“They’ll be there a week,” she says again, as if I forgot our conversation yesterday. I nod, but this time, I’m not bringing up the evils of the sweet Siren song of death, so she actually smiles at me. “Are you well?” she asks me.
I want to laugh. Well? Does she mean healthy? Intact? Sane? “I have no idea,” I say.
She grins at my response. What the hell? Sometimes I think if she were stuck here with the varsity football quarterback, the one who’s going to Princeton on a full ride and looks like fucking Tom Brady, she’d have torn him to shreds already.
Her white hair rises a little in the front from static, and sticks to her forehead in that annoying way that only happens to people with superfine, stick-straight hair. My head is covered in thick black stuff with a stubborn wave to it. Static runs screaming away from my head, as do combs and brushes.
She battles with her own strands for a moment, trying to push them back and flatten them down. She huffs with annoyance and marches to the kitchen, where she pulls out a large kitchen knife from a drawer. She grabs a hunk of hair in one fist and holds the knife to it.
Holy shit. “Hold on! Geez, what are you doing?”
“I’m cutting it,” she announces.
That would explain why it’s four different lengths and so irregular. “Don’t you have scissors?”
She blinks at me. Apparently, logic is some orange-winged creature she’s never met before.
“Oh.” She puts the knife down and rummages through a drawer full of twine, pamphlets, and keys that probably don’t open anything. She pulls out an old pair of long shears with black handles, the kind that teachers always have at their desk. And then she grabs another handful of hair and starts to hew at it with the scissors.
“Wait, wait.” I put my hands up to stop her. “Let me do it.”
She freezes with the open blades against a hunk of hair.
“I’m no expert, but I’ve watched the barber do this a million times, so…I’m a visual expert. Sort of.”
For a whole minute, she just stares at me. It’s distinctly uncomfortable. This girl would win the world championship of staring contests. This girl would make a damn fish blink.
“All right.” She takes the scissors and puts them on the counter.
I go back to the bedroom, where the three-legged stool sits beneath the now-empty mug of honey water. When I carry the stool into the kitchen, I notice that the stone cairns dotting the floor have been moved aside to make room for the stool. Oddly, the stones are still perfectly balanced on each other. If I’d moved them that fast, they’d just be a scattered mess.
I pat the stool, and she bends over and pats it, too.
I frown. “No, I mean, sit down here.”
“Oh.” She plops down and I stand behind her, reaching to pick up the scissors. I hope they’re not too dull, or else this is going to be as effective as cutting with spoons.
“How short do you want it?” I ask.
“Short.”
“Uh. Can you be more specific?”
“Like Jean Seberg.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jean Dorothy Seberg was an actress born on November 13, 1938. She starred in thirty-eight films in Hollywood and Europe, and died of a barbiturate overdose in Paris at the age of forty.” She turns to see my expression of undiluted surprise, then points to my head. “It was short. Like yours. Shorter, even.”
I nod. Okay. Short it is.
I start cutting bits off here and there, aiming to keep it about an inch long. I try not to touch her skin, but it’s hard not to. Especially when I start snipping off the bits at the nape of her neck. I do what the barbers do, and capture a lock of hair between two extended fingers, then cut it off on the palm side of my fingers to protect her skin. Her neck is so soft, like velvet or silk. And it’s still really warm, like she’s got a furnace within her body.
Every time I pinch another bit of hair and nestle my fingers against her neck, she blinks and swallows. And I blink and swallow. I’m not used to being so close to girls. To any girl. Carla’s a faint memory these days.
No one at my high school wanted to have anything to do with me. I oozed leperdom out of my pores. The truth is, most people want normal when it comes to choosing friends or hookups in school. Complicated is for the movies. Complicated gets you shunned faster than a case of publicly announced chlamydia. Complicated always ends badly. My life in the last ten years has only ever been school, my uncle, Walmart, and those letters. Those shitty letters.
There was never room for normal.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
I’ve stopped cutting, forgetting where I was. I’m not in Duluth anymore. I’ll be eighteen in a few months. I’ve left it all behind. All that matters right now are these scissors, and this girl.
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m almost done.”
Her white hair is cropped short now. She looks like a pixie, or some sort of elf. I shuffle to the front of her and reach for some longer wisps of hair near her forehead. She leans closer to meet me in the middle. The neck of her nightgown bows open, and I see the tops of her breasts when I look down.
God, she’s so beautiful.
I swallow again and will my body to not embarrass me. I go from novice haircutter to an expert in seconds, desperate to finish before my whole body fires up like an inferno. I finish off the last few pieces, put the scissors down, and step away. “It’s all done.”
Her long, delicate fingers touch her head all over. She smiles, delighted. She stands up and approaches me, her breasts tenting the front of her gown. I take a step back, and then another. I’m afraid to be so close. She’ll know I’m attracted to her. I wish my body would calm down. Soon, my back hits the stone fireplace, and she closes the distance between us. She points at me with a tapered index finger, reaching until her finger pad touches my neck. It’s not a delicate touch, but deliberate and oddly aggressive. I get the distinct feeling that she’s feeling the pulse in my neck. It must be going a mile a minute. She opens her mouth.
“My name is Anda.”
Chapter Eighteen
ANDA
His face flushes a faint dusky pink beneath his chestnut-colored cheeks. He smells of the boreal forests of the Isle. Of trees and cold lake water and musk. He meets my eyes, but there is a hint of panic there. He doesn’t like me to be so close. Well, no one would, if they knew what I was.
But he doesn’t know. So why is he afraid?
His pulse beats hard and fast under my finger. So much power and life there. So exquisite. My vision blurs a little.
Push, Anda. Push a little harder. Make it stop.
I shake my head and ignore her. My hunger is sated for now, but there is yet a need I can’t identify. What I want is to feel his short, scraggly beard and compare it to the stubbly moss that grows beneath paper birch trees. My finger rises against his throat to touch his jaw, rough with stubble, and he moves away abruptly. I’m left pointing at him, a needle turned north.
I finally drop my arm to clasp my hands, wishing I could touch his pulse again. It was nice being close to that warm, living river under his skin.
“I’m Hector,” he blurts out.