Someone Else's Shoes Page 8

  “Mom says Oliver likes you.”

  Ben sat up, throwing his long legs over the side of the futon. “I like him too. He’s a good kid.”

  She was quiet a minute, deciding whether or not Ben was the right person to tell. Finally she said, “There are some boys at Oliver’s school who are mean to him.”

  “Yeah, he told me.”

  “He did?” Izzy tucked the wet strand of hair back behind her ear and tried not to sound wounded. Jeez, the kid had only known Ben for a couple of days and already he was telling him all his secrets!

  “Yeah. He wanted to know whether he should spill it to that therapist your mom sent him to. He’s afraid she’ll call his teacher or something, and that’ll make everything worse.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Told him for now don’t say anything. Wait and see if he can trust her. I’ve got study hall last period, so I’ll skip out early tomorrow and go pick him up. I can put the evil eye on those little fatheads who’re bullying him.” He held out his tattooed arm and made his hand into a fist. A muscle in his arm lifted up his T-shirt. “I’ll introduce them to my scorpion.”

  Izzy’s eyes widened. “You’re gonna beat up little kids?”

  Ben shook his head as if astounded by her stupidity. “You think I’m a real creep, don’t you?”

  “Well, you said—”

  “Don’t be dumb. I’m just gonna scare the little brats—that’s all.”

  Nobody called Izzy dumb. The word buzzed through her brain like an electric current. Her eyes narrowed, and she spat out the question that had been bugging her. “How come you’re always fixing things around here? Are you trying to get my mom to like you or something?”

  Ben sneered. “Please. I don’t care what your mom thinks. I’m bored to death in this place—I gotta do something. I guess you’d rather I just hide out down here in the basement all day with my tail between my legs.”

  “No. I’d rather you go home.”

  “Believe me, so would I. This wasn’t my idea.” Ben scooted off the futon and pushed past Izzy. He flicked on the overhead light, which was bright enough to make them both blink.

  “Don’t you have any friends you can hang out with sometimes?” she asked him.

  Ben threw his duffel bag on the futon. “I’m kind of between friends at the moment.”

  Izzy could believe that. “You mean they don’t like you anymore?”

  Ben had been rummaging through his bag, but he turned to face her. “Listen, Patsy Bratsy, I don’t see your friends lined up around the block either.”

  Izzy could feel her face go red, and it made her even angrier. “I’m just warning you,” she said. “My mom doesn’t want to get married again. She’s not going to be your new mother, if that’s what you think.”

  Ben threw back his head and laughed, but it came out sounding so rough and raw, it must have hurt his throat. “Are you kidding? Having one crappy mother is bad enough. I don’t need two.”

  “My mother’s not crappy!”

  He smirked. “Yeah, right.”

  “At least my mother didn’t run off to California and leave me!”

  Ben glared at her as if he’d like to break her in half. “No, but your dad left, didn’t he? Probably because he couldn’t stand you.”

  For some reason Izzy hadn’t seen that one coming, and the accusation momentarily took her breath away.

  “Why don’t you disappear, devil child? Isn’t it your bedtime too?” Ben turned his back on her.

  “I go to bed when I want to!” Which was only true when her mother got distracted, like tonight, and forgot what time it was.

  Ben pulled a T-shirt out of his duffel bag and sniffed the armpits. “Well, it’s my bedtime. So get out of here now.”

  The lump that had been forming in Izzy’s throat suddenly expanded into a balloon, pushing its way up until it burst out of her mouth. “Just because I’m a little bit younger than you doesn’t mean I’m dumb! And I have lots of friends, and I can go visit my dad anytime I want to! And I was helping Oliver too, before you even got here!”

  Ben was startled by her outburst. “I didn’t say—”

  But Izzy didn’t stick around to listen. She made for the stairs before the tears she hadn’t even realized were gathering spilled down her cheeks.

  “And this is my house!” she yelled back at him as she stomped upstairs. “So don’t you ever tell me to get out of here! You’re the one who should get out, and I can’t wait until you do!”

