A Spin of the Wheel

(Another adventure in randomness, this time using a “spin the wheel” app on my iPad. Let’s see what happens…)

Theresa

“Oh come on, it’ll be fun!”

At first, Theresa had been wary of the geeky looking fellow who’d been eyeing up her and her identical sisters from across the plaza as they moved from store to store, but her nerves had eased as soon as he approached them and introduced himself as a production assistant on the TV show “RandoMakeover.”

Usually they only approached pairs of friends or romantic couples, he had explained, but the idea of featuring triplets was one he couldn’t pass up, much like the idea of the accompanying payment, in addition to a visit to one of the town’s top salon’s, was one Theresa didn’t want to pass up, either.

“We’ve looked the same for a quarter of a century,” she said to Nikki and Danielle in exasperation. “Let’s do something unexpected!”

Nikki, scrunched her mouth to the side in thought. Reach up to pull the scrunchy that held her casual bun in place free, she let her long, dark brown locks tumble down to the bottom of her rib cage in front of her left shoulder and teased its ends with her fingertips. In magnificent condition and almost all one length save for some shoulder length layers, just like the others, her hair really was quite glorious, but Theresa could feel her sister coming to her side of the debate.

“No one would expect it, that’s or sure,” she said.

Unconvinced, Danielle’s brow furrowed. “You realize we’ll have no control over how short they go?”

“Neither will they,” Theresa countered. “The wheel they use always has more long styles than short. You probably won’t lose much length at all.”

Danielle reached back to protectively gather her high, bouncy ponytail. “Teddy loves my hair like it is, though.”

Theresa grabbed the production assistant’s iPad and signed the consent form. “He loves you, not your hair,” she said. She waited for Nikki to sign an identical form on the iPad, and then held it out toward Danielle. “Unless you don’t really believe that’s the case and wouldn’t want to put it to the test?”

Danielle snarled rather weakly, glancing unfriendly-like at the nearby camera man with her doe-like brown eyes.

“The money would be really nice,” Nikki quietly said. “I could use it.”

“Can’t just you two do it?” Danielle asked.

“All three, I’m afraid,” the production assistant said, though even Theresa wasn’t sure that was true. “All or none.”

“Please?” Nikki asked.

With a whimper, Danielle took the iPad and signed the form.

Danielle

It was weird, filming footage with Nikki and Theresa as they approached the salon and tried to improvise conversations about the upcoming cuts and styles, and then posing in random ways and at different spots in the plaza.

Mugging for a camera was nothing now for Danielle, especially given the Internet following Nikki had built up after being laid off and deciding to become a full-time content creator.

Gorgeous triplets, to no one’s surprise, were a draw. 

Still, this time it seemed odd, like trying to have fun at a possible wake. As soon as she and her sisters had entered the high-end salon, their hair was let down from their respective ponytails and casual updos and brushed out and fluffed and made to fall in a perfectly specific way around their faces and shoulders. The three of them posed and preened for a bit, just like the supermodels they once believed they could have been had they only not stopped growing at heights of five foot four, and then, just like that, the moment of truth arrived. They were led off to a row of ceramic sinks and asked to lean back.

Once their beautiful manes had been washed, a pleasant and relaxing experience despite the lingering sense of doom, they found themselves standing together as cameramen and stylists busily buzzed around. 

“Who’s first?” a different production assistant, this one a young woman with a purple crop and heavy-framed glasses, asked. 

Both Nikki and Theresa turned and pointed at Danielle. “The chicken,” they said.

“Jerks,” she muttered in return. Hopefully the production company would be able to edit in a wittier comeback before the episode aired.

Soon enough, she found herself shaking hands with a very handsome fellow named Ken, his own appearance and style so absolutely impeccable that she would have believed he’d been raised in a colony of stylists from birth, like young padawans being raised in Jedi temples.

He made polite small talk for a bit, but Danielle couldn’t really hear any of it considering how distracted she was by everything going on around her.

