Page 51 of Left-Hand Larceny

I hope she doesn’t mean to ask me… she may have basically mastered two languages, and a smattering of a third, but there are some days even English foils me. Just the other day, I forgot the word “bagel” and called it a “bead donut” in the drive thru. At least the cashier got a good chuckle… and understood what I wanted.

“Glasses.” Ragnar says the word. Letting his gaze slip from his phone to me and back again.

I grin as Kat rolls her eyes. Literally asked him for the answer, annoyed when he comes through for her.The perfect little sister.

“Ég vissi það.” She looks like she wants to set him on fire with her mind. I adore her already.

“Af hover ju að spyrja?”

“I love your glasses,” she says to me.

“Thank you,” I laugh, pushing the pink-sparkled frames up my nose and tugging my braid over my shoulder. Anything to keep my hands busy. “They’re my favorite thing about me most days.”

“And your hair!” she gasps. “You have pink hair!”

I tilt my head and show her the streak tucked into my braid.

“Just a little,” I say. “Is pink your favorite color?”

She’s nodding enthusiastically, like a little bobble head. Her curls whip around the frame of the call and I get dizzy for a moment, watching her delight.

“It was,” she admits, ducking her eyes down in a way I’ve memorized about her older brother. “Now I like purple and blue. And sometimes yellow.”

She shoots off a rapid fire question at her brother, who bites his lips to keep from smiling. His eyes shift from me to his sister and back again. He says something back on a laugh and she pouts, lower lip pushing out in a way psychologists should definitely study. It works that well.

“She w-wants to dye her h-h-hair p-pink.” Ragnar tells me, his voice raspy, as it hits my eardrums. The look on his face says he’s not sure about it.

“They make kid-safe hair dye.” I tell him. “Also clip ins.”

“No.” Kat shakes her head so hard she’s a blur. “I want it all pink.”

“I always wanted to do my whole head too,” I say, drawing her attention back to me.

“You are a grownup?” She asks, head tilted like a curious puppy. “You don’t need to ask for permission?”

Technically, no. I shrug.

“It wouldn’t exactly be… professional,” I say.

The upkeep would be intense. I do not have it in me to do hours-long appointments every month. I barely remember to wash it as is. Dyeing a strip at the nape of my neck was the perfect compromise. I got to have some pink. It’s mostly hidden when I’m at work—although maybe not well enough if Kat noticed immediately—and even I can handle bleaching a square inch of hair.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ragnar frown slightly. Maybe I’m not doing a good enough job convincing baby Ólaffson to avoid the hair dye. Well, in that case, letting us video chat was probably a bad idea.

“W-who t-told you that?” he asks, sounding genuinely baffled. “That p-pink h-h-hair is u-unprofessional.”

I shrug, trying to make it seem like it’s not a big deal. It’s not. I’m over it. There are way bigger things going on in the world right now. “Everyone?”

“That w-was a qu-question. N-not an a-a-answer.” He takes a step closer to me. “Bill? G-Greg?”

I shake my head. It would have been easier if hair color was a hard and fast rule. I know it is at the school where Quinn works. They apparently tried to talk her out of the red. Before she pointed out it grew in that color. It’s harder to know how to fall in line, when the suggestions are just that. Guidelines as opposed to actual rules.

It wasn’t my boss. Or the owner of the team. It was my parents.

And Christian. None of them came right out and said it. Okay, Christian kind of did, but it was easy enough to read in their careful, offhand comments. We’d see a girl with bubblegumpink hair on the evening news and Dad would comment how it was a shame they couldn’t find someone else. Mom would lament how bleaching long term—something I’ll unfortunately have to do with my dark hair—causes damage.

Christian was a little less subtle. I didn’t have the pink streak when we were together, but any changes to my appearance were met with the silent treatment. I don’t mean he didn’t notice my newly bobbed hair, or the conch piercing, or even the gel tip nails. I mean he literally wouldn’t speak to me. Look at me. Acknowledge my existence. Not until I groveled. Or changed it back.

The point is, without a clear boundary—“Don’t die your hair unnatural colors”—how am I supposed to know what is expected of me? If I can tell the people in my immediate circle dislike cotton-candy hair colors, then those colors are easy enough to avoid. The problem only comes when I realize I want pink hair. Desperately.

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