Dilemma McNair

Appearances

Ruby's backpack hung from her shoulders as if instead of binders and textbooks, it was filled with rocks. To her they were nearly the same thing anyways. It took her forty-five minutes to walk home, and when she did reach home, the sky was the blue-gray of night in the city. Having never been out of the urban area before, she wondered if the night was really so infinitely black without the light, pollution and light pollution like she had heard about in books and poems. Ruby also wondered if she would really be able to see more than ten stars twinkle in the sky.

She counted how many she could see from the gum-studded and cracked sidewalk that lay dead outside of her house.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. The seemed distant, lonely, and out of place, similar to Ruby. She barely lifted her feet as she ascended the three steps that lead to the front door of her low-lying brick house. Without looking back at the few stars she could see, she walked through the doorway and into the kitchen.

The light that filled the room reminded her of fake butter that doused the popcorn at the closest theatre in town. The scarred tiles on the floor lay flat under the light and the kitchen table was set with a white table cloth. Mother was just bending down to stick a roast chicken from the Stop & Shop into the oven alongside a cookie sheet covered in frozen 'home-fries'. Her hands shook slightly until they released the food and when she stood up, the oven door sprang shut with a hollow whup. Then Mother turned around and a grim frown scratched itself into her cardboard face.

"What do you think you've been doing out so late?" She was using her usual reprimanding tone, the one that Ruby was used to ignoring.

Mother had deep blue eyes that didn't fit with her stringy brown and gray hair, wrinkles permanently at the corners of her mouth that gave the impression of a frown even on the rare occasion of a smile, and red pocks on her forehead from her teenage years of picking at zits. Her eyes travelled up to Ruby's face and widened briefly before they narrowed. "What have you done to your hair?"

"Do you like it?" Any hopes Ruby had of approval disintegrated in the first moments.

"Like It? You've chopped it all off!"

"Yeah." She shrugged.

"You had no right--"

She cut her off but kept her voice steady as if they were having an every day conversation, "I had every right. It's my hair."

"It looks so... masculine." She said the word with vinegar.

Ruby shrugged her shoulders. "Not really." She walked past her mother quickly and down the periwinkle hallway that lead to her bedroom. Her door slammed shut behind her and the latch clicked satisfyingly. She grabbed her phone from her dock, and tapped it so that the screen lit up. She then slammed her forefinger onto the first song in her play list.

Ruby tossed her phone, music blasting, onto her bed and turned to stare into the mirror that stood atop her dresser. Her face shone back in the liquid silver and had a glowing hallow from the reflection of the light behind her. She saw her thin face and tanned skin from her time on the school track team. She had a narrow nose to match her face and dull brown eyes. Her teeth were mostly straight from braces years back in junior high, but they had slid back a bit over the years since she had refused to wear her retainer.

She thought that her new haircut suited her. She liked the way it was closely cropped by her ears and at her neck. She liked the way her new bangs swooped over her forehead. Her head wasn't surrounded by an ominous curtain of stringy hair anymore. Ruby nodded to herself; she didn't have any regrets.

Ruby sat on her bed by her phone. Then she lay down and watched as the clock on her wall steadily went tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick...

Father knocked gently on her door, only to be answered by an increase in the volume of Ruby's music. "Ruby?"

Nothing.

He pulled her door open slowly, "I was unaware that you listened to Pink Floyd."

She shut her eyes as he walked in and sat beside where she lay on her bed. "Your mother has dinner ready."

Nothing.

"Come on honey,"

Ruby pried her eyes open, and stared straight into his eyes. He shifted his gaze to the bangs that flipped up from her eyebrows. She watched the corners of his mouth tighten.

"What do you think of it?" She watched his lips, waiting for them to form words.

"Well... the good thing about hair is that it always grows back." He looked away, "let's not keep your mother waiting."

"Is that all that matters to you?" Her voice felt flat in her throat as she sensed that in general her parents disapproved of her choices. It wouldn't have been a big deal if she hadn't felt like this always happened to her. But Ruby felt like the more dislike she gained for her parents, the more they disliked her in return, which wasn't how parents were supposed to work.

Father said nothing and she focused back on her music. "Father, all in all your just another brick in the wall."

He puzzled the quote over silently and his shoulders dropped as he issued a sigh. His mouth stretched thinner, "Dinner's in the kitchen for whenever you're ready."

Ruby squeezed her eyes shut as Father left. She could hear the clattering of plates and cutlery at their kitchen table drift down the hallway, followed by voices. Mother and Father were close to an argument, but it wasn't anything unusual and it wasn't anything to make Father stick up for her. She always hoped that he would. He was softer than her mother and had more of a heart-- Ruby would almost say that he had a heart if it weren't for the lack of courage that locked everything that could make him himself away.

Mother started, "What do you think?"

Father followed with a safe statement, "It's just hair."

"No, it's not just hair-- it's her appearance. First it's hair, then it's piercings and tattoos and soon enough we'll have a juvenile delinquent on our hands."

"I think if we trust her--"

"God knows what others will think of her-- comments from the kids at school, comments from the parents."

"Bryna, I think--"

"Her manners are disgusting, her attitude is unbelievable, and everywhere I go, she's disobeying me."

Ruby walked slowly to her door and pulled it shut. She knew that what Mother had to say was partially true, but maybe she was rebelling for a reason. And maybe that reason was that she was tired of Mother's constant criticism on everything; of Mother only paying attention to the things she disapproved of. She decided in a split instant that the way best to drown it all out was headphones, so she snatched a pair from her bedside table and jammed them into the headphone jack. She then stuffed the earbuds into her ears.

She tapped on the music icon in her phone. Shuffle. Play. Ignore the world.