Cousin. Part 1

She changed everything about herself to step out of someone else’s shadow. But some shadows follow you wherever you go.

We had been compared to Cara our whole lives. Being cousins the same age, we really did look alike. We probably could have been friends, but after a lifetime of “Cara this,” “Cara that,” I never much wanted to. We saw each other occasionally at big family gatherings, said hello, and otherwise kept our distance.

My unformed teenage psyche in particular took the brunt of it from Grandma.

“Did you see Cara at the dance competition? A real star!”

“Gran, but when I had a costume like that, you said I’d end up in a strip club!”

“Well, you don’t dance like her.”

Behind her back I called Grandma the Crow, for her endless “Cara-Cara-Cara.” Mom always played along, joining in the game.

Cara got praised for taking something up, and then praised again for quitting it, for having had the sense to stop wasting her time on nonsense. That I’d already been talked into wasting my own time on the exact same nonsense — nobody cared about that.

It wasn’t always this way, either. Sometimes I’d get into something first, and then it would turn out Cara had taken it up too, and the comparisons were unavoidable. That made it even worse. Sports, painting, theater, photography, modeling — all of it got divided up with Cara, whether either of us wanted it or not.

That August was especially hot. The air was so thick and humid it felt like syrup. The fan just churned it around like a mixer, without bringing a drop of relief. Grandma was staying with us and had gathered everyone for a family dinner, where, along with the casserole, I was served the next blow.

“Did you see how Cara cut her hair! It suits her so well, and so practical in this heat!”

The casserole caught in my throat. Just a week ago, she and Mom had been insisting that my long hair was an ornament I could never, under any circumstances, part with — heat or no heat.

I ran to my room in tears. I’d been turning the idea of a haircut over in my head for a while now, and now I’d have to do it right after Cara. Or not do it, because of her.

I tried watching a movie, then reading a book, but that damned Cara sat lodged in my head regardless. In the end I decided I’d go to the salon — but before that, under no circumstances could I look at Cara’s profile, so I wouldn’t see her new haircut first.

Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look…

“Would you like a haircut?”

“Yes, I’d like to take off some length. It’s so hot right now…”

“Say no more, I know exactly what you need!”

They draped the cape over me, misted my hair with water from a spray bottle. The first snip of the scissors took off length almost to shoulder height. Cara would never go through with that. I smiled to myself, pleased.

The work picked up speed. The stylist moved around the chair quickly and confidently — taking the next section, checking its length against what she’d already cut, tugging it down gently with the comb to check the line as the hair fell naturally, then snipping again. Every so often she’d come around to face me, tilt her head to one side, checking whether the length sat evenly along my cheekbones, and lightly trim thin pieces near my face, holding them steady between her index and middle fingers. Every pass of the scissors sent a little shiver down my skin — not a scary one, more like a pleasant, ticklish static.

Half an hour later I was looking at my new haircut. A long bob at shoulder length, the ends curling slightly inward — she ran a curling iron through them at the end so the shape would sit neatly. Against the length I’d had before, my head felt noticeably lighter, as if I’d shed something heavy I’d been carrying for years without even noticing, and only now felt the relief of its absence.

I kept touching my hair all day. Any chance I got, I’d give my head a little shake, feeling how unfamiliarly light it was, how it scattered and settled back on my shoulders without the old weight. I felt proud of myself, convinced myself it was cooler now with this cut.

It all came crashing down at home.

“Cara’s still got the better version, though.”

A chill ran down my spine — the crow’s caw itself wasn’t the scary part, it was what I might find if I looked. Cara’s profile, a new haircut… Yes. It was exactly the same. If anything, because of her slight natural wave, hers looked even fuller. It really did suit her better. In the photo she was smiling with a particular smugness, as if she’d done it just now, out of spite — though the photo had been taken a week earlier, and I wasn’t even following her.

I went to the bathroom, stuck my head under the tap, and wrapped it in a towel. This could not be tolerated. Tomorrow I needed to become unlike Cara. Which meant spending money on a stylist again.

