by himself, in one trip. But he was a guy, and he was kind of a minimalist anyway. They thought my stuff was bad, but Lottie had all those books.
“Can’t we just…not and say we did?” Will said as we consumed the cupcakes Audrey had brought over for the party.
“Look, if we could just Portkey the stuff here, I would totally do that, but we can’t,” Lottie said.
“Wish we could,” Audrey said. “It would make things so much easier.”
Stryker swiped some frosting off his cupcake and held it out to me. I licked it off and someone made a disgusted sound. Oh, like they hadn’t all done it already.
“There’s another part of this little surprise,” Trish said, getting up from Max’s lap. “Stryker mentioned your wish to change your hair up, so I brought some supplies.” She grabbed her backpack and dumped it out on the coffee table. Bottles and combs and other things fell out.
“You ready to be pink?” I picked up the box that had a smiling girl with brilliant pink hair on the front. Well, I wasn’t ready to be that pink, but a few streaks were definitely doable.
“Um, you sure you know what you’re doing?” I said.
“Who do you think does my hair, and his?” She pointed to Stryker. “I’ve been doing it for years, and I haven’t messed up yet.”
“There was that one time…” Stryker said.
She glared at him. “Okay once, I messed up once.”
“What happened?” Max said.
Trish looked at the ceiling. “I may have made Stryker’s hair the color of snot.”
“I think it was more dirty canary. Either way, it was pretty bad,” Stryker said, shuddering. “Never again.”
“But that’s not going to happen to you. So, are you ready?” She took the box from me and grinned.
“Guess so,” I said, even though it was kind of a lie. No time like now.
I’d only ever had highlights done, so doing the pink was a whole different thing. First Trish had to bleach the pieces that I wanted, which made my eyes burn, and then she had to put the color on. There was a lot of waiting, and holding still, and people staring at me, and more waiting for the end results. I opted for a few streaks in the front, and then a few more here and there throughout. Trish seemed to know what she was doing, so I trusted her enough to take charge.
She wouldn’t let me see anything until she’d washed the dye out in Stryker’s sink and blow-dried my entire head. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d flat-ironed it. I’d sort of stopped doing a lot of that stuff. I also hadn’t been tanning in forever. I used to go like clockwork, but it seemed like both a stupid and dangerous waste of money now.
“You’re done, gorgeous,” Trish said, turning me around.
“Let us see!” Lottie said, banging on the bathroom door.
“Well, it’s…” I said, searching for the right word.
“Pink,” Trish finished for me.
The girl looking back at me from the mirror looked…older? More…in charge? I tucked one of the streaks behind my ear and smiled. It was pink and it was awesome.
“My mom is going to freak.” This couldn’t be any worse than Kayla’s tattoo. At least this wasn’t permanent.
Lottie banged on the door again.
“I’m coming out,” I said, looking once more in the mirror. There was something missing. I quickly fished in my bag for my glasses, after popping out my contacts. I always kept extra solution at Stryker’s because he liked the glasses better than my contacts.
“Genius,” Trish said when I put my glasses on. “It’s like in those movies where the girl takes off her glasses and all of a sudden she’s super hot. Only you’re the opposite of that.”
“Right,” I said, trying to figure out if that was a compliment or an insult and deciding it was a compliment.
There was another bang on the door, so I took a deep breath, opened the door dramatically and struck a pose.
“Tada!” I was met with a round of applause and a kiss from Stryker.
“Hey, Pinky. You look amazing.”
“Thanks.”
Everyone said how good it looked and touched it and oohhhed and ahhhed. Even if it looked like crap, they probably would have done so with as much enthusiasm. They were also all starving, and would have done anything to hurry up the process so they could all go eat.
“Shoot. I think I left my phone back at the dorm,” I said, after searching for it in my purse and my