So Yesterday - By Scott Westerfeld Page 0,23

triple mirror, wallowing in the discomfort of seeing what I looked like from unfamiliar directions. Did my ears really stick out like that? Surely that was not my profile. And when had my shirt gotten half tucked in at the back?

Then I noticed what I was wearing. When cool hunting, I usually disappear into corduroys, sportswear, and laundry-day splendor, turning invisible. But this morning I'd unconsciously slipped into my real clothes. Generic corduroy had resolved into baggy black painters, the usual oversized chewing-gum-colored tee replaced by a light gray wife beater under an open black shirt with a collar. No wonder my parents had noticed, somehow reading the signs, resulting in the unexpected psychic leap when Mom had asked whether I liked Jen.

Maybe it was obvious to everyone. Maybe I was trying too hard.

"I think we're all set." Jen appeared behind me, the mirrors splitting her into multiple views, full hangers swinging from one hand. I took them from her, regressing to when Mom used to take me shopping, and equally unsure of the result.

"Are you sure we couldn't just disguise ourselves as waiters or something?"

"Yeah, right. That is so Mission Impossible." (By which she meant the original TV show and not the movie franchise, so I'll allow it.)

She reached up to ruffle my hair, checking out the angles in the mirror, and smiled. "Take one last look, Hunter. By tonight you won't recognize yourself."
Chapter 13
Chapter 13

"THIS IS GOING TO STING," JEN SAID.

It did. Of course it did.

Bleach is acid, the great destroyer. You see, each of your hairs is protected by an outer layer called a cuticle, which holds in the pigment that gives the hair its color. The purpose of bleach is to destroy these cuticles so that all the pigment falls out. It's quick and dirty. Like smashing a bunch of fish tanks to release the fish, it leaves a mess. That's why if you go on to add coloring, a little bit swims down the drain every time you take a shower. Your fish tanks are broken.

I had known all this, but only in theory, because I'd always dyed my hair blacker, not lighter. (I was just adding more fish, not getting rid of the old ones.) So when Jen started daubing toothpaste-consistency acid into my hair, I wasn't prepared.

"That stings!"

"That's what I said."

"Yeah, but... ow."

It felt like many thousands of mosquitoes were visiting my scalp. Like a bald man who'd fallen asleep at the beach. Like my hair was on fire.

"How's that?"

"A lot like... having acid on my head."

"Sorry, but I maxed out the solution strength. We're going for major transformation here. It won't hurt as much next time, you know."

"Next time?"

"Yeah. Your scalp loses a lot of feeling after the first bleach job."

"Great," I said. "I was looking to get rid of some of those extra scalp nerves."

"No pain, no gain."

"I'm feeling the gain."

She covered my head with a piece of aluminum foil - saying helpfully, "This makes it hotter, to strengthen the chemical reaction" - then flipped another chair out and sat down across from me.

We were in Jen's kitchen, which was small but clearly the workplace of a committed cook. Pots and pans hung from the ceiling, clanking lightly in the breeze from an exhaust fan working to remove the smell of hair acid. Two thousand dollars' worth of recently purchased non-Hunter party-wear hung among the pans, still covered in plastic to make sure my next credit card bill wouldn't kill me.

Jen lived here with her older sister, who was trying to break into being a dessert chef. Many of the blackened iron pans suggested the shapes of macaroons and ladyfingers, and there was a series of sifts for refining flour down to invisible dust.

The kitchen was retro or maybe just old. The chair on which I quietly writhed was vintage chrome and vinyl, matching the table's green-and-gold-speckled Formica. The refrigerator was also 1960s era, with a stainless-steel door handle shaped like a giant trigger.

As the acid slowly flayed my scalp, I found myself desperate for distraction.

"Has your sister had this place long?"

"It was my parents' when they first moved in together. We lived here until I was twelve, but they kept it after the Day of Darkness."

"The Day of Darkness?"

"When we moved out to Jersey."

I tried to imagine a whole family living here, and my melting-scalp discomfort was tinged with claustrophobia. Off the kitchen were two other smallish rooms with air-shaft windows. That was the whole place.

"Four people in