ShreyF
Comic version now available on my patreon
Claire loved style. Unfortunately, so did her daughter.
The difference was that Claire believed style meant cream-colored tops, tailored beige trousers, gold hoop earrings and dark-red hair maintained with the discipline of a museum collection. Her hair fell in broad, glossy waves almost to her waist. She wore it loose one day, in a thick braid the next, then in a high ponytail that still reached the middle of her back.
Mara’s definition involved black graphic shirts, silver-studded belts, checkerboard wrist warmers, heavy eyeliner and waist-length black hair hanging around a pair of oversized glasses.
One morning, Claire looked Mara up and down over the rim of her coffee cup.
“Don’t,” Mara said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You raised an eyebrow.”
“I was only wondering if all of that is necessary for lunch.”
Mara examined herself in the microwave door. “Yep.”
“The eyeliner, the belts, the checker things—”
“Wrist warmers.”
“And you’ve worn black every day this week.”
Mara glanced at her clothes. “Good. My streak continues.”
Claire tried again the next evening. Her red hair was arranged in a loose side braid, thick enough to cover most of one shoulder.
“Could you maybe tone the look down tonight?”
Mara slowly pointed at herself. “The look?”
“You’re twenty. Eventually the goth phase has to end.”
“You started calling it a phase four years ago. At what point does it qualify as a subscription?”
Claire removed the elastic from her braid and worked her fingers through the rippling length. “You know what I mean. You’re such a pretty girl underneath all of this.”
Mara’s sarcastic expression vanished. “Underneath?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Mom, I didn’t trip and accidentally become goth. I look like this because I like looking like this. That’s the part you keep missing.”
“I’m trying to help.”
Mara watched Claire smooth a hand protectively over her red hair. A dangerous little light appeared in her eyes.
“Okay,” Mara said. “Cut your hair.”
Claire froze. “Excuse me?”
Mara held a hand at shoulder level. “Here?”
“No.”
She raised it to Claire’s jaw. “Here?”
Claire gathered her hair over one shoulder as though rescuing it. “Absolutely not.”
“Pixie?”
“Mara!”
“There.” Mara pointed triumphantly. “That face. That’s exactly what I mean.”
She lifted the ends of Claire’s hair. Even that small gesture made Claire take them back.
“You’ve spent twenty years taking care of this,” Mara said. “You decided it’s part of you. You’d hate somebody choosing what your hair should look like, so stop choosing what I should look like.”
For once, Claire had no immediate answer.
The disagreement continued that night. Claire sat at her vanity in pajamas with her hair twisted into an enormous low bun.
“Someday you’ll understand why I worry,” she said.
“No. You’d have to actually be me to understand.” Mara turned toward the door. “I wish you had to be me for one day.”
Claire pulled the pins from her bun, releasing the red waves down her back. “And I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.”
Lightning flashed outside.
“KRAK-KOOM!”
Both women jumped. Static lifted the ends of Mara’s black hair.
“Well,” Mara said, staring at the window. “That wasn’t ominous.”
The next morning, Mara woke with hair in her mouth.
She pushed herself upright and found a heavy red mass covering the pillow, her shoulders and most of her lap. She pulled one lock forward. It continued past her chest, past her waist and nearly to the mattress.
“Oh no.”
She stumbled to the vanity. Claire’s face stared back from the mirror. Mara grabbed both cheeks and stretched them.
“Why am I forty?”
In the other bedroom, Claire opened her eyes and noticed black-painted fingernails. She touched the unfamiliar hand, then pulled a long section of black hair over her shoulder.
“No.”
The mirror confirmed Mara’s face, Mara’s glasses and the smudged remains of Mara’s eyeliner.
“I’m twenty,” Claire whispered. A tiny smile appeared before the rest of the situation reached her. “I’m Mara!”
They burst into the hallway simultaneously and almost collided.
“You!” they shouted.
“This is extremely weird,” Mara said, looking down at Claire’s body.
“Don’t phrase it like that.”
The first crisis was hair.
