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Lexi cuts her hair in May.
It’s a week before school lets out, but the air already smells like summer. The familiar, sticky-sweet combination, one that feels like riding her bike with Rue, going round the convenience store parking lot in circles. Smells like sitting on the roof eating ice cream sandwiches and listening to stories of Kat’s latest vacation, seeing pictures from BB’s birthday.
It feels like happiness, a kind of freedom. Excitement, under the hot sun and in the blasting AC, as her brain concocts scenes she can rip straight from a Netflix movie. A coming of age summer, she thinks. One that’s going to change her forever.
Of course, it’s not the summer that changes things; instead, there’s a phone call at 7 pm on a spring Tuesday that does the trick. An unknown number, but the prickles on the back of her neck tell her to pick up anyway, the last five minutes of Friends can wait.
“Hello?” She thinks she always sounds like her mother when she answers the phone, like she’s playing at being a grown up. My mom’s in the shower but she’s totally here right now, I’m not an unsupervised kid left alone.
The line is quiet for a second, just a sharp exhale right against the receiver, and at first she thinks it’s a prank. Some pervert calling to jerk off, some idiot from Yearbook or Geometry who thinks it’s funny to tease the prudish Howard sister.
“I don’t know who gave you my number-“
“Lexi?”
The voice sounds familiar, like she could pick it out of a crowd, knows it even in her dreams. Comforting, even if she hasn’t heard it in days, even if she feared that he didn’t want her to hear it ever again.
“Hi,” she breathes, fingers tight against the phone, nails clicking against the plastic. “Hi, Fez.”
He lets out another short sigh, a little breath she almost thinks she can feel on her ear, teasing her skin.
“How are you?” She asks, but as soon as it comes out of her mouth it sounds like the dumbest thing imaginable.
How are you? How’s jail? So sorry about Ashtray, that shit sounds absolutely crazy. Huge bummer. Hey, when’s your trial date?
“Uh, ‘m good. Yeah. Good.” He doesn’t sound quite like he believes it, but she knows better than to call him out. Sometimes you need to lie to others before you can lie to yourself.
“Good,” she echoes, and there’s a little cough on the other end, like he’s clearing his throat.
“I just, uh-“ She can hear the scratch of skin on skin, knows he’s rubbing his beard with nervous hands, playing with the hair just for want of something to do. “I was hopin’ we could talk.”
She nods, before the reality of an auditory conversation catches up with her. “Yes. I’d love to. We can talk.”
There’s a shuffling sound, the phone switching to the other ear, before his fingers return to his chin. The scratching is soft, an almost comforting echo, and if she closes her eyes she can see him doing the motion, the careful sort of look he pulls when he’s thinking hard about something. Like he never wants to give her anything less than the entirety of his focus, his whole brainpower, directed only at Lexi Howard.
“We can talk about whatever you want,” she adds. “Um, like-“
She didn’t think that one through. Truthfully, there’s plenty of topics for them to cover (my play was a great success! I heard you got shot. Rue says you’re doing well enough to get transferred to the jail, and I was just wondering your thoughts on if it’s actually better or worse than being in the hospital 24/7. How are your nightmares? If my sister got shot in front of me, I’d have crazy nightmares. Let me know!) but nothing seems appropriate for her to broach on her own. Not without him opening the door, and their very first conversation in four weeks doesn’t feel like the most likely time for him to dig into personal trauma.
“Well, we could talk ‘bout you,” he says, so hopeful it almost makes her heart hurt.
“Yeah,” she breaths, and she can hear him release another sigh, a gentle one that floats down the line and lands on her cheek. “We can.”
“I actually called ‘cause, uh-“ He swallows, nerves and spit and the same lump she feels in her own throat. “Rue was visitin’ last week, and she talked ‘bout your play an’ that. Said it was fuckin’ fire.”
She snorts out a laugh, so sudden and sharp that her hand goes to cover her mouth, pressing into the smile just to feel the way it curves on her face, the little grin she knows has only ever been saved for him.
“Um, I don’t know about fire,” she offers. “But I think people liked it.”
“Bet they did,” he mumbles, and she can hear his mirroring smirk, can picture the glint in his eye as he talks. “You a real writer now, huh?”
He’d said that once before, when she was tucked up under the blanket on his couch, muttering about how she’d change the ending of Stand By Me, that Chris’ death doesn’t feel quite so necessary to the modern viewer.
“It’s fucking sad enough,” she’d told him, and he’d just laughed in response, mumbling how she should show them how it was done. Craft the better story, so good Hollywood would come banging her door down to make the movie.
“Show ‘em how a real writer works,” he’d teased, and her face flushed such a deep red that she can feel it even now, the burn of embarrassment and pleasure and something secretly wonderful.
Maybe being a real writer is having your sister give you the silent treatment for two full weeks, all because you dragged a carousel horse on stage and paraded her behavior in front of the whole school.
