Home: Part 33

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

March 1977

Shannon had gone from dark to light, as though she had turned the sun onto her hair. The hair was shorter, too, no longer at her shoulders but just below her earlobes on the sides. "It was Val's idea," she said. "As soon as I sat in the chair, she said I looked like I needed a change." She pirouetted. "This is how she thought I should look."

"You're a blonde now," I said from the sofa. When she'd first come through the door, I hadn't recognized her.

"Dirty blonde, Val says."

"Short blonde," I said.

She looked at her reflection in the wood-framed mirror we had found at a yard sale. Then she looked at me. "What do you think?"

"Let me touch it," I said. She sat beside me, and I caressed the side of her head, feeling the hair. "It even feels different."

"So?"

"I think I like it," I said.

She leaned into  me. "It's a change, isn't it? That's all."

"First you get me to eat pomegranates, and now this."

She laughed. "I forgot about the pomegranate."

I kissed the top of her head. "It's beautiful. You're beautiful. You would be even if you didn't have any hair at all."

"Like a mannequin?"

"Yeah, but with eyes and a real smile."

"You're sweet. My dad will hate it."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. He's just always said how much he likes long hair on women. That's why my mom never gets hers cut short."

"Well, the hell with him." She brushed her bangs away from her eyebrows.