“Your hair is absolutely gorgeous,” he told her, his fingers slipping through her tresses’ thick length again and again. Once he realized he wasn’t going to get much more than a nervous smile in reply from her, he gathered the lush locks up atop her head, and asked her to hold them there as he whisked an expensive, white cape emblazoned with the salon’s name over her.

Purple-Haired Girl handed him an iPad, and he turned to Danielle to deliver the spiel anyone who’d ever seen the show would be familiar with. “You’re familiar with how this goes, right? You spin the digital wheel to decide what style you’ll get, but I have some leeway to make sure the end result suits you, correct?”

Danielle nodded, but after some silent prodding from the PA, vocally said, “Yes.”

Ken motioned to hand the tablet, but then pulled it back. “Do you want to know the result before we start, or do you want to be surprised?”

Danielle glanced at the camera, and realized knowing right away would probably just mean she’d start crying sooner. “Make it a surprise,” she said.

“Okay, in that case I’ll keep a hold of the tablet and you can just give the wheel a flick. Is there anything you’re hoping for?”

“Long hair,” Danielle said as she flicked the wheel and then clenched her eyes shut despite the tablet being pulled away. “I want to keep my long, pretty hair.”

Ken waited for a moment, showing the tablet to the production assistant and the cameraman until the digital wheel came to a stop. The purple-haired girl’s eyebrows rose, and Ken made a thoughtful sound, but neither said anything to Danielle

That did not, in any way, calm her nerves. So, as her breathing quickened and her pulse raced, she watched ken pick up his comb and scissors and move behind her. Her eyes darted from the stylist to his reflection in the mirror before her once he stood behind the chair in which she sat. Biting her bottom lip, she closed her eyes once his fingers began gathering her long, soft hair back behind her shoulders. Slowly, his comb moved through the length of her treasured mane, its teeth gently caressing her scalp as it swept from roots to tip, managing to almost — almost — slow her heart a beat or two in the process. But then the combing stopped, and her long, silky, shiny tresses were gathered upon of her shoulders. The comb ran through them again and again, and then Ken’s fingers as they were gathered up into another tight, thick, swingy ponytail level with the tops her petite ears. 

She had just dared to open her eyes again, the wish for keeping her long locks still racing back and forth through her mind, when she saw the stylist lift his shears to the base of her tight ponytail. Without easing his grip, she watched as his thumb and fingers came together and moved apart, each semi-obscured motion coupled with a soul-wrenching, bone-chilling crunching sound and subtle tug against her scalp. 

“Oh god!” She wailed, not even realizing she was saying it until the words had already left her mouth.

Before long, as panic began to lift her eyebrows skyward, wisps of horrifyingly short hair began to fall forward. Lighter than it had been since she was a little girl, the tresses swayed easily in the breeze of the salon, barely reaching past her chin as Ken’s blades continued to chew their way through the base of the last ponytail she’d have for a long, long time.

Theresa

She’d just been seated and caped when Theresa heard Danielle’s wail of “Oh god!” Somewhere distant in the salon. She cringed a bit, wondering if the worst possibilities had come true, but then her thoughts were redirected to her own situation when her stylist, A gorgeous brunette named Alicia with a poof of corkscrew curls gathered at her crown, presented the iPad to Theresa and gave the usual spiel. 

“I’m in,” Theresa replied, and gave the digital wheel the hardest spin she could manage with a fingertip. 

“Hoping for anything specific?” Alicia asked as the wheel spun.

Theresa shook her head. “Nope. I just want something different.” She watched as the wheel slowed, moving past “wavy hair,” “bowl cut,” and “heavy bangs” before finally stopping.

“Lob.”

Theresa smiled. “Perfect.”

“Okay, first things first,” Alicia said as she arranged Theresa’s wealth of perfect, shiny dark locks to fall in front of her shoulders. “We get rid of the bulk.”

