MINE

~1~

It all started with an invite from a friend, or to be more specific, my collage dorm roommate. Mary-Allen is the total package of the girl next door. She looks a lot like Meg Ryan in the movie 'You've got mail'.

"Come. Please!"
"No..."
"Please, Cooper. It will only be about 30 of us at the lake house. Please, please, please....." she gives me her best puppy dog eyes and starts to get on her knees.
"Please. I will need a lift back to town. The party will end before 12. And even if it doesn't, we will leave before 12. Please..... I promise."
"Fine. You can just stay with me and Aunt Celia over the weekend."
"Yeah! You're the best roommate ever!" She starts jumping up and down and starts hugging me.
"Remember that it is Halloween and I am going up on Friday morning to help set up for the party."
I roll my eyes at her and get poked in the ribs for my effort.

"Cooper, how about you go with something different than last year?"
"What? What was wrong with last year's costume?"
"Nothing! It was great. Really, really great."
I look her straight in the eye with the most straight face I can pull off.
"One really would have been more than enough."
She blushes and tried not to look me in the eye.
"It's just that, uh.....I don't think the pink worked so well with your hair..."

My eyes begin to twinkle and then the corners of my mouth start to rise. You see, my father had a sense of humor and being a red head himself, he just knew that I was going to be one myself. So he called me Cooper. He wasn't totally wrong. My hair looks like burning copper in the sun.

Here is the kicker. My name is Cooper Burns. You get the irony in that, right? As if that was not all, my hair curl on its own a cord. It will be waves now and then almost locks the next minute. It was the worst when I was younger and I decided to have short hair. Sometimes it was beautiful short waves and the next moment, I looked like a poodle.

Dad made it bearable. He showed me pictures of him when he was a little boy and he had the same thing with his own hair.
He used to say that hair as magical as ours, can out shine the rest. That I find funny now, for I have never seen my hair not shine, even in the worst hair days ever.
So, yeah. I see where Mary-Allen comes from. Pink, and a pail pink at that, does not go with my hair.

I start to laugh and shake my head. "I know. It was the only fairy costume that the shop had left. The green was all out. I had a wand. Remember the invite said: 'No wand, no entrance to be granted.'"
She rolls her eyes at me and says, "Yes, I remember. I hoped you would have gotten a Hogwarts costume and came as Hermione Granger. Not as something that repelled most of the party goers."
"Yes, I know. I promise you that I will be a good friend to you and come to this party wearing something more to your liking and a bit of mine."
"Promise?"
"Pinky promise. "