Mara attempted to brush Claire’s vast red waves and trapped the brush halfway down. She tugged, twisted and finally yelped, “Ow! How do you do this every morning?”
She bent to pick up an elastic, and the entire length poured over her shoulders and covered her face. Later, she closed a drawer on several ends and nearly pulled herself backward when she tried to walk away.
“This isn’t hair care,” Mara said, staring at Claire’s shelf of shampoos, conditioners, oils, masks, serums and brushes. “This is a logistics department.”
Claire had her own problems. She tried removing Mara’s eyeliner with a damp tissue and succeeded only in smearing it across one cheek. Mara appeared behind her with a bottle of makeup remover, Claire’s red hair tied into a sloppy high ponytail.
“Need help?”
Claire glared.
“It says ‘waterproof,’ Mom. You tried water.”
They established rules at the kitchen table: no tattoos, no piercings, no embarrassing posts, no dating and, underlined twice, no haircuts.
“You leave mine alone,” Mara said, pointing at her own black hair.
“You leave mine alone,” Claire replied, indicating the enormous red ponytail hanging from Mara’s borrowed head.
“Deal.”
For a few hours, the arrangement almost worked. Mara put Claire’s hair into a low ponytail and attempted to answer a work video call.
“How are the quarterly numbers looking?” a coworker asked.
Mara sat unnaturally straight. “Very…”
The silence lengthened.
“…quarterly.”
Claire went shopping in Mara’s body. People stared at the black clothes, graphic shirt and heavy makeup. Her first reaction was irritation, followed by discomfort and finally a reluctant understanding.
“So people really do stare,” she thought.
Then a woman in a cheerful blue floral dress walked past. Claire looked from the dress to Mara’s black clothing.
“Maybe Mara just needs to see another possibility.”
Meanwhile, Mara found an old photograph of Claire holding her as a toddler. Claire had already possessed the same extraordinary dark-red hair, almost as long and thick as it was now. Mara touched the braid over her borrowed shoulder.
“She’s really had this forever.”
That should have been the moment both women learned their lesson.
Instead, Claire found a salon.
“Just makeup,” she told herself outside the door. Then she touched Mara’s long black ends. “And maybe clean up the ends.”
The stylist seated her beneath a cape and brushed the black hair perfectly straight. It formed a shining curtain behind the chair.
“What are we changing?” the stylist asked.
“I want something lighter. Friendlier.”
“Layers?”
Claire hesitated.
The stylist lifted the hair to shoulder length. Claire still looked uncertain, so she showed her a photograph of a compact French bob.
“Or we actually change it.”
The stylist placed a comb beside Mara’s jaw. Almost three feet of black hair remained below it.
“The finished line would sit here.”
Claire stared at the proposed length. “That’s…a lot.”
She remembered Mara underlining NO HAIRCUTS.
“Technically…” she thought, before correcting herself. “No. There is no technically.”
The stylist waited.
Claire swallowed. “Do it.”
The stylist divided the hair horizontally at the nape and clipped the upper layers out of the way. The lowest section was combed flat against the cape. Claire watched the scissors align just below the jaw.
The first closure produced a sharp metallic snip. The stylist opened the blades, moved sideways and cut again. Snip by deliberate snip, a dark line appeared across the nape. The severed section remained supported for a moment, then slipped free as a single heavy length.
Claire’s mouth formed a small circle. “Oh.”
The cut continued across the back. Hair that had reached Mara’s waist now landed in glossy black coils around the chair. The stylist released a thick section on the left and combed it across Claire’s shoulder. She positioned the blades at jaw level.
Claire squeezed one eye shut.
The scissors closed. The long section slid down the cape and dropped into her lap before tumbling to the floor. One side now curved against Mara’s cheek while the other remained long.
“I look like two different people.”
“Give me thirty seconds.”
The stylist cut the opposite side. More hair fell, exposing the neck and leaving a compact shape around the face. Claire looked at the growing pile and offered herself the weakest possible justification.
“Hair grows.”
The stylist refined the nape into a precise line, slightly shorter at the back and curving toward the chin. She separated a triangular section over the forehead and held the fringe between two fingers.