Like magic, a set of long, slender shears appeared in the stylist’s hands. Soundlessly, they opened and slid around the long locks hiding Theresa’s right shoulder and falling past her breast. With a loud, slow, persistent SCHNICKT the blades closed just under her collarbone, and with the encouragement of Alicia’s comb, well over a foot of Theresa’s beautiful mane slid away, gathering in a thick, surprisingly heavy pile in her lap. 

Her breath held in her chest against a rapidly beating heart, Theresa’s eyes widened as she watched Alicia’s scissors open and close again and again, spilling more and more of the lush, soft brown locks into her lap as she sat there helpless. It was crazy to think this was happening, much less being filmed to be streamed at the world’s convenience.

When Alicia’s scissors fell silent and were pulled away, Theresa realized what remained of the long fall of hair wasn’t even as long as the shortest layers she’d had moments ago. And to think, there was still a lot of shaping left to do — or at least  he assumed so, considering the lack of care for tidiness Alicia had shown, and continued to show once she moved to Theresa’s left side, setting her hungry shears loose on the last of Theresa’s beautiful long locks, and doubling the pile of shorn tresses in her subject’s lap. 

Nikki

Danielle’s yelp of despair had done more to unnerve Nikki than any amount of camera people or scissor-happy stylists could dream possible. But still, she liked to think she had managed to keep her cool as she’s been introduced to Sarah, the pretty blonde stylist with a cute, short, banged bob. With the cape in place and her hair splayed dramatically across it, Nikki quietly listened to what would happen, affirmed her agreement, and then spun the wheel.

“Want to be surprised, or no?” Sarah asked as the digital wheel clicked and clacked over-dramatically.

“No, I need to know,” Nikki replied. She hated surprises. “I promise I won’t freak out like my sister.”

Sarah glanced behind a divider. “Actually, I think she chose to be surprised… but it’s kind of easy to tell what the result is gonna be.”

Nikki raised her eyebrows. Was there any possible manner in which that could been taken in a good way?

Then the wheel started to slow. 

Lob.

Pixie.

Disconnected pixie.

And finally… Choppy bob.

“Ooh! Cute!” Sarah squealed.

Choppy bob. Nikki looked at her reflection, at all of the glorious, envy inducing length that did such an amazing job of almost completely hiding her entire torso as she sat in the chair.

Choppy bob left a lot open to interpretation. It could be chopped anywhere between her shoulders to her…

“Bulk first, then we’ll get in there and really refine it,” Sarah said. She left no room for argument as she gathered Nikki’s wealth of silken locks back behind her shoulders. She ran her comb through its length briskly, and then, just as briskly, relied her silver shears and set them to the attack. In the mirror’s reflection, Nikki watched them start high above her right shoulder, closing slowly and releasing the lion’s share of her lovely length to tumble away and disappear behind her. What was left, all the had been spared, swung forward, its signature straightness yielding to a bit of wave thanks to the reduced weight. The ends, the brutally crisp ends, hung just about mid-neck, and were quickly joined by another shorn lock as Sarah’s scissors continued their crunching advance. Again and again they opened and closed, ruthlessly reducing the weight of Nikki’s beautiful hair as, beneath the fancy salon’s cape, her fingers played with the scrunchy she realized she’d no longer need. 

As nervous as she was, as odd as it felt to be filmed as her lovely hair was being ravaged, Nikki made herself watch her reflection as her beautiful mane was shorn away because, really, how often would she have the chance to see herself undergo such a transformation?

Besides when the show was broadcast, of course. It was simply unrealistic to think her hair would ever be notably long again, much less as long as it had been. She’d seen enough friends and contacts cut off their abundant locks to know how often hairstyles stayed short once they went short. And, if she wound up with another 9-to-5 job at any point, they’d probably want her to keep the shorter, more professional style.

Additionally, even as her locks remained somewhat butchered and unstyled as Sarah snipped away the last of the long locks Nikki had maintained since middle school, she had to admit that looking a bit older for once might be nice. 

Once the cutting stopped and Sarah stepped away to fiddle with some of her tools, Nikki seized the chance to shake her head from side to side, feeling, for the first time, her soft locks brush against her cheeks with tremendous ease. It was so strange to feel the crisp ends of her beloved mane teasing her neck and nape as the newly formed waves swung around, but she didn’t hate it.

