"Gross."
"Go fuck yourself, Jackie," I grumbled, kneading my fingers on my scalp. I'd resorted to not washing my hair and just putting baby powder on it so it wouldn't look oily. When I washed my hair, oodles of strands would fall out. My hair had been thick at the start, but now it was unbelievably thin, and anyone with a pair of eyeballs could see I had hair loss. Not to mention the short patch of hair that'd been shaved to remove the tumor was becoming more and more visible.
I looked like a hot mess.
Not only my hair was shitty, but so were all of my clothes. I'd dropped a pants size (and a couple bra letters and numbers; my luck in a nutshell) and so all I could wear were sweatpants, which wasn't totally bad because they were comfortable and the weight loss was less obvious than if I wore jeans every day.
I was pretty disappointed at my fifth-grader boobs, though.
"Just put it up," she suggested.
"No. I don't now how long I'll have hair, and I'm not going to keep it up."
Jackie shrugged, realizing it was true. "How are you feeling today?" she asked.
"Shitty."
"So the usual."
I nodded. I'd gone through two more chemo treatments. My eyebrows were completely gone, which was a complete disaster trying to pencil in every day.
I looked in the mirror, feeling discouraged. I could see my scalp easily. I had what, ten strands of hair left on my head?
"Are you having a mental breakdown?" Jackie asked, watching my reflection while she stood behind me.
"Yeah." I bent down, pulling out Alan's hair buzzing device from it's special box.
"Nessa, don't," Jackie plead.
I plugged it into the wall.
"Vanessa."
I clicked on the on switch and brought it toward my head.
Jackie just let out a yelp, knowing that there was no stopping me. I touched the shaver to my head, feeling the rough pulling vibrations.
Then I pushed it back.
The dark pieces fell into the sink.
Strip by strip, I shaved my entire head, Jackie picking up the falling pieces from the floor and the sink and my shoulders and putting them into the hair baggie.
As expected, when everything was buzzed off and my hair was gone except for a measley buzz cut, I started to bawl.
"Maybe you should stay home," Jackie suggested, putting her dad's things back away under the sink.
"No," I snapped, brushing the tears away with a tissue. "I'm going."
"Well can you be inspiring faster?" Jackie asked. I pulled a headband from our shared hair supply basket and pushed it back. "School started ten minutes ago."
~~~~~~~~
"Mother of pearl!" Ms. Dossen gasped when I walked into the guidance office. "Look how amazing you look!" She looked genuinely pleased, not like she was just pitying me because I took the daring step. "But late again," she mumbled, pursing her lips. "Did you do it this morning?"
"Yeah, that's why Jackie and I were late," I explained. "Does it really look okay?" I ran my hand over it, feeling the stubbly pieces. Maybe this was an awful idea.
"Of course," she insisted. She folded her hands together waffle style and smiled, her body leaning her body toward me excitedly. Ms. Dossen fell back on her heels again, unfolding her hands. She was back to her normal self. "Why don't you go into your little work room and get started," she suggested. I nodded, adjusting my backpack before heading toward the door. "Oh, and by the way," she called out just before I opened the door, "You have a visitor."
Feeling a nervous pit in the bottom of my stomach fill with heat, I turned the handle of the door and slipped inside. All I could see was the back of a blonde head. It was a guy, who was a little thicker in the middle. From where I stood, I could see a little bit of stubble on his chin. His backpack rested on the floor by his feet and he was bent over a textbook, scribbling answers on a lined sheet of paper. He didn't even raise his head when I closed the door with a click, and silently sat at the table across from him, sliding my rolling chair close to the table. I opened up my backpack. It was eerily quiet in the tiny room, and I wished he would say something.
"Hey, man," he said, just barely glancing up. He did a double take, looking back up, taking in the makeup on my face and the headband wrapped around my brow. "Aw, I'm sorry. That was really stupid of me." He ran his hand through the floppy curls at the base of his forehead. "Especially after I've been sick."
"What?"
"Yeah. You're sick," he said. "I can tell. I had cancer about eight months ago. I'm a whole grade behind."
"What year are you in?"
"Well I should've graduated last year," he explained. "But then shit got in the way." He shrugged. "Just have to start college life a little later." He grinned. "I'm Beau."
"Vanessa," I introduced myself. "Don't tell anyone I'm sick, okay?"
"You haven't told anyone?" he asked, incredulous.
"No. I didn't want all of the attention," I replied.
He glanced up at my head. "That's going to be a bit of a problem now," he reminded me.
"Well, people might as well figure it out before I'm completely bald," I shrugged. But on the inside, I felt like I was having a seizure, I was shaking so hard with nervousness. What would everyone say? I don't think I could handle the pity.
I pulled my things out of my backpack, setting them on the table. After sifting through the chart Lexi, Ms. Dossen and I had made to schedule my schoolwork, I decided on math. That was what I was farthest behind in.
The room was completely silent for a couple of hours, except for the quiet hum of classical music Beau was playing on his phone, but it was so quiet I had to strain to hear it. Wasn't it supposed to relax you? Or make you smarter? It was just stressing me out because I had no idea what it sounded like.
"How far have you gotten?" Beau asked after the second block bell. He was rounding up his things and pushing them into a dark blue backpack. He stood and slid his pencil into his pocket and stood, swinging the backpack over his shoulders.
"Not very," I answered, still focused on my work.
"Well I've gotta go to work," he said. "But I'll be back tomorrow. Don't miss me too much!" he called out before leaving.
"Bye."
I finished a good portion of my math homework and all of my english, and felt pretty accomplished.
Plus, I think I'd just made a good friend.
~~~~~~
Just one week later I was completely bald.
And by now, I didn't give two shits about it. I didn't even bother penciling in my eyebrows because I just looked like a stupid Guido. I did wear bigger earrings and more eye makeup in an attempt to draw attention away from my big shiny head, but it didn't really make much of a difference. The school had a strict no-hat policy too, not even making an exception for me.
"If we make an exception for you, we have to make one for everybody," the douchey vice principal had told me. Sorry, I didn't realize cancer was a bad excuse.
What a dick.
I was at my locker between passing periods one day, searching for a book I needed but had misplaced.
"Vanessa?" a voice said. I turned around to face her. "Are you sick?" My so called "friend" asked. "Because if you're not, that shaved head fashion statement is awful."
I raised my arms up and shoved against her chest.