Kevin
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By noon, half the campus had seen Valeria Cruz.
By one, Valeria had decided the other half must have been absent.
She crossed the university quad with a backpack hanging from one shoulder and knee-length chestnut waves flowing behind her. Her hair moved in a broad, glossy curtain, separating around her legs and sweeping back together with every step. Students looked up from their phones. Conversations paused. Someone near the fountain nudged a friend.
“Val, you’re doing the runway walk again,” called a friend behind her.
Valeria glanced over one shoulder without slowing. “If people are going to stare, I may as well give them something worth staring at.”
Her confidence had not appeared overnight. Neither had her hair.
Every morning began with the same ritual. Valeria stood before the dormitory mirror in a satin robe while her roommate watched her work through an arrangement of brushes, combs, oils, serums and silk ties. Valeria separated her hair carefully, beginning with the ends before moving upward. When loose, it covered the back of her chair and spilled across the bed.
“You own more hair products than I own textbooks,” her roommate said.
“That sounds like a you problem.”
The routine changed depending on Valeria’s mood. Some days she gathered everything into a huge high ponytail that dropped to the backs of her thighs. On others, she wore a thick side braid whose end disappeared below café tables. She knew which styles photographed best from the front, which needed a rear angle and which caused strangers to stop walking.
Once, while studying, a classmate asked if she had ever considered cutting it.
Valeria’s hand travelled slowly down the braid over her shoulder.
“Not once,” she said. “If I ever change my life, I’ll start somewhere less beautiful.”
She was equally certain about people. Valeria knew the athletes, theater students, student officers and art majors. More importantly, she knew where everyone belonged in relation to her.
That included Raven and the women from the Alternative Arts Club.
Raven had skin so pale it made her long black hair look even darker. Heavy bangs rested over smoky eyes, and black lipstick sharpened every expression. Her friends Nyx and Mara were equally distinctive. Nyx wore her black hair in an angular bob interrupted by a violet streak. Mara decorated her long locs with small silver beads.
Valeria regarded their table at the campus café with open amusement.
“You going to the Alternative Arts thing tonight?” her friend asked.
“The goth event?” Valeria said. “I value joy.”
Across the room, Raven looked up.
“They definitely heard that,” the friend whispered.
“They’re goth. Hearing unpleasant things is their brand.”
Raven’s expression did not change, but Valeria saw it. She simply did not care.
The Alternative Arts event occupied a courtyard between two campus buildings. Raven, Nyx and Mara spent the afternoon arranging handmade posters, altered clothes and painted backdrops. Hanging beside their table was Raven’s favorite piece: a matte-black leather jacket covered with silver embroidered vines. She had cut, stitched and decorated every panel herself.
Valeria arrived with two friends and stopped in front of it.
“Oh,” she said. “Now that is cute.”
Raven looked up immediately. “Don’t.”
Valeria had already lifted it from the rack.
“I’m just looking.”
“With your hands,” Nyx said. “Amazing.”
Valeria ignored her and slipped her arms into the sleeves. The black leather settled over her white blouse, its silver embroidery framing the enormous mass of chestnut hair pouring over it.
One of Valeria’s friends raised her phone. “Okay, annoyingly, that does look good.”
“I improve most things.”
She flipped all her hair over one shoulder and posed.
“Take it off,” Raven said.
“In a second.”
The phone camera clicked. Valeria examined the photograph, smirked and began typing.
Raven stepped closer. “Take the post down and give me my jacket.”
“Relax. I was giving it exposure.”
“That isn’t yours to expose.”
Valeria glanced at the screen one final time. Her caption read: Borrowed this from the campus crypt and somehow made it fashion.
Then she turned and walked away wearing the jacket.
Nyx stared after her. “She’s not kidding. She’s actually leaving.”
“Valeria,” Raven called.
Valeria continued walking. Her long hair swayed over the embroidered back of the jacket.
“Come get it, then.”
She expected an argument. Perhaps Raven would shout or complain to an event organizer.
Instead, Valeria heard three sets of boots moving quickly behind her.
She looked back. Raven, Nyx and Mara were following.
“Oh,” Valeria whispered. “They’re serious.”
She gathered as much hair as she could against her chest and broke into a run.
“You people are unbelievably dramatic!”
“You stole her jacket!” Mara shouted.
Valeria’s hair immediately began escaping her arms. The loose waves streamed behind her, spreading wider with every stride. Running with knee-length hair was nothing like walking with it. It swung around her knees, caught against her elbows and dragged through the air several feet behind her.
She cut across the quad toward the humanities building and passed too close to a hedge.
Several lengths snapped tight.
“SNAG!”
Valeria stopped so abruptly that her shoes scraped the pavement. Chestnut strands stretched between her back and the branches.
“No, no—”
She grabbed the caught hair with both hands and tried to unwind it. Behind her, the boots were getting closer.
“Come on. Come on!”
A thin branch held fast. Valeria pulled harder.
“RIP!”
She stumbled forward. Several torn strands remained trembling among the leaves.
Her hair was still overwhelmingly long, but the lower waves were no longer perfect. They tangled together where the hedge had dragged through them.
Valeria stared at the strands on the branch.
They are dead, she thought. All of them are dead.
She ran into the humanities building and shoved through a heavy door. Her body cleared it. Most of her hair did too.
The trailing ends did not.
“SLAM!”
Valeria felt the sudden pull behind her and cried out. “Are you kidding me?!”