“Not too short in front,” Claire said.
“You chose a bob.”
Claire gave her an offended pout as the scissors shortened the fringe to eyebrow level. Small black clippings fluttered onto her eyelashes and cape.
The stylist dried the hair with a round brush. Warm air lifted the short sections before curling them inward beneath each ear. The long curtain was gone. In its place was a rounded French bob that framed Mara’s face and exposed most of her neck.
Claire touched one curved end. “Oh.”
“Good ‘oh’?”
“Very good ‘oh.’”
She removed Mara’s glasses, cleaned away the dark eyeliner and applied softer makeup. One eye was bare while the other remained heavily lined, producing a comically mismatched reflection.
“I haven’t seen her face like this in years,” Claire murmured.
Afterward, she bought the blue floral dress. In the changing-room mirror, the puff sleeves, tiny bow and softly moving skirt completed the transformation.
“There,” Claire said, smiling at Mara’s reflection. “She’ll understand.”
At home, Mara checked the time, sent three unanswered messages and opened the shared calendar.
SALON — 11:30.
Her face went blank.
“She wouldn’t.”
One eye narrowed.
“She absolutely would.”
Mara ran, pulling Claire’s braid apart as she went. The immense red hair streamed behind her and caught on everything. She eventually had to gather it in both arms.
“Why does she have so much hair?”
She burst into the salon. “Black hair! Glasses! Goth!”
The receptionist blinked. “Hello to you too.”
“Was she here?”
“The girl who wanted to ungoth?”
Mara’s eye twitched.
A stylist was sweeping the final black remnants into a pile. Mara stared at them, then slowly examined Claire’s reflection in a tall mirror. Waist-length red hair filled it.
Her anger became a very small, very dangerous smile.
“Do you take walk-ins?”
“Sorry. We’re booked solid.”
Mara deflated, but only until she stepped outside and noticed the traditional barbershop across the road. Through the window, a barber was finishing a man’s close fade.
“Oh.”
The barbershop fell silent when Mara entered in Claire’s elegant cream-and-beige outfit, surrounded by an ocean of red hair. One customer lowered his newspaper.
“Can I help you?” the barber asked.
“I need a haircut.”
Once she was caped, the barber left the red hair outside the fabric so it remained visible. He held the ends at shoulder level.
“About here?”
“Shorter.”
He indicated the chin. “A bob?”
“Shorter.”
He cautiously suggested a pixie length.
Mara shook her head. “No.”
The barber relaxed.
“Shorter.”
Mara pointed at a customer with faded sides. “Something like that. Buzz the sides and back, taper them close, and leave a short spiky top styled forward.”
“That will remove almost everything.”
“That’s the point.”
Before cutting, the barber combed Claire’s hair straight down her back. Without its waves, it looked even longer. He gathered it into a low ponytail so thick that one elastic could barely contain it, then secured several more down the length.
Mara’s grin faltered as the barber lifted the ponytail horizontally. It had real weight. The bound red length stretched from the nape almost to his elbow.
“That is more hair than I expected,” Mara admitted.
He opened heavy scissors above the top elastic. The blades closed partway and stopped.
CHNK.
He opened them and bit deeper.
CHNK. CHNK.
Mara’s eyebrow climbed. “That sounds alarmingly structural.”
“You had a lot of hair.”
The scissors ground through the final dense section. Resistance suddenly vanished, and the enormous ponytail came away in the barber’s hand. Claire’s remaining hair sprang upward into a rough, uneven bob around her jaw.
Mara stared at the severed length.
The barber handed it to her. She needed both hands to hold it.
“Mom is going to murder me.”
A waiting customer raised his newspaper. “I’m not getting involved.”
Mara shook the rough bob around her face. “I could stop here.”
Then she pictured her own carefully finished French bob.
“Nope.”
The barber switched on the clippers.
The electric buzz filled the shop. Mara’s smile froze.