I slept badly. Maybe it was the heat, but I kept waking up in a sweat. In one of the dreams I kept running from my own shadow, and it kept catching up and biting at my heels.

“You didn’t like the haircut? But it really suits you, and it’s only been a day,” the stylist’s face showed genuine surprise.

“I’m sorry. I like it too. But my boyfriend convinced me I could go shorter” — I lied, not even sure why.

“He’s right, shorter would suit you too, but I wouldn’t go along with what he wants.”

“Let’s try it — this length isn’t saving me from the heat much anyway.”

“How much shorter did you want?”

“As short as possible” — I gestured with my hands to somewhere just below my ears.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

In truth I wasn’t sure at all, and I was terrified. My hair had always been long, and I couldn’t picture what would be left on my head once the stylist turned my careless gesture into reality.

She sat me up straight, combed my hair into a center part, and divided it into sections, clipped up — the crown, two side panels, the back. She started with the bottom layer at the nape: took a thin horizontal strand, pulled it straight down with the comb at a right angle to my head, and cut it in one confident stroke along the line she’d marked with her fingers. Then, section by section, unclipping one panel at a time, checking each new length against the last, holding the hair between her index and middle fingers close to the roots so the cut would come out as clean as possible.

Once the main length was gone and a considerable pile of hair lay on the floor around the chair, she set the scissors aside and picked up clippers with a fine guard. The awful buzzing got even more frightening as she brought it up to the back of my neck — first just tracing the hairline to even out the contour, then going over it again slightly higher, thinning the bulk right against the skin. A bead of cold sweat ran down my forehead. The only comfort was: Cara would never do this.

What I ended up with was something like a bob just below the ear, with a clean, almost graphic edge, and a noticeably shorter, clippered nape — it really did feel fresher now, the air moving freely across my neck where a heavy curtain of hair used to hang.

“Isn’t that a bit too short, don’t you think?” Mom asked at dinner, looking at me like I’d done something indecent.

“It suits him,” I said, without specifying who.

Mom froze for a second, fork halfway to her mouth, clearly trying to work out who I meant, but I’d already turned back to my plate, and the question went unasked.

Grandma said nothing that evening, just pressed her lips into a disapproving line. I was triumphant — this was exactly what I’d needed.

Riding the high, I posted a photo of the new cut online and started checking Cara’s profile. Every day, several times a day. I was terrified she’d copy my look, steal it. After a week I calmed down. After two, the thunder rolled again.

“Cara got herself that crow’s nest too — you must be a bad influence on her, though it does suit her, somehow.”

I grabbed my phone at once and pulled up Cara’s profile. She really had gotten the same cut! Out of spite I left a sarcastic comment: “Welcome to the club.” Before long, people were noting in the replies how alike we looked, that it suited me too, and so on. Cara stayed silent.

After that, a kind of standoff started between us. I’d post a photo with my hair tucked behind my ear — she’d copy it. She’d style hers a certain way — now the ball was in my court. A separate genre unto itself were the derogatory terms for our haircuts, straight out of Grandma’s vocabulary. “Crow’s nest,” “mop,” and so on. It surprised me that Cara knew these just as well as I did — it even crossed my mind that she must have called the Crow herself specifically to ask about them.

Two weeks later it became clear I’d lost this particular battle. The likes, the comments — everything was against me. I needed to cut it off and move on. I no longer had the money to go to the salon every two weeks, though. So I started looking for modeling gigs at hairdressing masterclasses, and quickly found one that fit. They were even going to pay me a little.

I showed up at the appointed time. The stylist was an elegant woman with an extravagant haircut of her own. She wore a portable headset mic, through which she addressed a small audience. A camera on a tripod recorded the masterclass. I didn’t ask what they’d be doing to my hair, but I was ready to sign off on anything under the heading “not like Cara.” I took a few “before” photos and reels.

They sat me down in the chair. Someone said the words “extreme pixie,” and the work began.

