Book Tuesday but Wednesday

Here's the newest excerpt from Casey.

School picture day was a nightmare with Casey wearing some incredibly awful plaid ensemble her mother thought would be “just darling”. To Casey it damned her for all eternity as a complete dork. That plaid ensemble would live on in the high school year book for all time. Sarah having been on the ‘inside’ for this whole time is not only helping her to wade through the treacherous waters of high school but also her closet. According to Sarah they had their work cut out for them. If Sarah could not help turn Casey’s prissy private school girl image around soon she felt she was going to be doomed to sitting alone in the lunchroom and forcing herself on the lactose-intolerant highly allergic girl in the corner to be her lab partner. Sarah is her Obi Won Kenobe. She is Casey’s only hope.

Right away Sarah suggested Casey cut her hair. It was time for Case’s old Junior High private school spiral perm to say sayonara. Off with the old grown out s ‘do and in with something sleek she said. Casey and Sarah planned it so that the week Casey got her braces removed and coincidentally her contacts it would also be the week she got her hair cut. Smiling shyly to herself, Casey had to admit she was getting a little bit excited about the whole thing. It was not as if she was popular or anything at her last school but she was enrolled there long enough and it was a small enough school so that she was known. Not really liked but known. Two entirely different things. It was time to shake things up a bit at this new school and stake some claim her own bit of turf.

As she walked through the glass and steel door one day after school, all her baby-sitting money rolled tightly in the pocket of her new jeans, Casey began to feel anxious. Sarah was already waiting for her in the reception area, loudly flipping through the latest issues of Cosmo and Glamour. Sarah had made sure to get an appointment with the youngest stylist in the salon. It was who everyone who was anyone in school went to for even the slightest bang trim. Sarah was banking on the fact that this ‘it’ stylist would be the clincher to catapulting Casey into the spotlight at school. The stylist had cherry red hair. When Casey saw her, she wanted to turn and run but Sarah quickly grabbed her by the shirt and pushed her through her into the stylists chair. “Sarah”, Casey whispered from the corner of her mouth, “Wasn’t her hair blue when we made the appointment last week?” Casey looked unsurely at Sarah who just flared her nostrils exhaled loudly and said, “Ok! Cut off that permed shit on the ends and give her something that makes her look sophisticated and cool. Not like that is hard to do with what she’s got going on right now. Anything is an improvement over that tired mess. Bye bye!” and with that Sarah flounced out of the room. She was off to read some back issues of Glamour and fondle the sample size shampoos in the next room.

Casey looked up expectantly at the stylist’s whose nametag said, ‘Stellah’ and hoped for the best. It’s hair she thought, only hair. It will grow back and if she reaches for any blue or green dye I’m out of here.