Kevin
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Chapter 7: The Alliance
The girls’ restroom was completely silent, save for the rhythmic, unsteady sound of Jade running a hand over her freshly shorn head. The harsh fluorescent lights gleamed off her pink scalp.
Tanya stood before the mirror, her trembling fingers touching the ruined edges of her bixie cut. The length was completely asymmetrical, ending bluntly just above her left ear and jaggedly at her right jawline. It looked like a child had attacked her with craft shears.
Their eyes met in the reflection—two casualties of Mia Thorne’s kingdom.
“She planned it,” Jade rasped, her voice thick with unshed tears. “The power outage wasn’t an accident.”
“I know,” Tanya whispered. Her eyes, usually soft and forgiving, were narrowing, turning the color of forged steel. She reached forward and aggressively swept her choppy fringe out of her face. “She wanted us humiliated. She wanted to be the only one left standing.”
“What do we do?” Jade asked, finally looking away from the mirror. “She’s untouchable.”
Tanya turned to face her. “No one is untouchable. She built her whole identity on that hair. It’s her power, her scepter.” Tanya’s voice dropped into a dangerous, calculated register. “We’re going to take it away. Every last strand. And we’re going to make her beg for it to happen.”
The plan was not born of hot, blinding rage, but of cold, meticulous calculation. They needed intelligence. They needed a conspirator. They needed the stylist.
They tracked down the man who had wielded the scissors on stage. His name was Lucien, a nervous, ambitious junior stylist from a local salon trying to build his portfolio. When Tanya and Jade cornered him in the parking lot behind the campus, his fake smile evaporated.
“Look, girls, it was a charity gig,” Lucien stammered, backing away from Tanya’s icy glare.
Tanya stepped closer, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt back to reveal the butchered bixie. “This isn’t charity, Lucien. This is a hatchet job. You intentionally botched my cut on Mia’s orders.”
Jade stepped up beside her, rubbing a hand against the grain of zero-guard stubble. “And my buzzcut? Did Mia tell you to push the clippers that aggressively against the grain? My scalp is bruised.”
“She… she paid me,” confessed Lucien, crumbling instantly under the pressure. “She gave me a hundred bucks extra per girl to ‘make it look awful.’ And fifty more to ensure her name was crossed off the list before the power was cut. Please, don’t tell the salon owner. I’ll lose my apprenticeship.”
Tanya smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, we won’t tell anyone, Lucien. But you work for us now.”
To finalize their pact, Tanya and Jade took a seat in the backroom of Lucien’s salon that very afternoon. “Fix this,” Tanya ordered.
Lucien worked carefully. He took the jagged remains of Tanya’s brown hair and sculpted it into a fierce, heavily textured mullet, short and spiky on top, tapering into longer pieces down her neck. He bleached it to a harsh, blinding platinum blonde. When he was finished, Tanya looked less like a victim and more like a punk-rock assassin.
Jade opted to keep her buzzcut but had Lucien clean it up into an immaculate, professional skin fade, a sharp edge that made her look like she was ready for war.
“Perfect,” Tanya said, studying her platinum mullet. “Now, for step two. Let’s get our hands on some livestock.”
Chapter 8: The Contagion
The beauty of the plan lay in its slow, invisible execution. Mia Thorne was vain, but she was also incredibly hygienic. A sudden infestation would look too suspicious. It had to build.
Tanya sourced the lice from a less-than-reputable pet shop connection in a neighboring town—a small, sealed vial of the tiny, insidious creatures.
The first deposit occurred during a study period in the library. Mia was holding court, her golden hair draped elegantly over the back of her chair. Tanya, walking casually past with an armful of books, “tripped” slightly. As she steadied herself against the back of Mia’s chair, she deposited exactly three of the tiny insects directly into the dense golden waves near Mia’s neck.
Mia didn’t notice a thing.
Two days later, Jade struck. During gym class, while Mia was complaining about the smell of the dodgeballs, Jade bumped past her in the locker room, brushing a sweater carrying five more of the pests against Mia’s loose hair.
By day four, the incubation period was over.
It started subtly. A slight twitch of Mia’s shoulder. A hand reaching up to delicately scratch the crown of her head during AP History. Mia, ever conscious of her image, tried to make the scratching look like a thoughtful gesture, tucking hair behind her ear, fluffing the roots.
But by day six, the itch was undeniable. Tanya and Jade watched from two tables away in the cafeteria as Mia fiercely dug her manicured fingernails into her scalp, her eyes wide with mounting panic. She excused herself abruptly, rushing toward the restroom.
