Blue Hair & Friday Night

The bathroom mirror reflected a version of me I barely recognized. Blue. My hair was supposed to be "ocean breeze teal" according to the box, but my hair had decided electric blue disaster was more accurate. Mom was gonna lose it when she got back from her business trip tomorrow.

I heard scratching at the bathroom door. Barnaby—our ancient golden retriever who was more potato than pet these days—wanted attention. Typical. The one time I'm having an actual crisis, my dog decides he needs to be petted NOW.

"Dude, give me a minute," I whispered, cracking the door open. Barnaby waddled in, his tail doing this weak little thump-thump against the doorframe. He looked at my blue hair like, "What did you do now, human?"

My phone buzzed. Jacey's house party started in twenty minutes. The party where I was finally going to talk to Maya—the girl who'd smiled at me in chem lab last week before I'd dropped my beaker and turned bright red. Classic me.

I stared at my reflection again. The blue wasn't terrible. It was just... loud. It screamed "look at me" when I'd spent sixteen years trying to blend into the background. But maybe that was the point. Maybe I was tired of blending.

Barnaby sneezed.

"You're right," I told him. "If I show up looking like this, at least no one can say I'm boring."

I grabbed my hoodie and headed out. When I walked into Jacey's noisy basement, the room actually got quiet for like three seconds. Someone wolf-whistled. I felt my face burning hotter than when I'd spilled hydrochloric acid on my jeans.

Then Maya materialized beside me, her eyes widening.

"Whoa. Your hair."

"Yeah, it's... kind of a disaster," I admitted.

"No," she said, grinning. "It's sick. You look like a total fox."

I blinked. "A... what now?"

"You know. Foxy. Like, in a good way? That came out wrong." She laughed, and the sound was better than any song on my playlist. "I mean, you look confident. I like that."

Barnaby would've approved. He always said I worried too much about what other people thought—mostly by falling asleep in the middle of my anxiety rants.

"Thanks," I said, actually smiling for real. "I'm starting to get that too."