Read Online Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield - Free Book Online

girl rite of passage that must be endured. It was hair. Only hair. Dying cells oozing through pores, that’s all it was.
    Arden was waiting, daring me.
    Carrie ran her hand over her own stubbled head, almost like she wasn’t aware she was doing it.
    Bree took a chunk of bread out of AiAi’s hand and said, ‘Gotta go. See you all tonight.’ Her eyes darted to me, then away. She left in a hurry.
    I sat on the crate and gathered my heavy hair into a ponytail with both hands. I handed it to Arden.
    Arden started to cut. But not with scissors. With her knife.
    The dragging, sawing sensation was awful. My scalp burned.
    Arden hacked through the hair just below her hand and let go.
    A raggedy, concave bob swung around my face, just past my chin. The feeling of lightness was nice. Just an even-up and I could have lived with it. I didn’t know why I hadn’t done it sooner, except that Vivienne had kept hers long and I’d just never even thought about doing something different.
    ‘Hey, thanks. It feels good,’ I said, touching the blunt ends. ‘Maybe just go around the edges again…’
    Arden lifted a piece and cut again, this time only a couple of centimetres from my scalp.
    I turned around and said, ‘I like it. You can stop cutting.’
    She twisted my shoulders to the front and said, ‘You still look like you.’
    I made a swollen lump on my lip with my teeth. Apart from violence, there was no exit. I made my mind empty, filled it back up with the resignation that I could summon whenever I remembered that the worst had already happened. Nothing else would ever hurt as much again.
    It was only hair.
    Darcy left and came back with the round hand-mirror that sat over the bathroom basin. She held it in front of me so I could watch.
    Arden continued cutting.
    When she had finished, there were uneven tufts and zigzag edges, but my new haircut was short and wispy. Without all that weight, it stood straight up; without all that hair, my eyes were enormous.
    Darcy angled the mirror so I could see the back.
    The nape of my neck was cold, bare, and so white. Childlike.
    I ran my hands over the skin and brushed away the amputated ends. I could see Darcy’s reflection behind me but I couldn’t read her expression.
    ‘I think she looks pretty,’ AiAi said through a mouthful of bread.
    ‘I think she looks like one of Carrie’s dyke friends,’ said Darcy.
    Carrie yelled, ‘For fuck’s sake, go find your happy place, Darce.’ She slammed her cup into the sink and stomped up the stairs.
    Arden’s mouth was thin as a paper cut. ‘Clean up this mess,’ she spat.
    I scooped up handfuls of hair. It was already drying, dying, no longer a part of me.
    Maybe I wasn’t supposed to look pretty. Maybe none of us were.
    I swept up the rest of the hair, stuffed it into a plastic shopping bag and took it outside.
    Bree was smoking, leaning up against the wall of the house. She had her iPod headphones in, her eyes closed. Her mouth moved silently to music I couldn’t hear.
    I touched her arm.
    She jumped and plucked out her headphones. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You look different.’
    ‘Not like me,’ I said.
    ‘No. You still look like you. Just lighter.’ She smiled. Her dimples were deep, like someone had pressed their thumbs into her face. A quick flash and they were gone. ‘I’ve gotta go somewhere. Come if you want.’
    I got the feeling she’d been waiting for me. I leaned the bag up against the side of the house and left it there.
    ‘Did Arden cut your hair, too?’ I asked her. ‘And the others?’
    ‘No.’ She tucked her iPod into the waistband of her jeans. Her mouth twisted. ‘The boys already had short hair.’

CHAPTER EIGHT
    ‘Two hundred bucks a week is a lot,’ I said.
    Bree led the way through a maze of alleys between double-storey townhouses. She walked quickly and smoked. Four cigarettes already and we’d only been walking for fifteen minutes. The air was razor-sharp and stung my throat like a strong