The stylist spoke loudly, in a slightly sing-song cadence, addressing now me, now the camera on the tripod, now the dozen or so people behind me whom I could only see reflected in the mirror — notebooks on their laps, someone filming on their phone as well.

“Today we’re going to break down the technique for a textured pixie on straight, thick hair,” she said, running her fingers through my hair, lifting it at the roots, weighing its thickness like appraising goods for sale. “See here, nice dense structure — that’s going to give us good volume at the crown with short sides.”

The audience murmured approval. I sat there feeling like a person and a visual aid at the same time — some kind of classroom mannequin, except this mannequin’s heart was pounding.

She got to work without much preamble — lifted the hair at the crown with the comb, gauging how much length was left after the last cut, and in one motion trimmed the top layer down almost to the root, ending up with just a handful of short clippings in her palm, which she held up to the camera anyway, like a trophy.

“There we go — quick and decisive, no long build-up. That sets the tone for the whole cut.”

Something inside me flinched along with that motion. I looked in the mirror at what was left — short, uneven stubble where, a minute ago, there had been a bob — and for a second I desperately wanted to stop the whole thing. But it was too late, and besides, I’d already earned my masterclass fee with that first snip.

What followed was slower, more painstaking work. She switched on the clippers and started on the sides — one, then the other — stopping now and then to show the audience the angle of the clippers, the guard length, how to stretch the skin taut with your free hand for a clean line. The hair at my temples was so short that I didn’t so much see as feel the cold metal gliding right against my skin.

“Now we move to the nape — the key here is a gradual taper, so there’s no harsh line.”

The back of my neck took the longest. I could hear the buzz of the clippers directly inside my skull, as if the sound were coming from within rather than from outside, and goosebumps ran the length of my spine. I gripped the armrests, trying not to move, though there was no need to — she held my head firmly, turning it left, then right, with a single flick of her wrist, as if I were a doll on a joint rather than a person.

Once she’d finished with the nape, she went back to the crown — the one part that was meant to stay relatively long. She lifted sections straight up with the comb and trimmed the ends with texturizing shears, quick, short snips, leaving a choppy, deliberately messy texture.

“It’s important not to cut everything to one uniform length here, or the style won’t read as alive.”

I didn’t retain half of what she was explaining to the audience — my head was buzzing for reasons that had nothing to do with the clippers. It felt like something else was being clipped away along with my hair — some layer that used to shield me from other people’s eyes — and that after this cut, there would be absolutely nowhere left to hide.

Toward the end she took a bit of matte paste, worked it between her palms, and started styling — pulling sections up and out to give a windswept, chaotic look, stepping back after each pass to check the result, then coming back in to adjust another millimeter.

“There,” she finally said, turning the chair to face me.

I didn’t recognize myself right away. My features seemed to have been laid bare — cheekbones that used to disappear under the length of my hair were suddenly visible, my neck looked longer, more exposed. I felt queasy and strangely thrilled at the same time, at how foreign and how much my own that reflection was, both at once.

“How do you like it?” the stylist asked, quieter now, without the performance for the audience.

“It’s a lot to get used to,” I said honestly.

“Getting used to something doesn’t mean it’s bad,” she smiled and turned to the next model, who was already being seated in the chair beside mine.

I took a few “after” photos with shaking hands — my hands only started trembling now that it was all over. In the taxi’s rearview mirror on the way home, I kept sneaking glances at myself, as if checking that this new head wouldn’t vanish if I looked away and back again.

At home, Mom threw up her hands the moment I walked in the door.

“Good Lord, what did you do to yourself.”

Grandma came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel, and froze in the doorway, studying me for so long the silence became something physical. I braced myself for the usual caw, prepared for it the way you brace for a shot — but she said nothing at all. She just shook her head and went back into the kitchen, as if she couldn’t find the words for this one, not even from her extensive repertoire.

The second part of the story is already available for free on Patreon and will be published here next week.