Gone With Thy Wig

Theo James survived.

Unfortunately…my wig didn’t.

I had been standing—barely–wobbling on a step stool in our Borrowers-sized living room, trying to decorate our “Christmas tree” for the last twenty minutes. And I say “Christmas Tree” extremely loosely, because it’s less foliage and pine-scented magic, and more a life-sized Theo James cardboard cutout wrapped in pink tinsel and red lipstick kisses from all of us girls.

I got the honour of the first mouth kiss, not to brag.

Theo joined our family six Christmases ago—back when we were too broke for an actual tree, but somehow not too broke (or smart) to buy a Facebook Marketplace cardboard cutout of Theo James.

No regrets.

Only priorities in this apartment.

He became tradition. Like Christmas, Halloween and Easter–Theo adapted.

This year, for Halloween, he went as one of my roommates, Matilda’s boyfriend, to make her ex jealous.

It worked too well.

Which is why Theo’s head is now held in place with duct tape.

What I’m trying to say, Theo, is that it’s a very versatile investment.

My wig, however, had been with me longer—the investment of the investment. Which is why losing it hurt more than the ending of Me Before You, and I cried for two months straight after watching it.

“Maybe…maybe we could glue the non-scorched bits back together?” Lovisa offers, sounding hopeful, scratching her neck while all four of us, including my cat and cardboard Theo, hover over the crime scene, our noses scrunching in response.

My beautiful pink human hair wig–my identity, my lifeline–lay blackened and scorched against our apartment’s wooden floor. The smell reminded me of the time our roommate, Collins, moved in and accidentally turned on the oven while my cat was napping inside.

We forgot to mention that we don’t use the oven.

Ever.

Sir Wigglebottoms was fine. The apartment, however, smelled like regret and smoked kitty for weeks.

Everything happened so fast.

The stool tilted as Lovisa tripped on its legs.

Matilda shrieked.

Collins caught my cat that had leapt in the air from terror.

Theo lurched forward, and suddenly a six-foot cardboard man was headed straight to our coffee table of aggressively scented candles.

I didn’t think. I jumped.

It was all very James Bond of me.

The wig–my TV wig, the one that made me palatable, polished, unbreakable, was still on my head. Collins had fitted it earlier for tomorrow and told me to leave it on because, and I quote, “It needs to mould onto your big head!” I listened. That was my first mistake.

There was a flash of heat.

Then the smell. The smell…

Tomorrow is supposed to be the biggest day of my career.

Instead, I am stuck staring at the one thing that kept my secret safe–my wig. The secret that would ruin me if it ever came out.

And if it got into his hands?

Armageddon.

I shoved my untamed blonde curls out of my face and stared at the damage. Heat rising on my cheeks. I couldn’t meet my life’s nemesis for the first time on live television without it.

Not without my identity.

Being branded the People’s Cupid meant one thing and one thing only: perfection. Straight, pink coloured hair. A polished smile and my red heart-shaped glasses. Made a version of myself that people could love without ever knowing who I was. Before being People’s Cupid? Not even my family wanted me.

I wasn’t going back. Never.

They didn’t know me without the wig.

. And I was ultimately screwed if I couldn’t come up with a solution.

“I told you,” Collins starts, blowing a heavy breath out, “we shouldn’t have let Lovisa play Juliet Dance when we have highly flammable objects near her.”

For my birthday this year, Lovisa came up with her own version of the popular game Just Dance. Calling it Juliet Dance.

Instead of the usual track lists, she filmed herself dancing to my favourite songs in different locations around New York–getting herself arrested in the process, which is how I found out about the gift four weeks earlier. Bailing her out at 2 a.m., dressed as Lady Liberty, with a stick-on moustache and holding a birthday cake, was the highlight of my year, I’m not going to lie. Best birthday gift ever.

Granted. We just shouldn’t have let her dance to THIS IS FOR by TWICE anywhere near hot candles–or our beloved Theo.

“He can’t see me like this,” I mumble, hands tangled in my hair as I pace back and forth–two steps forward, two steps back. That’s the luxury of our apartment.

“What?” Lovisa says, face scrunched.

“Someone open the damn windows!” I scream.

Matilda scrambles across the floor with a screech, throwing open every window she can reach. Mr Wigglebottoms glides between my legs, sensing my anxiety.

“Letty, calm down.” Collins wraps an arm around my shoulders. “We’ll figure something out, right, girls?” She looks over her shoulder with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes in the way I can tell she wanted it to.

Both of them nod.

Too quickly.

Rolling my eyes, I pull away from her. “Look at this!” I point at the obvious, still burning on the ground. “I can’t go on The New York Morning Chit Chat without my wig!”

“If this is about Heath–” Collins starts, but immediately stops when I interrupt her sharply, “–Don’t even mention that jackass’s name! And it isn’t just about him!” My eyes bulging, I watch as she recoils into herself, stepping back from me as if I were a grizzly bear. And honestly, I’m not too far off when I catch my reflection in a mirror.

