Free So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld Page A

cuticles so that all the pigment falls out. It's quick and dirty. Like
smashing a bunch of fish tanks to release the fish, it leaves a mess. That's
why if you go on to add coloring, a little bit swims down the drain every time
you take a shower. Your fish tanks are broken.
    I had known all this, but only in theory, because I'd
always dyed my hair blacker, not lighter. (I was just adding more fish, not
getting rid of the old ones.) So when Jen started daubing toothpaste-consistency
acid into my hair, I wasn't prepared.
    "That stings!"
    "That's what I said."
    "Yeah, but ... ow."
    It felt like many thousands of mosquitoes were
visiting my scalp. Like a bald man who'd fallen asleep at the beach. Like my
hair was on fire.
    "How's that?"
    "A lot like ... having acid on my head."
    "Sorry, but I maxed out
the solution strength. We're going for major transformation here. It won't hurt
as much next time, you know."
    "Next time?"
    "Yeah. Your scalp loses a lot of feeling after
the first bleach job."
    "Great," I said. "I was looking to get
rid of some of those extra scalp nerves."
    "No pain, no gain."
    "I'm feeling the gain."
    She covered my head with a
piece of aluminum foil—saying helpfully, "This makes it hotter, to
strengthen the chemical reaction"—then flipped another chair out and sat
down across from me.
    We were in Jen's kitchen,
which was small but clearly the workplace of a committed cook. Pots and pans
hung from the ceiling, clanking lightly in the breeze from an exhaust fan
working to remove the smell of hair acid. Two thousand dollars' worth of
recently purchased non-Hunter party-wear hung among the pans, still covered in
plastic to make sure my next credit card bill wouldn't kill me.
    Jen lived here with her older
sister, who was trying to break into being a dessert chef. Many of the
blackened iron pans suggested the shapes of macaroons and ladyfingers, and
there was a series of sifts for refining flour down to invisible dust.
    The kitchen was retro or maybe
just old. The chair on which I quietly writhed was vintage chrome and vinyl,
matching the table's green-and-gold-speckled Formica. The refrigerator was also
1960s era, with a stainless-steel door handle shaped like a giant trigger.
    As the acid slowly flayed my scalp, I found myself desperate
for ' distraction.
    "Has your sister had this
place long?"
    "It was my parents' when they first moved in
together. We lived here until I was twelve, but they kept it after the Day of
Darkness."
    "The Day of Darkness?"
    "When we moved out to Jersey."
    I tried to imagine a whole family living here, and my
melting-scalp discomfort was tinged with claustrophobia. Off the kitchen were
two other smallish rooms with air-shaft windows. That was the whole place.
    "Four people in this place? New Jersey must have
looked pretty good."
    Jen made a gagging noise. "Oh, sure. Great for my
parents. But everyone out there thought I was a freak, with my kiddie-punk purple
streaks and homemade clothes."
    I thought about my own big move. "Well, at least
you weren't too far away from home to visit."
    She sighed. "Might as well have been. By the time
I was fourteen, my Manhattan friends had all dumped me. Like I'd turned into a
Jersey girl or something."
    "Ouch."
    I remembered my peek into Jen's room when we'd
arrived. It was classic Innovator: furniture collected off the street, a shelf
overrun with notebooks, a dozen half-completed projects in paper and cloth.
Three walls were covered, one by magazine clippings, one by a collage of found
photographs she'd picked up off the street, and the last by a bulletin board
painted to resemble a basketball court, on which magnetic Xs and Os held up pictures of players male
and female. The loft bed made a cave for a small desk, where a laptop flickered
in invisible communion with a wireless hub hanging on the wall. All the frantic
clutter of a cool girl trying to make up for the Lost Years.
    "When did you move back?"
    "Last year, as soon as they let me. But