I am sick and tired of being a girl. Specifically, I am done with having long hair. I hate the way it pulls me back to bed when I try to get up. I have so much hair that my ponytail sags no matter how high I tie it.
And don't get me started on the baby hairs constantly getting in my face or the several strands that constantly stick to my blazer. My lint rollers are tired of picking up my hair.
I know girls can have short hair. There's even a photo in the family album of my mother in her twenties with a pixie cut. She's radiant in the polaroid, untouched by the ravages of time. She would love it if I had hair as short as hers and has said so many times.
It's my father who is against the change to my look. He constantly stresses that I must look like a girl, emphasizing cleanliness and a feminine wardrobe. I tell him to stay in his lane and mind his own business. What would a middle-aged Chinese man know about womanhood?
Besides, he's not the one at the hair salon with me when I'm getting my hair trimmed. It's my mother who stands behind me, filling in the linguistic blanks to the hairdresser. She doesn't even blink when I ask for my hair to be cut just below my ears.
The hairdresser hesitates. "Are you sure?"
I nod, and my mother's head bobs along with mine. Women around the hairdresser's age were ordinarily more than happy to chop off the long locks of a girl's head. Her sensitivity toward my appearance was unexpected.
"You would look better if your hair were at your shoulders."
My mother translated the hairdresser's recommendation for me. I stare at myself in the mirror. Maybe she had a point.
We compromise on hair length. After a bit of back and forth, we agreed to have my hair an inch above my shoulders. As the cold metal of the scissors touched the back of my neck, I made up my mind to cut my hair further if I wasn't satisfied with the results.
One thing I dreaded at the salon was the return of the bowl cut. Before high school, that was my signature hairdo, albeit one against my will. It was a byproduct of my family's cheap habits, cutting my hair into a misshapen bob so that they would not waste time and money at the salon. The only thing that I sacrificed was my dignity when the kids at school would make fun of my uneven bangs.
It would have been easier if my family had let me grow my hair out. They wouldn't have had to bother with trimming my hair, and I would've had an ounce of self-respect with long Rapunzel-esque locks. When I told my mother the kids at school were teasing me, she laughed. But from that moment on, she made sure that I always had money to go to the salon.
As pieces of my hair fell to the salon floor, I decided that I liked the way I looked. The new hair length was chic, passably Parisian instead of cheaply post-Communist. I couldn't help but smile at my reflection.
I wasn't used to liking myself, much less how I looked. Maybe there was something feminine, or even pretty, about me.
At school, Maia tries to compliment my new look. She was overjoyed whenever anyone changed their hair since her religion forbade her from showing hers in front of other men. But Ainsley couldn't help throwing in a jab about the hairstyle.
"Dora the Explorer wants her hair back," she says playfully. "You look like you could be Lord Farquaad's twin. Isn't that right, Maia?"
"I think she looks cute," she replies, defending me. "Yan, you look adorable."
Ainsley frowns at her insubordination. "Isn't it bad luck to cut your hair after Chinese New Year's? You can tell me if your mom forced you to have your hair that short."
I think back to what Yuey told me about Ainsley, about the hatred and jealousy she saw bubbling beneath the surface. I searched her face for traces of those feelings, wondering if she was taking another joke too far.
"I wanted to try something different," I answered. "I don't think I'm cutting away the luck of the New Year."
She slaps my shoulder, letting out a loud laugh that sounded too forced. It draws weird looks from the students nearby, and my cheeks heat up in embarrassment. I awkwardly laughed in response, joining her.
"You get my sense of humor, right? Maia never understands," she says, zeroing in on a new target.
"Sometimes you're just mean and it's not even funny," Maia pouts.
"Mean? I could never be mean to Yan. She's our friend. And Yan would tell me if I ever hurt her feelings." She gives me a meaningful look.
I briefly make eye contact with Maia. If someone took a photo of us at that moment, I would guarantee that we had the same expression on our faces.
"Your jokes aren't always ... appropriate," I offer. "So even if you try to make them funny, they don't always come out that way."
Ainsley opens her mouth to speak, but a choking noise comes out instead. Maia covers her lips, failing to suppress a giggle. The bell rings by the time Ainsley is coherent again. Anything she says is drowned out by the loud, blaring noise.
Yuey says she likes my haircut, although she thinks I would look better if my hair were shorter. Something about it being better for high cheekbones, but I'm not the most well-versed in what the beauty magazines say. She isn't surprised when I tell her how Ainsley reacted to my new look.
"She's jealous of you. Also, what you said went directly against her. This could mean trouble for you in the future," she warns.
"I didn't want to disagree with Maia." I remind her of my situation, being stuck between the two of them.
"Maia is a doormat. She would have just gone along with whatever you said."
That didn't dissolve the urge I had to defend her. I remember the look in her eyes when she told me she suspected Ainsley was behind Natalie's online bullying. But I knew if I told Yuey that, she would just say that Maia needed to grow a spine. The girl who considers me her best friend didn't have much sympathy for those she perceived as stupid. Maia was vapid at times, but that didn't mean she couldn't be a victim of Ainsley's cruelty. As far as I was concerned, their shared history was the glue holding them together. I wonder if they will still be friends after we graduate, when their past shrinks further in time.
Mikael notices that something has changed about my appearance. He can't quite place his finger on it, asking if I was wearing makeup or if I bought a new school uniform. He remarks that I have a glow, that my eyes and skin are brighter.
I gently guide him to look at my head. His eyes widened.
"You changed your hair." He leans in for closer inspection. "You look cute."
"Thanks." My chest flutters.
"Can I touch it? It looks so soft."
Somehow, my heart beats even faster. "Sure." That was the most nonchalant thing I could say as he felt my hair.
"You're lucky. Most people don't look good after a haircut. Especially not me."
His blond hair was getting shaggy, judging by the way he kept reaching up and brushing it away from his eyes. Personally, I thought longer hair made him look better, but that was the case with most boys.
"You could never look ugly." I patted my hair, making sure he didn't mess it up.
"But I can look weird. You'll see next week," he promised. "By the way, I got something for you."
He hands me a paper bag. I peer inside, slightly thrown off by the gift. I pull out a Walkman and a pair of headphones.
"I wanted to thank you for those old radios," he says. "This is so you can listen to music on the subway when there's no signal. I know that you can just download songs on your phone, and this is retro, but–"
"I like it," I reply, cutting off his babbling. "It's thoughtful. But what can I listen to?"
His eyes shine with excitement. "I've included a few CDs of my personal favorite songs. I don't know if you'll like them, but in case you don't, I can buy you the songs you like."
"That's alright. I think I'll like them." I spot a few old rock songs in the pile of CDs. I mentioned not being able to listen to music in the subway tunnels offhandedly during club time. I didn't expect him to remember my complaint, much less do anything about it.
It made me bashful knowing that he thought of me. As I carefully place his present into my bookbag, I spot Natalie watching me from a distance. She glowers and slinks away before I can approach her.
An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach. Trouble was on the horizon.
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