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Luz hated her hair.
It was matted and it stuck out in weird ways and sometimes it tried to curl and sometimes it didn’t.
She loathed how awkwardly the uneven bangs framed her face, and she couldn’t be bothered to wake up earlier every morning to throw the mop of locks into a decent style.
So Luz would let it hang, reaching her shoulder blades and the split ends ticking her back.
Sometimes, when she was having a really bad hair day, she would simply tug all of it into her hood and pretend she was just a cat with short, manageable fur instead of a whole head of uncontrollable mane.
But… she couldn’t really lie to herself.
She didn’t mind the extra effort every morning. She was usually up anyway, being a natural early riser.
And the bad hair days were few and far between, usually looking almost as nice as all the other girls in her class.
But that was where the real problem started, wasn’t it?
“Hey Luz, did you dye your hair?” It’s one of the girls in her class, twirling a sparkly pencil between long, pale fingers.
It was a dumb impulse. After binging a really immersive Azura fanfic, the idea popped into her head like bread springing up from the toaster.
It was something fun, something that would make her smile and think of the series she enjoyed.
So the morning after the tips of her hair held a green hue.
“Yeah, actually.” She smiled, hoping her classmate would approve. She couldn’t remember the girls name, something with an ‘E’ or an ‘A’ in the beginning. “I did it myself!”
“I can tell…” the girl muttered, pencil pausing mid-twirl, caught between her index and middle finger.
Her hands gripped onto the strips of her backpack like a vice.
Unlike her hair, the dumb gray bag was not an impule.
It was something carefully planned, picked from an assortment of patterns and colors because she had decided it was least likely to get her noticed. It was most difficult to pick out of a crowd. Just what she was looking for.
Even if it felt dull and soulless.
Luz despised that bag almost as much as she hated her hair.
The girl cleared her throat, smiling cheaply as if Luz somehow hadn’t heard her previous comment. “Well, it certainly suits you.” Her teeth split from behind glossy lips, a laugh wavering her words.
Emma. Her name was Emma.
Luz muttered a halfhearted ‘thank you’, continuing her tread to her seat.
A few eyes had stuck to her as she walked by, targeting the shoddily colored chunk of hair.
Whispers floated up from the crowd, mingling with the stale scent of Axe spray and paste. Luz did her best to block out any decipherable words, focusing on something else. Anything else.
Her fingers twitched, reaching for her pencil.
Taking a deep breath, the girl opened her spiral notebook, brain locking up at the sight of big words and confusing dates.
A hand rubbed her temple, knowing that if she could just focus then it wouldn’t be that back. Surely she could sit and review her notes on the Treaty of Versailles, right?
Except that no one else was. They were all too busy talking with each other, or texting under their desks, or sneaking snacks from their backpacks.
Who even cared about some stupid treaty. All those guys are dead anyway- why should she listen to them?
She tapped the graphite against the paper, trying to ignore the malignant giggles rising from Emma’s table. It didn’t take a genius to put together that the side glances and hushed tones were all aimed at her.
Come on Luz, just think about something else. Anything else .
The Treaty of Versailles. Those most-likely dead guys. Emma’s pink nails perfectly maneuvering the pencil in circles.
That Azura fanfic.
It really was well put together. Some cheesy multichaptered AU that didn’t seem anything special on the surface. Looking a little deeper however…
She recalled being cocooned in her bed, eyes wide with intrigue as the author’s well placed foreshadowing and hints all fell into place. It all led up to an emotional climax, where Hecate professed her love for her once rival Azura.
It pulled Luz to the edge of her seat, a smile growing on her lips by merely thinking about it. She would have to remember to leave a supportive comment on the work after school.
A messenger bag was plopped on the ground next to her, her table mate’s chair scraping unpleasantly against the floor.
Her assigned elbow partner (Alex, if she wasn’t mistaken) begrudgingly sat down, making sure to scoot the chair as far from Luz as she could. Like she somehow wouldn’t notice.
A redhead sitting next to Emma waved to Alex, the two talking across the room with each other.
Where was she? Oh, yeah! The ending of the fic was certainly something special, with Azura helping to defeat Hecate’s horrendous boss, who had manipulated her into a life of bitterness and injustice by-
“What are you drawing?” Alex’s voice cut clean through her fantasy.
“What am I- huh?” Luz couldn’t contain the confusion in her voice. “I’m not drawing.” She said cooly, knowing full well she only drew at home. All she had been doing was tapping her pencil, and thinking about the Treaty of Fibonacci or whatever it was.
Alex weakly concealed a snort, pushing her glasses back on her nose. They accentuated how blue her eyes were. “You sure about that?”
