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Sunlight streams through the clouds, dancing delicately through the atmosphere, traveling several million miles and through an immeasurable number of obstacles to land directly on Noelle’s eyes. As a result, due to the laws of cause and effect, she squints and uses one hand to shield her eyes as she pitifully attempts to pick out the beef portions of her food with poor vision.
“You look like you just walked into a room after someone farted in it,” Min says, giggling. For a moment, Noelle thinks it isn’t directed at her, but then she takes a glance at Min through her light-shrouded vision, who is visibly leaning over the table toward her.
“Do you have to be so immature all the time?” Noelle grumbles as she looks away and turns back to her dish.
“Is the sun hurting your eyes?” Diya asks, concernedly. “Could switch seats with you, if you want.”
“I appreciate the offer, but—” It’s too late. The effort to stop Diya is futile. She has already stood up and walked to Noelle’s side, waiting expectantly for her to stand.
Min lets out a noise of protest when Diya gets up from her side, but it dies out into an annoyed grumble when Noelle sits next to her. She crosses her arms indignantly and leans back with a sigh. Noelle is deeply proud to have annoyed her.
“Woah,” Akarsha says, glancing in between Noelle and Min. She grins in a suspicious way and then continues, “Fuck it, I ship it.”
A chorus of “no” and “ew” and “I don’t like girls” rise up from the two accused. Min turns sharply to Noelle, who does the exact same action at the exact same time, and then shakes her head, scrunching her nose up in disgust.
“Like I would ever sink so low as to date this rock,” Min stresses. “She’s more robot than person.”
“Like I would ever date you ,” Noelle replies with conviction. “You’re more delinquent than human.” With that, she whips her head away, her braid moving alongside.
“Jesus Christ, when was the last time you cut your hair?” Noelle registers the sensation of someone putting her hand on her braid and she defensively pulls it out of her attacker’s grasp, holding it to her chest. It’s Min. “Your braid touches your ass. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?”
Red creeps up Noelle’s neck. “…A while.”
“That’s gotta be hard,” Akarsha pipes up. “You already barely get enough sleep as is. Why don’t you get it cut?”
“My mom says it’s a waste of time and won’t schedule an appointment for me.” Quietly, Noelle fiddles with the end of her braid, where a hair tie keeps it all together.
“Well, that’s bullshit,” Min declares. She looks like she’s about to say something else when the bell rings and Noelle jumps up to shove all of her lunchbox innards back into their container and hustle to class. She waves a quick goodbye to Diya, and then she’s gone.
Noelle exits her last class of the day at around three-thirty. She had stayed back for a little longer than necessary to prod her teacher about the half-point she missed on their last test to the point where the teacher agitatedly gave her the half-point to get her to leave him alone. She wanders across the parking lot, weaving through the newly-planted tree saplings (an effort to get the school to look more “positive” rather than a bleak, empty prison) until she arrives at her car, which is actually her mother’s car, but she never leaves the house, so once Noelle got her driver’s license, she let Noelle use it to drive to school. The only condition is that she “could not use it to drive her friends” and she “cannot use it during summer for distractions.” Of course, Noelle’s mother thinks that friends are a distraction, but she refuses to say the quiet part aloud.
She opens the door of her car, which she never locks (because honestly, who is going to steal a 2001 Toyota Corolla?) and sits down on the worn seats, closing the door, turning it on, gently placing her foot on the brake and—
“Wait!”
A very frazzled Min materializes at her passenger window, panting. Raising an eyebrow, Noelle rolls it down, allowing the other girl to plead her case as to why she is here.
“What took you so long?” Min asks quickly, putting her arms inside the car as she leans against the exterior.
“I wasn’t aware I had someone waiting on me.” Noelle swiftly moves to roll the window back up, but Min makes a startled sound, so she sighs and turns back to her again. “What do you want?”
“Can you give me a ride?”
Noelle scoffs. “You could’ve taken the bus.”
“Well, obviously I can’t do that anymore.” Min rolls her eyes. “What do I look like, a fucking time traveler?”
“It’s warm out. You can walk.”
