I turn back. "Oh, and Elphie?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for...you know, showing me everything"

You flash me a smile (a REAL smile, which for once is not sarcastic, and which would be completly unrecognisable to most of the students and proffessors at Shiz), wave and carry on walking.

The bookshop was new and almost exotic in how different it was to everything else i'm used to... but the salon is familiar to me in a way that your bedroom is familiar.

I know this place, and from the moment i step inside, i'm enveloped in its cloud of hairspray, perfumes, fresh-smelling shampoo and conditioner, the hard underlying smell of nail polish... I've enterd girl-world, the shiney and perfect domain of teenage girls everywhere... even those who may be realising for the first time in their lives that there is actually more to them this.

The salon hasn't changed. The same stylists are here, the same magazines lay on the tables and, don't get me wrong, i still enjoy getting my hair done because i've always had a thing about people touching my hair...

But i can't relax as much as i'd like to, because the longer i'm there, and the more conversations i overhear, the more i am distracted from everything by the tiny voice (which, if you want to know, sounds A LOT like you) in my head which asks again and again why i've never noticed before just how irritatingly vapid these people are.

The more time i spend with you, the more details i notice: the woman who carries a minature pug with her and talks to it incessantly, as if it's a child, in between a phone call to her sons nanny, explaining why she can't join them for lunch.

There's the girl who waits for her friends to choose their nail polish colours before she chooses her own, to be sure she fits in with the rest of them.

There's the women who loudly discuss the latest celebrity gossip as if its real life, involving people they actually know rather than complete strangers.

And on top of that, theres a constant background cover of shrieks and squeals and insipid comments and fake laughter and even faker compliments...

After a while, i shut my eyes and try to block out everything before i end up leaving before the stylist is finished working on me.

Guyssss my computer crashed before i'd saved the other half of this! *cries :'(

So ill post this.

Im sorry its been SO long_i took my friend James to see Wicked last week_I thought he might not like it, cos he's a guy nd stuff, but he liked it! And i'm re-obsessed. I got an AWESOME tshirt from the ozdust botique nd the green really does go good with my new pink hair! So i'm galindified lol

Please review if you liked it at all_it'll give me strength to rewrite the deleted bit of this chapter!

Dedicated to SPANISHBUZZFTW :)