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“Sean,” Aaron hissed, “what the hell?”
Sean froze.
Tufts of dark hair littered the couch, wisps caught between the blades of the scissors. Some had curled into tiny S shapes on his father’s collar, stark against his crisp white shirt. His father’s hair was what could charitably be deemed a mess: it seemed all right at the back and the sides but got choppy around his ears and over his forehead.
Aaron hesitated, hoping his voice hadn’t startled his father awake, and when he continued to snore he padded over to Sean. Though he was whispering, his voice was sharp. “What were you even doing?”
“Richard said his brother did it when his other brother was mean to him,” Sean mumbled. His bottom lip trembled and he clutched the scissors to his chest. “And dad’s mean.”
Some stupid childish prank? Six was old enough for Sean to know better than to try that. At his age he had been quite aware things like this only ever backfired.
“Yeah, well, Richard’s an idiot,” Aaron said. Their father grunted and rolled onto his side. He pulled the scissors out of Sean’s hands. “We don’t listen to him.”
“No!” Sean protested. “He’s my friend.”
Aaron hummed a vague agreement to placate him and studied his father’s hair with a sinking dread in his stomach. The longer he looked the more obvious it became that it had just had some child with scissors hacking at it.
“’ron?” his father slurred.
“Go upstairs,” Aaron told Sean, and the expression on his face was not one to be argued with. Sean huffed a sigh but obeyed, casting one last anxious look back at him before he hurried up the stairs.
With his father still half asleep, he might be able to put the scissors back and come up with some semblance of a plan before the man got a good look at his reflection. Find somewhere to hide and sit out the brunt of his father’s rage, because the blame would land squarely on him as it tended to do when nobody was around to witness whatever mistake had been made, ornament broken.
His father’s cold hand formed a vice grip around his wrist.
The man shook off his tiredness rather quickly and brushed at the hairs irritating him. His brow furrowed in confusion and he leant down to examine the hair on the carpet, rolling it across his palm and prodding at it with his thumb.
Shit.
“What the hell did you do?” his father accused. His fingers sunk into the bony points of his wrist; he’d have bruises tomorrow.
Aaron remembered he hadn’t put down the scissors at the exact same moment his father noticed him holding them. He met his eyes for a terrifying split second, a blazing dark fire lashing within, and his father latched on to his other wrist too.
He dropped the scissors.
On his feet, his father forced him backwards until his head hit the wall with a thud; he felt the impact in his teeth. “What do you think you’re playing at? Is this funny to you?”
“I didn’t do it,” Aaron protested, his eyes watering with the pain.
“Oh, no, I’m sure you didn’t,” his father said. “And it was all one big co-incidence, is that it?”
His hands were aching with the force of his father’s hold as the doorjamb dug into his back, sending a painful jolt up his spine.
“It’s never your fault,” his father said. “There’s always some kind of excuse with you. What is it this time?”
But he thought of Sean hiding upstairs, probably frightened by the yelling, and he said nothing. His father slapped him. Its sharp crack echoed in the silent room as his face stung.
“Fine,” his father spat, his eyes flaring with vindication when Aaron flinched at the volume. He stalked over to the couch, retrieved the scissors, and seized him by his shirt.
Aaron stumbled as his father marched him out into the hall and shoved him at the stairs. A sharp point jutted into his skin. The low ache settled into the base of his skull had his stomach churning – with nerves or with a concussion he couldn’t tell.
Sean was lingering in his bedroom doorway, biting his fingernails. His eyes were wet.
“I did it,” he said.
His father scoffed. “Don’t you dare get your brother involved. He doesn’t need your influence.”
“Sean, it’s okay,” Aaron said. “You don’t need to lie.”
“I didn’t!”
“Get in here,” his father ordered, jerking his head at the bathroom. Sean slipped his fingers back into his mouth and followed them.
He slammed Aaron against the counter, pinned him there, twisting one arm behind his back and trapping the other between Aaron’s body and his leg. The breath knocked out of him, Aaron couldn’t struggle. For a long long moment he was afraid his father’s hands would close around his neck, that it was all intentional, squeezing with all his force.
His scalp prickled fiercely as his father took a fistful of his hair and dragged Aaron across until he was staring into the sink, the limescale growing inside the pipe. He tried to push himself up, hands flat on the countertops, but they gave out as his father thumped him hard on the back. It was lucky he hit his chin on the rim of the sink and not a tooth.
“Dad,” Sean begged. “I did it.”
A burning pain sliced across his skin. The familiar warmth of welling blood came next, trickling down behind his ear.
