The Long Run, page 3
“Shit. How’d you get that?”
The barber pointed a clipper at the bruise on my cheek. My tongue instinctively felt the sore spot in my mouth.
“Had to finish something. You know.”
The guy laughed and nodded. “Oh, I know. Respect.”
Whatever. He pulled out a mister and started sorting out my curls. “Damn you got a lot of head, kid.”
“Been a minute.”
“Need to bust out my nice clippers.”
The guy was a talker, I could tell. I’ve never been about that.
“So. Whatchu want?”
I just wanted a haircut. Just cut my hair.
“Short on the sides? Keep it long up top?”
“I don’t...”
“How do you usually wear it?”
I stared at myself in the mirror. I’d been growing my hair out all summer. I don’t know if that was on purpose but it had a lot of length to it. Some height. Problem was, it never bothered me before today so I didn’t know what I was supposed to be fixing. I didn’t know what to say.
“I, uh... I like it long. You know?”
“Okay. So, keep it long?”
“Nah, I mean... You know.”
“Shape it up? Just a trim?”
“Like...”
I tried focusing on my reflection but the dude was right there with me. Staring at me. Waiting for an answer.
“I can do whatever, kid. What do you want?”
The static on his radio was taking over the music. I couldn’t focus on the question. What was the question? What did I want?
“...Just get rid of it.”
He almost seemed disappointed. I just focused on the static. The buzz. The mirror.
I’ve got a bad face. Well, to be fair, it’s my eyebrows that suck. I hate getting haircuts ’cause they just plant you in front of a mirror and, every time, all I do is stare at the fucking things. They’re bushy and close and arguably my worst feature. Or at least my most insistent. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as “very insistent eyebrows” but I’m told they were my dad’s brows so maybe I was never gonna want them. I wish I had my mom’s eyebrows. They weren’t a distinguishable feature of hers, but that’s the point. Eyebrows should never be the first thing you notice on a person. Del, my stepdad, says I have my mom’s eyes but it’s not true. My eyes are muddy. Swampy. Hidden under two pissed-off caterpillars. Hers were just green. Like an island.
The radio started playing that country lady’s song under the static. Something about a kiss or a river. I think it played a lot when I was a kid. I think I liked it.
My barber nodded over to his buddy.
“Yo, bro, turn on 99.3.”
His buddy stopped sweeping hair and fiddled with the knobs. Soon enough, the DJs over at The Buzz were arguing over if little boys should be allowed to play house and my barber got back to shearing me. He sort of chuckled.
“Can’t cut to that singsong shit. That lollipop music, you know?”
I didn’t know but I nodded anyway. Because I understood. Man’s gotta be comfortable. My hair’s a big project. It gets real thick and curly when I don’t do anything to it and my coach always gets on me about cutting it. Says I’ll be faster with short hair. I get where he’s coming from but I kind of like running with it loose. I feel like an animal or a wolf or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It probably looks better short.
“Gonna hit the sides. Tilt back?”
I nodded and tilted my head back. The barber leaned over me and put a hand on my head. Locked me in place. In this position, I could see his nipple through his tank. I tried to look away but his grip wasn’t giving me many options. So, I just looked. It was just a nipple. It wasn’t some secret, we all had them. But his was so dark. Like clay or redwood. There was hair too which was interesting to me for some reason. I don’t know why but I’ve been thinking about hair a lot recently. There was sweat too. I think the guy caught me looking ’cause he smiled and laughed which seemed like a pretty stupid thing to do. I put my eyes back in my head and told myself to stop acting like a fucking asshole. One second I’m mumbling like a dickhead ’cause I don’t know how I want my hair, the next I’m staring at the man’s nipple? I don’t know what my problem is. I’m just off. That’s it. I’m just off today.
I think he had a tattoo by his nipple.