He placed the guarded blade at the bottom of her right sideburn, underneath several inches of red hair. The first upward pass pushed into the dense section and removed a broad strip from temple to above the ear. Red pieces folded over the clipper teeth, slid down the cape and collected in her lap.
Where the hair had been, only short red stubble remained. The pale skin beneath was faintly visible.
Mara touched the exposed ear. “Whoa.”
“Still committed?”
Her mischievous grin returned. “Very.”
The clippers travelled upward again and again. Each pass cleared another path, leaving the right side almost skin-close at the bottom and gradually darker toward the top. The barber folded Mara’s ear down and guided the machine carefully around its edge. Longer strands fell past her cheek and landed among the severed pieces.
Halfway through, the right side and part of the back were closely tapered while the left side still covered her ear. The top flopped heavily across her forehead.
“This might be the worst hairstyle I’ve ever seen,” Mara said.
“Give it five minutes,” the customer advised.
The barber moved to the left. The clippers entered beneath the remaining hair, and a thick red section peeled away from the scalp. Mara scrunched her nose as the vibration travelled through her head.
At the back, the barber began at the neckline and pushed upward. Claire’s neck emerged inch by inch as the heavy hair disappeared. Smaller clippers cleaned the lower nape and traced a crisp line around each ear.
Mara rubbed the freshly clipped surface. Her shoulders jumped.
“That feels weird.”
“Cold?”
“Extremely.”
Only the top remained long. The barber lifted it vertically between his fingers, leaving little more than an inch above them. Mara watched the scissors approach.
Snip-snip-snip-snip.
Large red pieces showered over her forehead and nose. She crossed her eyes at one clipping stuck to the tip.
“I regret one thing.”
“The haircut?”
“This specific hair.”
The barber tightened the fade with a shorter guard, moving carefully around the temples and nape until the lower edges were almost bare. He blended the stubble gradually into the slightly longer hair above, then used a narrow trimmer to clean the curves around Claire’s ears.
Finally, he rubbed a small amount of product between his palms and worked it through the short top. The dark-red strands were pushed forward and slightly upward into neat defined spikes.
“There.”
Mara kept her eyes closed. “How bad?”
“Depends who owns the hair.”
She opened one eye.
Claire arrived home first, wearing the blue dress, French bob and hopeful smile. She practised an explanation in the hallway mirror.
“She’ll be mad,” Claire whispered. “Then she’ll see how cute it is.”
The front door opened.
“Mara, before you—”
Mara stood in the doorway with Claire’s sides and nape faded almost to the skin and the remaining red top spiked forward. In one hand, she casually held the enormous severed ponytail.
Claire’s face emptied of all expression before collapsing into cartoon horror.
“What did you do?”
Mara rubbed the velvety side of Claire’s head. “I ungoth’d your hair.”
Their argument lasted well into the night. Claire accused Mara of destroying twenty years of growth. Mara pointed at her own missing black lengths and reminded Claire who had broken the agreement first.
Eventually, anger gave way to apologies. Neither apology restored a single strand.
The following morning, Claire woke in her own body. Her hand automatically reached behind her head, expecting a heavy river of hair across the pillow.
Her fingers met a short, tapered nape.
Her eyes opened very slowly.
“No.”
In the other room, Mara sat up and touched a rounded black bob. She looked into the mirror.
“Oh.”
They met in the hallway. Claire wore the red fade. Mara wore the French bob.
“We’re back,” Claire said.
“Yep.”
Claire touched her nearly bare side. Mara curled one short black end around her finger.
“The hair isn’t.”
“Nope.”
Several weeks later, Claire kept the fade freshly maintained. With her gold hoops, fitted cream top and short red spikes brushed confidently forward, the style looked unmistakably hers.
Mara wore the blue floral dress on occasion, although the shopping bag in her hand contained enough black accessories to prevent anyone from declaring Claire victorious.
As they walked, Mara glanced sideways at the closely tapered hair above Claire’s ear. A mischievous smile appeared.
“You know…”
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
Claire pointed at her. “I know that face.”
Mara laughed.
Neither woman learned to agree about style. They learned something considerably more useful.
Ask first.
