Page 21 of My Stepbrother's Wedding
Karen clicked her tongue. “Could you imagine marrying a troll just to come to America? Anyway, hurry up and get here before the entire summer goes to waste.”
“Give me three days,” I said. “Three long days.”
***
I spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach with Dad, Elizabeth, and Will’s dorky friends. I might have enjoyed it had I been with Karen. No matter. I read fifty pages of vampire love trianglesbefore Irena and Mira showed up. They invited me to accompany them to “the best hairstylist in Enkelana.” I would’ve balked at spending more time with the Malegonians, but a little pampering in the beauty salon sounded appealing.
We crammed into Mira’s car. I’d always thought of Mercedes-Benz as a luxury car brand, but this one was old enough to get social security and drove like a tractor. I suspected it had once been silver beneath the legion of scraps and dents. The air conditioner didn’t work, and the tires made a high-pitch squeal at every turn. Thankfully, the trip was short. We pulled to the curb in front of a storefront with a pair of scissors on the door.
The beauty parlor seemed small by American standards. Of course, everything was small in Malegonia: the roads, the coffee, the bathrooms, the stores. Even the people looked smaller. The hairstylist, Diana, shook our hands and went on a long spiel in her language. Mira and Irena translated bits and pieces, but mostly, I sat there awkward and confused.
I’d hoped to get my nails done or trim my split ends, but Diana focused on the bride-to-be instead. It was a bit annoying, but she deserved special treatment for marrying Will, sort of like giving last rites to someone on death row.
The stylist took forever, and I was glad I’d brought my book. I didn’t understand a word exchanged, but from the aluminum foil and smell of bleach, I deduced they were dying Irena’s hair. I wasn’t sure this was necessary, as her honey-blond curls already made me jealous, but Diana spent thenext twenty minutes applying chemicals to her head. Afterward the ladies boiled a pot of that disgusting Turkish coffee and shared the latest gossip.
They didn’t translate much for me, so I sat reading about lusty vampires while we waited. Another bride-to-be showed up with an entourage of young girls and old ladies in their wedding clothes, invading the tiny salon like stormtroopers. The new bride blabbered nonstop and had a whistling voice that grated like a shard of broken glass in my eardrum. Diana seemed to forget Irena was even there, until Mira said something.
The stylist laid Irena back in the sink and washed out the chemicals. When Irena sat up, her hair glowed bright purple. A general gasp resounded. I shrieked and covered my mouth. She could have passed for a member of a punk band if she had a few more piercings. Silent looks of terror covered every face. The hairstylist shifted her weight back and forth nervously.
“Is it bad?” Irena asked.
“It’s … unique,” I said. A more forthright answer would have been that she looked like a neon snow cone. How such beautiful hair could be so completely destroyed was beyond me.
The Malegonians exchanged a flutter of nervous comments. I sensed panic from the hairstylist, but the woman tried to play it off as if everything was under control. She rubbed some more chemicals into Irena’s hair and set a timer—something she should have done before. I was too stunned to return to my book, so I spoke with Mira instead.
“Was her hair supposed to turn out like that?” I asked.
Mira waited until Diana was on the other side of the room before she answered. “No, she left the bleach on too long. She’s trying to fix it by adding lowlights.”
“Lowlights? How are lowlights going to fix this?”
Mira shrugged. I gulped. Irena’s lips trembled on the verge of tears.
Ten minutes later, Diana washed out the new batch of chemicals. To my astonishment, her hair looked even worse than before. The purple hue had turned gray, and the addition of black streaks made Irena look more like the Wicked Witch of the West than a flowering girl on her wedding day. I stared wide eyed and slack jawed. Mira rattled at Diana in an escalating tone. Irena looked in the mirror and broke into a sob.
“Maybe we can get a wig,” I suggested.
Mira said something that caused Diana to sneer and raise her voice. Mira erupted with a slew of heated words, all well deserved by the stylist. I didn’t need a translation to make out the catfight that followed. Irena stared at her reflection like someone coming to grips with a severe medical diagnosis. The other bride-to-be clucked nervously, as if Diana could turn her into a frog, and fled with her entourage. We joined the rapid exodus, Irena keeping a towel over her head to hide her brutalized hair. My heart broke for the girl. Not only was she going to marry Will, but she was also stuck with the Chernobyl of hairdos.
***
We drove to my stepbrother’s apartment after the disaster with Diana. His place was hidden off a main road, behind a fast-food restaurant and a tiny convenience store. The building looked like every other drab gray flat in town. All the glass was broken out of the common windows, and someone had spray-painted a swastika on the first-floor exterior—not appealing, but a slight improvement over how Will had kept his room in high school.
I followed the girls up the stairs to the fifth floor, wishing there was an elevator, and met Will at his front door. He noticed the towel immediately.
“Why are you wearing that on your head?” he asked.
“Can we come in?” Irena said, a waver in her accent.
Will nodded and opened the door for us. His place was spartan, to say the least—a tiny studio apartment with old furniture, unadorned walls, and a refrigerator that didn’t work. An acoustic guitar lay across his bed, and a disorderly stack of books stood on the coffee table next to a laptop computer and a jumble of cables. The room screamed bachelor pad. Still, the inside looked nicer than the outside.
Will moved his junk and pulled out two chairs so we could sit down. Irena wrapped her arms across her body and stared at the floor. Will glanced at her expectantly.
“Tell me I’m beautiful,” Irena said, lips quivering.
Will frowned and lowered his brow. “Of course you’re beautiful. What’s wrong?”
With a sigh, she pulled the towel off her head, revealing the barbarism inflicted on her innocent hair. Will’s chin nearly bounced off the floor, and his eyes opened so wide that I thought they’d fall out of his head.
