Page 47 of Free Heart
Pushing Romeo off, I struggle to a fully seated position. “What the hell did you do to your hair?”
“I cut it.” He pauses in the doorway, the light from the window shining on his tense face.
“You cut it,” I repeat in disbelief.
“With scissors,” he adds unnecessarily, his shoulders almost touching his now very visible ears. They’re pretty like the restof him and not excessively large or weirdly shaped. Thank God, since apparently I’ll be seeing a lot of them. “Then I went to have the barber shape it up.”
“You cut it yourself?”
“It’s been a bad day,” Sejin says, wiping his hand across his face, and it seems to all come tumbling out of him without even a breath between sentences. “I didn’t have time to dry it this morning, so it was wet all day. And then the new little guy? Byron? He vomited on me and it got in my hair, and I threw up too, and it was all—” He waves his hands around. “I washed it out in the sink with hand soap that smelled like cinnamon apples—”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, and when I got to Papa Bear, my fucking hair got caught in my locker door, and Ilostit. Celli gave me some scissors and—” He mimes cutting his hair. “Gone. Boom. But then it looked like shit, all choppy and horrible, and, and…” His eyes well with tears. “I started crying”—he waves at his own face—“like now, and Pete was all, ‘Just leave, kid, Jesus’ and I was really in no place to argue with him about it, even though we need the money. Like a lot. So, I went to the closest barber, and he made it nice.”
Sejin lifts his hand, the one that’s been behind his back, and a long black ponytail waves in the air. Romeo jumps up and bats at it. Sejin lifts it higher. “Celli collected it all and made me take it with me. The barber tied it up for me.” Wiping at his wet face with the back of his hand, Sejin whispers, “I can’t believe I did it. What was I thinking? I’ve always had long hair. Since I was a kid.”
I swallow down my own visceral reaction to the loss of all that black silk and reach out to him instead. As he comes forward, and sits on the bed next to me, I touch the buzzed undercutbeneath the almost chin-length longer parts. Turns out I like the sensation of its softness against my fingers. “You look great.”
“Do I?” He tugs back from my touch, running his hand through his hair and over his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter really. I needed it gone.”
“Why?”
“I can’t do itall,” Sejin cries. And then, as if he’s heard himself too clearly, he casts his gaze down to the floor where Muggs and Julio are trying to bat at the length of his cut-off hair again. It dangles loosely in his grasp, hanging over the side of the bed. His voice is quiet when he speaks again. “I don’t have the time or the energy to keep up with it anymore while I’m holding down two jobs, trying to care for Peggy Jo’s little monsters here, and helping you—” He holds out a hand. “Don’t! Don’t apologize!”
I blink. “I wasn’t going to.”
“—because I want to help you.” Sejin pauses and tilts his head. “You weren’t?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
I shrug. “I mean…Ididn’t make you cut your hair.”
“No, but—” Sejin’s jaw tightens. “You don’t see how this situation contributed to me doing it?”
“Yes? But I wasn’t going to apologize. Even though I am sorry.”
His mouth goes hard.
“Icanapologize if you want me to.” I take a breath and say seriously, “I’m sorry you cut your hair.”
“No, I don’t want you to be sorry I cut my hair!” Sejin exclaims, shaking the ponytail at me. “I want you to be sorry I’m so overwhelmed. Because I wouldn’t be if…if…” He trails off.
“If I’d died?”
“No!” His eyes fly wide.
“If you’d left me?”
“No! For fuck’s sake, don’t be an asshole. If you’d never tried that damn climb.”
“Mm.” There we go. More of that anger he’s got locked inside. He told me at the start it was fair for him to have it, and it is, but he also told me life isn’t fair, so…
Whitman said we contain multitudes. Sejin is a prime example.
He sits quietly for a long moment before he whispers, “But I don’t think I’d want you to be a Dan who doesn’t climb.”