“It’s time for phase three,” Tanya whispered to Jade.
Jade nodded, slipping out of the cafeteria and pulling on a replica of the sweater Maya, Mia’s chief lieutenant, always wore. She waited near the pickup lane after school, knowing Mrs. Thorne was picking Mia up early for a dentist appointment.
As Mrs. Thorne—a woman whose hair was as styled and rigid as her daughter’s—stepped out of her luxury SUV, Jade ‘accidentally’ collided with her, dropping a textbook.
“Oh, Mrs. Thorne! I am so sorry!” Jade exclaimed, mimicking Maya’s breathy cadence perfectly.
“Watch where you’re going, dear,” Mrs. Thorne sniffed, dusting off her coat.
Jade leaned in close, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Mrs. Thorne, I just had to tell you… you might want to get Mia checked. There’s a massive lice outbreak in the junior class, and… well, people are saying Mia is Patient Zero. She’s been scratching uncontrollably all day.”
Mrs. Thorne’s perfectly contoured face drained of color. “Lice? On my Mia? That’s impossible. She uses imported French shampoo!”
“I’m just passing it on,” Jade said, scurrying away before Mrs. Thorne could look too closely at her skin-faded head.
That evening, Mia’s house became a war zone. When Mia finally confessed to the itching, Mrs. Thorne shrieked. She immediately banished Mia to the downstairs bathroom, refusing to let those “foul beasts” contaminate the upstairs carpets.
“You will go to Lucien tomorrow,” her mother demanded through the closed door. “I will not have a daughter of mine spreading vermin! Have him do whatever intense chemical treatment is required.”
When Mia slunk into Lucien’s chair the next afternoon, she looked thoroughly defeated. Her golden hair was lank and greasy from a panic-induced application of olive oil.
“Just fix it, Lucien,” Mia ordered, though her voice lacked its usual venom. “Kill them all.”
Lucien, remembering Tanya’s cold eyes, nodded dutifully. He took Mia to the shampoo bowl. He washed her hair meticulously. He massaged her scalp. But the bottle he used wasn’t a potent, pediculicide treatment. It was a standard, high-end clarifying shampoo. He made sure to wash away the adult lice he could see, but he left the tiny, stubborn nits glued firmly to the hair shafts near the scalp.
“All clean, Mia,” Lucien lied smoothly, blowing out her golden hair until it shone once more. “You’re good as new.”
Mia flipped her hair triumphantly. “I knew it was just a false alarm.”
Chapter 9: The Diagnosis
The peace lasted exactly three days. The eggs hatched.
This time, the infestation was explosive. Mia was in the locker room showers after a particularly grueling P.E. session. The hot water agitated the newborn lice. Unable to control herself, Mia began tearing at her scalp with both hands, sobbing in frustration as her nails drew red welts along her neck.
A sophomore girl walked in, took one look at Mia frantically clawing at her own head, and ran straight to the school nurse.
Within an hour, Mia was sitting in the nurse’s office, a paper cape draped around her shoulders. The nurse, a stern woman with no patience for high school drama, parted Mia’s damp, golden hair with a wooden stick.
“Oh my,” the nurse said, adjusting her glasses. “Miss Thorne, this is not a mild case. This is a severe, entrenched infestation. I can see hundreds of nits. And the scratching… your scalp is highly inflamed.”
The nurse drafted a letter immediately and handed it to a humiliated Mia. “You are suspended from campus until you are entirely clear. And frankly, given the density of your hair and the condition of your scalp… traditional chemical treatments might cause chemical burns at this point.”
When Mrs. Thorne read the letter, she nearly fainted. The shame was unbearable. She drove Mia straight to the salon, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“I don’t care what it takes,” Mrs. Thorne hissed as she dragged Mia through the salon doors. “Fix this immediately.”
Lucien was waiting. And so were Tanya and Jade.
Chapter 10: The Shearing of the Queen
They were sitting in the waiting area, casually flipping through magazines. Tanya’s platinum mullet stood out starkly against the black leather chair. Jade’s skin fade caught the overhead lights.
“Tanya? Jade?” Mia gasped, instinctively backing up. “What are you doing here?”
“Just a trim,” Tanya said, offering a shark-like smile. “Though it looks like you’re here for something a bit more… extensive.”
Mrs. Thorne glared at Lucien. “The nurse said her scalp is too inflamed for chemicals. How do we get these things out of her hair?”
Lucien swallowed hard. He looked at Mia’s waist-length, golden pride and joy. Then he looked at Tanya, who gave him a slow, deliberate nod.