“God, you’re such a bitch sometimes,” Min growls, pushing herself off of Noelle’s car. “Fine. I’ll walk. ”
Noelle watches as she makes a show of stomping away, and something about it plays on her heartstrings, makes her want to go against her own rules. Internally groaning, she calls out, “Wait.”
Min looks back.
“It’s… not safe for you to walk home alone. I’ll give you a ride,” Noelle then grins smugly, “ if you say please.”
Making a dramatic joke out of dragging her hands over her face and whining, Min spits out, “Please?”
The workings of a genuine smile tug at the end of Noelle’s lips. “Alright, get in.”
Min does just that, and they set off, the ride quiet and empty save for Min occasionally interjecting to give Noelle directions. (Noelle has never had a reason to go to Min’s house before, even though they’ve known each other—as teenagers—for over a year. Even their fake study dates that would evolve into them ditching to spend time with Akarsha and Diya had never taken place at either of their houses. It’s peculiar, and Noelle wonders why.)
They arrive at Min’s home about five minutes later. It’s not shoddy or slummy, like Noelle had been subconsciously expecting. It’s almost nice, if a little dated. The entire thing is covered in light blue acrylic siding, with a clashing brown roof and white trim. One of the windows on the second floor is adorned with posters for bands Noelle doesn’t recognize and one of the others is completely blank. It wouldn’t take Noelle’s intellect to puzzle out which one belonged to Min.
She doesn’t pull into the driveway, and instead continues up the street until she’s parallel to the front door.
Min silently opens the door, but she doesn’t immediately close it and leave. “Wait here.” Before Noelle can ask her why, she’s sprinting to her house, and she’s gone.
Noelle slumps against her seat resignedly. Being a morally upstanding citizen is exhausting. She could leave any time she wanted. She could put her car in drive and go home. For some reason, though, she doesn’t want to. And she waits for Min to return, tapping her fingers against her steering wheel rhythmically.
Fortunately, she doesn’t take too long. She emerges from the building just a few minutes later, a backpack slung across her shoulder and a baseball cap on her head. She… looks nice with the cap on. Noelle looks straight ahead.
Before Noelle can remark on how this is the first time she’s ever seen Min with a backpack, she’s beaten to the punch. “Alright, let’s head to your place,” Min says as she enters the car.
Alarmed, Noelle whips toward her. “Absolutely not. Also, why?”
“If I told you you’d never say yes,” Min replies. “Let’s just go.”
“It’s not like I’m gonna magically change my mind because you’re already in my home.”
“I’m doing you a favor.”
Noelle knows that she’s never going to out-stubborn Min. She shakes her head, but puts the car into drive, and they’re off.
“Can I get even a hint as to what exactly is happening here?”
“Nope.”
“God, you’re terrible.”
“Can’t you just trust me for once?”
“Why would I ever trust you?”
“Because…” Min pauses. “Because we’re… fellow acquaintances.”
Noelle doesn’t look away from the road but her grip on the steering wheel tightens. “How do you know about that?”
“Akarsha told me about it. She never stops quoting it.”
“I wouldn’t even call you an acquaintance. You’re more like an annoyance.”
“Seriously, Noelle,” Min’s voice takes on a deeper tone. “We’ve been doing this shit for years. Can’t we just pause and stop pretending like we hate each other?”
“I don’t hate you,” Noelle says earnestly. It surprises her how easily she can say it. “You’re just… you’re just annoying, like I said. You swear too much and you get into too much trouble and you get low grades. We’re opposites.” They grate against each other every day, like tectonic plates. Mountains too steep to climb form from their movement.
“What about our parents?”
“You don’t get to talk to me about my parents.”
“Remember that conversation we had in freshman year right before we went to the buffet and the team tried to fit me into a duffel bag?” Min asks. “We bonded over hating our parents. And then at the actual buffet, I was like, wow you’re fucked up, I like you. But you had a weird reaction to it.” She leans her forehead against the window. “So I was like, oh shit, nevermind. But I think you’re funny in a fucked up way. You just never seemed… to appreciate that.”
“We’ve always disliked each other,” Noelle points out. “It doesn’t make logical sense to deviate from that. People don’t magically make up in real life over one conversation. It meant nothing.”
