They didn’t even seem to notice Gabe, who was standing in the back, awkwardly fiddling with strings from the hood of his sweatshirt.
“Okay, listen up, please,” said one of the counselors—both female—in charge. “All of these brushes and combs are new. If you use one, put your name on the handle with one of these Sharpies. No sharing brushes allowed. Also, Colleen is going to demonstrate how to use the straight irons and the curling iron. You can only use one of those after you watch the demonstration, because they get really hot and you could get burned if you don’t know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re welcome to use any of the products here.” She waved her arm over the array on the desks. “And we can help you French braid and reverse French braid, if you’d like.”
The girls began to whisper and squeal and plan. Gabe began to wonder if he’d made a big mistake.
“Have fun!” said the counselor.
The girls swarmed the products like happy ants at a picnic, and within a few seconds most of the choices were gone. Once they’d dispersed into groups, Gabe walked up to the desks and looked over what remained. Pomade, Frizz Away, Super Ultra Hold, Max Volume—what did any of this stuff even mean? He was reading the back of a bottle of “smoothing creme” when the counselor who’d done the introduction came over and sat on the edge of the desk.
“I don’t think that’s your best choice,” she said. “Your hair’s not really long enough to need smoothing creme.”
Gabe put the bottle down and stared, overwhelmed and disappointed, at the floor.
The counselor held out her hand. “I’m Francesca,” she said.
“Gabe.”
“Nice to meet you, Gabe. What are you looking to do here?”
Gabe gulped, his stomach flipping with worry. He knew this was a bold activity choice, but was she going to kick him out? “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, what do you want your hair to look like? Do you want it bigger, parted, spiky, slicked back? If you tell me what you’re looking to do, I can help you find the right product. Consider me your personal style consultant.”
Relieved, Gabe looked up at Francesca for the first time and smiled. A personal style consultant—that was exactly what he needed if he wanted to look less nerdy. “My step-brother wears his kind of spiky and messy,” he said, “but on purpose.”
Francesca bit her lower lip and nodded. “The tousled look. I feel you.” She scanned the table and chose a tub of clear, bubble-filled gel. “Take off your glasses and have a seat.” She raised her eyebrows twice in quick succession. “I’m going to work some magic.”
Francesca rubbed some gel between her hands and applied it to the whole of Gabe’s head first, massaging his scalp. With his glasses off, Gabe’s heightened sense of touch made him tingle from the cold goopiness of the gel on his head, but he felt the way he had before reading his haiku out loud in poetry class, anxious and excited at the same time. After the initial big coating, Francesca used her fingertips to position smaller pieces of hair in different directions. Gabe could hear her pausing and considering, then feel her adjusting. When she was done, she stood him up and led him, his eyes closed and glasses in his hand, to the wall with the mirrors.
“Are you ready?” she said.
Please don’t let me look like a poodle, Gabe thought.
“Take a look!”
Gabe put on his glasses and opened his eyes. He turned his head to the right and then the left. It was different, but it looked pretty good! “Do you think it looks cool?” he asked Francesca.
“I think it looks awesome,” she said, “but I did it, so I’m biased. Here. Colleen!” She called the other counselor. “Come check out Gabe’s hair.”
Colleen put her hand over her heart and gave a long, loud gasp. “I love it!” she cried.
“You do?” said Gabe.
“Yes! But you know what I might love even more? A Caesar style.”
“Like Julius Caesar?” said Gabe. He tried to remember what Caesar looked like.
“Oh,” said Francesca, “brushed forward? But we could flip the front up. That might look slick.”
Colleen sprayed Gabe’s hair with water to loosen the gel and then combed it all straight toward his face. Then she knelt down and used a brush to make the front go straight up, and—after telling him to close his eyes—she sprayed a cloud of hair spray to make it hold.
Gabe thought this looked pretty good too. Even though it was named for a historical figure, it looked like a style Zack would approve of.
Francesca was at the side of the room, holding pieces of hair from two girls’ heads while two other girls practiced French braiding. “I really like that,” she said to Gabe.
“Let me see,” said one of the girls who was having her hair braided.
Francesca and the girls shuffled over to Gabe in a clump, all attached. “Oh, yeah,” said the girl. “Some boys in my school wear their hair like that.”
“Now let me see,” said the other girl whose hair Francesca was holding. They all shifted positions.
“My brother used to wear his hair like that,” the girl said, “but now that he’s in middle school he wears it kind of up in the middle instead. He says this style is so out.”
“It is?” Gabe asked.
He spent the rest of activity time in the center of a group of girls, every one of them with an opinion about which hairstyle would be the coolest. His hair was side parted, center parted, slicked back, and faux hawked. They brushed, moussed, spritzed, and teased until he was sure his hair was going to fall out.
At the end, he looked at himself in the mirror. His neck was sore, his sweatshirt was wet, and his forehead was sticky.
“Well, Gabe,” said Francesca, “which do you like best? Let me know and I’ll even let you keep the product we used for it.” She winked.
Gabe thought as he looked in the mirror. Apart from a few styles that had everyone cracking up, he thought Zack would consider a lot of them cool. “Which one did you think was the best?” he asked Francesca.
“A lot of them looked really good,” she said. “But only you can decide which one is really you.”
Gabe wrinkled his nose in the mirror. Just what he needed. Another thing to figure out.
Problem: Am I a nerd who only has nerdy adventures?
Hypothesis: No.
Proof:
THINGS I CAN |
THINGS I CAN’T |
1. I’m going to sleepaway camp for six weeks! |
1. It is the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment. |
2. My bunkmates are really cool, and we became friends right away! |
2. They like learning digits of π. |
3. The food is bad, just like at camps in books and movies! |
3. We fixed it with lemon juice to kill the bacteria. |
4. I’m being stalked by an annoying girl! |
4. She is in my Logical Reasoning and Poetry Writing classes. |
5. I creamed Amanda in a sing-off! |
5. We sang all the countries of the world. |
6. We put music and sports pictures on our walls. |
6. They are of Beethoven and the rules of badminton. |
7. Wesley says amazing things in his sleep! |
7. He solves math problems. 7a. and brainteasers. |
8. I tried some cool hairstyles that lots of girls said looked cute. |
8. One is named for Julius Caesar. |