The Look (15 page)

A
s soon as we get home, we rush into the kitchen to tell Mum what we’ve been up to. She takes one look and gives a sudden shriek of her own. Her knees buckle underneath her. Oh, no. I hadn’t thought about this. To have one bald daughter might seem like carelessness, but two …

Dad comes out of the bedroom, where he’s been writing, and turns pale. He goes to Mum to hold her up, glaring at me. He’s shocked by what I’ve done and angry at the effect it’s had on Mum. But already she’s pulling herself together.

“Ava, darling! You look wonderful! Ted, too. Well done. Come and give me a hug.”

She hugs both of us to her, tight. I think it took her a second to work out what had happened, but she’s our mum: A second was all it needed. She sniffs and takes a deep breath.

“I knew this moment would come and I’ve been saving things up. Come into my room. I’ll show you.”

For a minute, I felt more Megamind than warrior princess, but thanks to Mum, the moment has passed. She may be tired and cranky at the moment, but when we really need her to be amazing she summons it up from somewhere.

We follow her into her bedroom, where she pulls a box out from under the bed. It’s an old boot box, from the days when she could afford to buy boots. And in it are silk scarves, folded between layers of tissue paper.

“I used to have quite a collection. I’m sure there are enough for both of you. Why don’t you pick out the ones you like? I don’t want your heads getting cold.”

We sit side by side on the edge of her bed, in front of her dresser, and check ourselves out in her mirror. We pile the scarves wherever we can and try different methods of tying them around our heads.

Ava finds some long turquoise and violet scarves in the softest, most delicate Indian silk, and winds them into a knot to one side of her neck. Their tassels hang past her shoulder. Now she looks more gypsy princess than warrior princess. Mum uses an eyebrow pencil to beef up Ava’s eyebrows. Somehow she’s kept most of her eyelashes, and with a bit of soft eye shadow and some eyeliner, she’s back to Jesse-ready total glamour again.

I try out all sorts of looks, from “the Queen out riding” to “crazy Victorian palm reader.” The key is to look cool and abandoned, not like Grace Kelly on a shopping trip. The scarves feel fabulously smooth and soft against my head, but they slip around and nothing’s quite right. I miss the simple, bold shape I had before. In the end I settle for a couple of Mum’s dangly earrings and nothing else.

Throughout supper, Mum keeps staring at me, and she can’t help looking anxious, bordering on freaked out. I sense she really wants me to go with the scarf option. Dad can hardly look at me at all. I’ve never done anything that my parents didn’t
like before — at least, not that I can remember. But something has changed, and it feels good.

It’s not as if I’m breaking any laws or anything. I’m just being who I am. This is me. I am bold; I am scary; I am strong. I am a rebel and a warrior, like my brave and beautiful sister sitting here beside me. A warrior who
really
likes the cassoulet Mum’s made tonight and can’t get enough of it. Also, two helpings of blackberry-and-apple crumble for dessert.

I am Xena. Deal with it.

After breakfast the next day, I borrow one of Mum’s berets and Dad’s bike, and go for a long ride as far as Richmond Park. It feels exhilarating to be out in the fresh air, surrounded by my favorite greenery, with the wind in my face and the sun on my skin. I could have done this before — Dad wouldn’t have minded — but for some reason it never occurred to me. Apart from cartwheeling on the “beach,” I haven’t had enough exercise recently. Over the last few weeks, life seemed increasingly complicated. Now I can’t believe I ever worried about my fat ankles.

Just as I’m freewheeling down the longest hill, my left hip starts vibrating. I pause and get my phone out of the pocket of my shorts. It’s Ava, sounding wistful.

“Hi, T. You’ve been gone for a while. Is everything OK?”

I tell her about the fresh air feeling and the faintest hint of autumn in the whispering leaves this morning. I love the changing seasons. Even the breeze seems to know that summer is nearly over.

“Jesse just texted,” she says. “I sent him one last night, telling him what we did yesterday, but I didn’t think he’d get it for
ages. He’s in Saint-Tropez, by the way.” Long sigh. Like me, she’s probably imagining the endless selection of ripped-abs, Red-Bikini Babes in Saint-Tropez. “Now he wants to know all about my hair. He knew it would be a big deal.”

“And?”

“And … I’m not sure what to say.”

She sounds back to being timid and nervous, not her old self at all. Also, her old self would have called Louise, not me. Ava and I have been talking more ever since … well, ever since everything that’s happened this summer. But I’ve never known her go out of her way to call me.

“I’ll come home now,” I tell her.

“Except … I liked what you said about the breeze, T. I need to get out, too. Shall I meet you in Wandsworth Park?”

I agree. Wandsworth Park is nothing like Richmond Park, despite the name. One is a glorious expanse of countryside in the city. The other is a little patch of green beside the river, not too far from our flat, where I’ve been practicing photography recently. But it’s much easier for Ava to get to, so I race back there on the bike, as fast as I can.

