After Alice

Chapter 45: Cut Off

Liv detested every aspect of Mims's house—the insufferable pets always shedding hair and throwing up, her dingy, small bedroom that was still decorated with New Kids on the Block and Boyz II Men posters from four years ago, and most of all, the watchful eyes of Mims. While she was grounded, she brought all her meals up to her room and did her dishes in the middle of the night. She hated having to keep her door open all the time, but Mims didn't enforce it very hard. Soon, Liv began closing her door whenever she wanted, daring Mims to enter and encounter her wrath.

The second week of her punishment, things got worse. Mr. C, now barely speaking to her at school, walked around the classroom handing back their family history essays. He tossed hers on her desk without even a look of acknowledgment. She turned it over and saw a red B on the top and lots of marks scribbled over the entire five pages. She swallowed and turned the paper back over, not daring to look at it again.

Mr. C talked to the class about their papers, and then singled out a girl named Jessie for her excellent work researching her grandfather's service during World War 2. Liv wanted to puke. She dropped her head onto the desk and kept it there for the rest of the class. When the bell rang, she cut out of school and went straight home to her bed.

After a long cry, she pulled out her essay and hastily read through his comments. They said things like: Why did you write this as a letter? What is your principal argument? Cite your sources.

At the end, where she listed her new questions about her mother's death, he wrote: You should have stated these at the beginning of your essay. You finally got to the heart of your topic! More research needs to be done to test your theories.

Liv gritted her teeth and tore the paper up into tiny pieces. This is fucking bullshit! Try writing about your own mother's murder!

She paced and cursed the injustices of her life. As much as Mr. C's criticism hurt her, she knew he had a point. Her mother's death was at the very heart of her existence. She needed to find the answers to her questions, but she couldn't do that stuck in Mims's house.

Mims called at 2:30 on the dot.

"Here," Liv said flatly.

"A suicide case just came in, and I'll have to work late tonight. Ricky should be home in a couple of hours."

Liv smiled at the opening Mims had just handed her.

"Do your homework."

"Fine," Liv said and hung up the phone.

She picked up her wallet and walked downtown. When she passed Cool Beans, she stuck a booger on the door handle. What a pretentious, stupid place to hang out, she thought.

At the next corner she came to Tangles hair salon. A sign in the window said, "walk-ins welcome." Liv stared at her long, scraggly hair in the window's reflection and mustered up the courage to enter. The only worker in the place was sitting on a dryer seat, reading a magazine.

"How can I help you?" she asked, snapping her gum. The stylist had a smoker's husky voice and her reddish-brown, blonde hair seemed to be a testing pad for all the dyes in the place.

"Can you cut my hair?" Liv asked.

"That's what I do," the stylist said, cocking her head to squint at Liv's hair. "How short?"

Liv shrugged her shoulders and put her hand up to her chin. "Maybe this much?"

"Like a bob?"

"Something professional-looking," Liv said. She looked around the room and spotted a photo of a model with glasses. "Like her."

The woman looked at the photo and back at Liv. She stepped forward and picked up Liv's hair on either side, then tucked it behind her shoulders, squinting the whole time.

"You've got a lot of gray. Do you want me to dye it too?"

"No!"

"Ok, ok! It's cool. I've never seen a kid with gray hair. It looks kind of wild."

Liv rolled her eyes. She was used to the gawking. The kid part was what she wanted to eliminate.

The woman washed her hair and led her to a chair. Liv avoided looking at herself in the mirror. The sound of the scissors snipping by her ears set her teeth on edge. The woman chatted endlessly about her kids and her boyfriend until finally the cutting was done.

"What do you think?"

Liv took a long look in the mirror. Her hair looked darker when it was wet, so she couldn't get the full effect, but she definitely looked a little older with the short, angled bob.

"It's good. Can you blow it out?"

When the lady finished drying and gelling her hair, it formed a shell around her face that reminded her of the bitchy matriarch from one of Mims's favorite soap operas. Liv smirked. With the right outfit, and a little makeup, no one would guess she was sixteen.

A cool breeze tickled Liv's neck as she walked home. Cherry blossoms blanketed the sidewalk in patches like snow. Liv noticed that the world looked sharper and more in focus to her now. She felt exhilarated to finally put her plans into action.

Then she saw Mr. C's green sedan parked in front of the public library. Her throat clenched, and she hesitated mid-stride. It would feel good to tell him about her mission, she thought. Maybe he would help her, or at least wish her well on her way. She took a deep breath and ran up the stairs. As she passed through the glass doors, she glimpsed her reflection and was shocked at how alien she looked. He might not even recognize me!

Mr. C wasn't by the reference librarian's desk, so she took the long route around the fiction section to where the research bays were in the back. Her heart skipped when she heard his baritone voice waft over the book spines. Peeking her head out around the last aisle, she found him sitting with his back to her. She couldn't see who he was sitting next to, but she could make out his words.

"You've got a flare for story-telling, and with a little coaching you could get into any journalism school you want."

Liv keeled into the shelf on her left and almost knocked over a row of books. She backed down the aisle and came around to the other side. By peeking through a gap in the shelf, she saw the back of the student he was with. Liv only had to see her black, dyed hair and plaid shirt tied around her waist to know exactly who it was. She felt a stabbing sensation in her chest, and she struggled to get air.

"I can't wait to expose my parents' church. It's a like a cult, you know?" Jo said, sounding more Valley-girlish than usual.

"All religions started out as cults," Mr. C said, "but there's a deeper political story here you can explore."

He leaned towards her, smiling. They looked like the picture of intimacy.

"Can you show me how this machine works?" Jo said.

"Sure, let's load up the first roll."

As Jo let Mr. C guide her hands over the knobs of the machine, Liv turned away and ran to the bathrooms, where she heaved up her lunch. She rocked on the toilet, replaying the scene in her head: her best friend sitting with her lover, holding his hand and confiding in him. Jo had never been interested in journalism before, or Mr. C. She was just copying and exploiting Liv's story, turning it into a cheap tabloid news headline. She's getting back at me for telling on her and Ricky.

Liv sobbed. How could I have been so stupid? For weeks she had been sneaking around, taking great pains to hide her relationship with Mr. C, but her best friend had seen right through it. She reached for her hair, but it wasn't there anymore. Suddenly, Liv remembered her plan. Her pain changed to anger. Why cry over this when she was about to leave for good? Let them have each other. Now I won't miss them when I'm gone.

She rose from the toilet and walked slowly and carefully out of the library, making sure no one would notice her exit.