Instantly, I feel horrible. Worse than before.

“I’m sorry.” I shake my head, flopping back onto our sofa that creaks in protest as the girls crowd around me. “I didn’t mean to lash out. I’ve just been wound tight for weeks. Knowing I’m finally going to have to meet him face to face, and now the wig?”

I exhale, my head dipping back. “It’s not helping. None of this is.”

They nod, all sympathy and soft eyes. And I love them for it. But no matter how supportive they are, they’ll never understand how deeply this man has threatened not just my career but my existence.

Heath Heartbreak.

He is exactly how his name suggests. The devil, reincarnated into a man whose sole purpose in life is to destroy love. And apparently, me in the process. I didn’t even do anything to him other than exist–well…I did sort of, kind of mention in an interview years ago that his dick is so small that Pluto finally felt seen.

So, ok I did do something to him.

But!

A week before that, he had told the world, and I quote, “Cupids tolerable until she opens her mouth. Sure, she’s hot visually, but nothing’s going on under that pink hair. Brain cells? Nonexistent.”

I think what I said was actually very respectful in comparison.

Heath was my first hate comment. My first enemy. And the first time, the feeling of anger was harboured.

I’ve been a love guru for nearly a decade. World famous for my advice, my supposed mastery over matters of the heart.

In reality? I’m a con-artist.

And somehow in his sick mind, he knows it.

Any chance he gets to drag me under the bus with his “alleged” information, he takes it. And what’s worse? The information isn’t alleged at all. But I have to act like it is, smile wider, strike first, and hit him somewhere delicate enough to keep him quiet while I prepare for whatever truth he tries to leak next.

“Ooo! I have an idea!” Matilda pats my shoulders happily, “There’s a 24hr party shop down the street, what is it called again?” She shifts on her feet for a moment, thinking, “Wackawoodle!” She snaps her hands together, jerking us all to attention. “That’s it! They’ll have wigs! We could try and Becky Homecky something up!”

The phrase “24-hour party shop” and naming a store “Wackawoodle” should immediately be illegal in all 50 states, but when it’s nearly 11 pm on a Sunday, and you have to be on live television with your nemesis you’ve never met before in person, in less than 12 hours. I think we can make an exception.

“Okay,” I stand up with far too much confidence than I should, “Get your shoes on, we have a wig to snatch.”

***

Wackawoodle consisted of three tragic aesthetics.

Tacky, Tackier, and ultimate tackiness with a side of yuck. I don’t know how they were still in business, but they did have a wig selection that could make a drag queen cry.

Not for good reasons.

The aisle smelled of plastic and bad decisions. The wigs hung in rows and were divided into two categories: synthetic and shiny, or ratchet and used. We opted for synthetic and shiny for obvious reasons. Each one was worse than the last.

Red that screamed.

Blonde that leaned green.

I tried one on anyway.

Then another.

I stood there, staring at myself in the reflection of a discounted fairy godmother’s wand and realised that the scorched wig on our living room floor had at least been mine. It had at least some resemblance to actual hair and not something plucked straight from Ronald McDonald’s butt crack and shoved with a price tag on it.

“Ooohhh-kkkaayy…” I say, smile tight, pulling the neon pink wig with a huge bald spot off my head. “So. Yeah. No wigs.”

Silence. Then Lovisa said it.

“We could always dye your hair?”

It was 10 minutes till closing, and all three of us ran into The Placebo Pharmacy & Co three blocks from our apartment. Besides its name, it had a great range of anything and everything you could need, from pregnancy tests in bulk to expired calendars from 1999, strangely with Liza Minnelli on its cover.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The pharmacy’s lights were too bright for the hour, as if the place was offended it too was awake. Russ, behind the counter—or as his name-tag read “uss”—glared and smoked a joint before showing us to where the dye was located.

Everything hummed.

Everything judged.

We stood in the hair aisle, surrounded by boxes promising miracles. I wish I could say Russ was my fairy godmother–father in disguise of a 16-year-old pot head, but I again was let down when he happened to mention through the smoke of weed that 90% of the hair dye they sold was recalled for rat poison, but his dad refused to waste product and money on buying fresh, uncontaminated products.

I swear, if Oprah could see me right now, she’d have an aneurysm trying to get me on her show.

Besides the rat poison comment, they did have quite a selection of colours that did somehow relax and impress me, which was rather concerning.

Midnight black, soft auburn, natural honey and pinky pink.

Bingo.

“This one looks good.” Collins picks up the box for pinky pink, nodding approvingly as she reads the back. It was all in Chinese, but with a quick Google Translate, we got the gist of how to use it.

How hard can I be anyway? It’s hair dye, not rocket science.

“We need a chemical hair straightening kit, too,” Matilda added, reaching on her tiptoes for a keratin treatment that had more red label warnings than seemed safe to sell.

