even going to notice.â
âI would have killed you,â I said. âLetâs go.â I grabbed her by the elbow. The sleep had felt good and I was no longer groggy. âWeâre getting out of here.â
âWhat about Mrs. Song?â
âWeâre going to go down and get Mrs. Song and then weâre going home. Whereâs Mrs. Songâs hat?â
Sunny handed me the hat from off the counter, and I looked around the room for a mirror. There was none, so I stepped in front of a small, silver paper-towel dispenser pinned to the wall over the sink to see myself and pulled Mrs. Songâs hat on. And then I yanked it off with a scream.
âSunny Sweet! What did you do?â
âI told you not to get mad,â Sunny said.
âWhy is my hair green?â
âWell, first I tried acetone, but that didnât work. So I found bleach, thinking thatââ
âStop!â I said. âI donât need to hear about your evil scientific methods.â
I gazed into the towel dispenser. My hair was shamrock-shake green.
I turned to Sunny. âYou have to fix this!â
She picked up the scissors.
âNot like that.â
âMasha, let me cut them out and then we can dye your hair back to brown. Youâll never be able to tell this even happened.â
I looked back into the paper-towel dispenser. A giant leprechaun looked back. âOkay,â I said, giving up. I slowly climbed back onto the bed that Iâd woken up on.
Smiling, Sunny dragged a stool over to the table and switched on a light over my head. Her skinny little arms loomed in front of my face and I could hear her short, excited breaths in my ear. Her fingersfiltered through my hair and I felt her choose a flower. There was a glint of metal from the scissors as they moved toward my head, a moment of silence, and then there was the horrible crunching of scissors meeting, and slicing through, hair. And then there was a tiny sting. âWhoops,â said Sunny.
âOuch!â My hand flew to my head, forgetting that it had a heavy cast attached to it. The weight of the cast made me lose control of the speed of my arm, and it socked me right in my eye, hard. Silver sparks floated inches from my pupils ⦠or in my pupils, I couldnât tell which, and I slid down onto the bed with a moan.
When I turned my head, I saw a tiny bit of blood on my hand. My blood!
I jumped up, my head spinning, and clomped like Frankensteinâs monster over to the paper-towel dispenser. My mouth fell open. âAhhh,â I howled. I now had a huge bald spot on the top right side of my head, along with a small cut by my scalp, and worst of all, a very fast-forming black eye!
I was a monster. I was Sunnyâs monster.
âItâs a very small avulsion,â Sunny said. âLet me try again. I promise not to cut you this time. Letâs call that strike one.â
I didnât answer. I gazed into that silver dispenser at myself in horror.
âThatâs a sports metaphor,â Sunny said. âStrike one.â Like I cared about sports after what she had just done to me.
âThis canât get worse,â I whispered.
âMaybe it can,â said Sunny. âThey keep calling you over the loudspeaker. Iâm pretty sure security is searching for you.â
I sighed and rolled my head back, looking up at the ceiling.
âLetâs just go home, Masha,â she said. âWe can take the bus. I can look up the bus number right now. And we can call Mrs. Song and tell her weâre going home.â
âYouâve had your cell phone with you the whole time?â
âI always have my cell phone,â she said.
I leaned against the table and ran my fingers lightly under my throbbing eye, wiping away the tears. I knew that I had only one hope left, and that was my medical barber.
âNo, Sunny, weâre not going home. Weâre going to the front desk on
James Silke, Frank Frazetta