The Kappa Lambda Sorority — Part 1

This is going to be a series of loosely connected (at best) short stories (relatively speaking) where I use random number generators to find out what styles the girls wind up with and whether they like it. So, my apologies in advance if some of them just wind up with a trim.

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Pacing back and forth in her room, Mia tried to shake the jitters out of her hands and calm her breathing. She’d been looking forward to pledging Kappa Lambda since she first met a few of the sisters in her Biology class last year, and the last few weeks of pledging had been a blast so far.

There was just one more test. A promise she’d made them, in a way. And a promise they made to her.

It seemed like a frivolous thing, having her Big Sister and two other girls choose a new hairstyle for her to get, but, as the Chapter President had explained, it was a matter of learning to trust one another. The sisters weren’t going to pick a bad style for anyone — that was why mini-committees chose the new looks for each girl — but the pledge couldn’t know what picture resided in the flat brown envelopes they were given when they accepted the challenge. 

What better way to show the sorority you were ready to join them, to believe in them, than to put your teenage vanity in their hands?

Mia looked at the envelope on her dresser, watching as it sat in silent mockery of the tension twisting her stomach. It’d be easy enough to tear it open and to take a look, of course. But then she’d no she failed in the one big request they’d asked of her. The only way to successfully fill the promise at that point, since the only person allowed to open the envelope was the person who’d be cutting her hair, would be to do it herself — and that was absolutely not an option she wanted to pursue.

Stepping toward her dresser and looking at the large mirror atop it, she ran her fingers through the long, medium brown hair that framed her face. Parted perfectly in the middle, it almost reached the middle of her back in huge, lazy waves, with just the barest hint of layers that had once been face-framing but were now long enough to tease her breasts. It was the longest she’d ever worn her hair, and she’d entered college last year with the intent of growing it at least to her waist, but… the sorority might have other plans for her.

Her phone beeped, jarring her out of her self-centered panic.

Did you go yet? Her big sister texted.

Mia sighed. The pledges had been given a couple of weeks for this assignment, but Mia had decided it might be best to get it over with as soon as possible. 

Not yet, she texted back. Building up the guts.

She set her phone down and started combing her hair again, still so soft and silken after washing it that morning. She may not have had the prettiest hair in the pledge class, or the most, but she was very fond of it nonetheless. She loved the way it complemented her light blue eyes and pretty features, and how it would tumble around either side of her glasses frames to give her a tousled bookworm look. She put the look to use to get more than a couple of dates in the library last year.

Do you want company for support?

Mia smiled. That was sweet, but… No, I don’t want you to see me cry just yet. 😉 Heading out now. I’ll let you know when it’s done.

With one more quick glance in the mirror, she straightened the collar of her white blouse, tugged her black sweater down and smoother the pleats of her plaid skirt. Her lovely hair went up into a loose, casual bun — maybe for the last time, for all she knew —  and then she grabbed her keys and headed out.

********

With her regular stylist 500 miles away back home, a quick bit of research led Mia to a walk-in salon with a remarkable reputation and great reviews. But of course she stalled a bit anyway, stopping off at a small cafe across the street for some coffee. The coffee turned out to be a good buy, though, because there was a bit of a wait at Walk-Ins Only as a good number of the local co-eds looked for, as the reviews said, “super cheap, super awesome cut.”

Once she wrote her name in the book of arrivals, she sat in nervous silence, legs crossed, and drank her coffee while watching the two stylists at work. The guy, a middle-aged sort-of hipster looked nice enough, with dark purple hair and a well-kept beard. He would spend his time chatting up whoever was in his chair, while his partner seemed to be more of the quiet type. Alabaster skinned with her hair cut in a black cherry shag, she certainly had a sense of style that she nailed, though that sense seemed to be the exact opposite of Mia’s. It was as if Jenna Ortega and Wynona Ryder had been added together and averaged out, in both age and looks.

Naturally, after two more frat boys had their hair refreshed and one high school girl lopped off her ponytail in favor of an edgy bob, Mia was called over by Jenna/Wynona.

Mia smiled nervously as she followed the woman to her chair, taking a deep breath before silently holding out the envelope she held as if it were a ticket of some sort.

The stylist glanced down at it, then back to Mia and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, uhm. This is what I want done. Someone else picked it out, though, so I don’t know what it is.”

Oh crap, what if the stylist refused to do it?

“It’s kind of a dare,” Mia clarified. “A trust exercise.”

A bit of a smile almost broke across the woman’s face as she took the envelope. “Kappa Lambda?” She asked in a tired, monotone voice. She almost made the words sound like a purr ever though neither of them had an ‘R’ in it.

