Shattered Appearances ✓

t w e n t y - n i n e: Bald Girls Wear It Best

The drive from the pier to our house took about half an hour (during which Giselle realized that we never brought her her ice cream and we had to go to an ice cream shop.)

"You're lucky I felt bad about the ice cream or else we would've gone straight home."

"Yeah whatever." Replied Giselle as she licked her pistachio ice cream.

It then took another fifteen minutes before we finally arrived home. By then I was exhausted and decided to go to bed.

I opened the door to our house, and Giselle rushed past me to go to the bathroom, leaving her cone behind. Setting my keys down on the table I was about to go to my room when I was Monica reading on the couch.

"You guys arrived from Stephanie's chemo appointment?" I asked her.

"We got back around an hour ago. Steph's went straight to bed since she was so tired. She might be sleeping but you can go to her room if you want." She replied.

"Thanks."

I decided to take a small detour and go straight to Stephanie's room. I needed to apologize. Well not apologize necessarily because I did nothing wrong, but at least be there for her now. Whatever that meant. I wasn't good with emotions.

I knocked on the door twice slowly to no response. Waiting a moment longer, I opened the door to see Stephanie fully awake. She was wearing a bandana on her hair and was facing the mirror. She was clutching something tightly in her hand but I couldn't make out what it was.

"Steph?"

"Go away." Was the only thing she said.

"Are you okay?" That was a stupid question. She obviously wasn't okay. That's like asking a smart person if they were smart.

It was then that she turned to me and said, "Did you not hear what I said? I said to get the hell away from here."

Actually she said something else but I decided to keep my mouth shut. I wouldn't want to make the situation worse.

"I just want to know what's wrong." I said in the most soothing voice I could muster. Seeing that I wouldn't leave she headed to the door. Finally being able to see her closer, I noticed that she had a tear strain face. Looking down at her hand I realized that she was holding a lock of hair.

Her hair.

"What's wrong is that I'm going to be bald, dumbass." She violently shut the door in my face. I stayed put for a while and I could hear the faint sounds of crying.

I was just going to ignore the fact that this is the second time I've been called a dumbass in a day. I remembered when Stephanie was just starting her chemo, only a mere few weeks ago, she said that one of her biggest fears was losing her hair. Although I didn't understand what it was like going through that, I did remember when my mother was going through chemo. She got noticeably weaker and started losing her hair in between her second cycle. She never decided to cut it off but she wore extensions to cover up the bald spots.

I could either knock on her door again and risk another violent response or leave her alone. It was a rather difficult decision to make because both would lead to undesired effects. It was then that an idea came into my mind.

Sitting down in front of the door I said, "You aren't alone. My mother had cancer too. It was stage three colon cancer that later developed into stage four. Around a couple months into her treatments she started losing her hair too but she wasn't self conscious about it. There are so many options. You could shave it off, or get extensions like she did. It'll grow back once the treatment is over. This is not permanent."