AB
See Part 1 for an explanation of this series or to learn about how Amy got herself into this predicament, or skip ahead to Part 3.
“Okay, listen,” Sue said to Amy outside the door of the salon. “You’re walking into my shop. I only take walk-ins on Mondays so I don’t have any appointments and I’ll keep the closed sign on the door until we’re done, and I’ll text Jim and tell him to take a longer lunch. It’ll just be us here, and I’m going to try to make this as easy for you as possible. But there are a lot of mirrors inside. You’re not going to be able to avoid seeing yourself unless you keep your eyes closed the entire time. I just need you to stay calm and believe me when I say I’m going to get you sorted out, all right?”
Amy sniffled and nodded, then reached a hand back for Candace. “You’re not going anywhere, right?”
“I’ll be here with you the whole time.”
The trio entered Sue’s Unisex Salon and Amy spotted her reflection almost immediately. On the left side of her head, she could see her blonde waves still hung, thick and well-tended, down to her waist. But on the right side, and even encroaching onto her crown, there were lengths of hair ranging from roughly shoulder-length to just a few inches in length. On the top of her head, a few short tufts of hair stuck straight up. The tears were back almost immediately. “How…” she stammered.
“How will I fix it?” Sue asked. She steered the girl by her shoulders toward her waiting chair. Then she picked up a set of clippers that were plugged in at her station. “With these.”
Amy immediately stood and started for the door.
“Any stylist worth their salt is going to tell you the same thing,” Sue shouted behind her. “There’s literally nothing to do but get rid of it and start over.”
“I think she’s right, Ames,” Candace said, approaching her friend and putting a hand out to stop her from leaving.
“She wants to shave my head, Candy. You can’t let her do that!”
“I don’t want to shave your head, and that’s not what I’m going to do,” Sue said from her station. “I’m going to leave you as much hair as I possibly can. But these are going to be the easiest way to get everything to an even length for me to start with.”
“What about extensions? Can’t we please do extensions?” Amy pleaded.
“I’m afraid not, dear. Your hair needs to be at least four inches long all over, so even if we kept the hair you had left longer, it would be several months until the rest of it was long enough that you could get extensions to match. And I don’t think you want to walk around looking like this until then, do you?
“Nooooooo,” Amy cried. “There has to be another way.”
“This really is it,” Sue said reassuringly. “Believe me, I take no pleasure in this.” That last part was a bit of a half-truth. While Sue hated the idea of someone being forced into an unwanted haircut, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t get the occasional thrill of taking her long-haired clients short. Still, most of those were older than Amy—young moms who were tired of their hair catching their children’s sticky fingers, and middle-aged women who felt they were too old for long hair—and she did feel sorry about what she knew she had to do.
Amy looked at Candace. “What am I going to tell my mom? Senior pictures are next month!”
“That at least it’s not a tattoo?”
Amy gave her friend a slight smile, the first time she’d smiled at all since the start of this ordeal. “I guess as far as teenage rebellion goes, at least this isn’t permanent?”
“Hair does grow,” Sue contributed. “If it didn’t, I’d be out of a job pretty quick.”
“What if I look ugly?”
“I promise you won’t,” the stylist responded.
“And I really don’t have any other choice?”
“I mean, I can start with shears if that will help you feel a little more relaxed. But at some point I’m going to have to use the clippers.”
“Would that be okay, Ames?” Candace asked.
Tearfully, Amy nodded and Candace guided her back to Sue’s chair. The stylist draped a cape over the young blonde. “Now,” she said, “let’s get you a new hairstyle.”
“I already hate it.”
“You might be surprised,” Sue said. “You have the facial features to pull off short hair, and you might find it even makes you look a little older.”
“Oooh, Ames! You can buy the White Claw next time!” Candace joked.
“Cold comfort, but I guess it’s something,” Amy said. “Don’t leave me, okay?” She extended a hand to her friend.
Candace took it. “I’ll be here the whole time.”