When I get there fifteen minutes later, panting, she is sitting elegantly on a bench by a long, wide stretch of grass, wearing a simple cotton summer dress, delicate makeup, and one of Mum’s blue silk scarves wound expertly around her head like a turban, with the ends trailing over her shoulder.

“You look wonderful!” I say before I can stop myself, because it might sound corny, but she does.

She smiles and looks embarrassed — but not incredulous, which is a good start.

“What you said that time about the photo for Jesse … can you take one now?” she asks. “While I’m feeling brave enough? It’s easier than trying to explain to him.”

“I’d love to. Except I don’t have the camera on me.” I shrug apologetically.

She looks even more embarrassed. “I do. I brought it with me. Just in case. I know you said that thing about making our room into a studio, but to be honest, I hate our room right now. I hate everything about that flat. Just because … bad associations. You know.”

I do. I hate it, too, a lot of the time. I bet she hates the bathroom the most.

“Outside is good,” I agree. “I’ve been practicing here quite a bit. And Nick — that boy, you probably don’t remember — anyway, this guy, he said that outdoor light is good. Style bloggers use it all the time.”

She grins at me. “I remember Nick,” she says. Then she grins at me some more.

I go pink. I can’t imagine why she’s looking at me like that. He’s just some boy who mentioned interesting types of photography. No big deal. I haven’t heard from him all summer, and I didn’t expect to. What does she mean? I thought we were talking about style bloggers.

“Hand me the camera,” I demand. “I’ll see what I can do.”

If my test shoots have taught me anything, it’s that you rarely get a great picture by just waving the camera around and pressing the button. If Jesse’s going to see Ava at her best, the background has to be right, and I have to capture the best angle of her face, with the most flattering light and shadows, and she
has to be smiling just enough, but not too much, and not doing that stupid thing with her fingernail.

I put myself in Xena mode and explain to Ava how I need her to sit. I wish I could fiddle with depth of field, like Greta did on the pebbly beach, but Ava’s camera isn’t that hi-tech. Instead, I concentrate on getting her in a decent pose and composing the picture so she’s surrounded by green, with the blue of her scarf showing up brightly against it. Certain angles make her face look too round, thanks to the steroid regime, so I avoid those. Others bring out her lovely cheekbones and her pretty nose. It’s looking OK, but it’s only when I do an impression of Vince — “A bit of gold armor and you’re
smokin’
!” — that her face comes alive, her violet eyes sparkle, and I get the shot that will compete with the Red-Bikini Babes.

“There!” I tell her. “What did I tell you?”

She checks the camera screen and pouts. “I look like an egg dressed as a pirate.”

“You do not. Look at your smile.”

“OK. I look like Anne Hathaway doing an impression of an egg dressed as a pirate.”

“That I’ll accept,” I agree, grinning and putting away the camera.

But I notice that she sends the picture to Jesse as soon as she gets home, and that by lunchtime, Mum has it as the new wallpaper on her phone. It shows it pays to think about what you’re doing. It’s not up to Seb standards, I admit, but it’s definitely the best picture I’ve taken so far.

Over lunch, Dad still keeps staring at us, and me in particular. He’s trying to be as enthusiastic about our new appearance as we are, but the effort shows.

“I’ve been doing some research,” he says. “There’s a very good wig shop in Notting Hill, apparently. I’ll book a cab to take you there.”

“I don’t need one,” Ava says. “The hospital will give me one, remember?”

“I do,” Dad says, “but those are pretty basic. Your mum and I — we want you to have something that’s very natural and realistic. I mean, you look great now” — he coughs — “obviously. But your nan … well, when she had chemo … she said a good wig made all the difference. For … public occasions. We can afford it if we’re careful. And, Ted, you’ll need one, too.”

“Sure, Dad,” Ava says obediently. “That’s very kind.”

I realize she’s in keep-the-parents-happy mode. Poor Ava. It’s really tiring, being ill. Then it occurs to me: I may be happy with my bald head at home, but school starts in a few days. Dad may have a point.

So Mum accompanies us to the wig shop and we spend ages in front of the mirror, turning ourselves into different people. It’s great. First, I’m Marilyn Monroe, then Fergie. Ava is Elizabeth Taylor (easy), then Katy Perry, then our old nan. Honestly — our nan. In a shaggy, short, blonde-streaked crop, just like she always used to wear. Creepy.

I fall in love with a short, dark, slinky wig with ruler-straight bangs that makes me look like Louise Brooks from the 1920s. (It’s amazing what you learn from watching the classic movie channel with your sister.) I’d love to get it, but it’s super-obviously
a wig. I know I’m going to have to settle for something that looks vaguely like the bird’s nest. Although when I describe it to the lady in the shop, she seems slightly horrified.