“What do you think so far?” Sarah asked, meeting Nikki’s gaze in the mirror.

“I like it. But it’s so short!”

Sarah smiled, turning and lifting her texturizing razor. “Oh, we’re just getting started.”

Danielle

Danielle couldn’t take her eyes off of the massive, nearly two foot long ponytail that sat across her lap.

The ponytail that, until moments ago, had been attached to her head. But now, it was gone. It was all gone — every bit of the long, lush locks that her boyfriend caressed and tugged, every sexy, silky tress that she used to wear in elaborate updos and intricate braids.

It was all gone, stolen away from her by some algorithmic digital wheel, and, even as she sat there in a silent daze, Ken continued to steal away more and more of her beautiful length. Saturated with a spray bottle, the ragged, chin-length bob that had remained after the harsh chopping of her beloved ponytail offered next to no resistance toward Ken’s animated shears. His fingers moved rapidly through her devastated mane, herding thicks hanks of her lush locks between his digits before his blades moved in and sheared away almost everything that peeked through.

A constant rainfall of shorn locks, some almost a foot in length while others were only a few inches, gathered in her lap and around her shoulders. It was ceaseless, just a never-ending parade of despair and desolation being wreaked upon her head as she sat helplessly while it happened. Eventually, he gently tilted her chin upward, forcing her to take in the visage of herself in the mirror, a strange woman with a ragged, wild pixie cut that seemed to have no sense or design about it. Her ears, for the first time since she was born, were completely naked, their tips teased only by the longest bits of dark hair left to surround them. 

Her eyes, her beautiful, dark, doe-like eyes were more than safe from ever being obscured by her silky locks — hell, it’d probably be half of a year or more before her eyebrows, much less her eyes, were even threatened.

But still… It didn’t look bad. With her cheekbones and jawline and cute little chin, she didn’t look awful.

“What did I spin?” She finally asked as Ken reached for something behind her.

“You sure you want to know?”

“Well it’s not like there’s a lot of doubt now.”

The cameraman chuckled as he swung around to get different angles of the shorn locks gathering on the floor.

“Bold pixie,” Ken’s reflection told her with a smile. 

“It seems more choppy and messy than bold,” she replied. Perhaps it was just a matter of taste, or what you considered bold to be. But from some of what she’d seen on Instagram and Tumblr…

A gentle hand nudged her chin toward her chest, and she once again found herself staring at the long, beautiful ponytail in her lap.

“Oh, it’s gonna be bold,” he told her. And then she heard a set of clippers roar to life. “Trust me.”

Theresa

Despite feeling she had entered this adventure with a care-free attitude, Theresa was beginning to grow nervous as she watched more and more of her collarbone-length hair fall away in a light drizzle of clippings and shearing. 

Lifting lock after lock up above Theresa’s head, Alicia worked carefully and diligently to perfect the ends of her masterpiece, carefully creating and illusion of a one-length lob where, in fact, there were a horde of light, energetic layers that teased Theresa’s shoulders up front before angling upward ever so slightly toward the back. 

As her hair was carefully and meticulously blown dry and styled with a center parting, Alicia took a step back and examined her work. Glancing at the mirror to see whether she could discern what the stylist was thinking, Theresa couldn’t help but think that — drastic change in length aside — the style didn’t make her look all that different from when she walked in.

But then Alicia made a thoughtful sound, stepped forward, and began combing the carefully styled locks forward until there was a thick curtain hanging over Theresa’s eyes. Without saying a word, the stylist gathered those locks up, twisted them a few times, and then lifted her scissors level with the tip of Theresa’s nose.