Sue started to run her hands through the shorn hair on the right side of Amy’s head first, fluffing it up and trying to get a feel for exactly how much length she’d have to work with. If the back and sides had been where the shorter cuts had been she’d have more to work with, but those shorter pieces near the girl’s crown were unfortunately going to have to be her guide here. As she had suspected, nothing here was more than two inches in length. “I’m going to start cutting, okay? I’m going to start by getting rid of any length left on the side I’ve already cut and then I’m going to move on to the other side. And just a word of warning—this is all going to be a pretty rough cut, so it’s not going to be very even or look very good. Just know that it’s the first step, not the last.”
“Do what you have to do, I guess,” Amy replied. The girl watched in the mirror as the stylist placed a comb in the ravaged hair near her temple and cut off everything that hung beneath it. She hadn’t thought she had much hair left there, but she was surprised to see how much there actually was when it hit the cape. “Shouldn’t we be collecting this? To donate?”
“Nothing that’s left on this side is long enough to donate,” Sue answered, moving her comb to a spot behind Amy’s left ear where her hair now reached just above her shoulders. “When we get to the other side, we’ll have plenty we can still donate.”
Amy shuddered as the stylist closed the blades of the shears. “I hope someone at least is able to enjoy my hair, now that I can’t.”
“I suspect,” Sue began, positioning her comb on a relatively short section of hair on the side of Amy’s head—still, however, longer than the top—and slicing across the hair that stuck out, “you’re going to find you can enjoy your hair just fine, even when there’s less of it. It’s all subjective.”
“Enjoy it how? I won’t be able to style it or anything.”
“You won’t be able to curl it or put it up for a while, but you’ll still be able to style it. And if you’ve ever wanted to experiment with your color, this will be a good time to have fun with that, too. With super short hair, the damage is pretty minimal, and if you hate it you can wait a week or two to take it back down to the length it was when you started, or you can buzz it a little shorter and start over from there. Plus, if you want to keep your hair short you might be able to cut it yourself, or your friend can help you. I can show her how.”
“No,” Amy protested. “I’m going to start growing it out right away.”
“You can do that, too,” Sue said. “And as you grow it out you might find there are other ways to enjoy your hair, too. The first time I buzzed all my hair off, I had a lot of fun experimenting with new styles as it grew out.”
“The first time?” Candace chimed in with curiosity.
“Oh yeah. I got certified as a barber before I was certified as a hair stylist. I was the only woman in my class and my hair was really long at the time. One day about a month in, one of the instructors was being shitty to me about how no man would ever want to go to a barber with hair as long as mine was, so I grabbed a set of clippers off the station, turned them on, and ran them right across the top of my head.”
Amy gasped. “Why…why would you do that?”
“Because I was young and stubborn and thought I had something to prove. Not the smartest thing I ever did, but the look on the instructor’s face was priceless, especially after I handed him the clippers and said, ‘do you want to finish or should I?’ He took them from me and finished the job and pretty much left me alone after that. The next year there were a few female students who enrolled and he tried to make the buzz cut a requirement for them. The school shitcanned him after that.”
“So you had him shave off all your hair for nothing?”
“I wouldn’t say it was for nothing. Like I said, it can be fun to experiment as your hair grows back.”
“How long did it take for you to grow your hair long again?” Candace asked, hoping to bolster her friend with reassuring words about how quickly hair grows.
“Oh, well, there’s not actually a straightforward answer there,” Sue said. “I let it grow for a couple of months and then a friend who was in art school asked if I’d model for a show he was doing where I’d be covered in body paint from head to toe, so I buzzed it off again for that, which was kind of fun. After that…hmm, let’s see, it took about a year to get down to my chin and I kept it that length for a while, in a cute little Louise Brooks-style bob. Kind of a little longer than what I’m sporting now, actually. Then I decided to go back to beauty school because I was tired of cutting men’s hair all day and I let my hair grow. It got all the way past my shoulders and then after graduation some of my friends and I had a makeover party where we drew each other’s names out of a hat and got to give a haircut of our choosing to the person whose name we drew. I wound up with this sort of Posh Spice thing that was cute but so not me and when I got home that night I just decided to buzz the whole thing off.”
