“Ah, câlice!” I swear loud enough for a few people to turn their heads when I accidentally click before I’m ready.
“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” I mutter as I look around for a cancel button, but there isn’t one.
It’s a terrible letter. It’s stupid. They’re going to read it and laugh.
I clutch my empty lemonade glass so hard I’m in danger of breaking it as I keep staring at the screen. I’m sure I could cancel the whole application, even if I have to give up the fee, but I keep squeezing the glass to stop me from doing it. I force myself to focus on something my psychologist said in our last session. I only started seeing her again a couple weeks ago, and it was the first time I walked out of her office feeling better and not just confused.
She said all our fears are a story we tell ourselves.
I let go of the glass and open up a blank document on my computer. I decide to write myself a new story. It’s a short one—just one sentence long—but it might be the best story I’ve ever come up with. Even as my heart beats loud and fast in my ears, there’s a part of me somewhere deep inside that knows my story is completely, totally true:
It’s a great letter, and I am so brave.
Twenty-Five
DeeDee
FLOAT: the act of pouring a light liquor on top of a heavier liquor to create a drink with a layered effect
“Open it!”
“I’m too scared!”
Valérie puts her hands on her hips. “Open it, or I’ll open it for you.”
We’re standing in our tiny kitchen, looking at the envelope Valérie just slapped down on the counter. She grabbed the mail on her way up to the apartment a few minutes ago and found a letter from Cheveluxe.
The letter is addressed to me.
“You sneaky bitch!” Valérie teases. “You didn’t even tell me you applied.”
I didn’t tell anyone. The school is popular enough that you have to do a phone interview after you get past the first round of application reviews. I’ve never been good at writing, and as the weeks after I submitted my application went by, I got more and more sure they’d take one look at my letter and put it in the reject pile. I didn’t want to have to face anyone’s disappointment but mine.
I was so shocked when they called me I almost fell over. I don’t even remember the questions they asked, or what I said back. That was a week ago, and they told me they’d be making final decisions by the end of July.
“DeeDee, open it! You totally got in.”
I shake my head and chew on my lip. “I don’t know. Tabarnak, I just don’t know.”
“Well, you won’t know unless you open it.” Her voice gets softer. “Do you want me to do it for you?”
I take a deep breath. “Non. I will do it, but first I need to sit down.”
My fingers are trembling when I reach out for the letter and take it into the living room. I tuck my legs up under me on the couch and start ripping the paper open. My hands are shaking so much it feels like it takes half an hour just to get the letter out. I can feel Valérie’s eyes on me as I hold the folded page up in front of my face.
This is it.
This is the whole reason I was supposed to come to Montreal in the first place. This was going to be my adventure with Clém, the one we talked about since we were teenagers having sleepovers in her basement, whispering about dumb boys we’d kissed and the dreams we had for our futures.
That was before the club—and the men, and the nights when the only thing that seemed to put a smile on Clém’s face were those little white pills—but even then, we’d talk about this. We’d talk about the day her letter would come from makeup artistry school and mine would show up from Cheveluxe.
We were going to do it together. I was never supposed to do this alone, and I think that’s what stopped me from trying. That’s what kept me behind the bar all these years, telling myself it was the only thing I wanted when my heart was always beating for something more.
I wipe the tears out of my eyes, and I think of Clém, free and happy somewhere, as I open the letter and read the first line.
The paper falls to the floor. My hands fly to my mouth.
“What?” Valérie demands. She’s still on her feet, watching me from across the room. “What is it?”
I shake my head. I can’t speak. She rushes over and grabs the letter for herself before shrieking.
“You got in!” She pulls me into a hug. “You got in! You did it!”
“I did it!” I repeat, even as I start sobbing against her. “Me. I did it. I really did it.”
I go down to the Old Port by myself that evening. It still makes me feel itchy and off to go anywhere by myself, especially at night, but I’ve been giving myself little challenges to feel more okay doing things on my own. I don’t go anywhere that isn’t safe, but I do push myself to try things I never would have done before without dragging friends along.
I take myself out on coffee dates or go poke around in the boutiques on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, and I fight the need to fill the silence. I let the silence fill me up instead. I listen to my thoughts instead of drowning them out with whatever’s around me.
I got the idea from my psychologist. I still don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to feel when I go see her. I always sit on my hands so I won’t start picking things up off her desk, and I get so nervous I start talking about my hair or the weather for twenty minutes. Sometimes I don’t even know if it’s making me any better, but she told me that’s normal, and I’m trusting that.
I’m trusting myself.
I walk by the bench where the little girl called me a princess. I hope she remembers the most important thing I said to her: that sometimes my hair makes me feel like a princess.
It was her big, chubby-cheeked smile that made me start thinking about applying to Cheveluxe. I looked at her, at the moment of total joy just a bright splash of pink can bring, and I thought about all the other people whose eyes have lit up when I’ve told them it’s time to look in the mirror and see their new hair. That’s exactly what happens: they light up. They glow. They jump around and do a crazy dance and start high-fiving everybody just like I did after I got off the zip line.
That’s how powerful the right hair can be, and maybe some people would call me silly for saying hair can be powerful, but I believe it with all my heart. The right hair makes you feel like you can do anything, and if I can make other people believe that about themselves, there’s no reason I can’t believe it about myself too.
The sun has already set, and the violet sky is turning a deep, dark blue, the colour spreading like an ink stain on a purple envelope. I walk to the edge of the boardwalk and stand with my hands on the rail, watching the night set in.
The sunset always makes me think of Zach, of standing on the Jacques Cartier Bridge and hearing my heart get faster and faster in my ears as our bodies got closer and closer. I can still picture the look in his eyes just before he kissed me: like he’d been waiting his whole damn life for that moment, like he’d painted the sunset himself, just for us, because he wanted everything about that kiss to be perfect.