“Mrs. Thorne,” Lucien began, adopting a professional, grave tone. “Given the severity of the infestation, the density of the hair, and the open abrasions on her scalp from scratching… combing them out is impossible. The only sanitary, safe option left…”
He trailed off, letting the silence hang heavily in the air.
“What?” Mia shrieked, clutching her hair. “Say it!”
“The only option is a complete removal,” Lucien finished. “We have to shave it.”
Mia screamed. It was a high, piercing sound of absolute terror. “No! No, no, no! Mom, tell him no!”
Mrs. Thorne looked at the letter from the nurse, then at her daughter’s raw, red scalp. She sighed, the sound of a woman prioritizing her social standing over her daughter’s vanity. “Do it,” she commanded. “If she goes back to school looking like a disease vector, we’ll be ruined. Shave her bald.”
Mia tried to bolt, but Mrs. Thorne grabbed her by the wrist and shoved her toward the barber’s chair. “Sit down and take your medicine, Mia. This is what happens when you don’t use the French shampoo properly.”
Defeated, sobbing hysterically, Mia sank into the leather chair. Lucien draped a heavy black cape over her, snapping it tightly around her neck to trap the golden hair beneath it.
“Actually, Lucien,” Tanya said, standing up and tossing her magazine aside. “Since Jade and I gave so generously to Mia’s charity drive, we’d love to help out with this… medical procedure.”
Mia’s eyes went wide with sheer panic as Tanya stepped up to the chair and picked up a heavy pair of electric clippers.
“You can’t do this!” Mia sobbed.
“Solidarity, remember?” Tanya whispered, her voice a chilling echo of Mia’s own words from the stage.
Tanya turned the clippers on. The heavy, metallic buzz filled the salon. She didn’t bother with a guard. She stepped behind the chair, grabbed a massive handful of Mia’s spun-gold hair at the crown, and drove the clippers straight up the back of Mia’s neck.
Mia choked on a sob as the heavy, waist-length golden swath fell away, sliding off the cape and hitting the floor with a dead thud. The cold steel of the clipper blades bit into Mia’s inflamed scalp, leaving a stark, pale strip of bare skin amidst the gold.
Tanya moved methodically, pushing the clippers over the curve of Mia’s skull. Strip by strip, the golden crown fell. It was a brutal, efficient dismantling. She sheared away the right side, the clippers slicing through the density with ease, exposing Mia’s ear and the pale skin above it.
“Your turn,” Tanya said, handing the buzzing machine to Jade.
Jade stepped up, her eyes hard. She grabbed the long hair remaining on the left side and ran the clippers aggressively right above Mia’s ear, watching the blonde strands pile up on the floor. She moved to the top, shearing away the long bangs that Mia used to flick so arrogantly.
In less than three minutes, the waist-length golden banner was gone. All that remained was a fuzzy, uneven, quarter-inch shadow of blonde stubble covering Mia’s head. Mia stared at her reflection, tears streaming down her face, her chest heaving with silent sobs. She looked small. She looked entirely ordinary.
She went to stand up, desperate to escape the mirror.
“Hold on, Miss Thorne,” Lucien said, placing a firm hand on her shoulder and pushing her back down into the chair. “We need to add the finishing touches. The nurse was very specific about the nits.”
Lucien turned to a small heated machine on his counter. He produced a brush and began to slather a thick, hot layer of white shaving cream over the blonde fuzz on Mia’s head.
Mia squeezed her eyes shut, trembling violently as the warm lather covered her scalp.
Lucien picked up a straight razor. He honed it quickly on a leather strop, the shhh-shhh sound cutting through Mia’s quiet crying.
He stepped to the side of the chair, pulled the skin on Mia’s temple taut, and laid the blade flat against her skin. With a smooth, scraping motion, he pulled the razor downward. The blade wiped away the white lather and the remaining blonde fuzz, leaving behind nothing but shiny, smooth, bare skin.
He worked his way around her head, the straight razor scraping cleanly, removing every last trace of her golden crown. He shaved the top, the sides, and finally the nape of her neck. When he was finished, he wiped her head with a hot, damp towel.
Mia Thorne was completely, perfectly bald. Her scalp shone under the harsh salon lights.
Tanya walked around to the front of the chair, her platinum mullet framing her sharp, satisfied smile. She leaned down until she was eye level with the weeping, bald girl.
“It’s a sacrifice, Mia,” Tanya whispered, patting her lightly on her smooth, bare head. “But think of the joy it brings.”
Tanya and Jade turned and walked out of the salon, leaving the dethroned queen to stare at her reflection, completely shattered, surrounded by a mountain of useless gold.
