I set my makeup brush down. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Mom was supposed to do my hair.”
My heart sinks. “I can do your hair.”
Olivia opens her hand, her hair uncoiling down her back, glinting golden in the yellow light. “It’s fine,” she says, floating toward her seat at the vanity.
I catch eyes with Hannah in the mirror and sweep blush up my cheekbone again. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Olivia pick up someone’s bikini trimmer. She flicks it on, and the buzz cuts through the chatter.
“What do you need that for?” I ask.
In one motion, she presses it to her hairline and rakes a stripe down the middle of her head.
I nearly choke, my hand flying out like I could stop her.
“What the hell, Olivia?” Hannah snaps.
The room goes quiet but for the hornet hum of the clippers. We all watch in stunned, frozen horror, as Olivia keeps cutting, calm and steady. One blond spiral after another slides down her shoulder, catches on the fabric of her leotard, and then piles on the floor.
When she’s done, she studies her reflection, the single bulb gleaming off the golden stubble left behind.
She clicks the trimmer off. No one moves. Hannah looks at me with wide, terrified eyes.
But I think I get it, actually. I think I understand. When everything is unfair and chaotic, you just want something, anything, to be in your control. Like if the world is going to strip you bare, you want to be able to decide how.
And sometimes the only thing a girl has left is her own body.
I reach for the trimmer, because my friend might be sad, but she doesn’t have to be alone. I meet Olivia’s eyes in the mirror and lift my shoulder in a shrug. “It’s just hair.”
Hannah makes a choking, startled sound. Someone in the room gasps.
The blade kisses my scalp, snags, then glides smoothly. Oliviacovers her mouth with her hands, tears swimming in her eyes. She laughs through her fingers, a broken, beautiful sound.
I wink, then I go for it—no hesitation. As the strands fall, it feels like more than hair dropping away. Like I’m sawing off years of someone else’s voice in my ear. Like I’m cutting myself free.
CHAPTER EIGHTYMELANIE
Sabrina skips offstage in her silver unitard, ponytail swinging, grinning like she just nailed the Olympics. The curtains close with a swish, and Mr. Magnuson’s voice carries out over the crowd: “Next, Hannah Campbell.”
I set the laptop in the empty seat beside me and knot my hands in my lap. I’ll have to decide what to do about that later. For now, the curtains part, and there she is. My daughter.
For a heartbeat, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Hannah stands center stage, the construction lights gleaming on the curve of her bare scalp. Completely bald. The shimmer of her dress only makes the starkness sharper, her head glowing under the harsh yellow beams.
Rage fills me so fast I feel dizzy. This has to be a trick. One of those mean pageant girls with their whisper campaigns and cruel little schemes—did they corner her backstage, did they shave her head just to humiliate her? My throat burns with the scream I want to let out, my body pitched forward in my chair, ready to storm the stage.
The audience ripples with whispers. A cough, a muffled laugh. Heat flashes across my skin, because they’re laughing at her, my baby, and she looks so small, so exposed.
And then Hannah opens her mouth.
Her voice rises clear and steady, cutting through the gossip likeglass breaking. A hymn she used to hum to herself at night, soft as a prayer, now filling the rafters. The crowd falls silent. I feel the hush like a blanket settling over the room. I can’t breathe for how beautiful it is, for how brave she is. My daughter, who never lets anyone hear her sing, standing bald-headed under the lights, singing like there’s no one in the room.
As Hannah finishes, the crowd erupts—chairs scraping back, feet stomping, applause rolling through the room like a tide. I realize I’m crying, and I don’t care who sees. I’ve never been prouder in my life.
And then, before the sound has even quieted, the curtains open again. Sarah Lynn walks out. Her head is shaved too, shining under the lights. She takes her place at the center of the stage, chin lifted, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
And I realize: it wasn’t a prank. It wasn’t cruelty. It was a choice. Something they did together.
But I feel a dark presence at the corner of the stage. Kennedy Claire stands just out of the ring of light. She isn’t clapping, isn’t smiling. Her gaze is pinned on Sarah Lynn with a fury so cold it makes me shiver. And then, slowly, her eyes flick toward Hannah.