Reviews are much appreciated, but not obligatory. I apologize to the eighties; it's not your fault. And I advise you, reader, to enjoy.

- thesunshinekid

Long, Luscious Locks

The eighties produced some really unfortunate things; neon, leg-warmers, neon leg-warmers, that stupid Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about stray felines… and this haircut.

It should never be said that Alice didn't have the best of intentions. I made sure of that before he let her anywhere near the scissors. But her sense of fashion has always been a little… forward, much like her sense of time. I should have expected an outcome like this.

But, what do you know, I guess I'm a sucker for the affections of my scrawny sister, and as it was I didn't exactly have high hopes for that century - or the rest of eternity, for that matter - so I let Alice cut my hair. Who, other than my sister, was going to care?

It turns out that I'm vainer than any self-respecting seventeen-year-old should be. Muddy from a round of football in the rain; no problem. Bad haircut; let's just say that I own stock in baseball cap companies.

The idea seemed pretty smart at the time. A few days before I came down with the flu, my mother had been badgering me about my hair, and how I never seemed to have the time to make it to a barber, always out with my friends doing Lord-Knows-What… and then the unbearable fever that came with the flu only served to make matters worse. My hair was long and stringy and when it rained, I felt like a dog.

I'm not much of a fan of dogs.

And, of course, it rains a lot; Carlisle makes sure of that. At our last school, I can promise you that we were the only students that didn't spend spring break in Cancun.

So, if it came out bad… I could always wear a hat. Shopping for hats might make Alice even happier than actually giving me a haircut.

And it came out… less than satisfactory. I wanted a nice, straight-up haircut; even, and neat, and looking more like an English prince than a disk jockey on speed. However, Alice was into bright pink and Blondie and just wanted her brother to look a little less like a hippie and a little more like a teenager.

So, I didn't blame Alice. It wasn't her fault that Emmett distracted her. She was trying, genuinely, to find a nice hybrid between my conservative tastes in fashion and her more exuberant ones. But Emmett had just become the new King of PacMan and we had to hear all about it. Loudly, and rather suddenly.

So, a simple snip turned into more of a sideways, jaunty snap. It even broke the scissors.

I contemplated taking Emmett down, but I had too much pride to get into a fight over my own vanity, and Esme had spent too much time cleaning the floors the previous day for it to end well. Instead I settled for a glare, the strength of a light-saber in a heated duel.

Return of the Jedi had only come out last week.

Alice had contemplated starting over again and giving me a buzz cut, but I cut that thought off before it was even finished. There are certain directions you don't go with Alice; the military look is one of them. If I didn't like my hair now, I would hate it then.

The only recourse was to continue as we were going, off-kilter snip by off-kilter snip.

OOOOO

My hair was a bit like a nuclear war zone. For twenty years I tried to remain positive about it, tried to avoid mirrors (if only vampires truly did have no reflection), for Alice's sorry sake if anything else. Though she'd never overtly thought about it - at least not within reach of my eavesdropping brain - I was sure that she didn't mind being the only one with a bad haircut anymore.

I ran my hands through my stubborn hair, and tossed the useless bottle of gel into the sink. More than twenty years of science, and still nothing I could do with the mop. I'd even spent two entire years wearing a hat, until we'd moved from Boston to upstate New York, and my Red Sox cap wasn't going to help me blend in - and try as I might, I could not support the Yankees.

Esme once suggested, in an awkward, sort-of joking manner, that the girls would fall for me more easily with the "cute new 'do." I'm rather glad to be the only one who can hear other people's thoughts; Esme would have been none-too-pleased with the vitriol churning through my mind at her intimation. More female attention was the last thing I needed. Particularly attention from females for whom looks mattered; those thoughts I found the most odious to hear.

I trudged from the bathroom and whipped up my backpack from where it lay on the couch - the wind from which would muss up my already mussed hair, no doubt. Not like it would matter; the morons of Forks High had learned long ago it wasn't worth it to look at the Cullen family - much less my mane. It was January anyway, which meant there were more interesting things going on. Ski trips to plan for, Winter Ball to gossip about, and there was a new girl in town; there'd be plenty else for those children to look at, instead of the unseemly rag on this head.

I met my brothers and sisters at my car, recently washed and detailed thanks to Rosalie's not-so-unfortunate loss in last week's monster game of Monopoly. The drive to school was peaceful, my siblings thankfully quiet.

But, pulling out onto the highway, I couldn't avoid a glance into the rear view mirror. Stupid hair.

OOOOO

I ran my left hand through my hair, grabbing fistfuls and yanking them forward. The pain… I'd never been so thankful for pain.

Anything to keep me from thinking about her.

To keep me from turning the car around.

My uncooperative hair had turned out to be the least of my worries today.