This whole recovery program thing started out as a survival tactic — for me to learn how to get by without him, to go about my regular life despite the massive Garrett-shaped hole in my existence. But now I wonder if that isn’t far enough. What if I have no regular life apart from the one I constructed around him? What if the very fabric of me, Sadie Elisabeth Allen, has been molded and shaped so much by who he is that I’m like the plants Mom grows in tubs on the back porch: you plant them next to a taller, stronger structure and they adapt around it, snaking their whole body around the frame until they have no shape of their own, just the outline of something else?
I gulp. I want shape! I need an outline! And just like that, it becomes painfully clear that my simple steps for getting over Garrett don’t go nearly far enough. It’s one thing to survive once he’s gone, but now I need to go further. Much further.
I need to find out who I am without him.
I walk the city streets in a daze a while longer, as those big questions roll around my mind. Finally, Aiko texts to let me know they’re at a café nearby. I go to meet them, finding them tucked in a back booth in a dark dive of a place, LuAnn sipping a cream soda and Aiko attacking a mountain of pie.
“I’m sorry,” I tell them quickly before either can speak. “I was a total brat, and mean, and cruel, and I didn’t mean any of it.”
Aiko smirks. “That’s a pretty comprehensive apology.”
“Well, I was a pretty comprehensive bitch.” I offer up an apologetic smile, but LuAnn is still stony-faced. “I really am sorry,” I tell her, desperate. “You were right, what you said, but I just didn’t want to hear it. It’s kind of hard to admit your entire life is based on a guy.”
I stand there, anxiously awaiting my fate. I didn’t realize it before — how much their friendship means to me — but now that I might have screwed it up for good, I see just how great they’ve been. How much fun I’ve been having, just hanging out. My voice catches in my throat as I think of losing them. “Forgive me?”
LuAnn just lets out a long breath, then nods.
“OK,” she says quietly. She scoots over in the booth to make room for me.
“Come on,” Aiko adds, her mouth full. “Help me out with this pie. I can’t eat all of this alone.”
“Sure, you can.” LuAnn laughs at her. “Remember Thanksgiving?”
Aiko groans. “Don’t! I dreamed about pumpkins for weeks after that. And evil little yams, dancing all over my room.”
I take a fork. “Did you buy any other stuff?”
“Some,” LuAnn answers, managing a glimmer of a smile. “But I hit my spending limit an hour ago, so the city can breathe easy for a while.”
“Maybe not,” I say. She raises an eyebrow. I take a breath, as if preparing myself for battle. And, in a way, I am. “Could you offer your expertise for a good cause?”
She looks at me carefully. “Depends what for.”
“Me,” I tell her firmly. “I want to try that haircut. And some new clothes — and anything else we see. It’s time I figure out who Sadie really is.”
I try vintage dresses and modern hipster looks, preppy pullovers and ’60s-style pencil skirts. Wedges and boots, scarves and bangles, lipstick in a dozen shades, and more types of denim than I even knew existed. Nothing is rejected; no style is judged too extreme. If I’m going to find out what I like outside my Garrett-shaped bubble of a world, then I have to try everything for myself. And I mean, everything. I feel like Columbus setting out for the New World, braving new territories with nothing but a compass and a collapsible telescope. Only instead of discovering foreign lands, I’m navigating a treacherous sea of mirrors and shiny hair appliances, thanks to the tiny salon LuAnn swears is the best in the city.
“And maybe then some soft waves, just around here. What do you say?” Derek, my stylist, asks but before I can even open my mouth, LuAnn jumps in.
“Yes, absolutely. And maybe some color?”
“Streaks. Pink!” Aiko demands, swiveling in a chair to my right.
“No pink,” I tell them, panicked. My reflection stares back at me: wet haired and swathed in blue towels. I begin to have second thoughts. “And are we sure about this?” I venture. “Maybe a haircut is going too far right now. I don’t know if —”
“Trust me, kid,” LuAnn interrupts with a reassuring smile, but for a terrible moment I wonder if this is all just elaborate revenge for our fight earlier. Lull me into a false sense of security with the wardrobe, then scar me for life — well, a few months — with a disaster of a haircut.
I gulp.
“Think about it,” Aiko says, pausing to blow a bubble with her gum. She waits for it to pop before continuing. “A whole fresh start. You’ll look in the mirror every morning and know you did this for you, not him.”
“But that isn’t exactly true.” I try one last excuse. “I mean, I am here because of Garrett, kind of, even if it’s in reverse. So really —”
“Enough!” LuAnn spins my chair back around. “No more excuses. And honestly, kid? This Amélie look is so two thousand and five.”
“She’s right.” Derek meets my eyes in the mirror and gives me a reassuring wink. Well, it would be reassuring if his own hair wasn’t styled in a towering purple Mohawk. “You’ll be fine — I promise.”
Two hours (and a headful of goopy paste that stung so hard I cried a little) later, I emerge from the salon: new, and — I hope — improved.
“Love it!” LuAnn declares, clapping.
“Really?” I reach up and touch it gently, still not used to the soft waves and general bounce of the whole thing. I’m used to battling it for half an hour with a blow-dryer and a straightening iron, but with some magical serum from Derek’s cupboard of wonders, the frizz is miraculously tamed. Throw in the lighter brown dye that caused me such pain, and I feel . . .
Different.
“Different bad or different good?” Aiko asks as we walk to meet Josh at the gig venue.
“I don’t know. . . .” I bite my lip. They insisted I change into that red vintage dress, too, and now every time I catch my reflection in a store window, I have to do a double take. “It’s just . . . so not like me. The me I’ve been, I mean.”
“You’ll get used to it,” LuAnn tells me breezily. But then again, she would be breezy; she’s the one who wears denim farm-girl overalls on regular workdays and manages to look cute and quirky in them, instead of deranged. “There’s a whole world of fashion possibilities out there! You’re just getting started.”