“Yeah, how’d you…”

“You’re not the first.” She patted the back of the chair as she turned away, starting to tear the envelope open. “ I’m Diana. Hop in the seat.”

Mia sat down, or, more accurately, hopped up onto the seat. She had just recently started to feel like an actual grownup, but the fact that her feet dangled a few inches above the floor as she sat down went a long way to making her feel like a kid again. 

Holding the photo in her teeth, the stylist turned back to Mia and tugged the band holding her hair up free. The soft brown locks tumbled down, eliciting an impressed sound from the stoic stylist. She took the photo from her mouth, folded it and stuck it in her pants pocket, and then fluffed Mia’s wealth of dark waves, pumping up their volume before gathering it all back behind her ears and shoulders. 

“You have gorgeous hair. Are you really ready to change it up?”

No, actually. She wasn’t. But she nodded anyway, because she had to believe her sisters wouldn’t do her dirty. “I am. Time for a new start in a new sisterhood.”

Diana couldn’t hide her eye roll; in fact, Mia was surprised the light grey irises didn’t roll right across the floor. It elicited an excited giggle from her, tinged by the nerves that were making it hard to sit still.

“Alright then. Glasses off.”

Mia pulled her glasses off, coating the world in a bit of a blur as Diana set them on the counter under the mirror. Then the world went dark and a black cape landed across her lap. The ends were tugged behind her neck, with Diana’s deft fingers swiftly moving Mia’s heavy hair out of the way so everything could be properly pinned in place. 

“Do you want to know what the end result is going to be before we start? I won’t rat you out.”

Mia shook her head. “No. I’ve made it this far. I can wait it out.”

“Okay, but if you start crying, I’m going to be kind of annoyed.”

“Yes, ma’am. I won’t cry. At least not until I get home.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Diana replied. She started running a comb through Mia’s locks, starting with slow, swift strokes toward the end and slowly working her way up high, where the strokes slowed down and ran from crown to tip.

Mia found it entrancing, and almost felt a nap calling out to her before the strokes became quick again, part of a well-practiced routine to gather Mia’s generous mane up on top of her head in multiple sections, all neatly clipped out of the way in perfect silence as Diana worked.

When the majority was secured and Mia could feel the salon’s cool air brushing against her naked ear and mostly naked neck, Diana’s gentle touch guided her head to tilt downward just a bit. Then her comb ran through the blanket of locks that remained free at Mia’s nape, and Mia heard the distinct sound of shears being opened and closed. 

“Last chance,” Diana said.

Mia bit down on the inside of her lip and closed her eyes before shaking her head. “Go for it.”

A gentle pressure pressed against Mia’s back, just above her shoulder blades as if being given a warning by Diana. And then the first crunches sounded, long and slow as the stylist’s hungry shears started cutting Mia’s precious locks. 

She was losing a lot, Mia realized, but not all of it — at least not right away. Her nerves eased a little bit as Diana’s comb began to slide through her hair again, lifting it up and away from the back of the chair before the soft crunching sounded again. 

Concentrating on keeping her heartbeat low, Mia kept her eyes closed and practiced breathing slowly even as the next round of sections were let loose, combed out, and then sacrificed to Diana’s scissors. This time, the blades seemed closer and louder than before, and the shorn weight seemed more noticeable when the first locks fell away and hit the floor with a plop. Then there was a session of fine tuning, where Diana would lift and snip and lift and cut and Mia couldn’t tell what was going on at all save for the occasional tease of a clipping of hair falling against her ear. 

It wasn’t until the third batch of sections were let loose, combed out, and briskly shortened that Mia felt her hair land in her lap with a plop. And once it started, there seemed to be no end to it. Again and again, Diana would herd Mia’s thick, dark locks forward, the stylist’s fingers stopping several inches from the end, and then her shears doing their best work and sending over a foot of hair plummeting downward. 

As relieved as she was to feel the remaining hair still falling to cover her ears after it was shorn shorter, Mia still couldn’t help but think she was going to wind up with a mullet of some sort. Her hands gripped the arms of Diana’s chair, her well-tended nails digging into them as she watched the blurry blobs in what she was assumed the mirror in front of her. 

The last of the clips were removed from her hair, but the last swaths of uncut hair remained prisoner in Diana’s hand under she snipped her scissors closed again, spilling a wildly concerning amount of dark hair down into Mia’s lap. The sorority pledge couldn’t hold back a petrified little squeal, to which Diana replied with a throaty chuckle. When the stylist did let those locks fall free, they fell heavily in front of Mia’s face, close enough to her eyes that even she could make out that they hung well past her chin. 

