Why I Let My Hair Grow Out Read online

  I’d sworn to myself a thousand times: When I grow up I’m going to have a house with rooms. With doors. That close.

  Dad had spent far less time with me over the last sixteen years than Mom had, due to his working like a slave to pay for our fabulous open-plan house in North No-name, Connecticut. So he never developed Mom’s psychic ability to know right away when I was yanking the parental chain.

  Poor Dad. He took the brochure out of my hands and turned the pages for me, slowly, like it was story time in preschool.

  “It’s a bike tour, see? They give you a bike when you get there, and there’s a tour guide and a van that drives along behind to carry your luggage or give you a ride if you get tired. And you get to ride your bike through all this beautiful Irish countryside. Can you believe these pictures, huh? Look how green the grass is!”

  “No offense, Dad, but you and Mom haven’t ridden bikes in years. And Tammy’s just gonna whine the whole way. Did you consider Club Med at all?” Dad looked annoyed all of a sudden, but I didn’t know why. I was just trying to participate and help plan the family vacation. Wasn’t that what we were doing?

  I heard a tense, warning jangle of silverware from the kitchen portion of the room. “The trip is for you, Morgan,” Dad said, sounding gruff. “Your mom and I, we think you’ve had a tough year. And sometimes a vacation is a good thing. Mentally, I mean.” Then he shut up. Whenever my dad gets out of his element, he clams up and waits for my mom to take over.

  Cue Mom, who didn’t even bother to pretend she hadn’t been listening. “What your father is trying to say is, we both feel you need a break.” Mom emerged from behind the “kitchen island” with her hands on her hips. She always calls it the “kitchen island,” like it has palm trees growing out of it. Hello, it’s a countertop, Mom. “A change, you said so yourself. We’ve been, frankly, a little worried.”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” My eyes started to roll on their own, but when I realized I was doing it, I exaggerated it, just for the effect.

  “I hope so, Morgan. But there has been some behavior lately, some extreme behavior. . . .”

  “You mean, like, my hair?” I’d been waiting for this moment. Looking forward to it, in fact.

  “Yes, that’s one thing—”

  “Wait,” I said. Time to turn up my attitude. “Wait. You want me, by myself, to go ride a bike across a foreign country with towns named Dingle, just because I cut my hair? Isn’t that a little extreme?”

  “You won’t be by yourself. It’s a group tour. There will be all kinds of people.” Mom faked a smile. “It’ll be fun.”

  “So you go, if it’s so frikkin’ fun! I’ll stay home.”

  “Watch the language, Morgan.” Language patrol was definitely Dad’s element. Good to know he was still listening.

  Mom dropped the smile and crossed her arms, and now she did not look very fun loving at all. “Let’s talk about Raphael,” she said.

  “No. Way.” I got up. One lousy door to slam behind me, that’s all I needed, and there was none to be found.

  “Morgan! We’re trying to help you! You’ve been acting like, like—”

  “A total bitch?” I sneered. Gotta throw Dad a bone now and then; it keeps him involved.

  “Morgan!” he boomed. “What did I say about language?”

  “Forget it, Daniel.” She turned back to me. “Yes, in fact! Since you and Raphael broke up, you have been acting very mean and hurtful, to us, to Tammy, and most importantly, to yourself.”

  Oh, please. “It’s just hair!” I said, in my most mean and hurtful tone. “And it’s my hair. Anyway, it has nothing to do with you or Dad or Tammy or”—for some reason it was hard to say Raph’s name—“or anybody!”

  Mom was on a rescue mission now, though. There was no stopping her with logic.

  “You’re upset and it’s completely understandable, honey! But you’re taking this really hard and there are things you can do to help yourself move on. Get some new experiences under your belt, meet some new people. It will put the whole Raphael thing in perspective.”

  “Never liked that boy, anyway,” muttered Dad. “Too cocky.”

  That did it. He had no right to say that. And, excuse me, like I didn’t know Raphael was cocky. Of course he was; that was one of the things I loved about him. Raphael never seemed to have any doubts. He had confidence in his opinions, and so what if most of them involved putting other people down?