All it took was a single snip, and, for the first time in her life, Theresa had bangs. Wispy and long, they teased her eyelashes with every blink as she looked at her reflection — until that once again disappeared behind another curtain of hair, which was gathered, twisted and shorn just like the first. And then there was a third, and then a forth. With panic rising, Theresa forced herself to stay still as the suddenly not-wispy curtain of bangs was trimmed away again and again. Soon, they no longer hid her eyes, and after another pass they no longer teased her eyelashes. Again, more clipping and crunching, more locks falling away, and then, when Alicia finally and thankfully smiled with satisfaction, Theresa’s elegantly arching eyebrows had been left completely unhindered by the thick, heavy, blunt curtain of bangs hiding her forehead. 

Alicia took a few moments with her comb to assure herself every single lock was perfectly in place, and then she traced the fingers of each hand down Theresa’s face-framing locks until they reached the abrupt end of Theresa’s new lob. 

“How have you gone this long without bangs?” The stylist asked as she stepped away.

Looking at her reflection, Theresa’s eyes pulsed wide … After the initial shock of watching so much of her hair fall away as the cape was pulled from her lap, she couldn’t deny that the new look — so easy to make swing and dance as she shook her head, and looking so sexy and mysterious yet somehow cute with the short, heavy bangs — was just an incredible upgrade. Her hair before had been spectacular and luscious and so beautiful, but, as she stood up and spun around and looked at herself over her shoulder, now she as a whole felt 100 times mores. 

She ran her fingers through its silken length again and again. 

“I can’t believe it’s so short! But it looks amazing!”

“So you’re happy you did it?” One of the nearby production assistants asked. 

Theresa turned to find a camera pointed toward her. With a smile and a thumbs up, she replied, “Absolutely!”

Alicia, peaking over at where the others were being attended, made a thoughtful face. “It looks like your sisters are going to be a bit longer. What would you say to some reddish highlights?”

Nikki

The rasping of the razor along Nikki’s incredibly healthy hair was torture against her ears, especially when every rasping pass left her with less and less of her glorious mane to play with. Watching her reflection as Sarah worked, carefully picking and choosing each lock to be shortened and shorn, Nikki found herself squirming beneath the cape, her feet fidgeting as her hands played with the scrunchy she still held. 

First, her waterfall of deep brown, waist-length tresses had been reduced to mid-neck length. Then in pursuit of a choppy, layered look that made use with the sudden emergence of mild waves that used to be straightened by the weight of her impressive mane, the mid-neck length bob had become a chin-length bob. And then, as discarded locks continued to pile up in Nikki’s lap, that became a jaw-length bob, and now, as Sarah chewed her bottom lip and dragged the razor along lock after lock after lock, Nikki could see her earlobes peeking from the bottom of the thick, choppy layers, and could feel the unobstructed cool air of the salon’s air conditioning against the nape of her neck.

“You’re just looking cuter and cuter the shorter we go,” Sarah told her, her fingers and razor now working upward from Nikki’s nape to her crown. Again and again, the stylist tossed excess locks to the side after carving them away. Then she moved to the front of the chair.

Nikki watched the stylist’s fingers as they almost moved in slow motion to collect the soft, silky locks resting against her left cheek. Predictably, the razor was lifted and the rasping sound teased Nikki once more. Three, four, five times it happened, and then with a quick ruffle of the newly bestowed bangs, Nikki was suddenly looking through a gossamer curtain of soft brown waves. 

“There we go.”

With relief, Nikki watched Sarah finally set the razor down for good. She slipped her hand out from under the cape while the stylist’s attention was elsewhere, and gaped when she felt just how short the back of her hair had been cut — it was boy short, if that! How Sarah had managed to cut her nape so short without clippers, Nikki couldn’t understand, but any semblance of length that had been there before was just gone.

Blinking, she looked back to her reflection, at the young woman with the super short — yet, rule-abiding choppy — bob that would ensure she needed to wear cute earrings ever damn day she went out. Wildly layered and slightly wavy, it was an incredibly beautiful, sexy style, but it was just so… so.. so short!

Sarah smiled when she turned back to her, brining some foils and a bowl of a light colored concoction she had mixed together. “Now to make that color just a bit more interesting.”

