I am no longer invisible. Eighty-three percent of the people I have walked by this morning stopped and stared and then whispered to their friends. The other seventeen percent did actual double takes, the kind I’ve heretofore only seen in cartoons where necks are bendable. I look different. My hair is short and choppy instead of hanging long and in my face. My clothes look more like what the popular guys in school wear.
I try not to think about the random fold by my left shin or that the denim feels tight and bends in all the wrong places. With each step, I miss my old khakis, of which I have three identical pairs that I’ve rotated on a daily basis for the past two years. I can smell my new hair putty, which is coconut-y and not altogether unpleasant, so long as I don’t dwell on its sticky texture. Miney applied it this morning, using a dose the volume of two quarters, and I filmed the process so I will be able to do it the exact same way once she goes back to school.
“Holy crap, Little D. I can’t believe you didn’t let me do this sooner,” Miney said this morning over breakfast, after I came downstairs and, at my mother’s insistence, stood still so they could get a look at the new me.
“You’re going to have the girls eating out of your hand,” my mom added.
As I walk down the hallway now, I think of all those montage scenes in teen movies where the main character, invariably a girl, tries on a plethora of outrageous dresses and hats, closes and opens dressing room doors in keeping with the music’s beat, and then finally emerges supposedly transformed by something as mundane as a new hairdo and a skimpy dress. What I’ve never understood is why the boys are always shocked when they get their first glance of their newly made-up date, as if the girls weren’t already beautiful despite their penchant for androgynous clothing. Do screenwriters think teenage boys lack all power of imagination? At least for me, the opposite is true. I’m pretty confident I already know what Kit looks like naked.
Despite Miney’s best efforts, I do not feel transformed. I cannot imagine Kit at the bottom of a staircase looking up at me with a slack jaw. And certainly, the thought of anyone eating from my hand like a goat at a petting zoo grosses me out. Is that really a thing?
“Wow, smokin’, Se?or Drucker,” Abby says as I walk into AP Spanish. My headphones are on, but my music is off in case I see Kit, who wasn’t in the parking lot at 7:57 as I had hoped and has so far missed our morning classes. This is the second time in my entire high school career that Abby has spoken to me, the first being four days ago when I bumped into Jessica and she called me a freak. I don’t understand if she’s making fun of me, so I just ignore her. Also, I cannot communicate with anyone who wears that much perfume.
“He looks like a different person,” Willow says. Does she think I can’t hear her because of my headphones, or does she just not care? “I mean, dude.”
I practice her inflection in my head, the way she emphasizes the dude, to run it by Miney later so she can translate. I mean, dude.
—
“Lo siento,” Kit says to Se?ora Rubenstein when she finally slips into class thirteen minutes after the bell. “Car problemos.”
Today, Kit’s again wearing that big white button-down shirt, and her hair is pulled up in its Monday messiness, though it’s looped into a bagel-shaped bun instead of its usual ponytail. Her face looks puffy, like she woke up only moments ago. I’m four seats behind her, so I study the back of her neck. She has a small round mole at the base of her nape, and it sits right there, primly, like it’s the perfect ending to an exquisite sentence. I don’t trust myself to remember its exact dimensions later, so I reach for my notebook and start drawing.
“I see you’ve gotten a haircut, Se?or Drucker,” Se?ora Rubenstein says in Spanish, apropos of nothing I can decipher, and at first I don’t bother looking up. I’ve just sketched the two swerves of Kit’s collar, and I want to get them right. “Se?or Drucker. Presta atención, Se?or Drucker.”
“Sí,” I say, and lift my head to find the entire class staring at me. I ignore Se?ora Rubenstein and her tapping foot and all those curious faces and look to Kit to attempt the impossible and read her expression. She raises her right eyebrow approximately one millimeter, keeps her lips in a straight, grim line, and then turns back to face the front of the room. Her eyes are bloodshot like Miney’s. Maybe conjunctivitis is going around. “Sí, tengo un corte de cabello.”
Se?ora Rubenstein somehow uses my haircut to transition to her unit on Spanish customs and culture, a clunky and illogical connection, but no one else seems bothered. Kit faces forward, her neck straight, and she doesn’t turn around for the rest of class.
Clearly she hates my new hair.
Maybe she hates me.
I keep drawing. That way at least I’ll have some small part of her to save for later.
—
After class I end up walking beside José, and before I can slip on my headphones, he starts peppering me with questions.
“What are you wearing?” he asks. I guess since we’re now teammates he assumes we must adhere to social niceties, like chitchat. I wish I could politely dispel him of this myth.
“Clothes.”
“Where did you get them?”
“The mall.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Why?
“Because I think I should get some. Girls are actually talking about you.”
“My sister picked them out.”
“Your sister is hot.”
“Not sure how that’s relevant.”
“Well, could she pick some clothes out for me?”
“She could, but I don’t think she will.”
“Don’t forget we have the decathlon meeting tomorrow after school.”
“I don’t forget things.”
“Me neither. Well, obviously, I don’t remember everything, but almost everything. My earliest memory is from when I was two years and five months old. What’s your earliest memory?”
“I have to think about it.”
“Were they expensive?”
“What?”
“The clothes.”
“Define expensive,” I say, and then José surprises me. Because he does. He defines the word expensive with impressive specificity.
—
I told myself I could secretly start calling the lunch table ours if we made it to a second week of sharing and here we are: week two, day one.
“Muy guapo,” Kit says, and points to her own head. I force myself to make eye contact, but there’s too much going on in her pupils. Attempting to unravel it and at the same time hold still makes my processing speed slow down.
“Huh?”
“Your haircut. Muy guapo.”
I don’t need Miney to translate this one. Muy guapo, is of course, Spanish for “very handsome.” I’m so glad I didn’t take Latin, which I had considered, since it would be helpful if I decided one day to go to medical school.
“Thank you. I mean, gracias.” Her pupils seem to be pushing and pulling at once, like a resistance exercise. I give up and look at her clavicle instead. The circular constellation of freckles.