  And come to think of it, what difference did it make where I spent the summer? Connecticut, Ireland, the dark side of Dingle or the rings of Saturn? I was not going to be Raphael’s girlfriend in any of those places anymore.

  I picked up the travel brochure, the one with the map on it. As if it mattered where a person was. I tore it into two shiny pieces. I didn’t look to check, but I was really hoping that Din was on one side and gle was on the other.

  “If you don’t want me here,” I snarled at my white-lipped parents, who’d probably already spent a ton of money booking me on the bike trip, “then it will be my pleasure to cross the frikkin’ ocean and spend my summer anywhere but this frikkin’ house!”

  Only I didn’t say frikkin’.

  three

  girls With Orange-streaked buzz cuts should stay the hell out of airports.

  Not once, but twice, once at JFK and once at Shannon, did I get chosen for the extra special attention of a personal body search by the aromatic airport personnel. The woman at JFK smelled worse. She smelled like BO and minty gum. The one in Shannon smelled like cigarettes and supersweet floral perfume. I guess that’s why people travel, I thought. To enjoy the exotic smell of foreign hands, I mean lands.

  And not once, but twice, did my carry-on luggage have to endure a hand inspection. Cigarette-and-perfume woman had a fine time unloading my overstuffed backpack, unzipping my toiletry bag, complimenting me on my blue lipstick and poking around in her cheerful, nosy way through my underwear and personal hygiene products. “Yes,” I wanted to yell. “I have explosive pantiliners and I’m not afraid to use them!” But why waste a temper tantrum on someone I’d never see again?

  Colin, however, was another story. Him I would be seeing a lot of, though I didn’t know this at the time.

  When I first saw Colin I was tired and stiff from the flight, wearing my hastily repacked backpack and wheeling my suitcase behind me, hungry and wondering what to do next. I was supposed to get picked up at the “Meeting Point,” but where was that? It sounded like a figure of speech, like the Point of No Return or the Last Straw or the Last Place You Look, where all lost objects eventually turn up. But the “Meeting Point”: that’s what it said on my now-crumpled itinerary, carefully printed out by Mom in multiple copies and tucked in my suitcase, my carry-on and the pocket of my denim jacket.

  “Just in case you get separated from your things,” she’d said, the big worrywart.

  I pulled out the jacket-pocket copy one more time and skimmed it as I walked, wheeling my big suitcase behind me. “The Meeting Point is near the Information Desk, in the Arrivals Hall.” The Last Straw will be found at the Point of No Return. If you reach the Last Place You Look you’ve Gone Too Far.

  I was walking and following the signs and amusing myself by mentally riffing on this figure of speech idea and what do you know, I finally reached an open area with a big sign overhead that read, MEETING POINT. Right underneath the sign was a tall, beefy, basically okay-looking guy leaning against a column, and he was holding a much smaller, handwritten sign of his own. It read:

  I come to fetch the bonnie Morgan.

  Hope your arse is ready for the trip!

  Your friends at The Emerald Cycle Bike Tour Company

  I guess he could tell by the dumbstruck and pissed-off look on my face that it was me standing in front of him, because he unslouched himself and actually tapped his finger to his forehead in a dorky little salute.

  “The bonnie Morgan, I presume!” He winked one cornflower-blue eye at me and grabbed my big suitcas
e before I could stop him. “I’m Colin, then! Follow me, lass.”

  I was about to insist on taking my own suitcase because I’d already had enough of strangers touching my stuff for one day, especially strangers who felt free to make signs about my “arse” before we’d even met. Anyway my suitcase was an expensive wheeled job my mom bought from Land’s End, so it was pretty easy to manage even though it was huge and weighed a ton, and I really didn’t need any help. But before I could mention any of this, Colin hoisted the suitcase up on one shoulder like it was empty.

  This surprised me, and all I could think of to say was: “It has wheels.”

  “Does it now?” He grinned as he walked, with me half-running to keep up. “That’s grand. If I had wheels, I’d skate about the whole blessed day. But I don’t, do I? All I have is my merry old van. The gas-guzzling rogue! I hope it survives the trip. The bloody engine’s been making a terrifying noise for a week now. Should get it fixed, eh?”

