Eventually, she was done.
Imogen looked in the mirror, this fresh reflection looking back at her. She felt her head again, the feeling smooth and soft and fuzzy across the palm of her hand.
She felt new, fresh. She felt cleansed. From all the loathing that had been welling up inside of her. From the slow creep into the darkness.
Wild Nights had saved her. Again.
Imogen grabbed the enormous pile of hair that had accumulated in the sink. There was so much of it. Thick and black and shining. It was the kind of hair she was supposed to pride herself on. Black as midnight and gleaming like the moon. That’s what the Arabic poets used to say. Persian ones, too. She had the beautiful hair of the beloved, and the relief she felt as she dumped it into the trash and did her best to dust the hair off of her clothes was a feeling unparalleled in her entire life. Her scalp was so pale compared to the rest of her skin, having been blocked from the sun by that carpet of thick, black hair.
Luckily, all of her clothes were black, so she didn’t have to worry about how much hair she got all over herself in this process. She looked back at herself. At the girl looking directly at her in the mirror. That wasn’t an Imogen she knew quite yet, but she was better than the Imogen who had come before, that much was certain. Imogen locked her backpack away in the employee lockers. She was ready to step back onto the ground floor of the bookstore.
She just hoped this new haircut wasn’t a fireable offense.
3
Bright Star
8:37 A.M.
Rinn
AJ Park was the most beautiful boy in the entire world.
From her spot by the register, Rinn could see him shelving books back by the historicals section, and the sight made her dizzy and warm all over. Like the sun finally peeking out from behind the cloud cover of winter. He had soulful, deep eyes and long, deft fingers and an intense focus on whatever he was doing.
He had that kind of Keanu Reeves–in-the-nineties vibe, except more tan and more Korean. He had hair that was short in the back but somehow too long and constantly falling into his eyes in the front. He had to regularly run his hands through it, pushing his dark locks out of his face. He was forever in motion, too. The only time he ever sat still was to sketch, and even then, his hands were flickering back and forth across a page.
But, anyway, that’s what AJ looked like.
Like a dark-haired Apollo. Like a young god.
Like a boy who ought to have been a model but was instead an artist.
He was perfect.
Rinn sighed. It was hopeless. The only thing AJ talked to Rinn about was work and old murder mysteries. Still, she kept AJ in her line of sight, hopeful that he might come over to the register and chat. It was the first official day of summer, and Rinn had read enough to know that summer was peak romance.
Anything could happen on midsummer. Even AJ Park could fall in love with her.
Rinn knew that she was a modern woman and she ought to go and talk to him on her own. It was just that whenever Rinn thought about talking to AJ about anything other than books, her breathing got all shallow, like when she was filming one of her daily vlogs and she started sweating in places she didn’t know a person could sweat. Rinn had been to therapy. She knew the word for that. Panic. And she knew the cure, too.
Go do it. Go say hi.
Rinn nodded to herself, smoothed down the front of her skirt, and took one step out from behind the register. She could do this. She could definitely go talk to AJ. He’s a person. She’s a person. They could be two people who just said hello and then maybe fell in love forever.
And that was when Imogen Azar came out of the staff room and all hell froze over.
Nobody moved for a solid minute. Not Imogen. Not AJ. Not even Daniella. Rinn could barely breathe. And Imogen, she seemed to be waiting to see what everyone else was going to do, waiting to see how everyone was going to react.
Rinn didn’t mean to stare. Not stare stare. But Imogen had walked into the break room wearing a helmet and—Rinn was pretty sure—all of her hair. Imogen walked out of the break room with a shaved head. Which was no hair whatsoever, save for the tiny quarter inch of stubble that was left. Rinn simply couldn’t compute what to say to that. She’d never seen a person lose all of their hair in five minutes flat.
Everything else about Imogen was the same. The short motorcycle boots. The faded black T-shirt and the worn red leather jacket. The baggy, ripped-up, baby-blue jeans were still cuffed to her ankles. Her face was still angular and proud. Her skin still deep olive. And her dark, brooding eyes were still dramatically framed with full black eyebrows.
Just no hair on her head.
Daniella was the first to break the silence. “Are you kidding me right now, Azar? Did you hear there was an award for most misguided youth at the store today, or did you just decide to get a fresh summer cut?”
“¿Por qué no los dos?” Imogen gave one of those smiles that looked like she actually wanted to give Daniella the finger but couldn’t, because they were all at work and there would be customers in the store soon.
“Cute,” said Daniella. “Do you always make a joke of the state of your mental health? Because shaving your entire head is like one of the hallmarks of depression, Azar.”
Rinn knew Daniella didn’t intend to be mean. Not mean mean. Daniella was just one of those people who dealt with uncomfortable situations with sarcasm and bitingly direct language. Typically, she used poetic levels of pop-culture-laced sarcasm. But it was still humor-as-a-defense-mechanism. Rinn had grown up in between her father’s Mexican American culture and her mother’s German one. She was used to looking at a thing from all angles before drawing absolute conclusions.
And in general, Rinn had trouble drawing any absolute conclusions.
It’s what made her so nervous, really. That the world was full of shades of gray. That she could see one thing but reality could be another. That she could be in love with AJ and he could maybe want nothing to do with her beyond friendly coworker chatter.
Rinn still didn’t know how Imogen could withstand the level of hostility thrown her way by Daniella, though.
Because rather than getting upset, Imogen just shrugged, somehow unperturbed by both Daniella’s commanding demeanor and all of them staring at her. “I’m not depressed. I’m taking the floor.”
And then she walked off.
Daniella looked like she really was going to throw something at Imogen’s head, regardless of the fact that Imogen was no longer wearing her helmet. Rinn hated being caught between their near-constant power struggles, but she also couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
“Do you need help with inventory?” asked Rinn, honestly wanting to help. “Isn’t that what you said you were about to go do?”
Daniella rolled her eyes. “Stuff it, Olivera. You can’t kiss up to me the way you do Jo.”
Rinn was about to argue that she wasn’t kissing up, and that she honestly was never trying to, when the phone—a putty-colored landline with a cord and everything—trilled into the silent store. Rinn did her best not to jump, but she flinched at the noise, it was so unexpected.
Briiiiing.
Briiiing.
BRIIIIIIIIING.