(She does regret that, honestly. More than a little but less than enough.)
“Oh, I dunno,” she mumbles, and he’s already on the defensive, argument coming out before she’s even finished speaking.
“Nah, you are. You wrote a whole fuckin’ show, right? S’cool as hell, Lexi. Real writer shit.”
For a second, she lets her eyes fall closed, and they’re back on the couch in his house. The room smells like smoke and weed and instead of turning her stomach, it nearly makes her sleepy. There’s a blanket on her legs and a hand in hers, and the softest smile she’s ever seen flirting across his face. One that reappears in her dreams, over and over, until she’s not even sure if she ever experienced it at all, or if it was simply a lovely creation, born from her own brain and based firmly outside of reality.
“Thanks,” she whispers. “That’s, um. That’s really nice of you.”
He hums softly, switching the phone again, and there’s a brief commotion in the background before he raises his voice just an octave.
“You doin’ anything good this summer?”
He’s sitting in jail and he wants to know her vacation plans. It’s funny, in a very cruel kind of way, the sense of irony she’d appreciate on stage and absolutely loathes in person.
“Cassie’s got orientation at state, so I might tag along. Take the tour.” She picks at a growing thread on the pink blanket, unraveling and unraveling until it just comes apart in her hand. “Could be fun.”
He thinks on that for a moment, and she knows the little wrinkle that’s appearing in his forehead, the way the wheels are turning so carefully.
“Yeah, could be,” he agrees. “Thought you wanted to apply to NYU, though?”
Of course he remembers that. He remembers everything that comes out of her mouth, like he writes down all her silly comments and reads them over later, studying for an imaginary test.
“Yeah, I mean, I did. Or I do. It’s just far away, and expensive, so.” She starts on a second thread, picking harder with an already broken nail, fervently scratching so it pokes right up into her skin. “You know.”
Another hum, lighter and gentler. “Yeah,” he mutters. “I know.”
Family and duty, she thinks. They both know, better than most. His family is fractured, torn to pieces and shattered in front of him, and hers is cut by her own hand. What a funny pair they make, diving into the familiarity of late night chats like no time at all has passed. Like it’s March, maybe, and she can get on her bike and go over to the store if she wants, just to see his face. To feel him press the cold soda into her palm and watch the way his fingers brush her hand, hard enough to be on purpose but not quite certain enough to call him out on it.
“Rue said you, uh-“ Another swallow, harder this time, like he’s forcing down certain words. “You guys on break soon, yeah?”
Her bottom lip slips between her teeth, head craning over the phone just in case she’ll be heard. In case the shadows in her room want to spy on her, to learn these private things she wants so badly to keep just for herself.
“Yeah,” she mutters. “School’s out next Friday.”
He thinks on this for a moment, offering the concept his same constant consideration, the long pauses he gives before he speaks, making sure whatever he has to say is really, truly important.
“You ever, uh. If you’d wanna, like- I know s’far. But Rue’s comin’ up in, like, a few weeks, she pro’lly give you a ride-“
“Yes,” she murmurs; an answer to a question he hasn’t quite asked, but one she can feel bumping around in his brain, ringing right out through his lips. “Yes, I wanna see you.”
The smile is nearly audible, the pure relief that flows through right into her ear, a feeling she wants to wrap herself up in and take a short nap.
“Yeah?” He questions, voice inching higher, louder. More sure. “Cool. I wanna see you.”
It feels strange (disjointed? Problematic?) that her heart leaps at that, even as her brain reminds her of the circumstances, the situation. I want to see you in the county jail is not I want to see you in my house, my bedroom, the passenger seat of my car. Not the same, like it won’t ever be the same for them again.
“I gotta go, Lexi, and I just wanna say,” he sighs, but this one is fond and sweet, if she can let herself pretend. “S’real nice talkin’ to you. Best part of my week.”
There’s still the voice in her head that wants to refute the idea, to brush off the compliment as if it means nothing. But if every word is so carefully chosen, if he thinks so hard about what to say because he deems it that important, then he wouldn’t just throw platitudes against the wall and hope they stick. Wouldn’t call her on the jail phone simply to chat about her high school theatre production. Wouldn’t ask to see her after all this time, wouldn’t want to say her name in that soft tone, the one that sends butterflies right down to her belly, if he didn’t really, genuinely, whole-heartedly mean it.
“You too,” she whispers, fingers gripping the plastic so tightly she worries she’ll crack the screen. “I can’t-“
There’s a sudden feeling arising in her throat, something close to bile and white hot, matching the pricking of the tears stinging right behind her eyes.
“I can’t wait to see you,” she finishes. “I can’t-“
“I gotta- fuck. Bye, Lexi.”
She hears the sharp click and the droning dial tone, echoing softly in her ear as her brain replays his last few sentences, drowning out the reminder that there is no longer a man on the other end.