Eventually, Ava goes for something shoulder-length and wavy. It’s called the Scarlett Johansson. Who wouldn’t buy a wig called the Scarlett Johansson? Even so, she puts it in a bag to take it home, rather than wearing it right now.

“It makes my head hot,” she complains.

The woman nods. “A lot of my customers say that. I wish they’d invent them with air-conditioning. You looked great in it, though. You could be a model, you know.”

Ava smiles and catches my eye.

My wig, in the end, is called the Robert Pattinson. Says it all.

“I
t looks as though it’s about to eat a bit of lettuce,” Daisy says pensively.

Fresh back from Germany, she’s come over to hear my news and check out my new hairpiece. On my head, she admits it’s very hard to tell the Pattinson from the real thing. But on my dresser, where it is now, she says it reminds her very much of a long-haired guinea pig.

“I wish you’d put it away.”

“I can put it back on,” I offer. “I need to attach it with wig tape, though, if I’m going to do it properly.”

“No, I like your head like that. It’s very nineties Sinéad O’Connor. She sings this song by Prince called ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’ Have you seen the video? It’s incredible. I’ll have to show you.”

With Daisy, it always comes back to music. In fact, she’s not that interested in most of my modeling stories, apart from the one about the kite tails. She doesn’t actually say “I told you so,” but transmits it in sheer brainwaves. Then she goes on about her dad’s gig in Düsseldorf and how much she missed Marmite. Basically, she’s just glad that things are back to normal.

Except they aren’t, exactly. Not for me. I may look the same — with the R-Patz on, anyway — but I feel different somehow. I have an urge to stride through ancient domains, dominating my kingdom, and there’s no denying the fact that under the R-Patz, I am bald. If anyone finds out, how’s that going to go down at Richmond Academy?

However, I’ve learned one thing from those endless, hopeless castings, and it’s that you just have to hold your head high and keep walking. So, despite my nervousness, when I show up in class on the first day of the fall term, I try to act as if nothing has happened. And the strange thing is — it seems to work. The R-Patz is hot and itchy. But after everything I’ve been through this summer, nobody notices anything at all.

Strangest of all, I have Cally Harvest to thank. It turns out that after a couple of Jell-O shots one evening in Magaluf, she had Dean Daniels’s initials tattooed on the back of her neck. It’s the talk of the class and makes her the center of attention. Dean’s thrilled. Personally, I’m not convinced it was such a great idea. She’s going to need to wear turtlenecks a lot if it doesn’t work out. Or else she’s going to have to be very careful in her choice of future boyfriends.

Soon, we’re back into the swing of the school day. The final period is art, which is the one I’ve been looking forward to. Miss Jenkins is keen to know how we got on with our projects over the summer, and I can’t wait to show her. When it comes to my turn, I unveil all my sketches of shaded fruit with a flourish.

“Really, Ted? Is that it?” she says, with a general lack of appreciation bordering on disappointment.

I look at my bananas, and back at Miss Jenkins, shocked. I also did a glass of water.

“I worked really hard on it!” I protest. And I did. I shaded those bananas for
ages
.

“But did you
think
about it? At all? Which artists inspired you? Oh, Ted — that manga drawing you did of Daisy last year was really good. It captured her softness and her spikiness. I was hoping for something more … original from you.”

I bite my lip. I would so love to be original.

Miss Jenkins sees my lip tremble slightly. She’s not as harsh as her crimson lipstick might suggest.

“Did you do
anything
artistic over the summer?”

Does wobbling up and down in five-inch platforms count as artistic, I wonder? Or having tissue-paper petals stuck to me? Or wearing a jacket made out of kite tails? The thing is, it was always the other people who were artistic. I was just there. And even then I was officially “very nothing.”

“Not really,” I admit. “Except … I took some photos, I suppose, of staircases and stuff. And of my sister.”

Miss Jenkins sighs again. I’m sure she’s about to say something about family photos not counting, but then she pauses, as if she’s just remembered that my big sister is Ava, and that Ava is (a) beautiful and (b) fighting for her life.

“Really?” she asks. “What were those photos about?”

At which point Nathan King, who’s been playing around at the back of the art room, bumps into a table and sends several tubes of poster paint flying. One explodes and covers Melanie Sanders in bright green goo, and she starts screaming hysterically.

“Sorry,” Miss Jenkins groans. “I’m needed.”

What did she mean “about”? I wonder. My pictures were of Ava, so they were “about” her, surely? Except, I realize as I ponder
it, they were more than that: They were “about” how she still looks beautiful, even though she’s changed so much this summer. They were “about” her bravery in facing up to everything the doctors are doing to fight the lymphoma …

And gradually, an idea begins to form. By the end of the class I know exactly what my art project — my new art project — is “about,” and how I need to research it, and how right Miss Jenkins was to spot that all those endless shaded bananas were — I admit it now — a total waste of time.