Annie didn’t hear the first knock on her bedroom door. She was listening to some song that made her sink further into her stiff mattress and shaded her eyes from the afternoon sun slithering through the fibers of her dusty curtains. She didn’t hear the second knock either. Or maybe she did. She convinced herself it was nothing, nonetheless. A knock on someone else’s door. Or perhaps a familiar creak in the very old house. No reason to move from this crease she had been molding for the past few hours or weeks. But it didn’t matter what excuse Annie had conjured. Charlotte let herself in without knocking a third time. She swung the door open violently and hit Annie’s closet with the doorknob. She held a curling wand in her hand.
“Did you see my text?” Charlotte said. Annie, in fact, did see Charlotte’s text; she just didn’t read it. Charlotte hated it when she did that.
“No,” Annie lied. Charlotte rolled her eyes.
“I need you to curl my hair,” Charlotte said. She marched herself into Annie’s room and plopped onto the floor next to the electrical socket. She plugged in the wand without looking in Annie’s direction.
“Why?” Annie groaned.
“Prom is tomorrow,” Charlotte said, opening Annie’s dresser drawer. She pulled out Annie’s hairbrush and started combing it through her pin-straight hair.
Ah yes, prom. Who could forget? It’s only been everything Charlotte had been talking about since Annie came home for the summer. It’s going to be hosted where Annie’s was a few years ago: one of those concert halls in town that they only use for banquets and funerals. Charlotte’s dress is teal. Not turquoise! Hannah B is wearing a turquoise dress, and Charlotte’s isn’t aquamarine either. Paula is wearing aquamarine. Or was it Jesse? No, no, Jesse is the name of the boy. He didn’t matter in all of this. He’s her date because everyone needed a date, and she wanted a corsage. He’s coming over tomorrow for pictures at 3:15pm precisely. Annie was supposed to help her get ready at 1:05pm. Annie thought she was wearing her hair straight.
“I thought you were wearing your hair straight,” Annie said.
“Ugh, no,” Charlotte groaned, “I told you. Abby R is wearing her hair straight.”
Right, Abby R. Abby R has a seafoam dress.
Charlotte continued to brush her hair with Annie’s hairbrush, “So, I need you to curl it.”
“So, why today?” Annie said. She said it with more venom that she intended.
“So,” Charlotte said with more “o’s” than necessary, “you can practice for tomorrow, duh.” She looked into the mirror rested against Annie’s wall and just kept combing. Ginger strands of hair started accumulating on the brush.
Annie didn’t say anything, and she didn’t move. Maybe, if she didn’t move Charlotte would just go away. It was a technique Annie picked up when she was at parties in high school. If she stayed quiet long enough after her friends knocked on the bathroom door she was hiding behind, they tended to go away and find someone else to fat shame.
Charlotte just glared at her through the mirror. She wasn’t going anywhere. Annie wouldn’t necessarily say that Charlotte has a way with words, but she has a presence that lets you know that something bad would happen if you opposed her. Annie got too many Lego bricks to the side of the head as a child for her to realize that.
She sighed and unplugged her headphones before slowly pealing herself from her comforter. The mattress groaned and screamed as she rose. Her muscles tightened around her knees as she tried to uncurl her legs. The warmth of her sheets radiated on her cold back calling out to her, Come back, oh you must. She slapped the sides of her face lightly, trying to make her eyes less foggy, before melting to the floor next to her sister in front of her mirror, careful not to look at herself in the reflection. She rested her phone down next to her and let her music waft softly around the room.
“This is what I want,” Charlotte said. She shoved her phone in Annie’s hands and turned her back to her. The picture showed a girl with an obviously professionally done blow-out, if that’s even what they’re called. She had perfectly curled platinum blonde hair that bounded down past her shoulder blades in shiny thick waves. The girl’s locks perfectly complimented the orangey gold of her tan and the platinum white of her teeth.
