Big Hair, Big Breasts, Help Us!

The left side of Mara Linton’s wig lifted every time the bathroom fan coughed.

She stood beneath the yellow light, one hand pressed to the crown and the other gripping a hairbrush like a microphone. The wig was enormous, glossy, and dark enough to make her look as if she had been struck by a glamorous thundercloud. Beneath it, the adhesive tugged at her scalp.

“Good morning,” Mara told the mirror.

The mirror offered her a lopsided stranger.

She pressed the hair down. “Good morning.”

This time, the stranger looked almost convincing.

On the counter, beside a tube of mascara and three emergency pins, lay the padded camisole she had bought with money saved from two months of skipping vending-machine snacks. It gave her chest a shape that belonged in the front row of a music video, not in the second-floor hallway of Bellwether High. The outfit was black, fitted, and absolutely determined to make every doorway feel narrower.

Mara slid it on under her sweater and adjusted the straps. The reflection changed. So did the way she held her shoulders.

There. That was the point.

Not becoming someone else. Just becoming the version of herself who did not apologize before entering a room.

She turned sideways, lifted her chin, and practiced walking past the lockers.

The wig shifted.

Mara caught it before it slid over her eyebrow.

“Confident,” she whispered. “Confident people do not panic when their hair migrates.”

From downstairs, her mother called, “Mara! The bus is here!”

Mara looked at the clock.

The bus was not here. The bus was early, which was worse.

She shoved two pins through the wig, grabbed her backpack, and hurried down the stairs. On the third step, her hair brushed the ceiling.

Her mother stood by the front door holding a mug and staring at Mara’s head.

“Is that new?”

“No,” Mara said.

“It has a shine.”

“It’s a healthy shine.”

“It’s taller than you.”

“That’s not the same as unhealthy.”

Her mother’s gaze lowered to the sweater stretched across Mara’s new silhouette. “And the sweater?”

“Also healthy.”

“Mara.”

“I’m late.”

She reached for the door. Her mother caught her sleeve.

“You look - ”

“If you say different, I’m getting on the bus.”

Her mother studied her face, then the wig, then the sweater. “You look determined.”

Mara let out the breath she had been holding. “That works.”

Outside, the morning had sharpened into cold sunlight. The bus groaned at the curb, its folding door snapping open. Mara climbed aboard with one hand on her wig and the other wrapped around her backpack strap.

The driver looked at her in the mirror.

“New hat?”

“Hair,” Mara said.

“Right.”

She moved down the aisle. Her shoulder clipped a seat, her chest-enhancing camisole pressed against the backpack, and the wig made a soft, expensive rustle each time she turned her head. Two freshmen stopped talking as she passed.

Mara kept walking.

Confident.

At school, the hallway was already a river of coats, backpacks, and voices. Lockers slammed like small explosions. Someone’s speaker leaked a tinny pop song near the science wing. The floor had been freshly mopped, and Mara’s shoes squeaked with every other step.

She entered through the side doors and immediately saw three people look at her.

One of them nudged another.

Mara’s fingers rose toward the wig, but she forced them down.

No touching. No checking. No fleeing to the bathroom.

She had made it twelve steps when a voice behind her said, “Is that Mara?”

“No,” someone answered. “That’s Mara’s rich aunt.”

Laughter skipped along the lockers.

Mara kept her gaze on the blue sign above the English corridor. First period. Mr. Vale. Forty-eight minutes of sitting still. Forty-eight minutes of not allowing the left side of her head to become a separate student.

A sophomore near the water fountain turned around too quickly and bumped into her. His eyes dropped to her sweater, then jumped back up.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You’re fine.”

“Wasn’t looking.”

“I noticed.”

His face reddened. The girl beside him whispered something. The whisper became a grin.

Mara walked faster.

By the time she reached her locker, the first rumor had already outrun her. She could feel it moving through the hallway, changing shape with every retelling.

The wig was real hair.

The wig was fake hair.

Mara had joined a band.

Mara was trying out for television.

Mara had gotten “something done.”

She spun the lock too hard and missed the final number.

“Come on,” she muttered.

A folded note appeared beneath the locker beside hers. It skidded across the floor and stopped against her shoe.

Mara stared at it.

Her name was written on the front in purple marker.

She bent to pick it up, but someone else got there first. Tessa Bell, who wore silver eyeliner and had never once looked surprised by anything, held the note between two fingers.

“Fan mail,” Tessa said.

“Give it to me.”

Tessa tilted her head. “Are you going to read it or frame it?”

Mara snatched the paper....