“Yes. I feel terrible about this.” I yank off my T-shirt and hand it to her.
“It’s okay,” she reassures me, as her eyes dart around to all the people staring her down. I watch one woman in the booth next to us mouth the word brat, and I am suddenly on my feet.
“He’s a little boy!” I say to the woman in the booth. “I just startled him badly and his shirt is soaked through, making his skin cold and wet. He’s having a hard time processing all of it at once, okay?”
The booth woman looks at me like I’m crazy, but she’s smart enough to mumble “sorry” to the mother, who is wriggling her son into my shirt. He begins to calm and I squat down, getting on eye level with him.
“I’m sorry I knocked you over. It was an accident. I’m sorry.” I smile at him, and he’s still clinging to his mother, but he’s not crying or shrieking anymore.
“He doesn’t talk much yet,” his mother says to me. Her eyes shift to the woman in the booth. “Thanks for sticking up for him.”
“I have a brother who’s a lot like him,” I say.
This is how we talk, when we meet someone who has a kid or a brother or a sister like ours. We won’t say the word for fear that we use the wrong one, or we’ve found an undiagnosed kid, or a parent who just plain hates to hear the word. But we all know. We can recognize it from across a room.
“I need an address, so I can mail your shirt back,” she says to me.
“No, keep it. I don’t like the band anymore, anyway.”
She gives me another grateful smile as she guides her son to his feet. He stands, tracing the words and designs on the oversized shirt with his finger while she wipes off his chair. One of the workers helps her, asking her if she needs anything else or if her son was hurt. She thanks him and tells him they’re fine, and the worker hurries off.
“I’m really sorry,” I say again.
“Oh, it’s okay. It was worth it to hear you take that woman down.” She gives me a conspiratorial grin. “We’re all in this together, right?”
I nod. “Right. Anyway, it was nice meeting you…” I look at the little boy.
“Mark,” she prompts.
I squat back down, looking him in the eye. “Mark. It was nice to meet you.” I put out my hand and he looks at it a moment. Finally, he takes it, shaking it twice.
“Bye,” I say, straightening up. I look back over my shoulder as I walk away, and Mark is still standing by the table. He is waving at me. I wave back and then rush to the bathroom, so I can get myself home.
When I come through, I am fuming. I am so angry at Mario, I’m practically vibrating with it.
That gives way to shock as I stare at my new reflection in the mirror.
“You cut my hair?” I say in disbelief. “You cut my hair!”
I stare in dismay at my new bangs, hanging just at my brow line. I haven’t had bangs since sixth grade, and it’s taken me all those years to grow them out again. She—I—up and decided to do myself a favor and give me bangs again. She also ate almost an entire box of crackers while lying in my bed. Ugh!
My fingers poke and shove at my bangs, but there’s no way to change this. They’re even a little crooked. I look down at the scissors lying on my dresser, and the locks of hair tossed into my trash can.
“Why would you do something like that?” I demand, looking in the mirror again. Great. Now I have to stop at the haircut place by Wickley’s and get these things straightened out. And spend another six years growing them out again.
As I’m heading out the door, Danny calls out after me.
“Are you coming back, Jessa?”
I stop in the doorway to reassure him. “Yes, Danny. I just have to run an errand, okay?”
“Are you coming back?” he clarifies.
It’s spooky how he knows this. His brain doesn’t work like ours, I know, but it’s spooky and comforting at the same time. Danny will always know the real me, I guess.
“Yes, Danny. I’ll be back, just like this.”
“With your new hair?”
I grit my teeth. “Yes, Danny. With my new hair.”
My hair gets fixed—well, as fixed as it can get—and after dinner I get involved in writing a new story. Eventually, I make myself go to bed because I’ve got a lot I want to say to a certain Dreamer.
He’s waiting for me in the classroom, sitting behind the teacher’s desk and tapping a pen against the desktop.
“What the hell!” I round on him. “You made me throw a soda on a kid who was … you know!”
“Yes,” he says, more than a bit perturbed. “And you just wrecked the whole scenario.”
“What? You’re mad at me?” I sputter. “I terrified that kid!”
“I didn’t ask you to flatten him,” Mario points out, standing up and coming around the desk. “Just spill on him. You went overboard.”