After a few minutes of keeping my eyes aggressively trained on a jar of Barbicide, the guy took a big chunk out of the back of my head. He showed it to me in the mirror, like some prized catch, and all I could think was how pissed Lucy will be when she sees me again. She loves my hair long and would hate that I didn’t consult her on the cut. Only Lucy Jordan could dump a guy and still retain any input on his hairstyle. But I guess she was always a different kind of girlfriend. We only dated a few months but we’ve known each other all our lives. Her parents moved into the other side of my duplex before I was born. Our moms were pregnant together. Went through divorces together. Raised us, fed us, and punished us together. We’re linked that way, dating or not.
I brushed a little curl out of my face and watched it fall to the floor. I guess Luce will like that my hair isn’t in my face anymore. She likes my ugly brows and’s always telling me that I’ve got a “very pretty face.” Once I asked if she meant handsome and she said that I was “pretty like a painting.” I don’t know how I feel about that, but I guess I’ll take her word. Because, with my mom gone, Lucy knows me better than anyone on earth. Which is probably why she dumped me. At least a part of it. I don’t know why she dumped me exactly. Which is definitely a part of it.
If my stepdad and I ever talked, I think he’d tell me he hated what I was doing to my hair. He’ll have to see the cut eventually but God knows he’d never say the words. Not much of a talker, Del. Still, I’d see it in his eyes. At his most gracious, he’d leave me with some vague comment about how much my mom loved my curls before shuffling off to work. Del works nights at the construction lot by Zelley Park and with all my day shifts this summer, we’ve got this whole “ships passing in the night” thing going that sorta works for me.
Thing is, I like Del. Speaking frankly, I probably love him. But the way I love my truck or my bed. Maybe that’s unfair. Del’s been in my life longer than not, but I don’t know. We worked when I was a little kid and he was this fun young white dude but we just don’t talk right anymore. It’s kinda the same thing with Luce. If I think on it, Matty too. And when a guy finds he can’t talk right with anyone in his life, he’s gotta wonder if it’s his own fault. Maybe he forgot how to talk somewhere along the way. Maybe he stayed too silent, too long and now his tongue’s atrophied. Rotted away in his mouth. Or maybe he just has nothing worth saying.
“Damn, dude. You good?”
I snapped out of my stare.
“What?”
The barber was looking at me in the mirror. Half-concerned. More amused.
“You look like you want to die, bro.”
A problem that’s plagued me since boyhood. The second someone sits me in a chair and touches my hair, my expression sinks into something more appropriate for a funeral or the live execution of a loved one.
I just shrugged. “...That’s just my face.”
It only took twenty minutes and about fifty-something shrugs but I think the guy finally understood that I just wanted to zone out. He got back to it and so did I.
Thing is, I’m usually better at diagnosing my moods. It’s like there’s been this thorn in my chest all day. Every breath reminds me that something must be wrong but no matter how hard I dig, I can’t get my finger on it.
I fiddled with a long, intact curl on my lap and thought about my mom. She did love my curls. Maybe the thorn was her. Or maybe not. Because when I go down that road, start thinking about her and how she was and all that, it’s hard for me to come back. Really ruins my day in a very specific way. Whatever this feeling was, it felt different from her. This wasn’t Mom-related. I’d know if it was. I know that thorn pretty well at this point.
Like, it was her birthday last Sunday. And when I woke up, I decided it could either be a terrible day and I could sulk and stew and blow up at people or I could make it nice. So, I drove our truck to our field and read our favorite book. Where the Red Fern Grows. Obvious, I know, but it was the first “big boy” book she read to me growing up. Then, later that night, I added another bead to the prayer bracelet she left me with. I’m not super religious but I guess I am for her. All in all, it was a nice day. Quiet. Not a thorn.
The barber started cleaning up my neck so I looked at my lap. My finger. A little eyeball stared back up at me. A quick doodle from Lucy Jordan, not an hour ago, sponsored by Bic. If I ever got a tattoo, I think I’d let her sketch it for me. She’s that kind of artist. She makes things people want to carry with them.