Best part of my week, she thinks, and even if the tears are slipping down her cheeks, pooling gently above her lips and dropping streaks on her blankets, it makes her smile just the same.
School ends on a Friday (1 pm, early release, and she imagines it’s more because the teaching body can’t be assed to even play a fucking video in the auditorium when it’s 85 degrees and perfectly sunny out.) Kat heads to the mall, Maddy goes to the pool, and Rue asks if she wants to come over and watch movies, maybe build a fort in their basement.
“I got Saw one, two, and three on deck,” she promises, but Lexi offers her a rain check, a rescheduling for the following Friday, when she doesn’t already have totally concrete, immovable plans.
No one’s home when she opens the door; Cassie’s sulking at BBs or with some new boy she’s picked up through a friend of a friend of McKay’s, and their Mom works til 7. Plenty of time to herself, just the right environment for the task at hand.
She snags a pair of kitchen scissors and a handheld mirror and sets to work in the bathroom. It’s easier than she expected; tie a low ponytail to start, trim just above the hair tie in a straight line. Make sure to constantly check if it’s even, if you’ve angled the scissors or tilted your head. It’s a strangely fun game, to take such note of her body and her posture, to count the beauty marks and the little freckles on her own face as she straightens out the ends. To see how the dark marks match her eyes, the same color as the hair she’s chopping off, the pieces slipping down her fingers and landing on the porcelain.
When she’s finished, and the bathroom sink is coated in little dark hairs, she finds the final product inches closer towards Arya Stark-era tomboy than she was intending. It lands right below her chin, curling in on the ends and nearly too short to tuck behind her ears, although she just about makes it work.
She spends another twenty minutes in the bathroom, even as the door to their room opens and Cassie demands to come in, she needs to brush her teeth. Too busy, for once, to dwell on her sister’s needs, preferring to take stock of the girl who looks back at her, the one who’s as unfamiliar as she is alluring
The reflection in the mirror is different, she thinks; not Lexi, the shy girl who lives in her sister’s shadow, the one who only stumbles through life on the sidelines. Instead, she looks like someone rough and tumble, even adventurous, maybe. Strong, most of all. Stronger than anyone else cares to see.
Well. Maybe one person saw.
She wakes the next morning and forgets, momentarily, that she’s lost about a pound and a half from her head. It feels light, like something massive lifted from her shoulders, a physical freedom that translates into an emotional one as she boards the bus, checking the route on her phone every five minutes just to confirm she’s going to the right place. The final destination, the rooms she’s only pictured in the moments before she falls asleep, drawing on TV and movies and an utter lack of real life experience.
They'd agreed on 9 AM, and she arrives right at 9:02 in front of a building that looks far less imposing than she’s been expecting. It’s almost like a school structure, made of the same red brick and bearing the same ugly fluorescents as she walks down the hall.
Strangely, that thought makes her feel more comfortable, more at ease, even as she’s bumped into by a sniffing child, who smears a dirty hand on the back of her leg before he’s tugged away by his mother.
The whole thing is rather routine; although, she supposes, that’s how it feels for everyone inside. Get your badge, sign your name, wait at your table. Pick at the peeling plastic until the doors open again, and then pretend like your heart isn’t flying straight into your chest, like every nerve on your body isn’t lighting up.
He looks the same, which is a shock. She’s expecting something different (tattoos, maybe?) in the face, in the way he carries himself. But this Fezco could have walked right out of the store back in February, straight from her dreams, only he had to change his clothes along the way.
He stops just beside the table, mouth set in a tight line, a tension she knows is reflected in get own expression. Uncertainty, because talking on the phone is one thing, but coming to visit a boy you’ve never kissed in jail is entirely another.
“Hey,” he mutters, and the soft gravel of his voice nearly makes the tension evaporate. “S’nice to see you.”
“You too,” she agrees.
Pleasantries out of the way and he sits down, hands spread a careful few inches from her, eyes glancing down to her t-shirt (Hair revival tour 2012) before he looks back up. There’s a tiny smile curling on his lips, something small, but frightfully genuine.
“I like your hair,” he offers, and his hand scoots just closer to hers, barely a fraction of an inch. “Real nice.”
She nods, and she can see the smile widen, the brief flash of his teeth as he lets it open into a grin.
“You look fuckin’ badass,” he mumbles, and she can’t help the snort that escapes, the little laugh she lets bubble out. “You badass, Lexi.”
It’s strange, she thinks, to find such enjoyment in a place like this. That even with the overly bright lights and the man at the door, they can escape into the sweetness, if only for a moment. Finding something perfect, the shared smile and the warm little current running between them. Just for twenty minutes, she knows, before the door closes and he goes away again.
Still, she's always been good at pretending. This is a different kind -a kind of lie, but one she's happy to tell herself- and yet she thinks she can be good at this, too.