  With me panting and chasing after him and him talking incessantly, without once stopping to take a breath, Colin and I hustled out of the terminal building and over to the Short-Term Car Park. His van was bright green except for the rust spots, with the astonishingly tacky Emerald Cycle Bike Tour Company logo painted on the door. The logo was, get this, a picture of a happy, winking leprechaun riding a bike and waving.

  How lame is that, I thought. My parents must have found this company on the back of a Lucky Charms box.

  I stared at the picture of the leprechaun, and the leprechaun stared back. The nightmare reality of putting my skinny arse on a bike seat for an entire week was starting to sink in, and it was not a good feeling. But anything had to be better than being stuck at home with my white-lipped, worrying parents and robot-girl Tammy, with the total lack of Raphael echoing through every square inch of my open-plan house, my no-name town, my ruined and empty life.

  i’d thought about raphael a lot On the flight. When I was feeling nervous during takeoff, I thought, Maybe we’ll crash and I’ll die and he’ll be sorry. I tried to imagine him sobbing with remorse at my funeral, but I couldn’t, really.

  And when we were up in the sky, high above the ocean, the passengers were watching the movie and the cheerful Aer Lingus flight attendants were taking a break from their constant offers of weird snacks (Black-and-white pudding? Lemon curd muffins? Good thing they had Pringles or I would have starved.), the plane was quiet, and I closed my eyes and got sleepy. That’s when I remembered some nice things about Raphael. He was a good kisser, that’s for sure.

  Is. Raphael is a good kisser. He just won’t be kissing me. Ever. Again.

  “Step in, then, bonnie Morgan!” Colin had tossed my suitcase in the back of the van and was already behind the wheel. “No, lass, sit up front with me! I don’t want to feel like the bloody driver, then, do I? We’re going to be friends in a minute and you’d be embarrassed to be all alone back there shouting up to your old pal Colin.”

  I climbed into the front and slammed the passenger side door. Right away I noticed the seat belt was broken. Mom had me well trained. Colin noticed me noticing.

  “Should get that fixed, eh? Don’t worry, lass, I’ve been drivin’ since I was a boy-o. You mind if I smoke, Mor? We’ll leave the windows open; I’m like a dog that way anyhow. I like to feel the air on my face.”

  Since when did anyone call me Mor? Colin was acting like we were lifelong chums, and the only words I’d spoken to him so far were, “It has wheels.” Maybe that was sufficient basis for friendship in this part of the world. Maybe he was just a freak. One thing was for sure: There was no need to expend energy listening for what Colin was really thinking, because it spilled out of his mouth nonstop.

  I rolled my window down halfway and looked over at him, careful not to smile. He grinned and clucked his tongue, which made the already-lit cigarette twitch in his mouth, and he revved the engine of the van. It sounded like a fleet of decrepit helicopters struggling to take off in the midst of a swarm of furious bees.

  “Gotta get that fixed, eh?” And we were off.

  i snuck glances Of colin driving as We made Our way toward our destination—someplace north of Limerick I think. He’d told me and showed me a map but I was not interested in maps. The scenery outside was pleasant, and we were driving on the wrong side of the road, which offered a kind of thrill, but I usually find people more interesting than scenery, and okay-looking young guys more interesting than regular people. So I checked out Colin. Discreetly, of course.

  Colin was not any older than twenty-two, I guessed, and athletically built, with thick, lightly freckled arms. When he moved his foot from the gas to the brake, his thigh flexed and I could see an edge of muscle moving beneath the fabric of his thin khaki pants. He was baby-faced in a way that might make you think he was pudgy, but there was not one millimeter of tummy rolling over the waistband of Colin’s pants.

  If a guy has a flat stomach sitting down, those are buff abs indeed.

  Not that I was planning on scoring a look at Colin’s abs. It just made me think of Raph again. Raphael was very proud of his abs and even kept track of his monthly crunch totals, but when he sat down there was about a half-inch of roll he could never get rid of. God help you if you noticed it too.

  So Colin scored points in the bod department. Unfortunately his hair color could only be described as strawberry frikkin’ blond. It looked fine on him, but still. I found it annoying.

  “Are you in a band, then?”

