The Van Pact

12: Stevie

On the way home from the Chick Fil A, we stopped at the CVS and bought a box of hair bleach. As long as I can remember, Valerie's always had thick, black hair. Even when I first met her, when were nine and I had just moved in from Boston (back then, Mom wanted to be closer to her family here in the Valley, and Dad wanted to keep the marriage together. Now Dad's here, and Mom's closer to Boston. The irony.). Of course Val's hair was a lot shorter then than it is now. In fact, it was so short it barely touched her ears. I remember it was the middle of August, and muggy. I had picked out my bedroom (I chose the one with the window seat, obviously). My mom and dad were moving my bed and toy boxes in and I went outside to scope out the lawn. Right when I had discovered the tire swing hanging off our maple tree, this tiny, black-haired kid in a Power Rangers t-shirt and camo shorts showed up. She stuck out her tanned hand at me and said, "Howdy neighbor, I'm Valerie DiPaolo." I thought she was boy at first, with her haircut and her brothers' hand-me-downs. Her name confused me.

Come to think of it, Valerie's never told me why her hair was ever that short. She must not have liked it, because she's still not a fan of pixie cuts. I debated loping off my hair last year while I was on an Audrey Hepburn kick and she was adamant that I didn't. She keeps her own hair at boob length, and will never cut it shorter than collarbone. I was shocked she was willing to bleach it. I only suggested it because I was so certain she'd say no.

"You know," Valerie mused, as she pulled the van into her driveway, "I've always wanted to be a blonde."

***

"You're a ginger," I could feel my eyebrows bolt straight up into my forehead.

Valerie flipped the hair bleach box upside down, and caught the insert that tumbled out of it. She read it, shrugged, and handed it to me.

"Looks like that's what happens when you bleach black hair," she inspected her reflection in her bathroom mirror. "Good thing we did my eyebrows. Black would be too dark now."

I looked down at the insert. There was a series of before and after photos for different color ranges of hair. Black hair apparently was supposed to turn out gingery. How did we not know this? At seventeen years old? What sort of teenage girls were we?

"I guess we should have looked this up on YouTube." I peered up at Valerie, who grinned at her reflection. "I take it you like it?"

"I don't know yet, it's still wet," Valerie squeezed the towel in which she had wrapped her hair. "I'm gonna do a conditioning treatment and blow it out."

"What do you know about blow-outs?" I've long accepted that Valerie is better at makeup and hair than I am, but neither of us would ever make it as beauty gurus on YouTube. I watched Valerie rifle through a drawer of styling supplies.

"Can't be that hard," she twirled a round hairbrush like a baton.

"I'm going to go watch some videos on how to salvage this for when you realize it turned out shitty," I walked into Val's room and plopped on the fluffy pink pillows on her bed.

***

"Tah-dah!"

It had been about forty minutes when Valerie emerged from her bathroom. I had spent the time compiling a list of steps to get her hair to Marilyn-Monroe-level platinum. That was a pointless exercise. I had expected Valerie's hair to look frizzy and dull, in accordance with what I learned from the YouTube beauty gurus' "hair bleaching tips and tricks" videos. My hair looks frizzy and dull after I blow dry it, and I've never even dyed it (of course, I naturally have fuzzy poodle curls).