Tethers: Bleach

I had a jug of sodium hypochlorite--bleach--which I set down on the tile floor of the bathroom beside my feet. I shut the bathroom door and turned on the air vent, then looked at myself in the mirror. I had dark hair. Really dark hair. It's possible that my parents, the Ballards, specifically arranged my genes to give me dark hair. Maybe they both had dark hair and I inherited it. I'll never know. But what makes it really not matter is that in about twenty minutes, I won't have dark hair anymore.

I had a pair of old gloves that I had designated for the task. I put them on before unscrewing the top of the bleach jug, which Hoops was able to siphon from the chemical laboratory and give to me. Good, old Hoops. He always humored me.

The squad thought I was acting up lately. Like some chronic disease or something. I've been talking back to Sergeant Kadlec more than usual, and I've got the headaches and the bruises to prove it. Storm thinks it's blatant insubordination, and I can bet you money he'll blame himself for it. It's not him, though. None of them get it. I can't blame them, but they could at least humor me like Hoops, who was practically a stranger. I'm not just whining. I'm thinking out loud, and apparently that makes me a rabble-rouser.

Ha, ha. Rabble-rouser. I would enjoy the word on the way it sounded alone, except it marked me as a threat to Cross-X's sick, little society.

I applied the bleach to my hair and waited. The smell started making me dizzy, so I risked opening the door and getting caught. I wasn't doing anything illegal, but the last thing I wanted was for someone to make me stop. I had to do this. No one believed I wasn't carefree Flare anymore. No one thought my opinions mattered. No one could tell that I was being serious when I said I wanted to quit this shit and go home.

The joke's on me, I guess. I don't have a home.

The bleach burned as it sat on the skin of my scalp. I put my hands on the edges of the sink and let my head hang over it, the sensation more of a nagging feeling than something to concentrate on. I checked my watch compulsively as the twenty minutes crept by slowly, the pain in my head growing as the fumes filled my lungs and my skin burned. Finally, it was time to wash it out. I turned the sink on full blast with cold water and shoved my head under it for a few seconds before I got to work shampooing it. I stopped when the water ran clear, then I shook my head of the excess water and looked up in the mirror.

I blinked twice. I didn't think it was going to make that big of a difference, but the blond-haired guy staring back at me was a stranger. The blond hair on my head was sticking up in randomized spiky formations, stiff as straw. I was supposed to sneak some mayonnaise out of the Galley to put on it to help soften it up, but that would have to wait until dinner.

Disappointment settled heavily at the bottom of my stomach in the meantime. I thought this would feel different. I thought this new image would free me from my old self, but all I felt was light-headed and headachey. I threw away the ruined gloves and moved out of the bathroom, about ready to collapse on the closest bed (Storm's) when the door to the dormitory opened. I almost ignored whoever it was, but instinct told me it would be in my best interest to look up. It was Tide. I didn't say anything.

"What the fuck did you do?" Tide asked. She never dropped the F-bomb. Ever.

"Bleached my hair," I replied, knowing that wasn't the answer she was looking for. I expected her to get mad like she usually did when I baited her. She didn't say anything.

We stood for several silent seconds, Tide gaping at me in a way that wasn't all surprise, but something else I couldn't quite fathom. Then she moved slowly toward me, somehow undisturbed by the appalling fumes of the bleach.

"Flare," she said levelly, searching my face. "What's wrong?"

I did something weird: I scoffed. I found that I didn't have a response, that I could only look away and scoff again. No one had asked me that before. I didn't really know.

Tide put her hands on the sides of my face and gently moved my head so that I was looking at her. She was standing close to me, and I could smell her scent and feel the warmth of her body. Her thumb grazed my cheek and I frowned. She waited.

"God, Tide," I said, all of the sudden feeling as though I had to choke back a sob, "I'm just so damn tired." That was all I could say. I had so much more bottled up inside of me, fantasies about the real world and how I wanted to fit into it, go to real arcades where I had to spend money to play games that weren't battle simulations, see a holovid about something that wasn't war, find a place outdoors that wasn't under enemy artillery fire.

Somehow, Tide must have known I meant more than I said because she looked devastated. She didn't speak for a moment. I felt my shoulders quivering with a caged energy that wanted to escape, but I refused. My face hurt from trying to keep in the sobs. When she opened her mouth to speak, I expected to hear about how we were all tired. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

I forced the hardest grin I'd ever produced in my life. "For what?"

"Everything. Not seeing this sooner. No, not confronting you sooner--I knew, Goddamn it, and I didn't do a damn thing about it, and--shit--" Tide broke off and moved her hands away, having stopped because her barrier against sadness had sprung a leak.

By that point, my dam had collapsed. I grabbed Tide and forced her against me, holding her tightly, crying so hard that my tremors could have given her motion sickness. She clung back to me, her face buried in my chest. We stayed like that until our energy drained and we sank to the floor in each other's arms, utterly exhausted, expended of any will to speak or move. We were practically asleep when we heard Puck come in.

Puck leaned over Storm's bed and saw us sitting together on the floor. "Hey, I--" Puck stopped what he was about to say and did a double-take, one so textbook that it could have come out of a holovid sitcom. He smiled down at us and nodded to indicate my hair. "I like it. It's a good change."