  His stream of chatter had been relentless, and I’d only half-listened since I was busy checking him out, but this seemed to require a response. “No,” I said, after a moment’s thought.

  “All the girls I know with bald heads are in bands. What’s that about, eh? If you want to be bald, be bald. No need to sing about it!” He laughed, thoroughly pleased by his own observation. “Have you got any tattoos, then?”

  Well, I did not. But how would Colin ever find that out?

  “Yes,” I said. And then, thinking it sounded more provocative, I said, “Two.”

  Colin let out a low whistle. “You’re a pistol, I can tell, Mor,” he said. “I almost got a tattoo once, at the end of a long night of too much drink. Praise the Lord I hadna enough money on me! Me mates’d convinced me to get the ‘Emerald Cycles’ advert branded on me bum. What a life of regret and remorse that would been the start of, eh?”

  “Don’t you like leprechauns?” I asked, sounding snarky. It has wheels. No. Yes. Two. Don’t you like leprechauns? I could still hold my end of our entire conversational history in the palm of my hand, but I suspected that this form of entertainment might soon reach an end.

  “Leprechauns!” Colin snorted so hard I thought a booger would fly out of his nose. He floored the gas pedal. “Is that why you’ve come to Ireland, lass? To see the wee folk? Silly Mor!” Colin laughed harder and drove faster, but the laughter sounded forced. “Take it from your old pal Colin—there’s no such thing as leprechauns!”

  four

  Why is it that anytime you do anything new that involves a group of people, the first thing that happens is “orientation”? Are human beings in such constant danger of becoming disoriented that we have to keep stopping and orienting ourselves? Up, down, inside, outside, moss growing on the shady side of trees. Like it matters.

  I had crossed an ocean and I was tired and I just wanted to crash in my room and channel surf Irish TV. Instead I was squeezed onto a deep, squishy sofa between a pair of very tall blond people, listening to a sturdy freckle-faced woman spew enthusiasm.

  “Welcome to orientation! The Emerald Cycle Bike Tour Company welcomes you to our fair country.” The freckle-faced woman was wearing a name sticker on her right boob. It read, “Mrs. Patricia Finneran-O’Hennessey.” Good thing she had big boobs.

  “We hope you’re all settled in and snug as bugs in your rooms by now. Isn’t the inn lovely? It’s lovely, isn’t it? Nearly four hundred years old, can you believe it?” Mrs. Finneran-O’Hennessey
-Boob clapped her doughy white fingers together politely, without making any real noise, while smiling and nodding at an elderly couple who were standing in the back of the room. The innkeepers, no doubt. They seemed about the same age as the house.

  Mrs. Boob’s symbolic finger clapping was joined immediately by some really loud, vigorous, whack-your-hands-together clapping. Source of sound: the two tall blond people on the sofa with me, one male and one female, though it was hard to tell which was which because they were both totally buff and sat up straight as mannequins and were wearing identical bike outfits.

  Bike outfits? I thought. Hello, this is orientation, we’re in the living room of Ye Olde Quaint Charming Irish Inn, gathered quaintly around ye olde fireplace, so easy on the spandex, there.

  “ Wunderbar!” cried the clapping girl. Her name sticker read Heidi. She was sitting pretty close to the fire, which made me wonder if spandex was flammable. Sure would be a bummer to get incinerated on the first night, especially after spending so many Euros on all that fancy bikewear.

  “Take a look around the room at your fellow travelers. You’ll be getting to know each other very well this week. There are no secrets on a bike tour, believe me!” Mrs. Boob laughed at her own hilarity. “Let me introduce everybody. Most of you have already met Colin—give us a wave, there, Colin!”

  Colin was in the back of the room too, slouched against one of the dark paneled walls. He gave a little tip of his imaginary hat and grinned. I thought he might have winked at me too, but maybe it was just the flickering light from the fire. I made sure not to look at him again, just in case.

  “Colin will drive the van that carries your luggage, and he’ll take the same routes you’ll be using except for the places where the roads are too narrow for the van to safely pass. He’s your number-one backup plan out there. If you get a flat tire or a sore bum—it happens!—you’ll be glad Colin’s nearby.”