“Couldn’t you have just changed the style a bit or had someone change it for you?” Amy asked, clearly shocked this woman had willingly buzzed her hair off rather than taking a less extreme option.
“I could have, if I’d’ve wanted to wait,” Sue chuckled. But I was drunk and it seemed like the only option at the time.”
“I know the feeling,” Candace chimed in, recalling her own drunk haircut the week before. She didn’t think she’d ever do something quite as extreme as Sue described, but, well, she understood the stylist’s now-or-never decision.
Suddenly, Amy became aware that while she spoke, Sue had started bundling the long hair that remained on Amy’s hair into several small ponytails. “What are you doing that for?” she asked, a combination of shock and curiosity in her voice.
“This will be easier for the donation. The hair I cut earlier we’re going to have to bundle up into ponytails anyway. Okay?”
“Okay,” Amy said without much emotion. “So then what?”
“Well, then the clippers are probably going to have to come out,” Sue answered.
Amy inhaled sharply. “I was hoping we’d be able to avoid that.”
“Trust me, it’s for the best,” Sue responded.
“Yeah, says the woman who has buzzed her hair off…” Amy paused to count. “Three times?”
“Five, actually,” Sue corrected her. In the mirror, Amy saw the stylist pull a ponytail near the top of her head taut. “Ready?”
“Do I have a choice?” Amy asked.
“No,” Sue responded, and without missing a beat, she raised her shears to the ponytail and sliced clean through, handing the severed blonde locks to Candace.
“I’m sorry, did you say five?” the redhead asked, absentmindedly stroking the ponytail as the stylist’s words sank in.
“Yep. After that post-“Posh” buzzcut I started a job at a salon and started dyeing my hair whatever color I felt like. I kind of became known for it—’the-girl-with-the-whatever-color-buzzcut.’ It’d start to fade or grow out so I’d buzz it down again and change the color every couple of weeks.”
“Okay, so that’s the other two buzz cuts?”
“Oh honey, no,” Sue said, lifting and snipping another ponytail from Amy’s head and handing it to Candace. “I kept that up for a couple of years. I’m talking about times I buzzed my hair off, not maintaining a buzzcut. That’s different.”
“So what were the other two?”
“I fell in love. Got engaged. God wedding fever and had this idea of how I wanted my hair to look on my big day. Grew it out for almost two years before the wedding. Found out the bastard cheated on me.” At this point Sue lifted another of Amy’s ponytails and snipped it off just below the rubber band that bundled it together. “Buzzed all my hair off while he was out of town for work and left it in the bathroom sink with my engagement ring on top of it, packed up what I could, and left before he got home.”
“What did he do?”
“He called me. I told him some friends were coming by for the rest of my stuff. He asked what he was supposed to do with all the hair in the sink, and I told him it was my parting gift.” Lift. Snip. Another blonde ponytail handed to the redhead.
“And…the last one?” it was Amy who asked this time, her eyes wide as she watched more and more of her hair disappear.
“Once I decided to start letting my hair grow again I thought I’d see how long I could get it. It took a couple of years but I got it almost as long as it was when I started barber school. Almost as long as yours was.” The stylist severed another of Amy’s ponytails and handed it to Candace.
Amy inspected herself in the mirror and saw there were only two left. Most of her head was now covered in a halo of blonde tufts of varying short lengths. She looked like she had stuck a finger in an electric socket. She said a silent prayer she’d look better by the time she left. “So then what?” she asked Sue, hoping to distract herself from what she saw in the mirror with the conclusion of the stylist’s tale.
“I started working at a different salon. The owner asked me for a headshot for the website and the only ones I had were from my technicolor buzzcut days, so she put one of those up, where my hair was very short and very freshly bleached platinum. People would book appointments with me and be surprised that my hair was so…’normal.'” Lift, snip, pass. One ponytail left. “Or else people would call the salon looking to book an appointment with ‘the girl with the blonde buzzcut,’ and the receptionist wouldn’t know who they were talking about. I asked the owner if I should get new photos taken so clients would stop getting so confused, and she said she had a better idea and asked if I’d be willing to buzz my hair off again.” Lift. Snip. Amy’s final ponytail was gone. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t even have to think about it. I said yes right away. We made it into a fundraiser and I donated my hair, like you’re doing.” Sue gave Amy’s shoulder a little squeeze. “I know you didn’t want to do this, but you’re going to make someone very happy with this donation. And I’m going to do my best to make you happy with your new look.”
