Forgive me, Leonard Peacock

FOUR

I have this signature really long dirty-blond hair that hangs over my eyes and past my shoulders. I’ve been growing it for years, ever since the government came after my dad and he fled the country.[7]

And my long locks piss Linda off something awful, especially since she’s into contemporary fashion. She says I look like a “grunge-rock stoner”[8] and back when she was still around caring about me, Linda actually made me submit to a drug test—pissing into a cup—which I passed.[9]

I didn’t get Linda a good-bye present, and I start to feel guilty about that, so I cut off all my hair with the scissors in the kitchen—the ones we usually use to cut food.

I cut it all down to the scalp in a wild orgy of arms and hands and silver blades.

Then I mash all of my hair into a big ball and wrap it in pink paper.

I’m laughing the whole time.

I cut out a little square of pink paper and write on the back.

Dear Delilah,

Here you go.

You got your wish.

Congratulations!

Love, Samson

I fold the square in half and tape it to the gift, which looks quite odd—almost like I tried to wrap a pocket of air.

Then I stick the present in the refrigerator, which seems hilarious.

Linda will be looking for a chilled bottle of Riesling to calm her jangled nerves after getting the news about her son ridding the world of Asher Beal and Leonard Peacock too.

She’ll find the pink wrap job.

Linda will wonder about my allusion to Samson and Delilah when she reads the card, because that was the title of my father’s failed sophomore record, but will get the joke just as soon as she opens her present.

I imagine her clutching her chest, faking the tears, playing the victim, and being all dramatic.

Jean-Luc will really have his professionally manicured French hands full.

No sex for him maybe, or maybe not.

Maybe their affair will blossom without me around to psychologically anchor poor Linda to reality and maternal duties.

Maybe once I’m gone, she’ll float away to France like a shiny new silver little-kid birthday balloon.

She’ll probably even lose a dress size without me around to trigger her “stress eating.”

Maybe Linda won’t return to our house ever again.

Maybe she and Jean-Luc will go to the fashion capital of the world, the City of Light, auw-hauh-hauw!, and screw like bunnies happily ever after.

She’ll sell everything, and the new homeowners will find my hair in the refrigerator and be like What the . . .?

My hair’ll just end up in the trash and that will be that.

Gone.

Forgotten.

RIP, hair.

Or maybe they’ll donate my locks to one of those wig-making places that help out kids with cancer. Like my hair would get a second shot at life with a little innocent-hearted bald chemo girl maybe.

I’d like that.

I really would.

My hair deserves it.

So I’m really hoping for that cancer-kid-helping outcome if Linda goes to France without coming home first, or maybe even Linda will donate my hair.

Anything’s possible, I guess.

I stare at the mirror over the kitchen sink.[10]

The no-hair guy staring back at me looks so strange now.

He’s like a different person with all uneven patches on his scalp.

He looks thinner.

I can see his cheekbones sticking out where his blond curtains used to hang.

How long has this guy been hiding under my hair?

I don’t like him.

“I’m going to kill you later today,” I say to that guy in the mirror, and he just smiles back at me like he can’t wait.

“Promise?” I hear someone say, which freaks me out, because my lips didn’t move.

I mean—it wasn’t me who said, “Promise?”

It’s like there’s a voice trapped inside the glass.

So I stop looking in the mirror.

Just for good measure, I smash that mirror with a coffee mug, because I don’t want the mirror me to speak ever again.

Shards rain down into the sink and then a million little mes look up like so many tiny minnows.