Page 1 of A Not-So Holiday Paradise
One
Molly
Once upon a time,many moons ago, I tried to dye my hair purple—“tried” being the operative word.
I was not particularly beauty-savvy. I was not particularly good with a curling iron or a straightening iron or anything else. And I guess I was not particularly smart, either, because none of these things crossed my mind at the time.
What you need to understand, in order to get the full scope of this fiasco, is that my hair has a mind of its own. It’s a bright, vivid orange, a stark contrast against my pale, freckled skin. It can never decide if it wants to be curly or wavy, and so it usually goes with a little of both: wavy on the sides, curly in the back, and happy to misbehave at any time. It’s taken a while, but I’ve made my peace with that now. I’ve even learned how to tame the beast, as it were, with the right conditioner and anti-frizz serum.
But in high school? Well, no peace had been made, and no beast had been tamed. The beast still very much ran wild, and I had not the slightest clue what to do with it. Which was why, my sophomore year, I believed—Igenuinely believed—that purple hair was the right move for me.
Purple. Hair.
I blame it on Pinterest, honestly. It was showing me all these pictures of girls with beautiful lilac hair, and Iwantedit. I wanted long, shiny hair in the palest of lavenders. I was going to be edgy yet elegant, an ethereal Fae queen gracing the halls of Logan High.
There’s nothing edgy, elegant, or ethereal about me—nothing about my yellow backpack and white Keds that screamed “fairy goddess.” There wasn’t then, and there isn’t now. I don’t know why I thought that was the case.
And to be fair, maybe it would have worked out if I had gone to a salon. I’m inclined to think it would have gone badly no matter where I went, but hey—who knows. It’s a moot point either way, because I didn’t go to a salon. I went to my parents’ bathtub. Just me, a canister of purple Kool-Aid, and a whole lot of unearned confidence that this was going to work.
It did not work.
It was a disaster. A complete disaster, and I walked around for the next two months looking like a dumpster fire of a human being, with reddish-purplish-brownish streaks in my already conspicuous hair—not to mention a halo of purple around my hairline, because I forgot to protect my skin from the Kool-Aid dye. It was my most humiliating look to date—
Until now.
Because this?
This might be worse. Go ahead and call me a drama queen if you want, but in roughly one hour I’m going to see Beckett Donovan for the first time in years, and my face is covered in splotchy, pink hives.
I look like a red Congo pufferfish,Tetraodon miurus,swollen and grouchy. Only unlike the puffer, who likes to wallow in the sand and ambush unsuspecting prey, I would very much like to wallow in bed and ambush my unsuspecting Netflix queue.
“Whoa,” comes a voice from behind me, and I jump, whirling around. My older brother, Wes, is standing in the doorway of my ocean liner cabin, looking both amused and concerned. “What happened to you?”
I groan, covering the lower half of my face with my hands and throwing myself onto the little bed tucked against the cabin wall. “I tried some of the fresh tropical fruits at the breakfast buffet, but I think I’m allergic,” I say.
“You’redefinitelyallergic,” he says, inviting himself inside. The cruise ship we’re on is pretty big, but my room is not, and Wes only has to take three steps before he reaches the bed. “How’s your airway? Your tongue? Let me see,” he says, sitting down and moving into nurse mode. “Move your hands.”
“No,” I grumble, covering my face more intently. “I can breathe just fine. I’m staying like this forever.”
Wes rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he says. He tugs at my hands, and I reluctantly let them fall away, exposing the rest of my face to him.
“Is it terrible?” I say, my voice little more than a whisper. Maybe I was overreacting before, or maybe it was just the lighting. Maybe it’s notthatbad—
“Oh, yeah,” he says with a snort of laughter. “It’s bad. Like the girl in the Willy Wonka movie? The one who turned into a blueberry? Only you’re turning into a strawberry—”
“Wes!” I wail, giving him a solidthwackon the arm. “What am I supposed to do?”
Wes’s eyes soften as he ruffles my hair, like I’m a child instead of a twenty-four-year-old woman. “Calm down, Moll,” he says. “I’m just teasing. We can run down to the infirmary and see if they’ve got some prednisone.”
“We could, except we need to meet Mom and Dad,” I point out, looking at the small digital clock on the bedside table. “Like…five minutes ago, we needed to meet them. And Beckett is gonna be waiting for us when we get off. We don’t have time.”
Wes doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about this as I am, and I don’t appreciate it one bit. If he could show even a fraction of the panic I’m currently experiencing, that would be nice. But all he does is shrug. “You can wait for the hives to go away on their own, or I can call everyone and tell them you need a minute.”
I swallow, peeking hopefully up at him. “You think that would be okay?”
I know my parents are really looking forward to this port excursion, and I don’t want to stand in the way of anything. They’ve been planning this Christmas cruise for the last year; my mom grew up in California, and she hates the winter. So my dad’s Christmas present for her last year was a cruise this year over the holidays. And while I do love looking out the window on Christmas morning to see snow, I also won’t be mad about singing “Jingle Bells” while reading a book on deck.
“Yeah, it will be fine,” Wes says, waving my concerns away. “Go down to the infirmary. I’ll call Mom and Beckett and explain.”