“I don’t know if that’s going to be possible,” Amy said, examining her fuzzy head in the mirror before sneaking a hand out from under her cape to tentatively touch what remained of her hair and wincing at what she felt.
“I don’t know, Ames,” Candace said, giving her friend’s hand a squeeze with he hand that wasn’t holding most of Amy’s severed hair. “The lady who’s done this five times just might know what she’s talking about.”
“You can put those down over there,” Sue told Candace, nodding at the bundles of blonde hair and then at the work station next to hers, which presumably belonged to Jim. “And you,” she said to Amy, “can point your chin down for me.”
The stylist picked up a set of clippers and fitted them with a large attachment. “Wait,” Amy protested, “are you going to use that all over my head? I don’t want to be bald.”
“Don’t worry, hon—you’re going to be far from bald. I just want to get your hair down to one even length so I can see what I really have to work with. This is a special attachment. It cuts hair to an even inch and a half. I’m going to start here and see if that gets us there.”
“You can’t go any longer?”
“I wish I could, Amy. I really do. But,” she held a mirror behind Amy so she could see the top and back of her head reflected in front of her, “see these patches here? I’m not even sure they’re an inch and a half long. And because of where they are, I have to use them as my guide. Nothing can be longer than that. So I’m starting with the biggest guide that I can and then I’ll go down one guide at a time until it’s all even, and after that I can figure out how to give you an actual style. Okay?”
“I guess,” Amy said with resignation.
“Good,” Sue said. “Now, chin down.”
The blonde teen did as she was instructed and held a hand out to Candace, who was still standing nearby. The redhead took her friend’s hand, feeling terrible about the whole thing. This was all her fault.
Sue flipped on her clippers and placed them at Amy’s nape, then ran them up to the crown of her head before moving them a little to the right of where she started and making another pass. Candace found herself shocked by how much hair was still coming off of her friend’s head—she didn’t think there was much left, but more and more blonde hair was coming away with each pass of the clippers.
In the chair, Amy was still horrified by what was happening to her, but was surprised to find that the actual sensation of the clippers was pleasant—sort of like one of those vibrating chairs in the airport, but for her head. She would do anything to still have her long hair firmly attached to her head but the buzzing machine was helping her to relax, a little.
The back of Amy’s head buzzed down, Sue guided the teen’s right ear toward her shoulder and made quick work of the hair that was left there after she cut off the small ponytails she had made. Blonde strands an inch or so in length—just long enough that Amy’s waves were still noticeable—rained down onto her lap and she bit her lip to try not to cry anymore, trying to focus on the pleasant vibrations of the clippers rather than what they were doing.
Then, Sue gently leaned Amy’s left ear toward her shoulder and began to clear the right side of her head of the uneven blonde tufts that remained there. This was the side that had been caught in the window and she was fairly confident she would find, as she worked, that her inch-and-a-half guard wouldn’t be sufficient here. As she got closer to the crown on this side, she saw she was correct. A few areas of the teen’s head here showed hair that was still noticeably shorter than what had been plowed down around them. Still, to really assess the extent of what she’d need to do, Sue decided to finish her work with this clipper guard, righting Amy’s head and running the humming machine from the teen’s forehead to her crown.
Amy’s eyes widened as she finally saw, like Candace had observed moments before, just how much hair was still coming off her head. She could envision what an inch and a half of hair looked like from having her hair trimmed in the past, but she had no idea what it would look like when it was all that was left on her head. She was shocked to discover that more than half of what had remained after Sue’s rough cut was now being peeled away, dropping unceremoniously to her lap and occasionally getting stuck in her eyelashes. “It’s just…so short,” the teen observed, as the stylist made a few more passes and turned off her clippers.
“It actually looks really good though, Ames,” Candace said beside her, and she meant it. Her friend’s heart-shaped face was now fully on display, and although the blonde was flushed and tear-streaked, Candace could see how Amy could totally rock this look if she wanted to.