In her side mirror, she can see Min physically flinch when she says the last part. She instantly feels the words clawing their way out of her throat— I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It meant a lot. But she keeps them at bay.
The rest of the drive is silent.
When Noelle pulls into her driveway, she instantly shoves Min’s head underneath the dash, ignoring her clipped “hey,” staring straight at the front door. She doesn’t move her eyes for a solid minute until she exhales with relief and lets Min sit up.
“The fuck was that for?” Min says, stretching out her back.
“I had to ensure my mother wasn’t home. She must’ve gone down the street to argue with other women.” Noelle opens the door and does not wait for Min as she quickly rushes to the front of her house. Unlike Min’s, it’s modern. The siding is beige and the roof is black, with black trim. Sometimes, Noelle thinks it’s soulless. All of the windows are blank. She can sense that Min is behind her when she gets the door open. “Whatever it is that you’re so insistent on doing, you have to do it fast. She’ll be back before the sun goes down.”
“I can make it work. Where’s the bathroom?” Min queries, taking a look around the interior of the home. Noelle points down the hall before Min grabs her wrist and drags her into it, and stands her in front of the mirror. She looks at the scene contemplatively, then exits the bathroom, leaving a very confused Noelle behind, and she returns with a chair from the dining room in hand. “Sit,” she orders. Noelle complies. “This is not ideal… I wish I had a stool.”
“And what exactly are you planning on doing to me?” Noelle asks, perturbed. She watches with concern as Min sifts through her cabinets to find a towel, wrapping it around Noelle’s neck and upper body.
“I’m giving you a haircut.” Min retrieves a pair of scissors and various hair products from her backpack, snipping the clippers menacingly and grinning like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“What?” Noelle shrieks, whipping her head toward Min. “Do you even know how to cut hair? Are you crazy?”
“Uh, duh, I wouldn’t do you like I did myself in elementary school,” Min says, rolling her eyes. “I’ve cut my hair for my entire life. I’m basically a pro.”
Noelle eyes Min’s haircut skeptically. It’s certainly not the worst she’s ever seen—it’s layered and even, but also has a wavy, messy look to it that seems natural even though Noelle knows Min’s hair is pin straight, like hers. It… frames her face well. Noelle looks away.
“Well,” Noelle sighs, rethinking her life choices, “I don’t really have any other option. Just don’t cut it too short.”
“Can I take your braid out?” Min asks gently. It’s so foreign . Noelle wants to slap her in the face and ask her to go back to normal. Noelle hates unfamiliarity more than she hates the unknown. She would have felt better to not be privy to this side of Min—this softer side of her, hiding behind the insults and the swearing. She hates that Min heard one offhand comment about her mother being controlling and felt empathy . She felt a need to act. She hates that she doesn’t know Min in any manner. This equation doesn’t have a variable. She can’t determine any of its solutions. Or if it has a solution at all.
“Yes,” Noelle chokes out.
And with hands so uncharacteristically careful, she slowly pulls apart Noelle’s tight braid and brushes it out to its normal consistency. Noelle can feel her staring at her in the mirror, so she looks up.
“What?” Noelle prods, less amiable than Min.
“Sorry,” Min replies quietly, returning to her brushing. A faint, almost undetectable red shadow has fallen on her face, across the bridge of her nose, covering the small freckles that adorn her cheeks. (Did she always have freckles?) “You just look different with your hair down.”
In a way, it feels relaxing when Min brushes her hair, almost putting her to sleep. Noelle subconsciously leans against the backside of the chair (which heightens out in the middle of her spine, so it isn’t the most comfortable, but it works) and closes her eyes. She always dreaded when her mother would brush her hair back before she learned how to do it herself. Her mother had rough, no-nonsense hands.
“It hurts.” Noelle struggles against her mother’s grip on her shoulder as she relentlessly swipes through Noelle’s hair with a brush. It’s not even tangled—her mother just keeps slapping the bristles against her scalp.
“Pain is part of life,” her mother replies in that clipped, inarguable tone of hers. She clicks her tongue and grabs Noelle’s hair, pulling it back, and with it, Noelle’s head. “Stay still.”
“I can’t. You’re hurting me.”
