"Ready to go?" Leelee asked, grinning.
"Yeah," Lindsey answered, standing up and grabbing her purse off the floor.
"You keep a close eye on her," Gohan said in a low voice to Catie. They both cast concerned glances at Lindsey as she slipped on her flip-flops.
The girls walked out into the warm sunlight. They all piled into the black Hummer Yorgi had purchased for Catie and headed to Columbia. They were going to have Lindsey's cast removed and then to get her hair fixed. Instead of improving as everyone had hoped, Lindsey was becoming more and more jumpy, even reluctant to touch Gohan.
When they finally arrived at the salon, after removing the cast (Lindsey had scratched her arm until it was red, proclaiming that casts were the most miserable things in the world), Lindsey flopped into the seat as the stylist stood looking at her hair.
"So what do you want exactly?" the young hair stylist asked. She was a tiny thing, with spiky pink hair and a nose ring.
"I want my hair back," Lindsey said miserably, staring at her reflection. Little did the girls know, but Lindsey had been avoiding mirrors ever since she left the hospital.
"I don't know that it's long enough to do extensions," the girl said, pulling up pieces of the short red hair between her index and middle fingers. "And we only do weft extensions here. Do you know what that is?"
Lindsey shook her head.
"What we do is we braid your hair really tight to your head, like cornrows and then we have this long strip that the hair is attached to and we sew that to the braid. But I'm afraid that would tear up what little bit of hair you have."
Lindsey sighed. "So what do I do? Shave it and buy a wig?"
"That's an option," the stylist said. "Or you can just go with it." When she saw the look on Lindsey's face, she said, "Or, I think I could do dreadlocks."
"Dreadlocks?" Lindsey asked, scrunching up her nose. "I don't think so."
"Now, don't knock it. I've got an awesome idea for dreads – not big, fat ones, but like, skinny, sleek, sexy ones. I have some hair to work with so we could give you real long ones, if you want. But I don't have any that match your hair. I have fire-engine red, but not natural red."
"What do you girls think?"
"Sounds kind'a neat," Catie admitted.
"Lindsey, you should do, like, black but put in a few with the bright red," Sabriena said. "That would be kick-ass."
"That would be cool," Leelee agreed.
"Can we do that?" Lindsey asked.
"Sure," the stylist nodded. "Let me go get the stuff and we'll get started."
"How's she doing?" Krillin asked Gohan.
Gohan sighed. "Okay, I guess. She's just not the same anymore."
"Well, honey, she was tortured in that cellar. You saw the shape she was in when they found her," Chichi said. "Just be patient. She'll come around. Just give her support and be there for her."
"I am," Gohan said. "But I still want to get a hold of those guys."
"That's out of your hands now, Gohan," Piccolo told him in a warning sort of way.
Bulma nodded in agreement. "You have to trust the police now."
Gohan snorted. "Since when do we leave matters to the police? We've never stood aside before!"
"These are regular humans, Gohan," Goku reminded his son. "This isn't Cell or some other super-being trying to take over the world."
Gohan crossed his arms over his chest and sat back in the couch, looking murderous.
"I just don't understand," Tien said. "Why would someone do something like that? She's a sweet kid, I don't get it."
"Me either," Yamcha added. "Everyone I've ever met likes Lindsey."
"She obviously hasn't had proper training," Vegeta said, looking sternly at Goku.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Goku asked.
"You notice none of my brats are in a bad way right now," Vegeta said. "I made sure they know how to defend themselves."
"Hey, Lindsey has powers as well, you know," Goku replied. "She could have used them."
"Then why didn't she?"
Goku paused and thought a minute. "Good question." He looked at Gohan and waited for an answer.
Gohan shook his head. "I don't know. We don't talk about it."
"Well, how is she supposed to get over it if she doesn't talk about it?" Bulma asked.
"I don't want to bring it up," Gohan said. "If she wants to talk about it, she'll bring it up. It's not my place. Personally, I'd rather just move on with our lives and act like none of this ever happened."
"That's not going to fix anything," Eighteen said, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, putting her daughter's hair in pigtails.
"I'm with Gohan," Trunks said. "If it were Catie in that situation, I wouldn't talk about it either."
Krillin shook his head. "It's a bad situation no matter how you look at it. I'm not sorry it's not me. I wouldn't know what to do."
They all sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
"So are you going ahead with the wedding?" Chichi asked.
"Of course we are," Gohan said defensively.
"I didn't mean it like that," Chichi explained. "I meant have you all talked any more about a date or anything?"
"We don't talk about much of anything," Gohan admitted. "We just kind'a . . . sit. Talk about small stuff, but nothing like that."
"I think they're back," Goku said, turning and looking out the curtain as the large, black SUV pulled in the drive.
"Oh, I hope they were able to fix her hair," Chichi said.
"Oh . . . my . . . god . . ." Seventeen said as he looked out the curtain.
"What?" Gohan demanded
"Someone has green hair," he said in disbelief.
"No," Trunks breathed. "They didn't."
"Oh," Seventeen said, turning back to the room. "They did."
The group of girls stumbled into the house, giggling like mad and clutching shopping bags in their hands.
Gohan about fell over when he saw the flash of green, but began snickering when he realized it was Catie.
She marched up to Trunks in a runway-model type of prance and asked, "Do you like it?"
"I – uh, well . . ." Trunks stammered.
"GOTCHA!" Catie screamed and yanked the green wig off her head.
Trunks heaved a sigh of relief as Catie's true, long, golden-brown hair fell down to its rightful place.
"Where's Linds . . ." Gohan's voice trailed off as he spun around and came face-to-face with his fiancée.
Lindsey stood there, her shoulders hunched forward (as was now the norm for her), her face framed in pencil thin, fire-engine red, dreadlocks. The rest of her hair had been slicked back tight on her skull into what could only be called an extremely fat, black ponytail. From this ponytail fell more pencil-thin dreadlocks that where long enough to fall to her bra line. Here and there was another red dreadlock in the mix. It gave her a very out-of-character punk rock look.
"Um, wow," Gohan said.
"You hate it," Lindsey muttered to the floor.
"No, no, don't be silly! I like it! It's just, you know, different!" Gohan grinned.
Lindsey shrugged. "Whatever."
"What's wrong?" Gohan asked.
"Nothin'," Lindsey answered. "I'm okay. I'm just tired. I sat in that chair for six hours while they did this. At one point they had three stylists working on me."
"At least you got your cast off," Gohan said, taking her wrist in his hand and kissing it.
She cringed slightly, but managed to smile at him.
"So what'd you buy?" Trunks asked Catie, "Besides that stupid wig to scare me with."
Catie wiped the tears away and tried to calm down her laughing. "I bought a new camera."
"Oh, cool," he grinned. "We'll have to get it out later."
"Well, I don't know about anybody else," Eighteen said, rising to her feet and striding towards Lindsey, "but I love your hair."
"Really?" Lindsey asked with a hopeful look.
Eighteen nodded. "Very trendy. You'll start something with that look."
Lindsey blushed and gratefully said, "Thank you."