“No it doesn’t, Candy.” Amy observed. Her waves were now totally gone, and in their place hair that could only be described as very short remained. “It looks awful. I look like a little boy.”
“Honey, nobody would ever mistake you for a boy,” Sue said. “But I am afraid we’re going to have to go shorter.” She held up the mirror again and angled it so Amy and Candace could see the uneven patches that remained. “See here? I can try to go over everything with an inch-and-a-quarter guard but realistically, now that I can see everything else evened up around it, I think you’ve got an inch here at most, maybe even a little less. I can keep going down one guard at a time until we find it or I can go with what I know will definitely work. What do you think?”
“Less than an inch? Oh god!” Amy was conflicted. On the one hand, she didn’t mind the idea of going one guard at a time, both to make sure she kept as much of her length as possible. Plus, the vibrating clippers really did feel nice. But on the other hand, she wanted to be done with this whole ordeal as quickly as possible so she could go home and hide in her bedroom until at least the start of the school year. Or maybe her parents would even let her do her senior year as a homeschool student? She wasn’t sure she could face her peers like this. “Just…do what you think you need to do,” she told Sue.
The stylist exchanged the large guard on her clippers for a significantly smaller one. “Okay,” she explained to the teen as she prepared for her next pass with the clippers. “This is a #7 guard. It’s going to cut everything down to seven-eighths of an inch. I think we’ll be okay from there—and hey, it’s still actually pretty long for a buzz cut. Ready?”
“No. But go ahead anyway.”
Sue flipped on her clippers. This time she didn’t instruct Amy to bow her head down. Instead, she started at Amy’s forehead and pushed the clippers back, allowing the teen to see right away how much hair was coming off this time. She was shocked by what a difference an inch of hair made. Even though her initial clippering had robbed Amy of the last of her discernible waves, she still looked like she had hair when it was over. Now, the path left in the wake of Sue’s clippers looked more like a fine blonde fuzz. There was no discernible texture to it at all anymore. The teen let out a little gasp.
Candace gave Amy’s hand a little squeeze. The redhead, too, was astonished by how much hair was still being stripped from her friend’s head. She had always envied Amy’s natural blonde locks, but with her hair this short, Amy’s hair practically disappeared entirely, leaving only the faintest shadow behind. And to think this was considered long for a buzz! “Sue,” she asked, “when you buzzed your hair how short did you go?”
“Depends on which time,” Sue responded, making another pass along the top of Amy’s head and widening the chasm she was carving through her already-short hair. “That first time, in barber school, there wasn’t a guard on the clippers at all, so my hair was about as short as it could get without actually being shaved down to the skin. But I prefer to have it at least a little longer. Usually a #2 or #3 on the top and shorter on the sides—so, between a quarter and a half an inch.”
“Shorter than this?!” Amy exclaimed. “This is already so, so short.”
“Well yeah,” Sue said as her clippers made their third pass from Amy’s forehead to her crown. “But when you consider that hair grows about half an inch a month, the difference between a #3 and a #7 is really just a matter of a few weeks. Even that first time in barber school, I was surprised by how quickly I had visible hair growth.”
“Half an inch a month?” Amy asked. “I didn’t realize it was that slow. Oh god! That means that even by prom…”
“Your hair will be a little longer than mine, yeah.” Sue replied, readying for another pass across the top of Amy’s head. “That is, if you decide to grow it out.”
“Like I said, I’m going to start letting it grow as soon as I get home. I don’t think I’m ever going to let anyone cut it again.”
“Well…” Sue said. One more pass and the entire top of Amy’s head would be even again. She readied her clippers. “You might want to at least let someone help you keep the back and sides short for a while as you let the top grow long. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up with a mullet. And not one of those cute ones that are back in style.” The stylist glided her humming device across Amy’s head once more, then nudged her head toward her left shoulder, ready to tackle the right side.
“So, realistically, how long until my hair is even as long as Candy’s?”
“With regular maintenance cuts to keep it in shape? A year and a half?”