  Dr. Gustino called Friday night after dinner. He talked to Ben first, though not for long. The only thing Izzy heard Ben say was, “Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay.” He sighed deeply, which Izzy took to mean he wasn’t leaving their cellar anytime soon. Then Izzy’s mom got on the phone and shut herself in her bedroom. Oliver followed Ben down to the basement, as usual. Also as usual, Izzy was not invited.

  She didn’t care. It was the perfect time to carry out her plan. Everybody else—her mother, her father, Aunt Felicia—made big decisions that ended up changing her life, whether she liked it or not. If things were going to change anyway, Izzy decided she’d be in charge of some of those changes.

  She’d spent half an hour that afternoon limping around Stuff, the store where all the college kids shopped, deciding what color hair dye to get. At first she thought she wanted Vampire Red or Flamingo Pink, but the Atomic Turquoise looked so pretty when she looked at it up close. Her regular hair was such an in-between color—not blond, not brown, not anything. How could she tell if the dye would look the same on her as it did on the model on the package?

  And then she found the jar of Electric Banana. Wow. Izzy hated to admit it, but she’d always sort of wanted blond hair. And this went way beyond regular old blond. It was bright neon yellow. Supposedly it even glowed in the dark. How amazingly cool would it be to have shining golden hair? People would notice her then!

  The salesgirl in the store, whose long hair, parted down the middle, was red on one side and green on the other, told her it was easy to do. “Use plastic gloves so you don’t stain your hands. Then just follow the directions. You can leave it in longer than they say to. I usually put it in before I go to bed, cover it with a shower cap, and rinse it out in the morning. You get a deeper color that way.”

  “Thanks,” Izzy said. “I’ll do that.”

  “Oh, and rinse it with vinegar afterward too, so the color lasts longer.”

  On the way home, she’d stopped at the pharmacy to get the plastic gloves, a shower cap, and hair gel, then had run into the grocery store to pick up a bottle of white vinegar.

  How hard could it be to cut your hair in one of those punky styles where it stands up all over your head? It didn’t all have to be the same length or anything. The first cut was the scariest—her hand shook—but there was no going back after that. As her boring, brownish hair fell into the bathroom sink, Izzy started to feel powerful. Afterward she scooped up the lanky locks and threw them into the wastebasket. Good riddance.

  Since the instructions that came with the dye warned that it would stain everything it touched, she got the oldest, thinnest towel to put around her shoulders, arranging it over a T-shirt that was now too tight to wear out of the house. No sense giving her mother any more to be angry about than necessary. Short yellow hair (on top of small silver shoes) would be enough.

  She pulled on the plastic gloves. The instructions said to do a test patch first to see how you liked the color, but Izzy wasn’t going to bother with that. She’d like it however it turned out—at least it would be different from her usual dull shade. It would have been better to have somebody else do the back for her, but that wasn’t an option, so Izzy just did the best she could. She started slowly, since she couldn’t see what she was doing, but then her arms got tired, so she sped up. You were supposed to use the brush that came with the dye, but Izzy just mixed in the cream with her fingers, like shampoo.

  Izzy was standing in the shower in case the dye dripped, but
the dye didn’t just drip; it seemed to fling itself every time she moved her head. By the time she was finished, there was Electric Banana on the tub, the wall tiles, the shower curtain, and all over her bare legs. Finally she wrestled the shower cap over her scalp and peeled off the wet yellow gloves. She hadn’t thought ahead about what to do with them, but since the towel was obviously ruined anyway, she just rolled the gloves inside it and left the mess in the bathtub to throw away in the morning.

  Her T-shirt was wet, so she couldn’t sleep in it. Besides, it would turn her sheets yellow. It was too tight to take off over the shower cap, but since it was ruined anyway, she took the scissors and cut it right down the middle, then threw it into the shower with the rest of the garbage.

  Izzy’s mother had her own bathroom, so she wouldn’t come into this one tonight. Uncle Henderson and Oliver shared Izzy’s bathroom, but Uncle Hen was probably already asleep, and Oliver certainly wasn’t going to take a shower on a Friday night. All she had to do was close the shower curtain, then get up early and dispose of the evidence. As she sneaked down the hall to her own room, Izzy felt very clever to have figured the whole thing out on her own.

