Excerpt
Beg, Borrow, or Steal
Chapter OneEmilyI don’t care who you are, when you live in a town the size of your thumb, if you don’t like the way your hair turns out at the salon, you stuff it deep down and never acknowledge it.
And that’s exactly why I prefer to take matters into my own hands and not allow circumstances to ever reach that point. I tend to speak my mind, and have it bite me in the ass too often, so I know if I tell Virginia that I hate my hair after this appointment, she’ll never forget it. By noon, she’ll have told everyone in our zero-stoplight town that I’m her pickiest, most unappeasable client. The roasting and poking will start immediately, and by five-thirty when I go to The Diner, someone will pop up out of nowhere and say, Are you sure that booth is good enough for you or would you like the one we reserve for the queen?
And it won’t stop there. From that day on, they’ll put a plaque on the table that reads Table Reserved for Queen Emily, and nothing I do or say will get them to remove it.
And if it seems like I’m overreacting, please know this is the very same town that started a petition last year, complete with smear campaign, to encourage my youngest sister (who was twenty-six years old at the time, mind you) to stop dating Will Griffin because they thought she was too good for him. He won them over in the end (Annie + Will forever), but the petition with the final tallies is framed and hanging in The Diner alongside the picture of Dolly Parton posing with the town. And I do mean the majority of the town. They heard she had stopped in for lunch while passing through, and one person called another who called their cousin who called their best friend who called their aunt’s boyfriend, and they all showed up for one huge group photo.
Moral of the story: Never underestimate what the town of Rome, Kentucky, is capable of.
The smell of bleach singes the insides of my nostrils as Virginia—one of only three stylists in the area—combines the powder lightener with the creamy developer right beside my face. She’s mixing that stuff so slowly a baby could do it faster, but I keep this thought to myself by picturing the terrifying treasure chest I’ve created in my mind where I lock up all my most antagonistic thoughts. It’s made of black steel and has sharp metal prongs all over it. The thing is deadly and made for keeping the peace in my day-to-day life.
“Well—I don’t like to gossip,” Virginia begins, weighing in on the conversation beside us that Hannah (the other stylist) and her client, Shirley, are having about the reason our packages have all been delivered late this week. Shirley has been the receptionist at the elementary school where I teach for over twenty-five years. She eats gossip like multivitamins.
Virginia continues, “But I did happen to see a certain someone leaving Brad’s house the other morning.”
Brad is our mailman, if it wasn’t obvious.
Everyone other than me in the salon gasps. I’m too busy staring at the bowl of lightener that’s not going to mix itself as Virginia lazily sways it in front of my face. The sassy grin aimed at the other ladies tells me she has no intention of putting any sort of hustle into my highlighting process.
“You don’t mean . . . ?” Hannah taunts, pausing with scissors in one hand, and in the other, a thin section of Shirley’s white hair, held at a ninety-degree angle—pre-snip.
“Yes,” Virginia states meaningfully with a vicious small-town twinkle in her eye. Take a picture right now and this would serve as the perfect image to describe Rome, Kentucky.
“But she’s married.”
“Not for long. When Hayes gets wind of what his wife has been doing with the sexy mailman, I expect we’ll see Evelyn’s clothes flung all over the yard and the neon boxers Brad is always giving us a peek of strung up the flagpole.” She pauses and frowns. “Truthfully, though, I don’t think Brad and Evelyn would make such a bad match.”
As fun as this is (and I don’t mean that sarcastically because I can get down with some juicy gossip along with the best of them), I happen to know that the lightener already painted on the back of my head and tucked into foils is getting dangerously close to frying the hair right off my scalp. I need Virginia to get this second bowl applied ASAP so she can start rinsing out the back while the front processes. I’m naturally a dark-blonde and prefer my highlights to blend seamlessly—not shine so bright they signal extraterrestrials.
The bowl weaves in front of my face again, but I intercept it this time and balance it in my lap to whisk the hell out of this cream. As all good and unbearable perfectionists know, if you want something done right, you mostly have to do it yourself.
Virginia doesn’t even spare me a glance. She’s used to me by now. The whole town is. When they see Emily Walker coming, they hand whatever it is they’re doing over to me and dive out of the way. Usually with a smile because they know I’ll do it in half the time and with the precision of a military special ops agent.
I finish mixing and hand the bowl over my shoulder to Virginia, who is knee-deep in speculation about what could have caused Evelyn to stray in her marriage. My next victim: the stack of messy foils on the workstation. I pre-fold each piece, handing them up one by one as Virginia paints the last of the lightener onto the front of my hair. There wasn’t much left, so thankfully she finishes quickly, and while the front processes, she spritzes water into the back foils and towels them off.
I tune out as the salon talk show moves through the lives of various town citizens, airing everyone’s dirty laundry with a bit of but it’s not my place to judge sprinkled on top just in case the good Lord is listening.
Madison, my sister just below me in age who is currently living in New York working on her culinary degree, will be angry that I’m not paying enough attention to relay all of the tasty on-dits to her later, but I’m too lost in my head, thinking of all the tasks I can get done now that I’m officially out of school for the summer and no longer have a class full of spunky—yet delightful—second-graders to teach every day. I don’t like to leave loose ends, so I cleaned out my classroom on the last day of school even though most of the other teachers will clean theirs out over the next few days. In the past I would go and help them, but I’m not allowed to anymore. They banned me after last year, saying they didn’t need a drill sergeant with a clipboard telling them how to efficiently pack up their rooms. Fair enough.
So with the school year officially behind me, I can focus on tasks closer to home:
• Help Mabel repaint the porch railing on her inn
• Finish writing the last chapter in my romance novel
• Contact the city about the pothole on Main Street
• Call Annie’s Internet provider and haggle for a lower price
The last one is more fun than chore for me. Annie, the most tenderhearted out of us four Walker siblings, mentioned the other day that she was dreading making that call, so I gleefully offered myself up as tribute. There’s nothing I love more than going head-to-head with a salesperson.
And believe it or not, I’m not the oldest sibling of our bunch. That title belongs to Noah—but part of me wonders if my parents were too sleep-deprived somewhere along the way and forgot that I was actually born first based on how laid back he is in comparison to me. Too bad my parents are dead, so I can’t ask them. Actually there’s no one I can ask about my family history now because as of November, my grandma—the woman who raised us after my parents kicked the bucket—died too. Everyone is dead. Dead, dead, dead.
And yes, I do like to throw startling little facts like those into conversation whenever I can because shock is always preferable to pity.
The last guy I dated seemed really freaked out when I delivered the dead-parents line with a smile on my face. But these days, I’m happily single by choice. (There’s also a chance that I’m single because I’m an unlovable porcupine and got tired of the constant rejection . . . but that thought is terrifying, so I slip it inside my Metal Treasure Chest of Doom and leave it there right next to the memory of my first and only love shattering my heart.)
Virginia tips my head back into the million-year-old plastic salon sink to rinse and shampoo my hair. Rather than relaxing, I spend the entire time convincing myself my neck isn’t going to snap. And it’s not until I’m back in the salon chair and Virginia is plugging in her blow-dryer that I hear the name that has me doing a mental spit take.
“Well, I’ve got my own bit of news to share. Did y’all hear about Jack Bennett?” I doubt Shirley realizes that with that one name she has successfully stopped my heart.