My heart keeps suggesting that this thorn thing’s gotta be Luce-adjacent but I don’t know. I mean, I do have this lingering worry that things will be weird between us. But when she caught me on our porch earlier, it felt okay. Not our best, but not as bad as I probably deserved. In a fair world, Lucy Jordan would never want to talk to me again. Because despite our being neighbors, basically sharing a bedroom wall, I hadn’t exactly made myself that reachable this summer. I was moody all June, basically ignored her all July, and come August could barely so much as respond when I finally got the breakup text. Between the running and the diner and my growing allergy to talking, Lucy became an unfortunate casualty in my mission to fall off the face of the earth.
She called me out on as much today after ambushing me on our stoop. I’d just finished up my second run of the day and she was waiting on the duplex steps. Not an unusual spot for her but it had been an unusual summer. She was deep in her sketch pad when I rolled up but was all business once she locked eyes on me.
“Bash Wednesday.”
“Luce Change.”
“You just missed Del. Says you need to clean your room. Says it smells like ass.”
I got out something like a grunt and started undoing my laces on the step below her. Like everything was normal. Like I hadn’t frozen her out all summer. Like she hadn’t dumped me right before my mom’s birthday. But Lucy seemed game to pretend.
“You boys playing nice?”
“We’re giving each other space.”
“He’s worried about you.”
I almost laughed. If we were talking like we usually talked, I would’ve called Luce out on that. She was digging. Because if Del was so worried, where was he? He knows where I live. He lives there too. But instead of saying too much, I just stayed on my laces.
“He’s busy. Been building condos over near Zelley all summer. He’s never home.”
“Rough. You still at the diner?”
“Yeah. Double shifts.”
“Sounds like you’re busy too.”
Lucy was walking me toward something, but I was too tired to follow. My feet hurt and I was still catching my breath off my run. Runs. And if I let her guide my sweaty ass down that train of thought, she’d only end up telling me that she was worried too. That I was avoiding her too. That I needed to stop being a wishy-washy bitch and figure out what I want in life and talk to her for real. And she’d be right. Because Lucy’s often right. And I know she just wants to help but how about letting a guy catch his fucking breath, huh?
I’d drifted somewhere and when I came back, Lucy was drawing on my finger. The eye. It was a sickeningly realistic sketch of an eyeball, but I knew it belonged to me. She filled in a vein and sighed.
“You’re shrinking, you know. Every time I see you. Little by little.”
“Okay.”
“Not saying anything. Just an observation.”
“And I said, okay.”
She didn’t say anything to that but I could feel her stink eye. It was the same look my mom would give me whenever I’d get a little too bold at the dinner table. Lucy and my mom were always on the same page when it came to my bullshit. They had a lot in common that way. Two Black women from Jersey who loved art, loved me, and had hard rules against responding to lip. I gave it a moment and picked at some grass in my running shoe.
“...I stopped lifting. Been working on long distance. The Rutgers scout told me they like sprinters who can do both.”
“Oh. So, that’s where you’ve been all summer.”
I made the choice to leave her hanging. Because I didn’t want to get into how much Rutgers meant to me. I could have rules too.
After enough of my nothing, Lucy paused her doodle and really took me in. Like she was updating her image of me. She put her pen in her flannel and felt my soon-to-be-mowed curls. Her fingertips moved through the waves and, for a second, I forgot about rules. Space. For a second, I just let myself be touched. I closed my eyes and leaned into her soft hands. Her soft voice.
“It’s getting long.”
“Too long?”
“No such thing. It’s prettier long.”
“I don’t wanna be pretty.”
“You don’t know what you want. That’s kinda the problem, Seb.”
Then her hands were gone. My eyes stayed closed and I heard a pen click. I heard her stand. I felt a kiss on my head and a long sigh against my hair.
“But you know that.”
I thought about asking her to stay out on our porch a little longer. Just stay and keep me talking. Because if she went inside, I didn’t know the next time I’d let myself talk to her. I didn’t know the next time I’d let myself talk.
