The fur coat's first march

Turn 20 of 51

Tall and slender, the girl appears to be in her early 20's, with a buzzed skull, accented by pastel blue bettie bangs and pastel blue long side pieces that cascade past her jawline, culminating in a pastel blue nape tail. Her skin is fair and unadorned, devoid of makeup or jewelry. She wears an oversized black cardigan with safety pins through the collar, paired with black skinny jeans that hug her legs, and black emo lug boots featuring buckles that add a touch of edge to her look. The transformation is striking, a complete departure from her previous polished appearance.

ask lizzie to give you a chelsea cut with bangs, long side pieces and at the nape dyed blue. the rest of your hair buzzed like hers. she agrees and starts working. you close your eyes and allow her to work. after 30 miuntes, she tells you to open your eyes and see the chelsea cut. you have bettie bangs now and long side pieces. both dyed blue. you have some long hair at the nape dyed blue.

You don't just accept the cut. You name it. 'Give me a chelsea,' you say, meeting Lizzie's eyes in the mirror. 'Bangs. Long side pieces. Buzz the rest like yours. And the nape — leave some length back there, and dye it blue. All of it blue.'

Lizzie stops with the scissors half-raised, and something like delight crosses her face, quick and unguarded. 'Okay, comrade,' she says. 'Okay. Sit back.'

You close your eyes and let her work. The clippers come out of a pouch you never noticed her carrying, and the first pass goes up the back of your skull with a sound like a hive waking. It should be terrifying. It isn't. Each pass of the clippers takes another stripe of the pale gold and lays it down on the newspaper, and your head in Lizzie's hands feels like a country being redrawn — borders you never chose, erased. She talks while she works, low, about nothing: the diner waitress, the bail fund number, a girl in the Circle who regrew hers out once and regretted it. You answer in single words, eyes closed, hands loose in your lap, surrendering the last expensive thing about you one inch at a time.

There are stops and starts. The buzz guard changes. Cold clippers against your nape. The snip of scissors at your temples, slower and more careful, bangs being carved out over your brow in blunt Bettie lines. Then the smell of bleach, sharp and chemical, then a colder, stranger smell, and something blue and viscous being combed through with your head tipped back over the sink in the hall bathroom, Lizzie's gloves on your scalp, the dye seeping warm. She wraps it, sets the timer on her phone, and stands guard over you like it's a ritual with an officiant.

'Open,' she says, thirty minutes later, and turns the chair.

The girl in the mirror has a shaved skull, hard and bare like Lizzie's, framing what's left: blunt blue bangs straight across the brow, two long blue side pieces hanging past the jaw, and a tail of blue at the nape, brushing the cardigan's collar. The eyes above the bangs are the only thing left from the old photographs, and even they look different under a fringe like that — harder, hooded, watching. You tilt your head and the side pieces swing, blue as ink, and the girl in the mirror tilts with you, and you like her. You like her the way you've never liked the gold-haired one.

Lizzie sweeps the towel off your shoulders and looks at the hair on the floor, a pale gold heap like something harvested. 'Last of it,' she says, and kicks the newspaper corners up around it. 'Now there's nothing left of before.' She says it like a kindness. In the mirror the two of you stand almost matching — buzzed, dyed, black-clothed — and you understand that Cleo is going to see this tomorrow, and that Cleo will know exactly what it cost and exactly what it means.