“Get used to it.”
Get used to it, Noelle did.
“Do you mind if I wash your hair? It’ll make my life so much easier,” Min says, breaking the comfortable silence that rested between them.
Do you mind…
Can I…
Min didn’t want to do anything that would make Noelle uncomfortable. In some sense, Noelle despises it—she isn’t a Prince Rupert’s drop, she won’t shatter into pieces because of one occurrence. But another, more selfish part of her is immensely appreciative. She’s averse to physical touch… but not engulfed in hatred of it. She nods her affirmative.
Min stands her up and has her bend over the bathtub. Noelle is very aware of how ridiculous the position she’s in is. Warm water, not too hot, meets her scalp and those gentle hands from earlier massage her hair until it’s all wet, and then Min turns the water off to put shampoo in. Noelle folds her arms, placing them on the edge of the bathtub, and rests her chest on them. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing here or how she got persuaded into this. She would have let Diya do this—if her big hands wouldn’t be a little too rough on her hair—but not Min.
“I usually cut my hair when it’s freshly washed and still a little damp,” Min explains as she washes the shampoo out of Noelle’s hair. “Dunno why, but it’s easier for me.”
Yes. There are absolutely no ulterior motives to this. Min is only washing her hair for the purpose of cutting it. When had Noelle convinced herself otherwise?
“Doesn’t it clump together, though? Wouldn’t that make it more difficult?” Noelle asks. In her own experience, her hair, when wet, was dense enough to hurt if you got slapped with it.
“If you ring all the water out with a towel and pat it dry, you can just brush it apart easily.” Min takes the conditioner and spreads it in her hands before applying it to Noelle’s ends. Since the conditioner takes a minute to set in, Min wipes off the excess from her hands and sits on the edge of the bathtub next to Noelle. “How often do you wash your hair?”
“Every few days.”
“How short do you want it?”
“Just… enough to cut off the split ends.”
“I think you could pull off something shorter.”
“If I go any shorter than that, my mom will kill me.”
“Who cares what she thinks? It’s your hair.”
Noelle ponders that for a moment. She supposes that, yes, it is her hair. But she does care what her mother thinks. Why? No logical reason comes to the forefront of her mind. Perhaps she simply wants to avoid punishment. Yes, she seeks her mother’s approval. Why?
Why?
She can’t answer. That scares her.
Min turns the water back on then, and Noelle thinks that maybe her anxiety will wash away with the conditioner. But it doesn’t, and the unsolvable problem comes rearing its ugly head again. Why does she value her mother’s opinion? All she had ever done was hurt her. All she had ever done was make Noelle worse.
Tenderly, Min’s hands ring out the conditioner lodged in Noelle’s hair, then she sits Noelle up again and wraps her hair in a towel, squeezing it.
“You look ridiculous,” Noelle says, peering down at Min as she strains her arms upward to reach Noelle’s head.
“Uh, not my fault you’re a lamp post,” Min retorts, but it has no bite behind it. In fact, she’s smiling lopsidedly.
“Question. Why are you wearing a baseball cap?”
Min instantly puts her hand to the brim of the hat and turns it around, so that the mesh was to the front of her head. “So I can do this.”
“Is it that big of a deal?”
“Yes. Yes it is.” Min seems to be satisfied with the dryness level of Noelle’s hair, so she unwraps the towel and sits Noelle back down again, resuming a familiar pattern of brushing: starting on either side, and then tackling the middle. It’s comfortable, and Noelle wants to fall asleep, like before.
“I have another question, actually,” Noelle says drowsily. “Is Diya putting you up to this?”
“Do you seriously not believe that I have a nice bone in my body?” Min replies sarcastically. Again, though, it’s not actually mean. “Okay, maybe she wanted us to actually call each other friends. But this whole business was all me. I’m the genius that came up with it.”
“I believe that Diya is too nice to ask you to essentially break into my home to give me a haircut,” Noelle responds.
“Actually, if I hadn’t come up with it first, she might’ve,” Min says. “She’s got a dark side. A few days ago, we were walking to Home Depot so I could turn in a job application, and she kicked over someone’s trash can because they had a Meg Whitman sign in their front yard. She didn’t even know who that was. She just knew she was a Republican who supported Prop 8.”
