Jenny’s Pledge (Part 3)
Another pass over Jackie’s thick red locks, and then another… and another… and as the hair on the left side of her head was gradually replaced by a bare white scalp I finally moved the clippers towards her left temple to remove the last traces of hair on that side. The clippers severed the hair over Jackie’s left ear and she turned to look at a mirror. She smoothed out the bangs covering the right side of her forehead and then turned her chair slightly the left. I didn’t understand what she was doing until I looked at the mirror myself, then I saw that if viewed from a certain angle it looked like Jackie still had a full head of hair, like nothing had ever happened.
The months after Janet’s shave were quite strange. First of all Janet began growing her hair out almost at once, but while her hair grew incredibly fast I could tell that she had enjoyed her shorn head just a little too much. After about ten weeks Janet had grown her hair all the way down into a chin length bob, but one day when we went to go drinking she showed up sporting her new short do which had become her preferred cut. She told us that it was a temporary style, but when she showed up over nine months later to Jackie’s shave she was still sporting it.
Jackie however had the completely opposite reaction. As her hair and my hair began the race down our backs we shared similar feelings towards our growing manes. The longer our hair grew the deeper our affection for it grew, and as both our manes extended down our backs and past the small of our backs we shared our sadness at the prospect of shaving our manes. Ten months later we were sitting in my room, just the two of us, pampering our hair as we talked about what awaited Jackie’s locks in another two months.
“You’re lucky you know,” Jackie said as she took off the bobby pin holding her bangs back. They fell over her forehead perfectly and framed her face as she fiddled with them. “You get to enjoy your hair for another year.”
“Well yeah, it seems that way, but you can start growing your hair out again as soon as it’s gone.” I set the brush down and began fluffing my hair. It had grown below the small of my back and now the tips touched the very top of my butt. “I’d love to have gotten rid of this hair when it was short and had a chance to grow it out as long as I wanted, but now any progress I make is going to be shaved no matter what when my time is up.”
“That’s absolutely true. I wish I had started to grow mine out the night this whole crazy thing started. I can’t believe I only have two months left.” Jackie said as she brushed her hair lovingly. Her hair shimmered beautifully, but didn’t quite reach the small of her back. At this point it was clear that I was going to win our little wager, but I hadn’t brought it up over the last few weeks and neither had she.
“And I’ve only got fourteen.” I looked at my hair in the mirror, flowing down my back in a beautiful fall of golden brown shining silk. “How long do you think it will be the night I get it shaved?” I asked.
“I wondered the same thing about my hair,” Jackie replied. Months and months of us pampering it had brought out a brilliantly beautiful shine in Jackie’s strawberry blond mane, “but as for you, I’m guessing yours will be just as long as Janet’s was, maybe even longer.”
“Wow.” I replied distractedly as I fluffed up my mane with my hands, then pulled it tightly back into a ponytail with one hand and yanked it as tightly as I could to get it flat against my head. I tried to get an idea of how I would look with a shaved head, and if I squinted I thought I could make out a hint of my future self, but the idea scared me so I released my long locks and sighed as my beautiful curtain of silk swung back into view.
“OK, brush me.” Jackie said as she handed me a brush. I obliged and sat behind her as I combed out her glorious red strands, thinking how strange it was that in eight short weeks this silky mass would be gone. “Are you looking forward to the shaving?” Jackie asked.
“A little, I felt so anxious when you were shaving Janet so I’m kind of excited to see what it was like.”
“I know huh?” Jackie replied as I continued to brush out the silky lengths. “I have no idea how she took losing all that amazing hair so well! My hair isn’t half as nice and I’m gonna be depressed when it’s gone.”
“Come on Jackie, your hair’s beautiful, and Janet was just a different breed. You can tell her long hair was bugging her after having it all those years.”
“Yeah, I know, but you’re not going to be like that are you?” Jackie reached behind her head and pulled a long lock over her shoulder, braiding it as I continued to brush her out. “Jess, be honest, in fourteen months when your hair is like… down to your knees, are you going to cry when you get it shaved?”
I thought about that question, but just briefly. “I think so, if I feel like this about my hair now, I’m going to probably be in love with it when it’s super long, but I doubt it will ever get to knee length.”
“It’ll be close.” Jackie said, continuing to braid her lock.
“OK, finish it off Jessica.” Jackie said two months later, I obliged and smoothed the long hair on the right side of her head. That hair was still untouched and beautiful, but not for long.
I continued to peel the hair off the right side of Jackie’s hair, stripping away strip after strip of lush, strawberry blond silk, and before long the only hair left was the long locks dangling from her right temple, just like Janet the year before. I felt a moment’s hesitation before the clippers bit into that last trace of her formerly gorgeous mane, but at this point it was really too late to change anything, so I pulled the clippers back and separated the last trace of her lovely hair from her head.
Almost immediately she reached up with both hands to rub her newly shaved head, and as her fingers traced over the sharp, bristly stubble that had once been soft, silky hair I realized that I was the last hair survivor in the room.
Almost as if reading my mind Jackie stood up and picked up the tiara she had worn on Janet’s shave one year ago and had tonight she had walked in with the glittery tiara adorning her shining locks for the last time. She walked over to me and with a smile and a wink she held it over my head. “Jessica, as former queen it is my great honor to proclaim you… drum roll please… “ she placed the tiara on my golden brown locks, and as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I had to admit I looked pretty good in it, “the new Follicle Queen!” Jackie began clapping with a huge goofy grin on her face, which now looked completely different without her thick red mane framing it. Janet and Judy joined in, laughing as I did my best impression of a beauty queen wave.
As I looked around the room at my best friends I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The only thing shining more than the tiara was my beautiful golden brown mane, but as I looked around the room and reached back to run my fingers through my butt length locks I came to accept the fact that time was finally running out for my hair.
To Be Continued…
