“Her poor mother is at her wits’ end with that girl,” Gram explains.
“Why?” Des settles cross-legged on the alphabet rug. She doesn’t like the way Gram says that girl, as though Paige is bad or broken. “We haven’t spent much time together, but I like Paige.”
Gram gives her a sharp look. “I want you to be careful around her, Des. Maybe she seems glamorous to you. Free-spirited. Bohemian. But she isn’t the kind of girl I want you emulating.”
“What kind of girl? What is that supposed to mean?” Des asks, irritated, as she stacks the books by subject: one pile about trucks, one pile about animals, one pile about bedtime, ones for learning colors and numbers and ABCs.
“It means she’s made some bad choices,” Gram says bluntly. “Drugs. Stealing from her mother. I know you and Em have grown apart . Maybe you’re looking to make a new friend. I’m not doubting your judgment, honey, but…” She trails off.
“Okaaay,” Des says, but it feels like Gram is doing exactly that. Like she’s one step away from saying she doesn’t want Des to hang out with Paige anymore. Which would be ridiculous. So Paige smokes weed sometimes. Gram went to all kinds of protest marches back in the sixties. She’s probably smoked weed herself. And stealing isn’t okay, but whatever problems Paige and her mother have, Gram’s only heard one side of the story. “I’m a little old for you to pick out my friends, aren’t I?”
Gram purses her red lips. “You are. Is that your way of telling me to mind my own beeswax?”
“It’s my way of telling you that you don’t have to worry,” Des says. She’s never really lied to Gram before. Never had to. But she can choose her own friends, and she doesn’t plan to stop hanging out with Paige.
“That’s what I thought. You’re never any trouble,” Gram says.
Somehow, that irks Des. She’s nineteen. Isn’t she supposed to be a little bit of trouble? Isn’t she supposed to have a wild, rebellious stage where she gets a tattoo or stays out all night or sleeps with a boy who breaks her heart? Isn’t she supposed to do something her seventy-year-old grandmother would disapprove of? She doesn’t have any interest in sleeping with anybody, and she’s usually in bed with a book by eleven o’clock. But maybe…maybe it’s time for a physical change. Something to signify that she’s not the same girl she was a year ago. Like how Em cut her waist-length hair into a lob.
Des twirls an auburn curl around her finger. She saw the way people looked at Paige on Saturday night. They saw her purple hair and her septum ring and her tattoos, and they made certain assumptions. They looked at her like she was somebody they didn’t want to mess with.
Nobody ever looks at Des like that.
Des is never any trouble.
She doesn’t want to worry Gram. But maybe Em had a point. Maybe she could stand to be a little more nineteen sometimes. To step out of her small, safe comfort zone and her rigid routine. As she starts to reshelve the books, Des feels an unfamiliar restlessness sweep over her. She wants to do something. Something different. Be someone different.
What would it be like to change her hair? It’s been long and red and curly since she was little. She remembers Mom braiding it for her first day of first grade. If she dyed it, everyone would notice. Being a redhead is just part of being a Garrett girl, like having freckles and working in the bookstore.
Maybe it would be nice to do something that set her apart for once.
She thinks of how surprised Em looked on Saturday night, when she saw her laughing and dancing with Paige.
Des had liked that. Being surprising.
Em would never expect her to dye her hair.
“I’m going to take my break,” she says suddenly.
“Now?” Gram looks at the stacks of board books strewn across the bright alphabet carpet. Des isn’t even halfway through reshelving them. “The books are all over the floor, honey.”
“I’ll be right back,” Des promises.
Gram looks like she wants to object, but she doesn’t. Des has been working ten-hour days, without complaint, for the last month. It’s a struggle for Gram to go up the steep staircase to the second-floor stockroom and office; she climbs the stairs at home slowly and arduously with her cane and with Des hovering anxiously behind her.
“Five minutes, okay?” Des flies out the front door, down the sidewalk, and into Tia Julia’s before she can change her mind. She spots Paige behind the bar cutting limes.
“Hey, Desdemona!” Paige says.
“I want to dye my hair blue. Can you help?”
Paige grins. “Hell yes, I can.”
• • •
“Planning a murder?”
Des looks up, startled, to find her high school classmate Savannah Lockwood peering down at her with enormous cornflower-blue eyes. “Excuse me?” Des says.
“I’m joking.” Savannah nods at the elbow-length rubber gloves and the bottle of bleach in Des’s arms.
“Oh. I’m dyeing my hair,” Des explains. Of course there’s a line at Carl’s Pharmacy tonight, and of course the town bigmouth, Savannah Lockwood, has to be here. Des should have driven over to the CVS.
“Ooh, what color?” Savannah leans into Des’s personal space. “My readers will want to know.”
Des takes a step back. “You honestly think your readers will care that I’m dyeing my hair blue?”
“A Garrett girl without red hair? That’s positively shocking, by Remington Hollow standards,” Savannah drawls. “What prompted the change? Can I quote you?”
“No,” Des says.
Savannah huffs. “There are no secrets in Remington Hollow, you know. Not for long.”
“That’s creepy,” Des says, leaning back against the rack of magazines. “Seriously, isn’t nepotism still a thing in journalism? Couldn’t your dad give you a real assignment?”
Savannah flips her shiny dark curls over her shoulder. “The blog is helping to establish the Gazette’s online presence for a millennial audience. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, working retail.”
Des smiles. “I actually know a lot about journalism from Bea. I’m sure you’ve heard about the new feature she scored, writing about women-owned businesses in Remington Hollow? Interviewing a different proprietor every week? Your dad has been so impressed with her work. We’re all super proud.”
Savannah’s eyes narrow. She hates Bea. As a senior, Savannah assumed she would be named editor of the school paper—not because she showed any real talent for it, but because her father is editor of the Remington Hollow Gazette and she thought it was somehow her due. She was furious when Bea, a junior, got the position instead. Last summer, Savannah interned at the Gazette and—to hear Bea tell it—mostly fetched coffee and flirted with the sports reporter. This summer, she’s pressured her dad into letting her write an About Town blog, which is a thinly veiled gossip column.