“A job application?” Noelle wonders aloud.
“Gotta grow up sometime,” Min shoots back flippantly, grabbing the scissors again and fingering Noelle’s hair. “How short?”
Noelle stares at herself in the mirror. She imagines what it would be like to have shoulder-length, or heaven forbid, chin-length hair. She imagines what her mother would say. She imagines how her father would react, how he would disapprove of her and punish her accordingly. She imagines what life would be like if she didn’t have to imagine any of this.
“Why do you think my mother wants me to have my hair long?”
Min blinks, surprised by the question. “Probably gender roles. Y’know, long hair equals femininity and short hair equals masculinity. But I think that if a girl wants to have short hair she can rock it. Same goes for a boy with long hair. It’s just hair.”
“Aren’t you a girl with short hair?”
At the question, Min looks down, like Noelle’s hair is suddenly infested with lice. “I guess.”
“Do you think I’d look good with short hair?” Noelle asks earnestly.
“Absolutely. You’d rock it, like I said.” Min smiles, and Noelle knows that her words are genuine.
She looks back at the mirror, inhaling sharply and exhaling slowly.
“Just… cut it to the middle of my back. But thank you.”
Min nods, starting to snip away. The jet black strands fall rhythmically onto paper towels laid on the floor. As Noelle’s hair falls away, Min sticks her tongue out in concentration, and Noelle frowns at the mirror. She wonders why her mother craves control over her, but she knows the answer to that already: she wants to live vicariously through her. She hates having long hair. A lot. A lot more than she thought she did. She hates taking ages to wash it and brush it and braid it every morning. She hates when it gets frizzy and it looks like a bomb exploded on her head. She hates how her mother loves it.
Just then, Noelle’s ear strains to hear the front door opening and sharp, heeled footsteps tapping the hardwood floor of the foyer. She makes a silent motion with her hand for Min to stop.
“Mom is home,” Noelle says. Min understands immediately.
They don’t have time to quickly clean up or hide Min behind the shower curtain before Noelle’s mother slams the door open with such force that the doorknob nearly leaves a dent in the wall. “Noelle Lei!” she booms, loud enough that it reverberates off of every wall and shakes Noelle’s eardrums. “What are you doing?”
“Mother, I can explain—”
“You are a bad daughter!” she continues, completely ignoring Noelle. “I tell you not to do something, but you do it anyway! You have developed no respect for authority! I should send you away!”
Noelle, who has stood up at some point in the yelling, looks down and stares at her feet. She is reminded why, exactly, she endeavors for her mother’s validation—it is soul-crushing if she doesn’t. She feels worthless.
“And who is this lady? She is dressed like a robber! You have let a stranger into our home!”
Noelle glances through her eyelids at Min. She’s staring, stone-faced and cold, at Noelle’s mother, scissors still in hand. Her eyebrows twitch into a subtle frown. Noelle’s eyes wander to the ground. The hair that litters the floor is now an unwelcome reminder of Noelle’s misdeed.
“You will send this girl home and then you will clean up this mess and go to your room! You will not have dinner tonight! I am telling your father about this!”
Without argument, Noelle nods. She knows what her father will think. She knows how he will react. There is no need to imagine it.
Seemingly unable to take it any longer, Min lets out a visceral growl and shouts, “What the fuck is your problem?” She takes a step forward as she says it, an action that Noelle’s mother perceives as a threat, and she takes a step back in response. “You wouldn’t let your own daughter get a haircut because of your weird ego trip and now you’re starving her. That’s fucking abuse.” Noelle pleads with her eyes for Min to stop.
“And what do you know?” Noelle’s mother replies. “You are just like her. Disrespectful. You will never get anywhere in life!”
“And you’re a monster who finds joy in making your own blood miserable!” Min shrieks back, throwing her hands in the air indignantly. “I bet you’ve never had anyone call you out on your bullshit before. You’re fucking crazy.”
“Leave my house now or I am calling the police.”