Annie looked at her sister through her mirror. Charlotte looked much younger than the model in the picture. Little pockets of baby fat plumped up her cheeks and pulled down the weight of her face. When she smiled, tiny crow’s-feet carved around her eyes. However, her jaw was strong and stern, cutting the softness of her pale skin with balls of tension. Her hair framed it all perfectly. Her straight ginger locks fell softly around her head like a halo reaching just above her shoulder blades. No one had hair like Charlotte’s, which she didn’t like. She used to beg Annie to take her to get highlights, but Annie refused. Charlotte didn’t need it, no matter how much she pleaded. She was already beautiful. The model she showed Annie was a different type of beautiful. The kind of beautiful that one could not replicate with a curling iron from CVS.
“Your hair is different than this,” Annie said, running her fingers through Charlotte’s hair. “Yours is thinner. It won’t fall the same.”
“Well, make it look the same,” Charlotte said thrusting Annie’s round brush in her hands. Some of the bristles came off in her palm.
“Can’t we use your brush?” Annie said, “This won’t work with your hair.”
“Of course it will,” Charlotte said, “Your hair is curly, it works on yours.”
“You hate my hair,” Annie said.
“I’ve never said that,” Charlotte said.
Charlotte, in fact, did say that and had frequently said that to Annie for almost the same amount of time Charlotte’s been able to form words. Thanks to Charlotte, Annie spent hours of her high school years in the bathroom meticulously straightening her hair with her mother’s hairdryer from the nineties. Her hands would get so hot in the plastic that she would burn herself, but she didn’t care. It would make her hair straight. Or at least kind of. It would always come out frizzy and uneven, but it was better than being compared to a bird’s nest by her own sister.
“Whatever,” Annie said. She picked up the wand like it was a bomb. “I don’t curl my hair. I’ve never used this before.”
Charlotte tipped her head back towards Annie in a groan. “It’s so easy,” Charlotte said, emphasizing her vowels into oblivion, “Just wrap the hair around, hold it, and unwind. Got it?”
“If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?” Annie said.
Charlotte held up her hands and wiggled her fingers, “I just painted my nails, I don’t want to ruin them,” Charlotte said. They were painted perfectly, as always, not one dot out of the lines. They were a soft blue that directly matched her eyes.
“They look nice,” Annie said, “I like that color.”
“Thanks,” Charlotte said, bringing her nails forward to admire her work, “I just got it from H&M.”
“Oh, nice,” Annie said. She combed her hand through Charlotte’s hair. Tiny lightning bolts of static shot out of her fingers into her sister’s hair.
“If you burn my hair off, I burn you. Got it?” Annie knew she was only joking, or at least mostly joking, but the little shake in Charlotte’s voice told her to really try not to fuck this up. A girl in town ripped a chunk of her hair out using one of these things a while back. Annie’s high school friends made fun of her for weeks. Annie didn’t know if Charlotte knew that. She hoped she didn’t.
The song changed on Annie’s playlist, something a little bit more light-hearted than before, but still gut-wrenching enough to make her bones get all gooey. It was one of those songs she must have listened to in middle school, or maybe high school, when she still woke up every day with such an impressive amount of gusto that she wouldn’t even touch her pillow until she fell asleep that night. Annie would put on this song every morning with too much mascara and leggings that only fit girls that weren’t her. She would put on this song and rip out the curly hairs that didn’t match her fried-straight ones before making her sister breakfast. Charlotte always hated this song, so she skipped it. Something else came on, something Annie didn’t remember adding but Charlotte didn’t skip it, so it stayed.
“Where should I start?” Annie said, awkwardly holding the wand up to Charlotte’s head. A green light appeared on its side saying that it was hot enough to start using. It smelt like burning plastic.
“I don’t care,” Charlotte said, but her shoulders tensed as the heat neared her ears.
Annie elected to start at the back, as far away from this poor girl’s scalp as possible. She carefully took a section of hair from her layers, just enough to fit in her palm. She decided that was enough. Tenderly, she wrapped the hair around the wand, which was now suspiciously smelling like burning plastic. Wrap. She enclosed the clamp around the hair and held it there. Hold. Her hands shook violently. There wasn’t a breath in the room. The air was stagnant apart from the mediocre music playing from Annie’s phone bouncing around her bedroom. Annie released the clamp on the wand and unwove the hair from its coil. Unwind. The coiled ringlet immediately collapsed from its tightly wound structure to a hot frizzy wave that billowed in random directions. Annie just sighed.