Danielle

Grabbing the arms of the stylist’s chair tightly, Danielle clenched her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as the rumbling, roaring clippers slid up the back of her head from nape to crown, pausing only to allow a brief moment for Ken the stylist to dump a small cloud of shorn velvet into her lap before he set the clippers at her nape again. Fighting back tears, she tried to reassure herself that the end result would be amazing, that the end result would be fantastic and that no one involved in the show would ever want to make one of the people on it look bad. 

But telling herself this, no matter how many times the words repeated themselves in her mind, did not change the fact that she was having her crowning glory clippered down to almost nothing, and she couldn’t stop it from happening. Pass after pass, Ken moved the clippers from her crown back to her nape, only to slide them upward again. He moved from the left side of her nape to her right, moving outward from the original path he’d carved right up the middle. Soon enough, he was bending each of her ears out of the way so he could steal away the last bit of length that had been teasing them, stopping just shy of robbing her of the little bit of length that formed her girl-burns. 

Once she thought he was done, though, he began again. After changing the guard on the clippers he started at the beginning, riding them up the curve of her nape before pulling them away a bit lower than before, and once again alternating side as she took the soft, brown velvet her glorious hair had been reduced to down even shorter.

Danielle had no idea how long this went on, though it certainly felt like forever, but eventually the calipering did end. Afterward, ken picked up his texturizing shears and began running them haphazardly through the depressingly short inch or so of hair she had left atop her head. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to his work; he just kept running his fingers through the defeated locks and would insert the toothy blades here and there before snipping them closed and then brushing away the bits of brunette hair that’d been shorn away. It did go a far way to breaking up her new haircut’s shape, Danielle had to admit that. Instead of looking like a dour schoolboy on his first day of a new grade, she began to see herself again, though a far punkier, sexier, and more daring version she never, ever expected herself to be.

Ken kept talking the whole time, but Danielle wasn’t able to focus on a single thing he said. And that would probably explain why she had no idea what he was doing when he began to coat her hair in a thick, smelly paste, or why he disappeared for several minutes before pleading her to a sink to have the concoction washed out, only to be replaced by another, which was also eventually washed out. 

For the first time in her life, Danielle’s hair could be towel-dried, which Ken did as she sat in his chair, now facing away from the mirror.

“Oh, this looks fantastic,” he told her. His smile wide and genuine.

The assurance did little to calm her nerves, but it was one of the few things so far that hadn’t outright terrified her, so that had to be worth something.

“Are you nervous?” He asked for the cameras.

She nodded. There was no use in denying it. “You could sat that, yes.”

He chuckled. “Okay, we’re almost done. Just a few last snips to get it perfect.”

Again, he began attacking her newly shorn and washed hair with his texturizing shears, but this time the tiny wisps that fell into Danielle’s lap were platinum blonde.

Theresa

Pacing back and forth in the salon lobby, Theresa couldn’t believe how much more nervous she was waiting for her sisters than when she was having her hair cut with no idea what the end result would be. 

Pausing in her steps, she turned to a mirror behind a shelf of hair products and fiddled with her bangs even though they were absolutely perfect. She ran her fingers ack through her freshly styled lob, with the ends of her soft, barely-shoulder-length hair teasing the base of her neck as she did. In the sunlight that streamed through the salon’s front windows, the warm red undertones Alicia had added sang out from within her natural dark brown base. 

Again, she lifted her fingers to her bangs. She’d had them for less than an hour, but already she was wondering, “How did I go so long without them?”

“Go so long without what?” Nikki asked.

Theresa turned to see her sister, camera crew in tow, and they both gasped at the same time. 

“Oh my god, it’s all gone!” They both yelled as they scampered toward one another.

Theresa wouldn’t stay still for Nikki to look at her lob; it suddenly felt like an even simpler change than she already thought it had been. 

