She yanked at her roots, both fists tangled in brownish/blonde hair. She had been doing it for weeks, eyes locked on herself in the bathroom mirror–tugging and pulling with all her might, until her eyes swelled with tears and her face twisted into a grimace.

“It’s not going to grow any faster,” I said in the most sympathetic way I could. 

“You just don’t get it, “she spat, glaring at me in the mirror. 

Everything changed the evening she came home with her new hair cut, the recommendation of an inept stylist whose theories of hair design have no place in reality. She hated me now. Not because I did anything wrong, but rather because I was part of the world in which she, now seven inches shorter, so to speak, had to live. 

“Just go away.” She pulled on her hair again and slammed the bathroom door.

“You were wrong, K.” I woke in the morning to find myself floating in a sea of her hair. Her voice continued to utter ominous things, but, because of the mass of hair, I couldn’t locate the source. 

I felt myself being dragged  under. It was either the undertow or something else.