But only for the moment. As with all their predecessors, the locks hung free and wet until Diana combed them out and began selecting specific ones to shorten, sending batches of five a six-inch lengths down to Mia’s lap and to lay on her shoulders. The cutting just kept going and going, until Mia no longer felt the ends of her locks against her chin, no longer against the tip of her nose, and after a third round of lift-and-snips, no longer against her cheeks. 

Slowly, Diana spun the chair around. Lifting and cutting kept happening, but the chops were no longer loud and hungry, but rather precise and gentle as she worked at all angles and all around, blending and perfecting Mia’s mane. 

“Just about done,” the stylist assured her, followed by the quiet clink of metal against the countertop where Mia’s glasses had been set. 

A hairdryer roared to life, and then a round brush began to assault what remained of Mia’s hair, gathering it up and pulling as it slowly rotated, briskly drying a mane that, as it fell around her face, felt exquisite against her cheeks and, eliciting her praise to the universe, fell with significant weight against her shoulders.

When the dryer and brush disappeared, Diana’s hands began an assault of their own, sweeping through Mia’s mane, ruffling and caressing and fixing it just so. The beautiful stylist turned the chair so they were face to face, her long nails teasing Mia’s forehead as Diana carefully perfected a parting in what Mia assumed was a new set of bangs, at least given the way some of the dark locks insisted on tickling her eyelashes every time she blinked.

“And there we go,” Diana said as she reached back to grab Mia’s glasses from the counter. She took Mia’s hand before gently placing the frames against her palm.

Mia had her eyes closed when she put her glasses on, but even with how large their circular lenses were, her eyes opened almost wider than them when she clearly saw her reaction. She recognized her hair and its thick, full, flowing waves, but the style — that immaculate, perfect mass of layers and lengths that surrounded her astonished face to fall a few inches past her shoulders — that was completely new.

Previously, she’d always referred to her hair as one length, but now, that most definitely wasn’t the case. She shook her head just a bit, and her lush mane, full of shine and life, danced wildly, no longer encumbered by so much weight. With a quick glance downward, the realization that she must have lost about half of her hair hit her. She turned and looked at the mirror over her shoulder, eyes widening again when she saw the gently curled ends of her hair resting just above her shoulder blades.

“Holy cow, you chopped off so much!”

“Yup. But no crying. You promised.”

Mia shook her head, again giggling at the feel of her silky locks brushing against her cheeks so easily. She loved those short, dance-happy layers, and loved how her new bangs highlighted her eyes so much. They were thicker than she’d ever had, but not quite blunt cut and not quite curtain bangs. Some fell to tease her suddenly prominent cheekbones, while others were just barely long enough to rest against the top of her glasses frames or hide her elegantly arched eyebrows. 

Unsure whether she still had much of a ponytail to gather her hair into, Mia swept her fingers back through the lush locks. Almost half of it was too short to stay back, with enough falling forward to create the strong impression that she’d chopped it all off into a chin-length bob.

As Mia followed Diana up front to pay, she couldn’t help but look into every mirror she passed by, still somehow startled by the reality that any sun kissed lengths among her locks were all but gone, giving her a much darker tone overall despite not having a single thing done to her color. She absolutely loved that.

Once outside, she stood in place and shook her head wildly, laughing for a moment at how the lazily curled locks danced and upped around her. She then gave it all a dramatic toss backward, smiling at the guys she noticed were watching before starting her walk home. 

As she strode down the sidewalk as if it were a catwalk, she called her big sister and made sure the camera was on. 

“Oh my god!” Angela cried out once she answered. “You did it! It looks great! I knew it would.”

Two more of the sorority sisters suddenly appeared behind her, each squealing and crying out how good the new style looked.

“Do you love it?” Angela asked. “I picked it out, you know.”

Mia made an exaggerated show of thinking it over. Sure, she’d probably never get to that waist-length goal of hers, but she had to admit that it did look great, and maybe shedding her high school girl style for a grown up look was worth it to guarantee getting into the sorority.

“I do,” she finally said with a smile. “And I think this is the beginning of a beautiful sisterhood.”

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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. I figured stories like this might be a good way to scratch my writing itch when I don’t feel like writing up a long, complex tale like I usually do. And not knowing what each girl will wind up with at the start of the story makes it more fun to write. Anyway, let me know what you thought.

(And for the curious, the random factors were that she wasn’t looking forward to the cut, lost 9 inches of overall length, got lots of layers, got some bangs, and was pretty happy with the result)