Amy gripped Candace’s hand tightly. The redhead winced—both from the pain of her friend’s grip but also from hearing definitively that it would be literal years before Amy’s hair was once again as long as it had been when she woke up that morning. She tried to turn the subject back to Sue’s hair so Any would think less about her own. “So Sue, what made you decide to grow out your hair this time around?”
“I didn’t,” Sue said, focused on her work peeling ever more of Amy’s hair off the side of her head.
“But…”
Sue laughed. “I mean, I didn’t decide. I opened this place right before the pandemic and hadn’t made up my mind yet about whether to keep my look or do something different, and then when things went on lockdown and I didn’t have anyone around to do my hair, I took that as a sign I should try growing it out again.”
“But can’t you cut your own. You said you have before.”
“Yeah, but it’s a lot easier to get a fade from someone else than to do it yourself.”
“What’s a fade?” Amy asked from her chair, as Sue tilted her head in the other direction.
“Oh, you’ll find out in just a few minutes,” the stylist said mysteriously, running her clippers up the left side of Amy’s head.
“So what about this current style?” Candace chimed in before Amy could get anxious about that last answer. “It clearly isn’t how your hair naturally grew out during lockdown.”
Sue made another pass up Amy’s head, as inch-long tufts of blonde hair fell on the teen’s shoulder. “Now this I did do. This is the result of what I was telling you about keeping the back and sides short while the top grows out. I couldn’t fade anything myself but it’s not too, too hard to give yourself an undercut if your mirrors are positioned right. As soon as the hair on top of my head started growing out I started buzzing the back and sides down. Once I got to a proper pixie length I didn’t have to keep buzzing it off but it was still lockdown and it’s a lot easier to cut the back and sides of your own hair with clippers than shears when it’s short, so I just kept it up until the hair on top of my head got to about the length it is now, and decided to start playing with the color and just maintaining the length. By the time lockdown ended I’d kind of gotten used to it so now Jim helps me maintain it. I dunno, though,” she mused, almost finished clearing the left side of Amy’s head, “I’m thinking about letting it grow again. Or buzzing it all off. I haven’t decided. Chin down for me.” She guided Amy’s head into position and began to work her way with her clippers up the back of Amy’s head, from nape to crown.
“Do you ever miss your long hair?” Amy asked, her voice slightly muffled by the cape as she bowed her head.
“Sure I do,” Sue said. “But whenever my hair gets too long I miss having it short. And at least when it’s short I can play with wigs. It’s a lot harder to put one on over a full head of hair.” Neither teen had an immediate follow-up, so Sue finished her work on the back of Amy’s head in relative silence, her mind wandering as she worked with the humming clippers. She did feel sorry for the girl in her chair. She really did. But she could also see that when she was finished, the look would really suit the teen, even if the girl wouldn’t be able to see it for herself at first. But Amy’s neck was long and her head was well shaped. She had big round eyes and high cheekbones and small ears, and the hair that she still had on her head was soft and a beautiful warm shade of blonde. Sue made a few final passes with her clippers then went over Amy’s entire head again, making sure she hadn’t missed any errant long hairs. She clicked off the device.
“Thank god it’s over,” Amy said, raising her head. She gasped at what she saw. A fine pelt of blonde hair had replaced her long blonde waves. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I look like my brother!”
“No!” Candace reassured her friend. “You actually look great!” She was telling the truth. The cut did look a little—unfinished, maybe?—but the super-short hair suited Amy surprisingly well. Candace was almost jealous that her friend could pull off the radical cut so easily.
“It’s not actually over,” Sue said, “or not unless you want it to be. Remember how you asked me what a fade is? I’m going to do that for you now. It will make the haircut look more intentional and mature—less like a little boy. But…” she paused. “It does mean taking some of this even shorter.”
“I don’t see how it could possibly get any shorter than this,” Amy whimpered. “Unless I’m literally bald.”
“The clipper guards go down in increments of about an eighth of an inch. The hair on top of your head is 7/8 of an inch long. So I’m going to use the 5/8 inch and 1/4 inch guards to taper your hair on the back and sides down toward your neckline. The hair on the top of your head won’t go any shorter than it is. I promise. It might even look a little longer than it is now because of the contrast in length.”
