Page 45 of Little Gray Dress

“Yes. Very, very.” I head upstairs and load up YouTube to get some quick tips so I don’t look washed-out with my new blonde hair. Thank God for technology. I don’t know how I started teenhood without it.

About half way through my third video is when I realize it’s not the makeup making me look streaky but the spray tan that is now starting to darken. When I say ‘darken,’ I mean, I look like I’ve just spent a week in the sun. It’s not exactly turning me orange, but I’m definitely not milky-white anymore.

“Hey, Lil…” I nonchalantly yell down the stairs hoping not to send Hannah into a full-on panic.

“What?” she yells back, obviously not quite reading my mind.

“Can you come up here?”

“Is something wrong?” she yells back, leading me to the balcony overlooking the living room.

“Just get up here!” I hiss down to her and watch her jump off the couch and run towards the stairs.

“What is it?” She walks in and stops in her tracks looking me up and down. “Oh no… the tan?”

“Yeah… the tan. What the fuck? How bad does it look?”

She bites her lip and looks me up and down. “It’s not terrible, yet but it keeps getting darker for up to eight hours. So… with the wedding just a few hours away…”

“Oh, my God… oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What do I do?” I sit down on the bed and drop my head down between my knees hoping to avoid the panic setting in quickly.

“I dunno… Give me a second.” She’s frantically typing into her phone probably Googling how to remove a spray tan. “This says, to slather on a layer of baby oil, let it sit for fifteen minutes and then scrub with lemon juice and baking soda.”

“What about my hair?”

“We’ll have to refix it. I have some oil.” She disappears from my room, returning within the same minute with a tiny bottle of baby oil. “Get to slathering, I’ll go down and make the scrub, I’m sure Hannah has everything.”

Baby oil is not a fun product. Once I had my top half covered in it the bottle was hard to manage to cover my legs. But somehow, I managed and now I can’t even sit because it’s so thick I’d just slide off anything I sat on.

“Here.” Lily comes in with a stiff loofah sponge and a container full of yellowish gloop. “It’s probably been about ten minutes, so get in there, steaming hot and scrub till your skin bleeds.”

“That’s a little drastic, isn’t it?” I take the concoction from her and walk into the shower. Right when I was happy with how my hair turned out, I have to mess it all up and hope that the outcome is the same.

“Either have pink skin from over-scrubbing, or look like you tried to change race?”

“Fine, I’ll scrub till it hurts.” I did, I scrubbed every area until I couldn’t take it and then I moved onto the next and then, in the end, I had to rewash with a regular loofah just to get the oil completely off my skin.

“Better?” I walk out still in a towel to see Lily sitting on my bed watching TV.

“Oh… Yes. I’d say you’re half as dark now. Still a little darker than I’d choose, but it looks almost normal.”

“Really?” I glance in the mirror right as Hannah walks in.

“Time to get—” She stops and stares at me. “What happened to your hair?”

“The spray tan went wrong and we had to scrub it off.”

“What?”

“I looked like I sat in the sun for hours.”

“And this is the after-scrub?” She’s got her jaw clenched through her forced smile.

“Yeah… Is it still terrible?”

“A little dark, but definitely not terrible. But… now you need to refix your hair, do your makeup and get dressed.”

“Got it, Lily will help me, right Lil?”

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