“Even if that was true,” his father said, “I don’t care. You’re telling me you can’t take care of your brother for two goddamn seconds? You’re sixteen, for Christ’s sake. Utterly useless.”
The scissors rasped as his father lopped off patches of his hair, falling into the sink in messy clumps. They were sharp and with his father’s unrestrained aggression, Aaron felt his skin split when they slipped. Blood splashed to the porcelain. His ear was wet and there was a trickle of blood streaking down his face, following the line of his jaw.
“You want to make me look stupid,” his father said, “you can take what you dish out.”
He sucked air sharply through his teeth when the last cut opened a shallow gash over his eyebrow. There was enough hair left for his father to force him to look upwards, though, and meet his own eyes in the mirror.
The stinging cuts were nothing compared to the punch in the gut his reflection was. His hair was uneven in length and in thickness, tufts cut back at random, choppy around the edges. Along his hairline there were at least three differing lengths of hair going on, and as Aaron shook his head to dislodge some of the itchy loose hair, he saw that the back was no better. It looked like someone had gotten interrupted halfway through trying to cut it all off.
Even that would’ve been neater.
He'd never thought of himself as caring too much what he looked like – he knew he was tall, bony in places that never quite suited him, that those eye bags were just never going to go away, were they? – but there was a difference between the ambivalence and a haircut that was certain to get him mocked for the rest of his time at school if someone saw him.
Aaron didn’t have time to think about it. He was up again, spurred on by a violent shove, down the stairs before he was pushed, his father’s yelling washing over him. The outraged bellow of “OUT!” was all he needed to hear – was welcome in a strange way, grounding him, because that was regular and that always happened and that he could predict.
“I don’t need to make you look stupid,” Aaron spat, didn’t much care if his father heard it or not. “You do that on your own fine!”
He made it out the door before his father lay another hand on him, nearly tripping on his loose shoelaces in his haste, though he only had a jacket; Aaron flipped up the hood but it wouldn’t hide it anywhere as well as a hat.
Just inside the woods he slowed to a walk. He wiped the blood off his face and pretended his hands were steadier than they were. The cuts were superficial and shallow, would probably close over by the time he got to Haley’s – and that was a thought, because he hardly wanted her to see him looking so ridiculous but he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Nobody else he trusted more.
Aaron did hesitate once more, standing in the shadow of their house. He scratched at his neck, brushed away the fine hairs settled there. He’d have to get it over with at some point. Might as well be now.
“You’re bleeding,” Haley said when she opened the door, her confusion shifting fast into concern.
“It’s nothing,” Aaron promised. He followed her to the bathroom upstairs she shared with Jessica and she dug out the self-stocked supplies she kept in the cupboard.
He leant with his back to the mirror and nudged the hood down. His face burned. To Haley’s credit she managed to keep most of the surprise off her face as she handed him a wad of tissue.
“It’s awful, you don’t have to pretend,” Aaron said. “Sean cut Dad’s hair. Some kid in his grade did it to his brother or something stupid, I don’t know. I guess he thought it was funny.”
“How did he manage that?” Haley said.
“He was asleep,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair. The back was definitely as much as, if not more, of a mess. “Woke up just in time to see me there with the fucking scissors though.”
Haley’s hands stilled. “What about Sean, is he—”
“He’s upset but he’s not hurt,” Aaron said. “Dad didn’t believe it was his idea and thought I was trying to pin it on him.”
She wrapped her arms around him, let his head fall into the crook of her neck, and he felt shaky and weak and close to tears. The sensation passed as quickly as it came, though he was still faintly dizzy.
Haley tilted her head at various angles, studying his hair. “I think we can fix it. If you want me to. You’re just gonna have to have it a bit longer on the top than the sides.”
Aaron shrugged. “It can’t make it worse.”
“I appreciate the confidence,” Haley teased. She tossed a crumpled bloody tissue into the garbage. “Mom’s got the scissors in the kitchen. Stay here a minute.”
He combed his fingers through his hair in some desperate attempt to make it more presentable. Though the initial surge of embarrassment had faded, Aaron still would rather avoid actually checking. His only consolation was that his father wasn’t in very good hands at home – mom had cut his and Sean’s hair once and only once. And he’d have to wait longer to fix his.
Even Haley’s hands near his head set him on edge, his muscles tense and ready to fight. He clasped his hands together in his lap. Haley made the first cut and Aaron flinched at the click, like he was fragile. Weak.
Haley pulled back but he trailed a hand over her wrist. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said. Moving to his side, she tilted his head. “Ready?”
