Strands That Bind Us

Maya burst into my room with scissors in one hand and a box of midnight blue hair dye in the other. Her eyes were wild, like she'd just run three miles uphill.

"I'm doing it. Tonight. Before my mom gets home tomorrow."

I set down my phone, halfway through a text to Jeremy that I'd been staring at for twenty minutes. "Doing what?"

"Cutting it. All off. And dyeing it blue. Like, actually blue."

Maya's hair fell past her shoulders, this perfect curtain of dark brown that she'd been growing since seventh grade. The same hair that had been in every Instagram post we'd ever taken together. The same hair that made her look like every other girl at Northwood High, which was exactly the problem.

I helped her. Of course I did. We spread garbage bags across my carpet while my parents argued downstairs about the cable bill—again. Something about how we needed to bundle services or whatever boring thing adults stress about.

"First cut," Maya whispered, handing me the scissors. Her hands shook. "If I mess it up, I'll cry."

"You won't cry," I said, though my palms were sweating against the cold metal. "You're literally the bravest person I know."

I snipped. A lock of brown hair fell onto the plastic, and Maya gasped like she hadn't expected it to be real. Then she grinned, this wicked flash of teeth.

"Again. More."

We hacked at it for an hour. By the end, she had this jagged, choppy bob that stuck out at weird angles—honestly, it looked kind of terrible. But when she dyed it and wiped the steam from my bathroom mirror, she didn't look like anyone else. She looked like Maya, but more.

"It's awful, right?" she asked, tilting her head.

"It's perfect," I lied, then told the truth. "It looks like freedom."

We ended up on my bed, exhausted, watching Netflix on my laptop because the cable was still out. She rested her head on my shoulder, her now-blue hair tickling my neck. I thought about how friendship is like hair—sometimes you have to cut away the parts that aren't working, even if it's scary, even if people stare. Sometimes the messy version is the real one.

"Thanks," she whispered. "For being my friend."

I thought about telling her about the text to Jeremy, about how I was scared he wouldn't like the new me, the quiet me. Instead I squeezed her hand.

"Always," I said.

In the morning, her mom would freak. Jeremy would probably leave me on read. But for now, in the blue light of my laptop screen, everything felt possible.