“And you think it will look better?”
“I know it will.”
“Okay. Then do it.”
Sue swapped the guard on her clippers for a #3 and held Amy’s right ear down, running her clippers from the girl’s temple toward a spot level with the arch of her eyebrows, as a barely perceptible sprinkling of blonde hair rained onto Amy’s cape. “There? See? I’m barely cutting any length at all now.” She readied her clippers to make another pass.
“That’s because there’s barely any length left,” Amy sighed.
The stylist didn’t respond, but rather focused on the task at hand. While it’s hard to mess up an all-over buzzcut it can be easy indeed to ruin a fade if you get distracted, and she wanted to do everything in her power to avoid taking this poor girl’s hair any shorter than she had to. A few more passes upward on the side of Amy’s head and Sue switched sides, repeating her work on Amy’s left. Finally, she stood again behind the girl and connected the shorter hair on the right and left sides of her head together.
Still concerned that her hair was being clippered ever shorter, Amy still found herself enjoying the feel of the humming clippers on her nape. Last year, she had been shocked to discover a new girl at her school with hair almost down to her waist was sporting a short nape undercut, visible only when she put her hair up into a ponytail or topknot. At the time, Amy couldn’t imagine letting clippers anywhere near her hair, even if it was easy to conceal. But suddenly she found herself wondering if the girl had gotten the undercut because she enjoyed this sensation, too.
Sue turned the clippers off again. “Okay, look in the mirror again. I’m not done, but see how there’s just enough difference between the top and sides here that it gives your haircut a shape? I’m going to do it again with the next size clipper down and it’ll be really noticeable.”
Amy scrutinized her reflection. “I can hardly tell the difference.”
“It’s subtle, I know. But after this next step you’ll really notice.”
Sue swapped her #3 for a #2 and carefully repeated her path around the sides and back of Amy’s head, stopping the clippers short of where she had stopped the last time.
Another sprinkling of hair, even shorter than the last, fell to Amy’s cape. “That does actually feel good,” she said quietly, unsure if Sue would hear her over the clippers.
“I know,” Sue said, somewhat coyly. “I was just as surprised to discover that as you are. And wait until you actually touch your head.”
Candace listened to this exchange, intrigued. She had never had clippers used on her hair, so she couldn’t imagine what they were talking about. Having your defining feature stripped away from you felt…good?
Sue shut off her clippers and encouraged Amy to lift her head again. This time, the teen could see the gradual fade between the top and sides of her hair. Sue was right—the hair on the top of her head did look a little longer now, and the overall shape of her hair seemed more intentional than the annual summer buzz Amy’s father gave her little brother when he was in grade school.
“I just have one more thing to do and I don’t want you to be nervous. I’m going to use a little, teeny tiny razor to clean up your hairline on your neck and around your ears. I’m not shaving your head—just giving you a cleaner look.”
“I trust you,” Amy said. It was true.
Sue lightly moistened the back and sides of Amy’s hair and then grabbed a small blade—Amy thought it looked like her mother’s dermaplaning razor—and began to slowly stroke it below the girl’s right temple. She worked up and over her ear and then switched to the left side, doing the same. Returning to the teen’s nape, Sue studied the girl’s natural hairline for a moment before deciding to outline its shape rather than rounding or squaring it off. It was something she’d learned when she had worn a buzzcut herself—sometimes keeping a natural hairline in the back made super-short hair seem more feminine than if it were reshaped. That done, Sue took a step back, looking at Amy’s reflection in her mirror. As short as it was, the style still seemed incomplete. “Amy,” Sue began, “I’m just going to make a suggestion here and you can say no. I want to reshape your hairline in the front a little bit and add a hard part to the style.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll use this same razor around your face especially by your temples, to create a more deliberate shape to the cut. And then to make the hard part, I’m going to shave the thinnest line right where the longer and shorter sections of your hair connect, right about here.” Sue drew a line with her finger that ran from a spot right over the teen’s right eye toward the back of her head. “You can’t part short hair like you can part long hair so we fake it by shaving in a part. It won’t take that much longer too grow in than the rest of your hair, so you won’t have to worry about that,” she added, sensing a question coming.