“Let me see,” Charlotte said. She grabbed the section Annie had just worked with the pads of her fingers. She lifted the strands to reveal the tired excuse of a wave. She looked at Annie through the mirror. Her blue eyes looked all hazy through the dusty reflection.
“Just keep going,” she said to the reflection. She sat up straighter and pushed her hair behind her ears, “It’ll come together.”
“I can try using hairspray,” Annie said, looking around her room. There were various piles of things from her college dorm room scattered around the floor. There wasn’t room for any of it in her drawers, so she left it all in old Market Basket bags. There had to be one full of her hair products somewhere. She remembered putting them in the bag next to her medication. Her psychiatrist told her to take it daily for the exhaustion, but Annie didn’t listen. It will help you find your old self again. There was no old self for Annie to dust off. She had burnt it all away.
The song changed again. Another from Annie’s high school years, filling the room with the smell of whitening toothpaste and diet pills. Was this the old self her doctors kept referring to? The one that could only leave the house after contorting their body to fit the mold of another? Annie couldn’t remember her life before it. It was all lost in stares and tiny salads. She didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t go back. She felt like she was still there. In this room, she was there. The floors creaking still from all her pacing. From her collapsing to the floor in hunger. It was all she could remember. Hunger. Hunger and burning. The burn marks on her hands. She would rather be tired and pulled to her mattress than go back to the ghost she was. Charlotte sighed with her throat and skipped the song.
“No, it’s ok,” Charlotte said, still staring into the reflection, “Just finish it.”
Annie kept going. She worked from back to front, saving the front pieces of her sister’s hair for last. She grabbed a section at a time. Wrap. Held it round the wand. Hold. And released it. Unwind. Each curl unfolded differently. One soft and swirling, the next sharp and dense. Annie kept winding the hair around the wand. Wrap. Hands shaking the clamp closed. Hold. And releasing the section to the ocean of ginger hair. The curl tumbled out messily, joining the choppy waves. Annie continued the storm. Wrap. Hold. Unwind. The mess continued. Wrap. Hold. Unwind. Wrap. Hold. Unwind. Wrap Hold Unwind Wrap HoldUnwind WrapHoldUnwindWrapHoldUnwind to the stormy red waves, hot and polluted with boiling plastic. Annie caused the thunder. Her shaky hands stirred the clouds and shot lightning to the serene orange waters. Charlotte’s hair tried to fight back but lost horribly to each devastating wrap. It didn’t want this. Her hair just wanted to stay straight.
Annie approached Charlotte’s ear for the front sections. She caught a glimpse of Charlotte’s face in the mirror. Her eyes were all glassy and porcelain. The freckles on her skin hid behind stifling red in her cheeks. She clenched her jaw so tightly Annie could hear the soft grinding of her teeth.
Charlotte caught Annie’s gaze. Annie tried to look away but got lost on the way. Charlotte heated her gaze boiling the glassy waters in her eyes. Bubbles of desperation burst from the simmer. They screeched. Wrap. Hold. Unwind.
Annie looked at the final section in front of her. Sweat trickled down her arm from her white knuckled grip on the wand. The hair was impossibly soft to the touch. It screamed as she wrapped the section around the wand. I’m so sorry, she held. A delirium filled her chest, a rush of energetic dizziness. The curls tumbled from the rod. Unwind unwind unwind. They fell loosely to Charlotte’s face, separating into a frizzy bouquet of tangles.
Charlotte didn’t say anything, and she didn’t move.
Annie couldn’t stop shaking. The wand felt as hot as her mother’s hair dryer from the nineties. Her hands were so hot. Like the sink water. The bathroom sink water at prom. Prom! She wore the wrong dress. She wore maroon even though Madison – no, Betty! was wearing maroon. She was an idiot. How could she mess this up? She was supposed to wear burgundy! Her friends pointed it out. Her friends didn’t let her in their pictures. There was too much of one color. She wore the wrong color. Madison – no, Betty! looked better. She was so tall and thin and strong, and everyone liked her. Annie’s friends told her that her dress was unflattering. Maroon wasn’t her color, they said. Maroon was for the skinny girls. No matter how much she starved herself, maroon wasn’t for her. Burgundy was her color; how could she be so stupid? Annie hid in the bathroom at prom and cried her eyes dry. She made the sink water hot enough to burn and held her hands under it. It hurt but she deserved it. She did it wrong. She wanted to melt away. It hurt so bad. It made blisters in her palms. The skin melted off in circles. Blood ran down the sink. Maroon. She wore the wrong dress. She deserved it. She deserved it. She did it wrong.