His nerves settled as she worked. “You’ve done this before,” Aaron said.
“Once,” she admitted. “Before we moved, some girl at our old middle school – Isabelle, ugh – she put gum in her hair. We tried peanut butter and everything but it wouldn’t come out and it got all tangled in.”
“Aren’t there hairdressers for that?” he said, earning a roll of the eyes.
“She didn’t want to worry mom and dad,” Haley said. “We spent our lunch trying to get it out and she didn’t want to go back to class like that, obviously. I borrowed one of the knives and a good pair of scissors from the art room and made it look like we’d planned to cut it.”
The idea of thirteen-year-old Haley with a knife was an amusing juxtaposition and he smiled. “You ‘borrowed’ a knife?”
“What?” she said. “I wasn’t sure how hard it was gonna be!”
She paused to wipe hair off the nape of his neck; there seemed to be more each time, sticking to his skin. “It was easier with hers, she had more hair to start with. I don’t want to cut yours too short but if you want it to be the same length, I think I might have to. Look.”
Aaron did.
Haley’s efforts had cleared up the more incongruous patches, neatened it up around his ears, and though it was much better than it had been, the hot embarrassment came rushing back when he stared at his reflection for too long.
“It’s meant to be wet when I cut it, I think. They do that for some reason,” she said. “I don’t want to mess it up.”
“Mess what up?” Jessica asked, swinging around the doorframe. She looked Aaron over. “What happened to you, lose a fight with a lawnmower?”
Haley smacked her on the arm as Aaron snorted with laughter. He appreciated Haley’s intentions, being too polite to acknowledge that—well, it was shit. And Jessica had come right out and said it, broken the ice between them all.
“Just Dad,” he said wryly. “You really should’ve seen it before Haley helped, she’s improved it.”
“It wasn’t great,” Haley said.
Jessica hummed. “What are you trying to do with it?”
Aaron and Haley exchanged a look and shrugged. “I mean, get it less… all over the place,” she said. “And then figure out what to do with it then.”
“Turn around,” Jessica said. He looked over his shoulder, let her see it all. “So we’re definitely DIY-ing it?”
“I’ve got school tomorrow,” Aaron said.
Haley ran her fingers through his hair, mussing it up experimentally. “If you sleep on it and leave it kinda messy, it looks like you’ve done it on purpose?”
She was the optimist amongst them.
“We’ve got Dad’s clippers in their bathroom,” Jessica suggested. “I know it’s not ideal but it’s an option.”
Aaron sighed and glanced at the mirror. “If it’s going to look terrible, at least it’ll look consistently terrible.”
Haley squeezed his shoulders. “It’s gonna grow out in no time.”
“It better,” he said.
“And it’s going to be better than your dad,” she said.
He drummed his fingers on his knee as Jessica went to fetch the clippers. “Yeah, Sean did give him an… interesting style.”
“I bet,” she said. “I’ll look out for him at church if he hasn’t had it cut by then.”
Aaron smirked. Between now and tomorrow evening, he doubted his father would have the time to arrange a decent haircut and he’d sooner die than miss Mass. He’d also rather die than be seen so dishevelled. If he could slip in to sleep and leave before his father woke, join the Brooks’ at church…
“So will I,” he said.
Jessica returned with the clippers. “I figure we start with the longest, see if we can cut the rest, go down from there.”
He nodded. Jessica offered them to Haley and she took the clippers, flicked them on. The low buzz against his neck echoed the rising nerves.
With how much he’d lost already, they started with a middle grade; the amount of hair in their sink, which he now leant over of his own accord, made him anxious. Though most of it was contributing to his stress in the first place, his heart beat just a little faster at the sight. No blood this time. Even with Jessica doing what she could with the scissors, the first pass over still left him with awkward shorter patches.
Haley tapped him on the shoulder and he raised his head.
Aaron ran a hand over his hair – the newly shorn buzzcut was too short for a hand to go through. It left him feeling exposed, raw and vulnerable: nothing but his face in all its sharp angles and sickly pallor. Nothing palatable, nothing to draw the eye, soften the blow.
Just hard edges and nowhere to hide.
But if it was too short for his hand, it was also too short for his father to grab, and that afforded him a certain level of security.
“Not bad,” Jessica said.
Haley nodded. “It works really well.”
They were earnest and he knew somehow that they weren’t lying to him, that they genuinely believed what they were seeing and what they were saying were one and the same. Whoever they saw in that mirror wasn’t him.
His face warmed with a different kind of embarrassment and Aaron didn’t correct them.