Then the same finger used to adjust her frames was angled to her notes, where a rough sketch of Azura and Hecate embracing was etched onto the paper.
Luz let out an humiliated squeak, embarrassment coloring her face. “N-NoThing!!” She suffocated the drawing beneath her eraser, the pure force causing a tear in the paper. Right down the center of her notes. “Shoot!”
Alex didn’t hold back her laughter this time, phone already in hand. “No, no. It's cute, really.” Someone’s messenger app chirped somewhere else in the room. “Maybe you’ll be an artist or something.”
The forced cheer that was injected into the words made Luz’s skin crawl. It was like the other girl was talking to a toddler.
Luz mumbled a noncommittal response, standing to retrieve tape in an effort to salvage her notes.
Another ding from a phone, followed by Emma’s twinkly laugh.
The only solace was the teacher’s voice, which had immediately turned around to reprimand Luz for using her tape without permission.
So yeah. Luz hated her hair. And her drawings, and her backpack, and all of it.
When she got home that day, she threw the awful bag in her room, not caring where or how the thing landed. She had stormed to the bathroom, tears welling up in her eyes.
The door slammed shut behind her, a pathetic reflection glaring back at her in the mirror.
All she saw was a girl with long floppy hair that awkwardly framed her face, and hands that were too stubby to twirl a pencil, and eyes that were too dark to shine in light.
All that stood there was a stupid girl, tears rolling down her cheeks and hands shaking in weak fists.
“Why can’t I just-” the voice was too twangy and loud her mouth widening too much, not nearly as twinkly or sparkly as Emma or Alex or any of the other girls.
She swallowed back a sob, voice wobbling under the strain of unshed tears.
Her hands held tight onto either edge of the counter, tears dripping into the sink.
It was barely above a whisper, voice cracking like glass. “Por qué no puedo ser como ellas?”
It hung in the air, something sour that made her insides hollow.
Her vision was blurred, clouded by the mess of tears. Wiping them away with the heels of her hand, Luz stepped back from the sink. She almost felt sick, knowing none of the other girls felt this way, they cried about normal things. Not about having weird hair and a weird voice or weird hands.
She almost left the question to rot there and hover above her, a constant reminder of all she wasn’t.
Until something shiny caught her eye.
On the counter laid a pair of silver scissors. The handles were a deep purple, similar to Azura’s iconic cloak.
Next to them was the box of hair dye. It was only partially used, the green paste bagged for future use.
She remembered how excited she had been, using the scissors to free the dye from it’s box. It was like an adventure, something that no one else at school had dared to try, something that could either go disastrously wrong or so, so deliciously right.
Luz scoffed, knowing it had fallen into the former category. She was so naive and joyful then, now all she wanted was to chop the offending hair off.
… huh.
The scissors seemed to glint again in the bathroom light. An offering.
She peered back up at the mirror, significantly less blurry.
Her skin wasn’t pale like theirs. And her voice wasn’t lilted like theirs.
… so who said that her hair had to look like theirs?
The handles fit over her fingers, splitting the halves apart like ribbon.
A single brown strand was pinched between the scissors teeth. It’s end was tinted green.
A deep breath pulled itself from her lungs in an attempt to follow through.
“Well.” She smiled weakly at her reflection, the only encouragement she would find. “Here goes everything.”
Her face pinched, unwilling to watch.
Snip.
A beat passed, and the world decidedly kept turning.
Luz peeked one eye open, holding up the strand of matted brown hair between her fingers.
A giddy smile grew on her face, curled in the ends in a way that felt so right .
So she continued.
Maybe she could keep cutting the green away, leaving the normal brown in its place.
But how awful would that be? Then things would go right back to how they were, and people like Emma and Alex would have won.
Snip.
Besides, in the comfort of her own bathroom, Luz kind of almost liked the green.
Well, maybe not. But she liked the idea of it.
The idea that she wouldn’t have to worry about their remarks, because instead of being a defective copy, Luz could be someone entirely new.
Snip.
Someone who had a colorful backpack. Maybe even one with those circular pins with fandom references.
Snip .
Someone who drew in class without scribbling it away or erasing it into oblivion.
Snip.
Someone who could dye their hair just because it felt right .
Snip.
The girl looked up at the mirror, a garden of green-brown hair scattered across the floor.
It wasn’t enough.
Luz had originally held the scissors out by the tips, only removing an inch or two.
But then, would she still look like all of them? Or would she start to look like Luz?
She glided the scissors closer to her head, until the blades were inches away from hugging the shell of her ear.
She grabbed a larger chunk this time, enough to be noticeable if things went wrong.
But honestly, who really cared?
Snip.
It’s just hair.