(no subject)
"Hello?"
"Cindy? It's Mom. I'm afraid I've got some bad news, honey."
It could have been worse. Her great-aunt was old, pretty much never seen outside of occasional birthday and Christmas cards, and -- the small, uncharitable spike from junior year that still needles her in the side every so often -- it's not like she was Mac's real great-aunt anyway.
It warrants a trip to Bakersfield regardless, along with two days' leave from class. Mac picks a different outfit this time; on the way up, her parents chide her to rearrange her hair to mask the dyed streaks. There's only the faintest tint of green left by now, like the kind you get after a month of swimming in chlorinated pools, but she sighs and complies.
Part of her thinks it might've been better if she left it the way it was. During the funeral, burial, and wake, she's one of only five brunettes in a sea of blonde. One of the other four sits a few rows in front of her. His hair's cropped short, spiked up, and bleached a bit by the sun.
Irrationally, Mac keeps staring, breath held, and thinking -- thinking --
She doesn't know what she's thinking.
Besides, when he turns in profile to whisper something to the guy next to him, it's easy to see he's at least ten years older than her.
I'm kind of sick of it, she'd said to Behrooz a week ago, and here and now, she leans her head back an inch to study the light fixtures above her great-aunt's coffin. It isn't, she's come to realize, the thinking about it that makes something cold tighten way at the bottom of her stomach. It's that she notices herself thinking about it in the first place, acutely, sharp enough to hurt.
And that almost half a year later, it still hasn't stopped.
Shouldn't it have, by now?
(It's weird, right?)
She avoids the guy anyway, and doesn't even realize she's doing it until accidental eye contact with him across the room makes her start like a scared animal.
The wake ends late: Mac crawls into bed in her uncle's guest room at close to eleven PM. There's twenty minutes after that spent watching the ceiling.
Eventually, though, she falls asleep.
"Cindy? It's Mom. I'm afraid I've got some bad news, honey."
It could have been worse. Her great-aunt was old, pretty much never seen outside of occasional birthday and Christmas cards, and -- the small, uncharitable spike from junior year that still needles her in the side every so often -- it's not like she was Mac's real great-aunt anyway.
It warrants a trip to Bakersfield regardless, along with two days' leave from class. Mac picks a different outfit this time; on the way up, her parents chide her to rearrange her hair to mask the dyed streaks. There's only the faintest tint of green left by now, like the kind you get after a month of swimming in chlorinated pools, but she sighs and complies.
Part of her thinks it might've been better if she left it the way it was. During the funeral, burial, and wake, she's one of only five brunettes in a sea of blonde. One of the other four sits a few rows in front of her. His hair's cropped short, spiked up, and bleached a bit by the sun.
Irrationally, Mac keeps staring, breath held, and thinking -- thinking --
She doesn't know what she's thinking.
Besides, when he turns in profile to whisper something to the guy next to him, it's easy to see he's at least ten years older than her.
I'm kind of sick of it, she'd said to Behrooz a week ago, and here and now, she leans her head back an inch to study the light fixtures above her great-aunt's coffin. It isn't, she's come to realize, the thinking about it that makes something cold tighten way at the bottom of her stomach. It's that she notices herself thinking about it in the first place, acutely, sharp enough to hurt.
And that almost half a year later, it still hasn't stopped.
Shouldn't it have, by now?
(It's weird, right?)
She avoids the guy anyway, and doesn't even realize she's doing it until accidental eye contact with him across the room makes her start like a scared animal.
The wake ends late: Mac crawls into bed in her uncle's guest room at close to eleven PM. There's twenty minutes after that spent watching the ceiling.
Eventually, though, she falls asleep.