I nodded. “Figures.” I brushed my hair out of my face. “Well, I guess I should probably go pack.”
“Okay,” Carter nodded. “I’ll see you a little later.”
“See ya.” I turned and started to walk away. Holy crap! I was going to New York City. Tonight. I’d never been to New York City. What was I supposed to wear?
My thoughts started to swirl and I resisted the urge to turn and start running back to my dorm room. No way I wanted to be seen as so uncool that I would just start running down the streets of Harvard Square.
“Lindsay!” Carter called after me.
I turned around. “Yeah?”
He smiled. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I smiled back.
And then I thought, screw it. I turned around and started to run.
***
When I got back to the dorms, Rachel was dying her hair.
In our room.
Bottles and potions were lined up on her desk, and there was a bowl filled with a thick blue paste sitting on the floor. Rachel was sitting down there next to it. Her hair was piled up on her head, and she was painting the paste onto it with a small brush.
“Hey!” she said brightly when she saw me. “I’m dying my hair!”
“Yeah, I see that.” I set my bag down gently on my desk chair. “But, um, shouldn’t you be doing that in the bathroom?”
“I was doing it in the bathroom,” she said. “But that awful girl from down the hall came in and was giving me a hard time. You know, the one who’s always trying to cut the line in the cafeteria and wears those One Direction shirts ironically even though no one knows that?” She rolled her eyes. “Can you believe her? I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t going to clean up my mess. But I think I should be nice to her, because she’s obviously been through something traumatic, don’t you think? Otherwise she wouldn’t be so awful.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.” I had no idea who she was talking about. I also wasn’t sure why Rachel thought it was okay to be dying her hair right in our room when obviously she was making a mess. But I wasn’t going to refute her. We had just made up and if she wanted to dye her hair and wreck our room in the process, then I was more than happy to let her.
“There!” Rachel finished painting her hair with the dye and stood up. A blob of paste fell off of her head and landed on the floor. “Oops,” she said and then bent down and wiped it up. She straightened back up and looked at herself in the mirror. “How do you think I’ll look as a redhead?”
“Hot.” I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop. I pulled out my phone and looked at the text Carter had sent me on my way over here, the one that gave me my flight details for tonight. “How come you’re dying your hair red, anyway?” I knew there had to be a reason. Rachel didn’t do things just to do them. Her sudden desire to change her appearance probably had something to do with an article she’d read, or some mythological creature that had inspired her.
“Because Adam likes redheads.”
“Oh.” I tried not to let her see my surprise, and instead kept my voice calm as I began googling flight prices. “So listen,” I said. “I’m going to be going to New York City for a couple days.”
“Really?” Rachel pulled a tissue out of the box on her dresser and wiped away a drip of dye that had fallen onto her forehead. It left a maroon looking stain on her skin.
“For what?”
“For a kickoff meeting for the next stage of Dr. Klaxton’s study.”
“Oh, that’s awesome!” She peered at herself in the mirror. “Do you think this stain is going to come off my forehead?”
“Oh, I’m sure it will.” They wouldn’t sell hair dye that stained people’s skin, would they? There had to be, like, regulations.
“I hope so.” She wiped at her forehead with her hand but it didn’t seem to do anything about the dark red smudge. “You don’t think this is the color my hair’s going to be, do you?” She picked up the empty box of hair dye and showed it to me. On the front, a girl with gorgeous auburn curls smiled a perfect smile. “This is how it’s supposed to look. Not dark red.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. It probably looks different on skin than it does on hair.”
“Yeah.” Her iPhone started playing a tune from where it was laying on her bed, and Rachel’s eyes lit up. “That’s my timer,” she said. “Time to go wash this stuff off.”
She headed for the door, then turned around and blew me a kiss. “Next time you see me, I’ll be a redhead.”
“Good luck,” I called as she disappeared into the hallway.
I turned back to my computer, located the flight I needed and booked it. I sent Carter a text.