“You did it wrong,” Charlotte cleared her throat and shook the waves from covering her face.
“I did not,” Annie said to the mirror. She was still shaking. Unwind.
“You must’ve,” Charlotte said. The orange mess floated around her, a mop of tired storms untamed and uncontrolled. “Look at me.”
Annie couldn’t look at her. She was still shaking. Unwind. Unwind. She was stuck in her dress, the wrong color. She stared at here palms. Two circular scars stared back at her. Maroon.
“People can’t see me like this!” Charlotte’s voice was breaking. Tears started falling from her soft eyes. Pink splotches covered her cheeks and her neck turned bright red.
Charlotte grabbed Annie’s brush from her hands and tried to salvage the stringy curls, but it was to no avail. The curls only detached further, teasing the hair into sharp angles. Tears only started falling quicker and quicker. Her skin getting redder and redder.
She then stuck her fingers into her hair and started combing. Her soft blue cuticles painted the hot orange seas blue, nail polish streaking deep in her layers, but she didn’t stop. Over and over, she smoothed and smoothed trying to erase every wrap, every hold. She smoothed and smoothed, but there was no erasing the carnage that had been done. The mop only became more frayed and electric, the smoothness only a memory. But Charlotte only continued.
Annie finally had enough. She grabbed Charlotte’s wrists and excavated her fingers from her head. Annie folded Charlotte into her arms, resting her head gently on Charlotte’s shoulder, squeezing her tightly into her chest. She let Charlotte sob while she trembled.
“I can’t keep doing this, Annie,” Charlotte whimpered, “It’s too much.”
“Prom?” Annie whispered. She knew Charlotte meant more than that.
“More than that,” Charlotte said stuttering on her breathing, “I hate it all. I hate the parties and the pictures and the dresses and… and everyone! They’re all mean, Ann! But…but they’re all so pretty! And they’re all nice to each other… I’m the one that’s wrong. I can feel it. I’m the ugly one. I must be. I don’t- I don’t want to go… but I want to…I’m going to go! But Annie I…I want to feel pretty, Ann. Why don’t I feel pretty? I like my dress… I-”
Charlotte’s thoughts tumbled further into incoherence, something Annie hadn’t seen from her in all these years. Despite Annie’s flighty chaos and tears, Charlotte was always in direct contrast. Always poised. Always perfect. Always natural and beautiful. Charlotte never wavered. Charlotte was strong and kind and considerate. She never asked questions when Annie cried on the car rides home. Or when Annie came home from parties after her parents went to sleep with makeup running down her face and burns on her arms. Or when Annie was reluctant to come home for college even though Charlotte insisted. Charlotte always held strong. She always stayed quiet. She always kept her nail polish perfect.
Annie didn’t know what to say. She only held her sister tighter as she blubbered.
“Does it get any easier?” Charlotte said staring at her sister in the mirror, “Tell me the truth, Ann. Does any of this get easier?”
Annie thought of college. Of sitting in the corner of a party with no one giving a shit about what she’s wearing or why she didn’t want to talk to anybody. Of finally letting her hair dry naturally and curly and feeling it bounce as she walked. She thought of walking to class without having to do her makeup or wear an outfit more complicated than a pair of sweats but feeling guilty about it the moment she got there. She thought of the comments she would get on her Instagram posts from her friends from high school. The texts she would from them concerned about her weight gain. She thought of her psychiatrist and the medication and the meditations and diagnoses. The diagnoses that told her that her past haunted her and held her captive and made her shake and cry when she thought about prom or parties or hairdryers.
