Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
“Oh my god, Josephine Eleanor Watts!” My mom gasped after putting Benji down for his nap.
I stared at her reflection in the mirror. She surveyed the pile of hair in the bathroom sink and all over the floor before returning her attention to my reflection.
“It got away from me,” I mumbled.
With one hand cupped over her mouth, she nodded. “I told you I’d take you next week,” she said, her hand drifting from her mouth to my hair, barely touching it like it could break.
“I know.” I frowned.
“Sweetie, your bangs …” Her fingertips grazed the spiky ends of my barely existent bangs. The stubble on my dad’s face after three days was longer than my bangs.
“I can’t go to school.” Tears filled my eyes. “They won’t let me wear a hat. And everyone will make fun of me. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Shh …” she hugged me and caressed my butchered hair. “We’ll figure something out.”
Something indeed.
After working her magic on what was left of my hair, I ended up with a layered bob that reached no farther than my earlobes, and my new best friend was a headband. Mom combed hair forward from the crown of my head and secured it with a headband. Viola! Fake bangs.
“They’re gonna know,” I murmured the next morning at breakfast.
“Not if you leave your headband in place.”
“They’ll make fun of the headband because I never wear a headband.”
“You have a new hairstyle. They’ll clearly see that it’s short, so the headband will just be part of your new, shorter hairstyle.” She set a glass of orange juice by my bowl of cereal.
“Ugh!” I grumbled. “I’m not even hungry.” Pushing back my chair, I ran upstairs and spent the next ten minutes staring at my teary-eyed reflection in the mirror before I had to catch the bus.
“Wait up!” Colten called.
“Go away. Not today,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me.
“Did you get your hair cut?”
“Duh,” I said halting at the bus stop.
He jumped in front of me, inspecting me.
I kept glancing away. “Could you stop staring so much?”
“What? Don’t you like it?”
I laughed. “Of course, I like it.”
I hated it.
“Don’t you?” I forced myself to look him in the eye.
Colten nodded slowly. “You look pretty. Like … really pretty.”
I hadn’t known him all that long, but I’d known him long enough to know he meant it. Colten Mosley thought I looked pretty.
At school, several teachers complimented me on my new hairdo. None of my friends said much, but that was okay. I wasn’t keeping it that way for long. The sooner it grew back out, the better.
Nearly making it through my first fake-bangs day, the last recess came along to ruin it. Toby Tyler, meanest boy in school, thought it would be funny to steal my headband and run to the ball diamond with it.
“TOBY!” I pressed my palm to my super short bangs and chased him. “STOP!” Catching up to him, I jumped for my headband while he held it just out of reach.
“Oh my gosh, you freak. What happened to your hair?” Toby laughed and so did two of his buddies.
In the process of trying to get the headband, I revealed my spiky bangs. A putting green.
Tears filled my eyes, but there was no way I was letting a single one go, not in front of Toby.
“Give it back, Toby.”
I glanced behind me at Colten strutting his way toward us.
“She’s a freak, Colten. Your little girlfriend is a freak,” Toby taunted.
Colten grabbed Toby’s shirt and shoved him onto the ground.
“What the heck?” Toby had the audacity to look shocked, but Colten had two inches on him, and everyone knew it was no competition.
“Get out of here, and don’t touch her again.” Colten grabbed my headband.
Toby growled something before stomping away with his friends.
I turned my back to Colten and quickly blotted my eyes before facing him again. “Thanks,” I murmured, taking the headband and tipping my chin while trying to put it back on my head with the fake bangs pulled forward.
“What happened?” Colten asked.
“Toby took my headband because he’s a jerk.”
“No. I mean, what happened to your hair in front?”
“I cut it too short. And now I can’t fix it.” I ripped the headband back off my head and threw it on the ground.
Colten picked it up and shook the dirt from it.
“My mom took hair from back here and pulled it forward, so it looked like bangs, but …” Again, I got emotional and had to fight the tears.
Colten slipped the headband onto my head and pulled it forward while tucking hair from the back of my head toward my forehead under the band, just like my mom had done. “There. It’s fine. I’ll tell Toby to keep his mouth shut, or I’ll punch him in the face.”
“Don’t do that.” I glanced up at Colten, patting my head to check my hair.