Pink Hair, Don't Care Anonymous

Tish and Snooky’s Manic Panic Cotton Candy Pink Classic High Voltage Permanent Hair Dye. $9.03 per tub of 4 fluid ounces. 14 tubs for 14 girls, that’d be a total of $126.42. A ski team tradition. “Not hazing,” the older girls argued, with a wink and a knowing smile. Valentine’s Day. We sat in the locker room, covered in towels, shower caps, trash bags. The lights were fluorescent, the fans feebly trying to rid the air of the sweet toxic smell of hair dye.

I was shivering but couldn’t tell if it was from the leaky window slipping in cold winter air, or the fact that I was dying my entire head neon pink. We masked our nerves by blasting Taylor Swift. Three times of Teardrops on my Guitar because Callie loves country, one time of Forever and Always because Molly is in love. We each took turns sitting on the throne, a plastic chair in the center of the locker room. The salon. We bleached, we washed, we slapped gobs of pink onto each other’s hair. Mine was so thick with substance that I shaped it into a shark fin, posed in front of the shower.

In the end, four hours and 37 minutes later, the fourteen of us stood in front of the mirror. Dang, I said. We cracked up.