Meanicures Read Online Free PDF Page B

chin line. I was still wearing my T-shirt, jeans, and corduroy jacket, and Mom had on one of her flowing hemp outfits. (Even when she wore a business suit, she had on an unbleached cotton camisole underneath.)
    “Kind of obvious what I did, huh? So, what do you think?” I asked.
    “Uh, I guess the important thing is what do
you
think?” she asked.
    “I like it.” I gazed at my reflection in our stainless steel toaster. “It’s different.”
    “Different. Yes.” She reached out to touch the back of my head, where my hair now stopped. “Are we feeling all right?”
    “I am. I don’t know about you,” I said, backing away. She had this glazed, confused expression that made me think dinner wasn’t going to turn out well. The brown rice would be burned, veggies scorched, and tofu done to the point of crumbling into sawdust.
    “Oh, wow. Did you color it, too? You colored it!” she suddenly cried.
    “Mom, I had to,” I said. “It was green this morning, thanks to your baby shampoo experiments last night.”
    “What kind of color did you get? Where?” A look of horror crossed her face. “It wasn’t
chemical
, was it?”
    She was acting like I’d suddenly started doing drugs.
    Then suddenly her eyes brightened. “No, you know what, this is great, this is fantastic. I’ve been trying to develop this line of stuff just for shorter hair, called Original
Short
Clean, and it’s all about special extralight shampoos for—”
    “No, Mom. I’ve had enough.” The words were out before I even had time to think about them. I realized this was something I’d wanted to say to my mother for a long time now.
    “Enough?” she asked.
    “Of me having to be your girl guinea pig for all your hair products. That’s half the reason I wanted to cut my hair,” I said.
    “It is?” She looked genuinely stunned, and I guess I couldn’t blame her. I’d never really been honest with her about this before.
    “Yes, Mom. I mean, what’s wrong with using Parker for a change? Or David, or—”
    “Their hair is not receptive to formulas designed mainly for longer hair—and, well, David hardly
has
any hair, for one thing.”
    “Aha! You tried out your stuff on him too many times, didn’t you?
That’s
why he’s bald,” I teased her. My mom’s boyfriend shaved his head, which often looked like a shiny bowling ball. To me, it was kind of ironic that the organic hair care product queen of Maine was dating someone with absolutely
no
hair.
    “You said that I was half the reason for this drastic change,” Mom said. “What’s the other reason?”
    I shrugged, not sure how much I wanted to explain. “I didn’t exactly have what we call a stellar day.”
    “No?” She looked genuinely concerned, but I wasn’t sure if it was about me, or the veggies that were about to burn. She quickly turned it off.
    I saw the video of me on TV in my brain again. “No.”
    “Want to talk about it?” she prompted.
    “Mmm …” I shook my head. “Definitely not.”
    “I’m worried. You’ve had long hair since … since …” She started to sniffle a little bit.
    “Since forever. I know.”
    “Since you were born,” she sniffled.
    “I don’t think I was born with long hair,” I said. “Unless you adopted me from a monkey house.” She still looked sad, so I added, “Mom, you know how it is when something just has to change. And you don’t know what it is, so you try … anything.”
    Mom looked at me as if she was finally getting it. “But, honey … why didn’t you just ask me to stop?”
    “I did ask,” I said.
    “Oh. Yes, I guess you did. But didn’t we have fun—I mean, can’t we still have fun?”
    “Honestly, it was fun, a lot of the time. And I’m glad to help out, and when you featured me on your website, that was really cool,” I admitted. “But lately—the thing is, Mom? I can’t afford to have bad hair days. Ever again.”
    “What? Why not? Did something happen?”
    “That’s kind of an