Orange Hair Don't Care

I'd been running away from my old self for weeks, ever since my mom cut my hair too short over summer break. Now I looked like a twelve-year-old boy instead of a sixteen-year-old girl. My friend Maya dared me to fix it.

So I bought an orange box dye. Tangerine Dream, the label read. Three AM, bleary-eyed and functioning on pure zombie-mode from finals week, I went to work.

The result wasn't exactly tangerine. It was more like radioactive traffic cone.

I spent the whole weekend wearing a beanie hat pulled down to my eyebrows. But Monday came anyway, and I had to face the music.

My hair was basically a neon sign shouting LOOK AT ME. I wanted to disappear.

But then something weird happened in third period. Jordan, the guy who'd never given me the time of day, actually noticed me. "Love the hair," he said, and my face matched the orange perfectly.

Maya cracked up. "You're not invisible anymore, that's for sure."

I hadn't been running toward popularity—I'd just been trying not to look like myself anymore. But sometimes the most embarrassing moments become the ones that finally let people see you.

I stopped wearing the hat on Tuesday. By Friday, I'd owned it. The orange hair wasn't who I wanted to be, but it forced me to stop hiding.

And Jordan? He asked for my number. Turns out, glowing in the dark isn't the worst thing that could happen.