“Go away!”
“I’m not coming in unless you want,” I said. “Uncle Cash is here too. You wanna talk to him instead?”
“M-my hair is ugly!” she sobbed, wrenching the door open and staring up at us through tear-filled eyes.
And oh.
Oh shit.
It was pretty fucking bad.
This wasn’t a single slip of the scissors. There were chunks of hair cut out of the front, and it looked like she was missing an entire pigtail. She really did look like that Barbie. Like, there was no fixing this with a couple of hairpins and a side part.
Gracie blinked up at me, and her bottom lip wobbled. “I just wanted to try Avery’s special grown-up scissors!” she wailed.
Cash crouched down and held the blanket open silently, and Gracie launched herself into his arms, clinging tightly and burying her face in his shoulder, her body shaking as she sobbed.
Cash sent me a worried glance before he stood and carried Gracie to his armchair.
The front door opened and Avery hurried in, and shit, he looked almost as upset as Gracie.
“I’m so sorry!” he said to Wilder. “I only turned my back for a minute, I swear! Mia had a new haircut today and everyone was admiring it, and I guess Gracie wanted to get in on the action.”
Wilder shook his head. “It’s not your fault. The main thing is that we get it fixed before tomorrow, because she can’t go to the Moores’ like that. Her grandma will probably take her and get her some bullshit cut. Like abob.”
“Oh god, no,” Avery said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve watched my mom cut my sister’s bangs before. I guess I can try and?—”
“Nooooo!” Gracie’s wail cut through whatever he’d been going to say.
It was Cash who whispered, “Hairdresser?”
Wilder shook his head, his expression grim. “I called around already. They’re booked out.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Shit. Ifshe goes to her grandparents looking like this, they’ll probably claim I’m an unfit parent.”
“Could we be in Richmond by four thirty?” Avery asked, looking at his phone.
Wilder rubbed his forehead again. “No.”
Avery winced and then said, his tone upbeat, “What cool hats do you have, Gracie?”
She wailed even louder.
“What was the name of that girl from high school who wanted to be a hairdresser?” Wilder asked the room at large.
“Didn’t go to high school with you, babe,” Avery said, still relentlessly—and obviously fakely—upbeat. “So I don’t know.”
“Everyone will laugh at me!” Gracie sobbed against Cash’s chest.
“Come on,” Wilder said, his desperation obvious. “We must knowsomeone.”
Normally I would have kept my mouth shut, because it was going to mean swallowing my pride and asking for a favor, two things I never, ever wanted to do, but it was forGracie. She was just a little kid, and the thought of the other kids making fun of her made my chest ache. And they would, because kids were kids, you know?
“Um,” I said, “so, uh, I think I might know someone.”
Wilder seized on my words as eagerly as a drowning man grabbing for a rope.
“You do?”
This was gonna bite me in the ass in all sorts of horrible ways, but what else could I do?
