Cousin. Part 2

This story is a direct continuation of Part 1.

Now came the important part. I reposted the masterclass video, put up a photo of my new look, and recorded a reel. Then I waited for Cara’s reaction. A dismissive emoji, a sarcastic comment, some Grandma-style line about a “plucked chicken” — any of that would have counted as a win. But there was no reaction at all. I waited a few hours and finally, unable to help myself, went to check Cara’s page…

What I saw left me stunned, my jaw refusing to close. Staring back at me from the photo was Cara, with a short pixie and shaved sides.

I rubbed my eyes, but the mirage didn’t dissolve. Her pixie was even shorter than mine, less textured, dyed a cool platinum blonde — but it was a pixie. She’d done a photoshoot, apparently trying different looks and cuts along the way, and had landed on the pixie in the end. And all of it had happened at the very same time I was being cut. What kind of cunning, what criminal precision would it take to orchestrate something like that. Cara was a criminal mastermind, a Moriarty who’d been saddled with a bumbling Lestrade instead of a Sherlock. I was crushed.

There was no question of any barbed comments online. No new photos, no posts. Cara kept quiet too — celebrating her victory, presumably. Mom and Grandma steered clear of the topic of my hair altogether, only occasionally sighing as they glanced at my head. And, for the first time in ages, neither of them brought up Cara at all.

Two weeks of that, and I knew I couldn’t take it anymore. My head carried the evidence of defeat, and I couldn’t stand to look at it. One day I was walking down the street, weighed down by this feeling, when hot August gave way to an equally sweltering September. A long evening shadow snapped at my heels. I looked up and saw an old-fashioned barbershop with a spinning pole out front. On a sudden impulse I stepped inside — no other customers. A young barber, far too fashionable for a place like this, looked bored, and seemed faintly startled to see me.

“Miss looking for a cut?”

“Yes. I’d like to get rid of this haircut.”

“Shave it all off?”

Taking it all off, being left bald… The idea terrified me — and instantly became inevitable. Starting from a blank page, pushing off from defeat and starting over. Yes. That was exactly what I needed.

“Shave it all off,” I repeated, as if testing the phrase’s weight before saying it out loud for good.

He nodded without further questions, as though requests like this were nothing unusual for him, and gestured to the leather chair by the window. I sat down, gripping the armrests — just like I had a few weeks earlier at the masterclass, except now there was no camera, no audience, only the ticking of an old wall clock and a thin draft from the door left slightly ajar.

He draped the cape over me, fastened it around my neck a touch tighter than necessary, and clicked on the clippers, no guard attached. The sound was lower and rougher than anything at the salon — not a buzz so much as a deep, guttural rumble that set my teeth on edge. He started with my bangs, running the clippers from forehead to crown in one unsentimental stroke. The strand that had been falling into my eyes that very morning landed on my lap in a second, and I barely had time to register anything besides a small tug at the roots.

Then he moved in wide, parallel passes — forehead to nape — steadying my head with his free hand at the crown, tilting it forward or to the side whenever he needed to reach a temple or behind an ear. The hair no longer fell in strands but in short clumps, settling on the cape, on the floor, tickling my neck where it slipped under my collar. I watched in the mirror opposite as my head seemed to lay itself bare, section by section — the crown first, then the temples, then the nape — and with every pass of the clippers, the face in the reflection looked less and less familiar, more and more nakedly itself.

He stopped, shook out the clippers, and ran his palm over my head, checking the length of the stubble by feel.

“Razor now, if you haven’t changed your mind.”

“I haven’t,” I said, though my voice betrayed me on the second word.

He tipped the chair back, nearly reclining, and covered my head with a hot, damp towel — the heat spread across my scalp, strangely pleasant after the cold of the clippers. A minute later he lifted the towel and started whipping up lather in a small bowl with a brush — a soft, almost domestic sound that had nothing in common with what was about to happen. He applied the lather in broad strokes, starting at the nape — it was warm, and smelled faintly of wood and menthol, a scent that made my nose sting for no reason I could name.

The razor turned out to be an old-fashioned straight one, with a wooden handle — he unfolded the blade in a slow, practiced motion, and just the sight of it glinting in the mirror took my breath away. The first stroke of the blade went from the nape upward, in short, confident sweeps, and I heard — didn’t feel as pain, but heard — a quiet scraping sound of metal against skin, like sandpaper being drawn across wood right next to my ear. He’d stop every two or three strokes to wipe the blade on the towel over his shoulder, then reapply lather wherever the skin was already bare.

I sat perfectly still, afraid to breathe too deeply, feeling the chill deepen with every stroke of the blade — not from fear, but because skin that had never once felt open air was now exposed to the cool draft from the half-open door. A strange feeling rose in my throat — not quite dread, not quite exhilaration — and I couldn’t tell which way it was leaning until I noticed tears welling up in my eyes, even though there was no pain at all.

When the blade passed over the last patch, at my hairline, he stepped back, studied my head with a critical eye, ran his palm over it once more — perfectly smooth now, without a single trace of stubble — and nodded, as if approving of his own work.

“Done.”

He wiped my scalp with a cool, damp towel, then with something that stung faintly of menthol, which made my scalp tingle even more, but pleasantly now, refreshingly. When he finally turned the chair to face the mirror, I saw myself — entirely new, frighteningly exposed, a smooth skull catching the light of the streetlamp outside. Not a trace of the hair I’d clung to so desperately all summer. Just the bare truth, polished to a shine.

I ran my palm over my own head — the skin was smooth and warm, strangely unfamiliar to the touch, as if it belonged to some mannequin I was now studying in place of myself.

For a few seconds the barbershop was silent — only the wall clock ticking, the old air conditioner humming in the corner. I sat there looking at myself, not trying to feel anything in advance, not comparing this face to anyone else’s, just letting myself be alone with this reflection for a moment, before the world found something else to say.

“You know, it’s the strangest thing,” he said, folding the razor and putting it away in its case. “This morning, before you, there was another girl in here. Uncannily like you. When you walked in, I thought I was having déjà vu. Or that it was some kind of prank. She spent a while convincing me she needed to go bald, have her whole head polished. I wasn’t keen at first, but she talked me into it. Said she couldn’t stand the comparisons to her cousin anymore — the one who kept copying everything she did.”

“What was her name?”

“Something with a K. Klara…”

“Cara.”

“That’s it. Cara.”

“Did she have a pixie too? Dyed blonde?”

“You know her?”

“You have no idea.”

I walked out of the barbershop, running my hand over my smooth, bare head. So Cara had been suffering through the same comparisons with me, listening to the same jabs from the Crow, running from me the same way I’d been running from her.

I took out my phone and texted my cousin: “Hey. We need to talk.”

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