“Wait.”
I stood up too.
“You going to Matty’s thing tonight?”
Lucy laughed.
“So I can drink shit beer and watch you turn into an asshole for people we don’t care about? In the woods?”
“You like the Sticks.”
“It’s still summer. I don’t gotta be who those people expect me to be for another two weeks.”
I followed her up and hung on her railing.
“...What should I tell them? Those people. If they ask. About us.”
Lucy unlocked her door and chuckled.
“Tell’m what you want, Seb. I’m a bitch. We fought all the time. I avoided you all summer and I never told you why. Tell’m you dumped me if you gotta.” She shrugged. “Whatever. Whatever you want.”
She headed inside, calling back as her front door closed. “And ice that boo-boo, pretty boy.”
And she was gone. The bruise on my cheek twitched. I sat on my steps and laced right back up. I replayed our conversation, top to bottom, over my third run of the day. Lucy was spot-on, per usual. I had been avoiding her. Half ’cause I was busy but more ’cause I knew she’d smell it on me. My mission. The ocean I’d put between me and this town. All that cansado.
The problem with Luce is she knows me enough to see through my bullshit. We were just talking, perfectly calm, perfectly civil, and she still made me feel butt-ass naked. I hate that. I wear these clothes for a reason.
But Lucy’s eyes weren’t keeping my stomach churning. That pity in her voice didn’t put this thorn in my ribs.
“Gonna have to charge you a sweeping fee, bro.”
“What?”
The barber nodded around us. The floor was covered in me. Like I was a Christmas tree and the tiles were covered in my needles. It was too much. It was more than I thought I had.
My eyes moved to the mirror and I saw the finished product. What I looked like without it all. And I’ll give it to him. He gave me what I asked for. I entered this shop with a head full of curls and that man got rid of them. Every single one.
“You okay, kid? I was joking about the fee.”
I paid before he could brush me down or clean me up. Cash. Let him keep the change. Didn’t say a word. If I stuck around any longer, I might’ve said something ugly. It would’ve been uncalled-for and unnecessary and I would’ve kicked myself for the rest of the night for saying it. If I stuck around, I think I could’ve gotten really upset.
I stomped across the parking lot, hoodie up, got in my truck, and stared at myself in the rearview. My scalp damp. All that skin. Bald. Exposed. I looked like a fucking baby. Goddamn it, I looked like a fucking moron. A quick punch to the steering wheel and the honk came and went.
“FUCK.”
I felt something well up in my throat. I rubbed the faint fuzz of stubble remaining across my scalp and took a long, deep breath.
“Why did...why’d you do that, man?”
I closed my eyes and sank into my seat. It’s not that I got a bad haircut—he did a good job. I’m just not very sure that I look like myself lately. It’s been getting kind of hard to tell who myself even is anymore but my hair’s always been this hint. Something I could always agree on. Sebastian Villeda? He likes his hair. A constant. Now who was I? Some buzz-cut dickhead with a pickup truck and a thorn in his side. Ridiculous.
I peeked back in the rearview and noticed the four cases of beer hiding in my back seat. Right. Probably should’ve covered those better. The sight of my contraband made me finally consider the obvious. That this awful feeling in my gut, this looming exhaustion with my life, was probably coming from my most common thorn.
Matty Silva and me are boys. Have been all through high school. I say boys because I always feel like I’m lying when I say friends. Anyone with their pulse on Moorestown High or two working eyeballs would say we are, in fact, best friends. We work together, hang out all the time, we’re both captains of the track team. We’re boys. Matty and the Flash. He’s the one who coined my nickname. Which, I guess, is a nice summation of our relationship. He’s the hype man I never hired. Always gassing me up to people. Always talking. In public, at least. We don’t talk much when we’re alone.
Sometimes we’ll be watching a movie on his couch or be on a run and I’ll get this bird’s-eye view of us, how everyone else must see us. Two brown boys who can run fast and bus tables. A matching set. Very alike.
