“She held me down!” Leo suddenly screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. He pointed a trembling finger at his grandmother. “I tried to run, Mommy! I said no! I said I had to keep my promise! But she grabbed my arms! She told the man I was being bad and to just cut it all off!”
My breath hitched. It wasn’t just a haircut. It was an assault.
Before I could unleash the fury boiling in my veins, the front door creaked open.
Lily stood in the doorway, clutching her blanket. The noise had woken her. She rubbed her eyes, still groggy, and looked down the steps at her brother.
When Lily saw Leo’s shaved, scratched head, the color drained entirely from her pale face. Her eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing terror. During her hardest months of chemotherapy, losing her hair had been her greatest trauma. To her seven-year-old mind, baldness equated to sickness. It equated to the hospital, the needles, the endless pain.
“Leo?” Lily gasped, stumbling backward, hitting the doorframe. Her breathing turned shallow and erratic. “Leo, are you sick? Are you going to the hospital like me? Why are you bald? Are you dying?”
“No, Lily, no!” I cried, rushing toward the porch to catch her as she collapsed into a panic attack. She curled into a tight ball, weeping hysterically, the trauma of her own illness violently resurfacing at the sight of her brother’s mutilated hair.
Leo ran up the steps, dropping to his knees beside his sister, crying harder. “I’m sorry, Lily! I’m sorry! I tried to stop her! I tried to keep my promise!”
He opened his small fist. Resting in his sweaty palm was a single, long blonde curl he had managed to snatch from the barbershop floor.
At that exact moment, a car door slammed behind us.
