“Oh, come on. You really pull it off.” Julia was doubled over in laughter, trying to catch her breath.
“I’m shaving it off.”
“No, don’t! The Nevers!” She dropped to the floor, not taking her eyes off of him, her hand clutching at her stomach. “Oww, Dave, the laughter hurts.”
“The Nevers just said dye your hair. They didn’t say anything about keeping vomit on my head for the rest of the school year. I’m gonna go to the mall to get this cut. Right now.”
“If I keep looking at it, I might pee myself.” She laughed again, either pretending to wipe a tear from her eye or actually doing it, Dave couldn’t tell at this point. “Wait until the morning. Maybe it’ll look better in daylight.”
Dave grimaced but stayed put. “Only because I’m such a good friend and you’re clearly enjoying this.” He lingered by the mirror for a second, looking down at Julia, who was trying to fight off another giggling fit. It was hard not to want this to go on, whatever his hair looked like, hard not to chase after the idea of the Nevers, too, when the result was a whole day spent with Julia laughing at his side, her cheeks as pink as her hair, her eyes suffused with joy. “It’s going to be a strange end of the year, isn’t it?”
o o o
The next morning Dave’s hair not only looked like puke, but like puke that had been allowed to sit out overnight.
Julia practically woke up laughing, and she refused to let Dave go until her dads saw his hair. They made their way downstairs, where Tom, Ethan, and Chef Mike seemed to have never left the spots they’d been at the day before.
“Good timing, we’re just about to test the Sunday brunch menu,” Ethan said when he heard them entering the kitchen. He was typing on his computer while Tom peeked over Chef Mike’s shoulder, watching him crack an egg into a steaming pot of water. Julia held her laughter, waiting for them to look up. She took a seat at one of the stools positioned by the kitchen island, and finally Ethan looked away from his screen and gasped.
The other two men turned to look at Dave. Tom immediately broke out in laughter. Chef Mike just said, “Yikes,” before returning to poaching eggs.
“Yup, going to the mall right now,” Dave said.
“You probably should, I might lose my appetite otherwise.”
“Ouch,” Dave said, though he took a seat next to Julia and Ethan.
Ethan pulled his glasses off and reached over to touch Julia’s hair. “This actually suits you.”
Dave loved sitting in the kitchen with Julia and her dads, loved the ease with which they talked and laughed with each other. He wished him and Brett and their dad had it, too. Dave had always wondered how Tom and Ethan handled Julia’s infatuation with her mom, whether they were ever hurt by it. But when he sat with them in their kitchen, it became clear that there was plenty of love to go around. No matter how much she longed for her mom, Julia never neglected her dads.
“How does your bathroom look?” Tom said, pouring a mug of coffee and offering it to Dave.
Julia quickly cupped her hand over Dave’s mouth. “Spotless.”
“You’re grounded,” Tom said, shaking his head.
“We had this discussion yesterday. Your reign of terror over me is done. Let it go.” Julia pulled her hand back and reached for Dave’s mug, blowing slightly at the surface. There was a hint of a chemical smell around the two of them from the hair dye, and Dave was thankful for the aromatic tendrils of steam rising from the coffee. He rose from his chair and went to the fridge to grab the milk, adding just a splash, the way Julia liked it. “So how’s the restaurant going? When do I get to see the dream come true?”
“More like a nightmare,” Ethan muttered. He put his glasses back on, then looked over at Julia. “Just kidding. Don’t panic.”
“Julia panics?” Dave asked, sitting back down.
Julia gave Ethan a light smack on the arm. “I have a rep to live up to; don’t tell people stuff like that.”
“Is there really anything this kid doesn’t know about you?”
“Not the point.” Julia drank from her mug, then slid it across the marble top to Dave.
They spent the morning in the comforts of the kitchen and the joys of the banter that Julia had learned from her dads. She filled them in vaguely on the Nevers, stating that she and Dave were conducting important sociological research into the world of the modern teenager. It sometimes felt like Dave belonged in that kitchen, though he knew he was just using Tom and Ethan’s warmth as a reason to think he and Julia were meant for more than friendship. When the afternoon started looming, Dave forced himself to leave the house, to cut his hair and maybe see his own family for a bit.
The mall was a slight detour on the way home, and throughout the walk he wished he were the kind of guy who wore hats. There weren’t a lot of people around, but it was still embarrassing to be out in public. He imagined even the squirrels, usually nonchalant about human hairstyles, staring down at him from the trees and making disgusted faces.
When he walked through the glass doors of the mall, he knew right away he was going to run into someone he knew, someone from school, someone who would be witness to the atrocity he and Julia had committed on his head. The mall was swarming with families, couples in their twenties, packs of middle school girls sharing cups of lemonade. Huge banners hung from the rafters announcing a special weekend-only sale.
He sighed and kept his eyes cast down on the floor, trying to maneuver his way around the crowd without running into too many people. Before he knew it, he was at the Supercuts, and the hipster girl with the red hair and the half sleeve of tattoos had written his name down on her clipboard and told him to take a seat in the waiting area.
Just as he was sighing in relief, he saw that the only chair available was right next to Gretchen. She was reading, but almost as soon as his eyes landed on her, she looked up at him. She smiled at him—all lips, though, no imperfect lower teeth—and raised her hand in a wave.
He raised his hand up and mouthed hello, hoping she’d somehow missed his hair. Which, of course, she hadn’t.
“Wow. What happened there?”
His stomach clenched as he took a seat next to her. “I know, I know.”
“That couldn’t have been by choice.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known it would end up looking like...” He motioned with his hands, pointing at the hair and trying to find a word that accurately described the fiasco sitting on his head.
“Like a wound festering in the eighteenth century before antibiotics were discovered?”
“That’s very specific. But yes.”
Gretchen smiled wide. She was in a simple white T-shirt and jeans, the beige sneakers that, he’d noticed lately, she wore most days. Dave felt his face flush and hoped she’d get called up to get her haircut soon, so she wouldn’t have time to memorize what he looked like. He didn’t know what to say, but was saved from a comment by a blow-dryer that went off nearby. Dave tried to seem casual as he looked around the Supercuts—two other guys waiting for their turn were on their phones, a woman sat with tinfoil in her hair reading a magazine, an old lady had one of those silver dome things over her head—but his eyes kept flicking back toward Gretchen. She kept her book on her lap, picked at a split end, smiled at him whenever their eyes would meet, looked away as shyly as he did.
“Sorry I haven’t talked to you in class this week,” Dave said once the hair dryer stopped. “I kept wanting to. But the more I thought about it, the more the other night at the Kapoors’ felt like a dream and I wasn’t really sure it happened. It did happen, right?”
Gretchen brought her book up to her face like she was