But mostly, Annie thought of home. She thought of her bed and how it still called out to her. Of how each floorboard creek reminded her of her frantic pacing before she went out each weekend. She thought of the warmth of her walls that seemed so much bigger a year ago. And Annie thought of her sister, as she always did. Of how, even when she would call her head a bird’s nest, Charlotte would always praise Annie’s smile. Of how Annie never failed sneak Charlotte a cookie from her waitressing job before she quit to spend more time at the gym. And of how she spent the last weeks in her bed while her sister had been withering into the shell she was all too familiar of inhabiting.
“I’m so sorry, Lots,” Annie sobbed. She ducked her head into her sister’s shoulder and let the tears come.
“I’m so tired, Ann,” Charlotte choked on her tears.
“I know, Lots,” Annie said into her shoulder.
The two girls sat on the floor with their heads pressed together, sobbing for themselves to a song Annie didn’t recognize. Annie felt the coarse texture of Charlotte’s hair tickle her cheek as Charlotte’s shoulders shuddered with her breathing. Annie rose her head from her sister’s shoulder and slowly combed Charlotte’s hair away from her face.
They looked alike like this. Annie could never see it when people pointed it out, she didn’t look at her reflection enough to put the pieces together, but looking into her foggy, warped mirror, she could see it all. Their eyes were the same shape, downturned on the outside just enough to make doing eyeliner impossible. The bags under Charlotte’s eyes had just started to form, little creases of pink shining through her skin. Annie’s were deeper, but less colored, with the swelling finally starting to dissipate. They both had the same freckles. Charlotte’s were more defined, of course. She got out more. Annie’s faded after she found herself stuck to her mattress most days after she came back from college. Or maybe when she started college. The exhaustion had finally got to her, but some of the freckles still stayed, staining her cheeks forever in a faint constellation across her nose.
The song changed again. The two looked at Annie’s phone in anticipation. It wasn’t one Annie remembered downloading. It was one of those songs that she and Charlotte would listen to in the car in the summer on the way down to the Cape. The two girls were restless in the backseat, creating pillow forts and castles for their journey. Charlotte would say that she was the better singer, and Annie would say nuh-uh and they would scream this song at each other until their parents had to turn it off. Or maybe this was that song that they did that performance in their living room. The one with the princess gowns and cartwheels. That was the one when Annie accidentally dropped Charlotte off her back into the Christmas tree during their big finish. She had scrapes all down her legs, but she laughed it off. Annie didn’t remember seeing blood that day.
Was that where that song was from? No, it was from that party! Or- yes! It the one Charlotte begged Annie to bring her to. The one at that football player’s house. He didn’t matter, but he was cool, and that mattered. Annie’s friends forced her to go, of course, and Charlotte wanted to come. The party was crowded, and Annie lost Charlotte in under five minutes. Annie met her friends by the snack table, but nobody ate anything. Annie reached for a pretzel and was met with hard stares and side glances. There were too many eyes. Annie ran to the bathroom and cried. There were so many eyes. It felt like she was drowning. She felt like burning. She was so hungry. There were so many eyes. Someone knocked on the bathroom door as her hand reached for the handle on the sink. She held her breath like she usually did. They knocked a second time. Charlotte let herself in before knocking a third. She didn’t say anything. She just sat on the floor next to her sister and let her cry and cry. But then this song came on! It blasted through the speakers of the party so loudly it radiated around the bathroom tiles. What a wonderful song it was! They couldn’t do anything but dance! Swinging each other around this football player’s ugly bathroom, they sang out loud, using fancy soaps as microphones, forgetting who they were. Forgetting where they were. Dancing so wildly that Annie hit her soap against light, shattering the lightbulb. The girls only laughed and screamed in the dark, holding each other tightly when their ribs hurt too much to stand.
Annie unwove her arms from Charlotte’s, pushing her gently from her chest. Charlotte’s nails were a mess, with ginger strings stuck to each finger. Annie smiled lightly and combed Charlotte’s hair behind her ear. Slimy blue nail polish smeared on Annie’s palm.
“I think you should wear it straight, tomorrow,” Annie said, looking her sister in the eyes, “It looks fucking awful.”
Charlotte snorted. Laughter bubbled in Annie’s chest. The girls collapsed together onto the floor. They took turns running their fingers through each other’s hair and just giggled with that blue nail polish all over their hands. There was nothing else in the room. Just two girls, giggling.