“Fine, but Noelle is coming with me,” Min spits out, grabbing Noelle by the wrist and dragging her out of the bathroom and to the front door, ignoring Noelle’s quiet protests. She walks right up to the passenger door and flings it open, gently (but still firmly) pushing Noelle into the seat.
“I will report the car as stolen! You and my daughter will be arrested!” Noelle’s mother cries.
“If you do that, I’m calling fucking CPS!”
That seems to get to her instantly. If there’s one way to take down Noelle’s mother, it’s with threats of higher authority—authority that could take away her “precious jewel.” There had never been a witness before. But starving your child as punishment certainly fell under the throes of illegality, and Min had heard it all. This way, she can keep her kid, rather than having her reputation ruined by having her shipped away. It’s an imperfect solution, but it works for the time being. Min clambers into the driver’s seat and quickly backs out of the driveway.
Noelle is pretty sure she’s dying. She can’t breathe and everything is blurry. She had so many things she wanted to scream at her mother during that shouting match— I hate you! My life isn’t yours! I want to never see you again! But she didn’t say anything. She was afraid. And the effects of her fear are hitting her hard now. It feels like the walls of the car’s interior are closing in on her, and she shrinks into her seat in a desperate attempt to get away.
Vaguely, she can register Min pulling over. Then, the other girl is leaning over her in the seat, not too overbearing of a presence but there.
“Noelle,” Min says. “Noelle, I need you to breathe for me, okay?”
She tries—all that comes out is a wheeze.
Min places her hand on Noelle’s delicately. “Breathe in when I squeeze, then breathe out when I squeeze again, okay?”
She squeezes. Noelle breathes in. She squeezes. Noelle breathes out. She squeezes. Noelle breathes in. She squeezes. Noelle breathes out.
They continue this pattern for an unknown number of minutes, but time is certainly passing, as the cars on the road are. They continue it until Noelle feels like she’s not dying where she sits, and she can breathe on her own.
Min releases her grip on Noelle’s hand and puts the car back in drive.
“Are you okay?” Min asks. When Noelle doesn’t answer, she doesn’t push it. “Fuck, I’m sorry for putting myself in that fight. I made it worse.”
“It’s okay,” Noelle replies quietly, even though it’s not. She’s never going to be welcome in her home again—if she ever was in the first place.
“It’s not, though,” Min says, echoing Noelle’s thoughts. “I just couldn’t stand to see her scream at you like that!” She pounds the steering wheel with her palm to punctuate her sentence. It strikes Noelle that she really does care for her. “I’m sorry for… being so mean to you before. Like, when we weren’t friends and were at each other’s throats all the time.”
The moment is fragile. She contributed to that constant fighting too, provoking Min constantly. God, she feels like an idiot now. For reacting weirdly at the buffet when they could’ve had this conversation much earlier. Perhaps change… unfamiliarity… they aren’t so bad. “It’s okay.” Noelle doesn’t think she can say anything else.
Min halfheartedly quirks the part of her lip that’s facing Noelle. Surprisingly, she’s a diligent driver and doesn’t take her eyes off the road, even though she doesn’t yet have her license.
“Anyway, I’m taking you to Diya’s house,” Min informs her. “Her parents don’t really care about who she brings in nowadays, so I can finish your haircut there. Can’t leave you with the most uneven hair in existence.”
“Thanks.” Noelle leans her head against the window. She opens her mouth, then closes it, then opens it again to say, “Do you think you could cut it shorter?”
She can pinpoint the exact moment Min lights up, even though she can’t see her. “Yes I can!”
“I’m tired of being afraid of her.”
“You’re gonna look great with short hair.”
It’s very genuine, almost too much, and Noelle chokes on the butterflies that erupt in her stomach and rise up her throat. She fights them down, and they continue the drive.
When Min cuts her hair, it will be up to her chin and she will look amazing. Diya will compliment her and Akarsha will turn red more often around her and Min will affectionately call the two of them “short hair squad.” Her mother will be furious and give her the cold shoulder for the rest of her life but she doesn’t care. Because she’s her own person and this is a gift that Min gave her. Because she is not her mother.
“And… Min?”
“Yeah?”
“That conversation at the buffet… it meant a lot to me.”
Min grins, and Noelle thinks she wants to make Min happy more often.