Amy looked at Candace. “What do you think?”
“I think Sue is the expert and if she thinks this will look good, you should let her do it.”
“Fine,” Amy nodded her head. “It’s not like I have that much to lose at this point.”
Sue stepped in front of Amy, partly because that’s where she needed to be for the next part and partly because she didn’t want the teen to see exactly what it entailed until she was done. Some of her clients—especially women—have panicked in the past during the hairline shaping, worried the stylist was going to go too far and wind up shaving them bald. She did not want to panic Amy any further. So, blocking the teen’s view, Sue began to slowly scrape off some of her hair toward the right side of her forehead and swooping down toward her ear. The difference from right to left was surprisingly noticeable. The side she had just worked on looked softer, more refined. Feminine even. She repeated her work on the teen’s left. Then, as her last move, Sue began to slowly carve the hard part across the top of Amy’s head, cautioning the teen to stay very still. The stylist did not want to tell her this but she knew that a sudden movement, a sneeze, a hiccough, could cause her to drag the part too wide and then she really would have to shave Amy’s head. Sue worked meticulously, curving her line so it matched the natural curve of Amy’s skull. And then, at last, she was done. “Close your eyes,” she instructed Amy, still standing in front of the now-cropped teen.
“But I’ve already seen it,” Amy argued.
Candace, who had been carefully watching Sue as she made her finishing touches and marveled at how much of a difference they made, squeezed Amy’s hand. “Trust me, Ames. Close your eyes.”
Amy obliged, and Sue removed herself from her spot between the girl and the mirror. “Okay. Open them.”
Amy blinked her eyes open and stared at the mirror. It was not the first time that day that she gasped on seeing her reflection. “You were right,” she said to Sue. “That really did make a huge difference. I have…an actual haircut now. It looks like I did this on purpose.”
“So you like it?” Sue asked.
“I…don’t hate it,” Amy replied.
“You should touch it,” Sue told Amy, removing her cape. The girl reached up and stroked the side of her head. “Oh wow,” she said. “I thought it would feel like sandpaper but…it’s really soft. Candy, feel this!” Amy placed her friend’s hand on her head and moved it a bit, causing the redhead to give the blonde’s hair a little rub.
Candace, too, was surprised by how soft her friend’s severely cropped hair felt. The freshly cut ends tickled her palms when she moved her hands, sort of like rubbing her hand against the grain on her parents’ velvet sofa. She felt a pang of guilt that this was now her friend’s hair…but also something else, a fascination with the feeling of it. “That does feel amazing. And you look amazing!” the redhead said to her friend.
Amy smiled somewhat sadly. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it,” she said. “But right now I just really wish I still had my hair.”
“If I may make a suggestion,” Sue said to the girl, “when you get home, put on some makeup. Have a lot of fun with your eyes, especially. You’d be amazed how beautiful you can feel with a buzzcut and some dramatic eyeliner. It’s what helped me learn to love my first buzz.” She looked up at the clock on her wall. “Now,” she said, “I really don’t want to rush you girls out of here,” she said, “but I really should reopen my shop now. Jim has been waiting patiently outside for the last half hour and he just texted to say we’ve had a few customers try to come in.”
“Of course!” Amy said. “I should get home anyway, before my mom gets there. She’s in for the shock of her life.” She stood. “How much do I owe you?”
“I told you,” Sue said, “This one was on the house.”
“Oh,” Amy said. “Right.” She reached into her bag for her wallet and pulled out a $20 bill. “At least let me tip you? You’ve been so kind to me. And…even if I don’t love it on me, I can tell you gave me a good haircut. You didn’t just buzz my hair off and send me on my way.”
Sue smiled warmly at the girl. “Okay,” she said. “But on one condition. Come back here in a couple of weeks and tell me what you think once you’ve lived with this for a while.”
“Okay,” Amy said. “I will.” The two girls exited the salon, and Sue flipped the sign on the door back to “open.”
To be continued…
