THE GLOVES COME OFF
“I’m not sure.”
“Sheryl, you can’t miss out.”
She shoved a broom in my hand. When I didn’t start sweeping, she made a grand gesture, stepping out of my way. Her gum smacked louder than the music on the radio.
“It’s not going to sweep itself. Don’t tell me you forgot how this works.”
I huffed. I might as well have stepped into a time machine and traveled back to my childhood. There weren’t many job opportunities for the kids of Firefly. Babysitting had been the occupation of choice, but the girls cornered the market.
When Mom told me I’d have to buy my own comics, I nearly fainted. Apparently, the tab at the grocery store had gotten out of control. Determined to keep myself drowningin superheroes, I went from one store to the next, asking if they had any work. Sheers by Sheryl had been my last stop.
“Geez, Sheryl, when was the last time you swept?” I could barely see the floor under all the hair. Either she had been going non-stop since she opened, or Sheryl needed to hire herself another shampoo boy.
She pushed those cat-eye glasses up her nose, making sure I could see the displeasure on her face. “This is why I fired you.”
Sheryl, more than any other person in Firefly, had a rigid exterior, almost as rigid as the perm she had since the 80s. After weeks of scrubbing scalps and prepping customers for her scissors, I noticed things weren’t as they seemed. When Carol came in, only weeks after her husband passed, Sheryl convinced her to try a new look. The boost of confidence had Carol smiling ear-to-ear. When I told her I was heading for college and had to cut my hours back to just weekends, she fired me.
“Did you ever think you’d go off to school only to come back and clean the floors again?” She picked up a can of hairspray and gave her hair a little spritz before giving it a little lift.
I pushed the broom around the two barber chairs. The amount of gray and white hair on the floor reminded me of who usually sat in these chairs, my mom being one of them. The older ladies treated Sheryl as one-part town gossip and one-part therapist with scissors.
“I have nightmares about cleaning hair out of the drains.”
“You and me both.” Sheryl climbed into a chair. I had always wondered who did her hair? Nobody in Firefly had an answer, and that alone made the information worth gold. “I think half of it belongs to Sandra. She’s done found herself a new man, and she wanted to switch it up.”
“Did she shave it all off?”
“Almost!” Sheryl spun the chair around as I swept up the last of the hair. It was enough to make two wigs. The next time I did my laundry, it’d be caught in the lint trap, another thing that haunted my dreams.
“She got one of those pixie cuts. I was skeptical at first, but she’s quite the hot momma now.”
Sandra went to school with my mom. They had been rivals on the cheer squad. Mom still told stories about how Sandra once dropped her during a stunt. That’s what happened when the coach appointed them as co-captains. She clung to that grudge as if it had happened yesterday.
“I would help my favorite shampoo boy in a heartbeat.” It took a moment before I realized she switched topics to the convention. “There’s nothing a crazy old woman with scissors can do at a comic book convention.”
She had a point, but I wasn’t leaving until she joined the cause. We had teenagers volunteering to help keep the event running smoothly. Sheryl would slap me silly if I had her working with a bunch of kids.
“Run the store?”
She raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. I put away the broom and sat in the chair next to her, spinning around in circles. “During the convention, I’m going to be busy. I can’tbe in Legends the whole time. You’re not open on Saturdays. You could help Jon.”
“Jon.” She spoke his name with disdain. If I thought the grudge against my mom was hilarious, I wasn’t sure about the one she held with Jon. When I didn’t ask, she proceeded as if I had.
“He came in here one time for a haircut. He wanted the sides shaved, a little length on the top, nothing unusual.” This was news to me. I didn’t even know Jon spent time in Firefly without me. “I saw the bastard the next day at Walmart, and do you know what he did?”
“You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
She jumped out of the chair. “He shaved his head. If that’s what he wanted, he should have asked. I can only assume he didn’t like his haircut. The audacity of that little whelp.”
Who knew hair choices created such hostility in Sheryl? I remember Jon and his bald phase. He regretted it. Not everybody has the skull to pull it off.
“So, I take it that’s a no.”
Her arms crossed over her chest as she shook her head from side to side. “Oh, I’m in.”
“Huh?”
