The Summer I Cut It All Off

The humidity had my hair sticking to my forehead in ways that felt tragically uncool. I stood in front of the mirror, scissors trembling in my hand, while my phone buzzed with texts about Makayla's party tonight. Everyone was going. Everyone except maybe me, if I showed up with a hack job.

"You're not actually doing that, are you?" My little brother appeared in the doorway, still in his baseball uniform from practice. He smelled like sunscreen and that specific kind of teenage boy confidence I'd been chasing all summer.

"Watch me." I snipped. A chunk fell onto the bathroom tile. Like, a CHUNK.

I didn't cry. I just stared at my reflection, at the uneven mess I'd created, at the person looking back who suddenly felt like both a stranger and the most honest version of herself I'd met in years.

At Makayla's, the air conditioning was broken and someone had set up a palm reading station in the corner because of course they had. Her cousin Kenya claimed she'd learned from a YouTube tutorial and could "literally see your future." I kept my left hand hidden, palm sweating against my denim shorts, because my lifeline was apparently tragic and I didn't need a fifteen-year-old mystic confirming what I already knew.

"You first," someone said, and suddenly I was in the folding chair, palm exposed.

Kenya traced the lines with surprisingly gentle fingers. She frowned. Then smiled. Then laughed.

"What?" I demanded, my stomach doing that thing where it forgets how to organ.

"You're gonna do something crazy," she said. "Something everyone says you shouldn't. But it's gonna be fox energy. Like, smart fox. Not scared fox."

The room went quiet. Then someone else shouted, "Wait, who here plays baseball?" and the moment dissolved into a debate about varsity tryouts.

I touched my uneven hair. My palm still tingled from her tracing. Outside, through the sliding door, I caught movement—a fox darting between the houses, impossibly orange against the suburban darkness, gone before I could point and ruin it by making it real for anyone else.

I took out my phone and snapped a mirror selfie. The worst hair in the history of hair. The most honest thing I'd done all summer.

Posted it with the caption: new era who dis.

The likes started flooding in before I even put my phone down. For the first time in forever, I didn't care about the number. I just felt lighter.