A/N: Sorry there was no update yesterday, I had NO time. Also, am I writing fic when I should be studying? Yes. Yes I am. I have no regrets. Short, one-shot-ish chapter, which is kidn of how this fic will be organized. It's just the nature of the story, sorry.
Three hundred and seventy four
On the day she's going to have her hair cut, Rachel sits and brushes it for hours. She ties it up in various combinations, primps it with every product she owns. It's such a small thing, really, her hair. Just cells on her head, but it feels so important. It feels like she's losing her dignity. She runs the brush through it over and over again, twirling the strands around her fingers. Her back begins to ache from the effort of sitting on the stool facing her dresser for so long.
Rachel examines herself for a moment, taking in the way she looks, the brush poised in her hand and the perfect glance of innocence in her eyes.
She sighs, putting down the brush on her dressing table, feeling frustrated.
Her hands reach for the scissors. She holds them between her fingers like a toy, twirling them in interest. They glimmer in the light coming through her window and she runs her fingers across the blunt outer edge. Then, on impulse, Rachel snaps them open, hacking at the side of her hair. It falls to the floor in pieces; gradually, bit by bit dislodging itself from her hair. Rachel is dissapointed; she expected something more dramatic. The drop of her hair like a gossamer sheet to her floor, but instead it's this jagged mess that lies like knives in wait. It takes her some time to make sure it's all gone from her head, she has to pull at it to dislodge it all.
When she's done, she stares in the mirror at herself. She looks stupid; her hair's uneven. She cut it from the side, so all she has is a jagged line across what was a perfect sheet. She stares in her own eyes. She barely feels like herself anymore.
So she'd got what she intended.
An alien in her own skin, Rachel sticks her tounge out as she tries to neaten up her handiwork. It has no effect. Rachel is a girl of many talents, but hairdressing is not one of them. She gives up, eventually. She still goes to the hairdresser to get the rest cut off. It wasn't really about that, anyway. It was just the matter of doing it on her own terms.
Her dads understand, when they see her. They understand everything. Sometimes Rachel feels like she lives in a house full of therapists. They're too understanding, they know all too well what she's going through, they put everything down to her stress and inner turmoil and the difficulties of facing the realities of cancer diagnosis.
Rachel feels like she's not a teenager anymore, but a child. The same kind of child who sat on a parent's lap was read stories to. The kind of child who is told what to do; who doesn't make their own decisions. Who people talk about as if she is not there, and that's the worst part. She's tired of people making remarks about her behaviour while she's standing in the room, and she can only imagine what it must be like when she's not there.
Her dads have always lived everything through books and films and musicals. Sometimes Rachel wonders if that left them able to deal with the real world. Because she's got no fanfare, no revelation. She's just a girl who's got her chances on the line.