She forced the door open again and found the lowest foot of her hair trapped in the seam. The ends were compressed, frayed and twisted. She yanked them free.
“Stop running and this gets easier,” Raven called from the corridor.
Valeria clutched the damaged ends. “For who?!”
She escaped through another exit, but outside, the walkways were crowded. A student turned at precisely the wrong moment and planted one sneaker on the end of her hair.
“Whoa—sorry!” he said.
“Don’t move!”
Valeria lunged forward before he could lift his foot.
“RRIP!”
A larger section tore away from the lowest lengths. Pain flashed across Valeria’s face, followed by pure horror. She stared at the chestnut strands trapped under the student’s shoe.
Then she pulled the scrunchie from her wrist and gathered everything into a messy low ponytail.
Contain it, she told herself. Just contain it.
The three goth women appeared at the other end of the walkway.
Valeria ran again.
She reached a narrow opening beside a maintenance gate and turned sideways to squeeze through. Her emergency ponytail swung behind her.
The thick lower section wrapped around the metal latch.
“CATCH!”
“There,” Mara said.
Valeria looked back and saw them approaching. Panic overruled caution. She seized the ponytail above the snag and threw herself forward.
“RIIIP!”
A thick bundle remained twisted around the latch.
Valeria staggered free and reached behind herself. One side still fell in tangled lengths toward her knees. The other had been torn into shredded sections ending around her waist and mid-back.
That was the moment she stopped feeling chased.
That was the moment she started feeling ruined.
Raven, Nyx and Mara cornered her in a quiet courtyard.
“Jacket,” Raven said.
Valeria was breathing too hard to argue. “Take it.”
She tore the jacket from her shoulders and thrust it at Raven.
“There. Happy?”
“No,” Nyx said, “but this helps.”
Mara lifted one of the ruined sections of Valeria’s hair and examined the frayed ends.
“This is wrecked.”
“Don’t touch it.”
Raven folded the jacket over one arm. Her eyes moved from its embroidered collar to Valeria’s mangled hair.
“You put your hands on something I made,” Raven said. “Now look at something you spent years on.”
Nyx reached into the club-supplies tote and produced a pair of silver scissors.
She opened them.
“SNICK.”
Valeria went completely still. “Don’t be insane.”
Nyx’s violet lips curved slightly. “Too late.”
She separated a thick damaged front section from the rest. Valeria watched the scissors approach it.
“Raven.”
“You should have stopped at the jacket.”
The blades closed at upper-chest level.
“SNIP.”
The long lock slid over Valeria’s shoulder. For one impossible second, she watched it remain whole even though it was no longer attached. Then it dropped to the concrete.
“You cut it.”
The words barely left her mouth.
They actually cut it.
Nyx took another section from the already damaged side and raised the scissors closer to Valeria’s chin.
“This side’s beyond saving.”
“Nothing is wrong with that side!”
“SNIP.”
Valeria turned her head and felt the shortened hair swing against her jaw. On one side, hacked strands stopped between her chin and shoulder. On the other, tangled lengths still descended almost to her knees.
The loss was frightening.
The unevenness was worse.
She touched the short side with trembling fingers. “Oh my God.”
Raven moved behind her. She lifted the tangled back section and began cutting through it in rough horizontal bites.
“Hold still.”
“I’m not helping you do this!”
“SNIP—SNIP.”
Heavy locks landed behind Valeria’s shoes. The pile spread quickly: coils, waves and straightened sections crossing one another on the concrete.
Years of careful brushing collected around her feet in handfuls.
Only one unmistakably long side remained. Mara brought it forward across Valeria’s chest. The surviving length looked even more extravagant now that the opposite side and back had been removed.
“This is the part she’s trying not to look at,” Mara said.
Valeria grabbed for it. “Don’t touch that side.”
Nyx positioned the blades around the thick section at shoulder level.
“Stop.”
“SNIP.”
The severed weight shifted in Mara’s hands, but shorter lengths still hung below Valeria’s shoulder.
Nyx raised the scissors again.
“Stop—stop—”
“SNIP.”
The last great length fell.
Valeria’s entire silhouette changed.
Raven trimmed the pieces hanging around her face. “You wanted attention.”
“Not like this.”
Nyx cut along the jawline, leaving the ends choppy and uneven. Mara clipped longer strips from the nape until nothing remained below the jaw.
It was not a salon line.
It was a survival line.
When they stepped back, Valeria’s chestnut hair formed a ragged chin-length bob. One side hung slightly lower than the other. The ends were hacked, rough and imperfect. Around her shoes lay nearly everything that had once reached her knees.
Mara lowered the scissors. “There.”
“Now it matches the condition it was in,” Nyx said.
Valeria stared at them through wet, furious eyes. “You ruined me.”
Raven adjusted the embroidered jacket over her arm and turned away.
“No,” she said. “You did the first part yourself.”
That night, Valeria stood before her dormitory mirror.
The ritual still waited for her.
Her brush lay beside the oils, silk ties and serum bottles she had arranged that morning. She lifted it and drew it through the short bob once.
The bristles exited the choppy ends almost immediately.
Her roommate blinked. “That was… fast.”
Valeria placed the brush down. She touched the uneven tips resting against her jaw and remembered how her hair had once filled the chair, crossed the bed and demanded half an hour of careful attention.
“I used to need half an hour,” she whispered.
Now she needed only a few seconds.
And proof that there had once been more.
