Grounded Read Online Free PDF Page A

at least.”
    Flora made an unattractive sound as she slurped her orange soda. Mother glared at me from across the room.
    “Hey, want me to do your hair in a French twist while you wait?” I asked Flora. I was trying to save us both.
    “You know how to do a French twist?” Flora said, perking up.
    “Yeah,” I answered. “I got so bored last week, I read all of Mrs. Coldwell’s hairstyling books.”
    I didn’t tell Flora what I’d discovered: that fixing hair wasn’t all that different from tying fishing lures.
    When I finished, Flora couldn’t take her eyes off her reflection in the mirror. Before the week ended, girls were coming to the beauty shop with and without their mothers, asking me to braid their hair and trim their bangs. Some brought pictures from magazines and begged me to make them look like famous actresses. Faye Dunaway and Julie Christie were popular requests.
    And then boys starting coming in with baseball cards, asking me to cut their hair like Johnny Bench and Catfish Hunter.
    “Let Dolly do your hair!” all the kids began saying. So that’s what I called my salon, which was just a metal stool with a swivel top in the back of Mother’s shop. I hung a curtain from the ceiling to separate my side from hers. I also found a mirror and made a sign with pictures of hairstyles I liked glued on poster board. Mother said I couldn’t charge more than one dollar a head. So that’s what I did.
    I won’t claim that I was a born beautician. I had my share of disasters, starting with the time BarryHowe came in on the first hot day in June. Barry was a boy in Wayne Junior’s class.
    “My cousin Frankie from Iowa’s spending the summer with us,” Barry said, gesturing with his head to the young relative at his side. “Have you got time for a haircut while I deliver groceries for Mr. Swisher?”
    “Sure,” I said, patting my metal stool and eying cousin Frankie, who had the scruffiest mop top I’d ever seen. The poor kid’s hair was worse than the rock ’n’ roll wig Wayne Junior wore for Halloween when he was in eighth grade.
    “It’s a shame to hide a good-looking face,” I told Frankie, repeating what I’d heard Mother tell her customers. And then I twirled the stool around and started cutting.
    A trick I learned from Mother was to turn customers so they faced away from the mirror while you cut. That way you avoided any unwanted audience participation. And if you did a good job, you could really wow them when you finished.
    Well, I thought I did a nice enough job on Barry Howe’s cousin. But when I spun him around on the stool to reveal his new cut, the dang kid burst into tears.
    Why? Because it turned out cousin Frankie wasa  she . And I’d just given her my best Marlon Brando haircut.
    “I look like a boy!” Frankie shrieked.
    “No, no, no,” I said, stalling so I could think up an excuse. “Maybe folks in Iowa don’t read fashion magazines. But good gosh, don’t you know this is the most popular style in France this summer? Why, yes it is! It’s just as stylish as can be.”
    After Barry Howe returned and escorted his sniffling cousin out the door, Mother pulled the curtain aside and gave me an exasperated look.
    “Shoes,” she finally said.
    “What?”
    “If you don’t know whether your customer’s male or female, look at their shoes.”
    “All right,” I said.
    “And if you still don’t know, for heaven’s sake, ask me .” And she yanked the curtain closed.
    I grabbed my scissors and looked in the mirror. Then I took aim. Mother must’ve heard me because she pulled the curtain back again.
    “ Now what are you doing?” she asked. “Daralynn, stop that! Stop !”
    But I kept going.
    “Daralynn!” Mother hollered when she saw bighunks of hair falling from my head. “What on God’s green earth are you doing?”
    “I’m giving myself the same haircut,” I reported glumly. And that’s exactly what I did.
    Lilac Rose would’ve been horrified if she