  * * *

  It was hard to sleep with the shower cap on, and Izzy woke up late. Fortunately, it appeared no one else had used the shower yet this morning. Izzy pushed the mess in the tub to one side and washed the thick yellow goo out of her hair. The bright color seemed to have stained the tiles and the tub and the shower curtain, but she’d worry about that later. The vinegar rinse came next, but the girl at the store had not told Izzy that massaging half a bottle of vinegar into your scalp made your eyes sting and your nose run.

  She grabbed a clean towel as she got out of the shower and patted her head. The mirror was fogged up, so she wiped it with a washcloth, and there, behind the droplets of water, was her new short yellow hair. Very yellow. Neon Electric Banana yellow.

  Izzy toweled her hair dry. Hmm. There were a few places she might have cut her hair too short, but the gel would fix it. She wasn’t sure how you were supposed to get those punky peaks like the girls in the pictures online, but after some gooey pushing and pulling, she’d come close to the look she wanted. Spiky golden points surrounded her face like a kindergartener’s drawing of the sun. She stood in front of the mirror, blinking, so every time she opened her eyes, the full force of the change hit her again. It was amazing. As she headed downstairs, she thought how cool it was that she didn’t look like Izzy Shepherd anymore. She looked like a celebrity! Or like a model! Or—

  “You look like Big Bird,” Ben said the minute she stepped into the kitchen.

  Her mother turned around, a cup of coffee in her hand. “Oh my God!” The coffee splashed on the floor before she could set the cup down on the counter. “What did you do to yourself?”

  Uncle Henderson, who was busy picking the raisins out of his cereal and eating them one by one, was the only person in the room not staring at her. Izzy could feel her courage evaporating, but she squared her chin and said, “I like it.”

  Her mother and Oliver approached for a closer look. “Your hair,” her mom said mournfully. “It was so pretty!”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Izzy said. “It was boring.”

  Oliver wrinkled up his nose. “What stinks?”

  Ben laughed, and Oliver looked pleased that he’d been the cause of it.

  “Vinegar,” Izzy said. “It makes the color last longer.” She was something of an expert on hair dyeing now.

  “Oh, now I smell it too,” Ben said. “You’re like salad dressing on legs.”

  “The color’s not permanent, is it?” her mother asked, putting a finger carefully up to one of the spikes, as if it might be sharp.

  “It washes out after a while. Next time I might do red.”

  Izzy’s mother looked as if she might cry. “Honey, if you wanted a haircut, I would have taken you to the salon. The way you cut it, it looks, well, it looks…”

  “Terrible,” Ben said, finishing the sentence.

  Izzy was sick of all his insults. “You think you look so fabulous?” she exploded at him. “With your arm full of creepy animals? And those big boots you clump around in? And your pitted-out T-shirts? You’re the one who looks terrible!”

  She could tell the blow had been a direct hit. The smug look on his face disappeared, and he winced as if she’d hurt his feelings. Who knew he even had any?

  “Izzy, calm down,” her mother said. “No one looks terrible. We can fix this. I’ll call my hairdresser and—”

  “I’m not going to your stupid hairdresser! I like my hair this way! I like me the way I am!”

  As she stormed out of the kitchen, she heard Ben say, “It’s a good thing you like yourself, Dizzy. But don’t expect anybody else to.”

  Izzy stayed in her room all morning. Her mother brought her a cinnamon roll as a peace offering, which she accepted because she was starving, but Izzy did not intend to speak to her unless she stopped staring at her hair with that heartbroken look.

  At one o’clock Cookie’s mother’s car pulled up out front, and Izzy streaked out the door and leaped into the back seat.

  “Goodness!” Mrs. Daley said. “What did you do to your lovely hair?” Sometimes Izzy hated mothers.

  Cookie had turned around to stare at her from the front seat. “It’s yellow!”

  “And short!” Pauline said.

  “Oh, really?” Izzy said. “I hadn’t noticed. What do you think?”

  The girls squinted at Izzy, trying to make up their minds.

  “Yes or no?” Izzy asked impatiently.