Nikki’s new look, on the other hand — the tumbling wealth of dark locks she’d sported was almost unrecognizable, cropped into a short, choppy bob that couldn’t even hide her ears anymore. And the back! Her nape had been cropped boy short, and was the only swath of her soft tresses that wasn’t interspersed with lovely honey blonde highlights that lightened her mane almost to the edge of being golden brown. Barely-there bangs framed her eyes, forming cute little curls.

Theresa laughed when she noticed Nikki still wore her hair scrunchy around her left wrist. With a quick swipe, she stole it away and tucked it into her back pocket. “I don’t think you’re going to need that any time soon.”

“I know,” Nikki admitted. “At least a year or so, right?” And then her eyes widened and her face paled as she looked over Theresa’s shoulder.

Danielle

Never, not in a hundred million years, would Danielle have chosen this look for herself. Standing in front of Ken’s mirror, she couldn’t stop looking at her reflection. All that was left of her treasured, chocolate brown locks stood almost on end, a wild, crazy and disjointed dance party of platinum blonde tresses that were barely an inch long. Matching wisps remained just in front of each ear, but quickly blended into the brutally short velvety fuzz above each ear. It was maybe a quarter of an inch at her temples and barely longer at her crown, but then was practically down to nothing at her nape.

Every time she passed her fingers over her scalp — because she certainly wasn’t able to run them through it — shivers danced up and down her spine. Again and again she caressed her nape, biting at her bottom lip as she looked at the new style from all angles, looked at how naked it left her ears and how totally exposed her long, slender neck was… Already, she was imagining her boyfriend pinning her against to the wall, attacking and nibbling and biting every bit of her that had been hidden by her blanket of hair up until a few minutes ago.

Feeling her cheeks warm, she realized there was a camera man nearby, and she quickly fluffed whatever length of hair atop her head she could and cleared her throat. “I guess I should go see my sisters?”

By the time she entered the front lobby, Theresa and Nikki were already cooing and aching over each other’s new looks. When Nikki saw her approaching over Theresa’s shoulder, her dropped jaw and wide eyes were the only reaction Danielle needed. 

Laughing, she held her arms out and spun around, giving her sisters a 360 of her cropped, bleached hair. For the first time, even though they’d long been their own individuals, she realized they all had their own looks — especially herself!

“Okay, Danielle wins the biggest change, obviously,” Theresa commented.

“Yeah, how did you wind up with the most tame makeover?” She asked. “You’re the one who started this!” She laughed, and then hugged Theresa. “But seriously, those bangs are adorable.”

“And your hair is hot as fuck,” Theresa replied.

Danielle turned to Nikki, reaching up to flip the short, bobbed waves that suddenly surrounded her carbon copy’s features, even as Nikki and Theresa both began to caress and rub the velvety fuzz adorning her own head. “And this bob has all the razz, sis.”

Hours later, even after all of the after-interviews were filmed and another round of mugging for the cameras had been taken care of, and after the three sisters had gone out to finally get something to eat when it all was said and done, even then Danielle was still rubbing the back of her clippered head, unable to believe what she had been talked into, what she had allowed the stylist and TV show do to her beautiful hair.

Walking toward Teddy’s apartment to finally show her boyfriend what had been done to his favorite feature of hers, her heart was still racing as she seriously considered whether she would ever have the long, lush mane she woke up with again. Would she have the time and patience to grow it out? With a grown-up, full time job, it was one thing to just maintain the long, thick hair she’d had all of her life. But to grow it out again? To keep up with maintenance cuts as it goes through every awkward stage possible, and then putting in all of the effort to take care of it because, unlike when it was waist length, having to chop off six inches of damaged locks wouldn’t go unnoticed anymore — it’d set her back a whole year or more.

With her heart in her throat, she knocked on Teddy’s door before turning the knob and opening it. She had to steel herself against the idea that he might react poorly if he had the same realization she just did — that the brunette Rapunzel he fell in love with might be, without any warning, gone for good.

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Sorry for the length — sometimes I can’t help myself. I hope you enjoyed this one, and, if you did, please let me know what you liked about it, or what you might have liked to see done differently. That’s always a good source of ideas for future stories.

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