“At you?”
She didn’t answer.
I sat beside her.
“Tess, please.”
For several seconds, she just stared at her hands.
Then she slowly reached up, loosened the strings, and pushed the hood back.
I actually stopped breathing.
Her hair was gone.
Not cut to her shoulders.
Not even cut into a bob.
The hair that had hung past her hips the night before had been chopped into a short pixie cutaround her ears.
It wasn’t perfectly even either. Some pieces were slightly shorter than others, as if the stylist had been working with very little room.
“Oh my God.”
Tessa looked away.
“What happened?”
“Mom—”
“Who did this?”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Please don’t freak out.”
“Tessa, you cried last year because I trimmed too much off one side. You wouldn’t even let me take an inch. Now all of it is gone.”
She wiped her face with her sleeve.
