Page 324 of A University of Betrayal

I looked at Larissa as my last tear rolled down my cheek. It would be the last tear I would shed in self-pity for this family.

“Cut my hair.”

Larissa looked at me in shock. “What?”

“I don’t want this hairstyle anymore. I hate long hair. Cut my hair as short as Bayla’s, maybe shorter, so that it barely touches my shoulders,” I said sharply and with determination.

This ridiculous hairstyle that Grace had always plaited into braids. Hair that now only served to be pinned up in a messy knot because I couldn’t handle it. I had never felt comfortable with it. It was part of the fragile Julie, an externally controlled Julie... If I wanted to change something, I had to start there first.

“Now?” Larissa asked, looking at her watch.

“Now.”

A smile spread across her lips, and I smiled through my tears too.

cinderella’s dead

EMELINE

Larissa and I disappeared upstairs to the bathroom, where she spread out her hair care set and took my thick, platinum-blond hair between her fingers.

“Are you sure?” she asked again.

I seemed to have surprised her.

My eyes met hers in the mirror. “I’ve never been so sure.”

She nodded and reached for the scissors. Then she started.

There was a soft scratchy sound and I watched as the long strand slid down the black cape.

It was as if Larissa was freeing me from something, from an old part of myself that was now falling to the floor.

The noise sounded again, and another strand slid down. Larissa picked up one of the strands and held it high. We both looked at it in the mirror.

A mischievous smile played around the corners of her mouth. “I’ve always wanted to cut hair this long for someone.”

Larissa continued cutting and with each old strand, something inside me came loose, fell to the floor and broke.

“Straighten your head,” Larissa reminded me with a grin, and I was forced to look in the mirror.

Normally, I hated what I saw there. I hated it to the core. But the more time passed, the more details I discovered that I had never seen before. Not in that dimmed light, not with full straight almost shoulder-length hair that made my cheekbones stand out even more.

I didn’t look like Julie anymore.

The old Julie died in that very moment. She was too weak for this world.

And for a moment I recognized him, the boy whose picture was under my pillow. The one who had died on November 2nd, 1998. We had the same aventurine eyes, the same pale face and the white hair... unmistakable.

A curious part of me wondered what he had been like. Was I like him?

I had only had my weak mother as a reference until now, but a part of me had always known that I wasn’t like her. Everyone had told me so. Amara, Gloria, Rebecca Harlow... They had all tried to keep me small, to compare me to her. But neither outwardly nor inwardly did I resemble the woman who seemed just as strange to me as this frail Julie. They compared me to her because they were afraid of him. And it was only a matter of time before they would be afraid of me too...

I looked at the reflection in front of me, tried to memorize how it felt, to make a connection, to stop suppressing the dark feelings. I felt everything rise up inside me at once. Anger, sadness, hate...pain.A new feeling mingled with all those that seemed familiar to me.

Power.

Power over my own body, over my elements that were waiting inside me to come out.

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