  “It’s not too bad,” Pauline said. “The cut is kind of choppy, though.”

  “It’s supposed to be. I did it myself.”

  “Obviously,” Cookie said. “Why didn’t you go to a salon?”

  “Because I wanted to surprise everybody,” Izzy said.

  “Well, you did.” Cookie shook her head. “Wait until the kids at school see you.”

  “Why?”

  Cookie and Pauline looked at each other and shrugged. “I don’t know,” Cookie said. “Maybe you should wear a hat Monday.”

  “Hats aren’t allowed in school,” Pauline said.

  Cookie rolled her eyes. “I know. I’m just saying.”

  What was she just saying? That Izzy should be ashamed of the way she looked? Well, she wasn’t.

  Later, as they waited in line for movie tickets, Pauline looked around nervously. “Those boys are staring at you,” she whispered to Izzy.

  Izzy turned to look. The boys seemed to be a few years older. One of them was pointing at her. They weren’t laughing, exactly, but they were definitely enjoying her new look.

  “See?” Izzy said. “People will notice me now.”

  “Yeah, but not in a good way.” Cookie took a step away from her, as if she didn’t want anyone to know they were friends.

  “You’re wrong!” Izzy said. “I’m definitely pulling off this look.”

  Cookie sighed and gave her a sad smile. “Izzy, I don’t think Lady Gaga could pull off that look.”

  Izzy fumed silently as they walked inside the dark theater. All through the film, her friends leaned against each other, giggling at the movie, or maybe at her—Izzy wasn’t sure. She might as well have been sitting by herself.

  Afterward, as they stood on the sidewalk, waiting for Cookie’s mother to pick them up, Cookie said, “I’ve decided about your hair.”

  “You’ve decided what about my hair?”

  “It was a mistake,” Cookie said. “You should get your mom to take you to a salon, and they’ll get it washed out and even up the cut.”

  “I don’t want to get it washed out,” Izzy said.

  “Well, they’ll laugh at you, then,” Cookie said.

  “Who will?”

  “Everybody.” Cookie would not meet Izzy’s eyes.

  Izzy turned to Pauline. “Will you laugh at me?” she asked.

  Pauline’s mouth drooped at th
e corners. “You know I won’t,” she said. “But, Izzy, I don’t want people to laugh at me either. You know?”

  “Why would they laugh at you? I’m the one who has yellow hair!” Izzy tried to act lighthearted, as if she weren’t bothered at all by her friends’ betrayal, but her voice sounded thin and kind of strangled. She knew exactly what Pauline meant. If you hung around with Big Bird, you must be Snuffleupagus.

  Pauline and Cookie exchanged a look that didn’t include Izzy. Then nobody said anything else the whole way home.

  * * *

  “Izzy Shepherd!” her mother called from the bathroom as she came up the stairs. “Come in here right now!”

  Oh no! She’d forgotten to clean up the dye mess. Slowly she walked down the hall until she stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Her mother was on her knees, bent over the bathtub, a scrub brush in her hand, the shower curtain spread out on the bottom of the tub.

  “Oops,” Izzy said.

  Her mother’s eyes seemed darker than usual, and the look she gave Izzy pierced her skin. “Oops? I think this merits more than an oops! I’ve spent most of my afternoon scrubbing yellow dye off the walls, the floor, and just about every surface in this room.”

  “I’m sorry. I was going to do it this morning, but then I got so mad when everybody made fun of me, I forgot about it.”

  Her mother pushed off the tub and stood up, her knees creaking. “Well, feel free to finish the job. I’ve been at it long enough. I should have made you do the whole thing, but I wanted to try to get the dye off as soon as possible.”

  Izzy knelt down by the tub. The smell of bleach burned her nostrils, but she pushed the scrub brush over the yellow stains as hard as she could. Her mother slumped onto the closed toilet seat.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Izzy,” she said. Before Izzy could defend herself, her mother held up her hand like a stop sign. “I understand you’re at an age where you need to push boundaries, and dyeing your hair is a fairly harmless way to do it—I’m not mad about that. But you’ve been acting very selfishly the past few weeks, and that does bother me.”