One of the reasons I used a wig, besides hiding my identity, was to cover my curly hair. Out of my entire family, besides my Grammy, I was the only one with bright blonde hair and a lion’s mane of curls.

I loved my curls until I didn’t.

No styling tamed them. However, braiding my hair and shoving it under a wig?

That was manageable.

Besides, I was prone to getting stuff stuck in my hair. In 7th grade, my hair got caught in Marc Blaine’s headgear. Having your hair sawed off during PE class by two firefighters and a canteen lady wasn’t my highlight of that year. Unfortunately, worse has happened since then.

So dying and chemically straightening my hair all at once? That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, but Collins didgo to hair school…for two weeks, give or take a few days she missed, so she should hopefully know what she is doing.

Right?

****

It smelled wrong before it hurt.

Dying your hair, unfortunately, did require you to have the IQ of a rocket scientist or at least someone whose IQ wasn’t that of a fish out of water trying to do algebra.

That should have been our 100th red flag. Our 101? Should have been after we applied the chemical straightener, Matilda casually mentioned that “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked the one from the clearance shelf,” along with a guilty smile and peck on my cheek.

Rat poison. Recalled hair products. Clearance shelf.

And somehow none of those words made us stop and think, “hey, maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

We are such idiots.

“Is it…supposed to do that?” someone asked, concerned laced. But I couldn’t focus on who it was as my jaw hung numb, staring at myself in the mirror. Matilda stood on the bathtub ledge, fanning me from behind with an old Chinese takeaway menu, my scalp burning red. Collins re-read the instructions for the 50th time while arguing with a Chinese AI bot we found online to decipher the smudged Chinese instructions. We thought, “It can’t be that important, let’s just skip it.”

Idiots²

Turns out it was. Very important.

Nobody answered.

Not when they saw Lovisa’s hands leaving my head, warm and empty. The room went quiet in the same way when something irreversible happens, and you’re left speechless. Even my cat covered his eyes with his paw from the doorway before skidding off.

My hair.

Chunks.

Gone.

I couldn’t tell if the tears pricking my blazing eyes were caused by the massive hair clumps falling off my head or the bleach, or maybe the fact that in less than 12 hours I am to come face to face with my life nemesis without my lifeline, without any lifeline, given the state of my hair.

“Should I get the superglue?” Collins whispers loud enough for a much-deserved side eye from me. No wig. No hair. No pride. No nothing. I’m screwed. Beyond screwed, like medically, legally and spiritually screwed. Not even an Etsy witch could save me now.

That phrase, God’s perfect timing, turned straight into the devil’s perfect timing when our TV was turned on by my cat accidentally standing on the remote. Volume full blast with a voice, all too familiar. But not for a good reason.

All four of our heads slowly peer around the doorway, clinging to one another like he somehow found our addresses and broke in.

And there on the screen was a blaring image of him.

Heath.

In all his sinister IHateLove glory. With a smile that could make an innocent person plead guilty to a crime they didn’t commit. And what added the cherry to this already crappy cake, you ask?

His most recent Instagram live stream. Plastered on my fricken TV screen.

The nerve.

Broadcast on the most-watched news source in the world, The Timeset.

“Juliet Cupid preaches to people how to fall in love. Countless self-help books on the topic and events galore, people practically on their knees for the lies she spews daily. Yet somehow she’s never stumbled over it herself. Watching her address romance while hiding behind a fake boyfriend is…fascinating, if you enjoy watching smoke where fire should be. Follow my journey where I spend the upcoming months diving into my new series ‘The Exposè of a Corrupt Cupid’, the lie, the fraud, the unlovable Juliet Cupid, or should I say Juliet Con-Cupid.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” I shriek, looking back at my pale-faced friends for support, but instead, I’m left with the sight of frozen, dry-mouthed, gaping statues who hold a striking resemblance to what I thought to be my supportive friends. Sweat pools on Collin’s forehead; meanwhile, Lovisa and Matilda look like they are auditioning for the infamous Scream painting.

“And Cupid?”

Slowly, my head turns back to the TV screen. Rigid. I feel like a child, about to be scolded, gulping, I watch his smirk grow more sour.

I’m his prey, and he’s about to pounce.

“I know you’re watching this. And I just want to say from the bottom of my non-existent heart, I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

My eyes fall shut, bracing myself against the door frame. I slump like the blobs of my hair all around the floor.

I hate him.

My phone buzzes from my back pocket, once, twice, three times, before I decide to bite the bullet and pull it out with the enthusiasm of a dying battery, already regretting my decision when I see who messaged me. I swear I am cursed.

“Hey, I think we should break up. I mean, like I met this really hot guy, Javier, who’s now my spray tan artist. He’s from the Bahamas and totally delicioso. Anyway, I feel like our fake romantic connection isn’t, you know, in the right direction anymore. It’s all very horizontal energy, like bad feng shui. Total me issue btw.

Love,

your fakest boyfriend, Garret! Xoxo.

P.S. Can I borrow your denim jacket that’s Reinstoned Sexy King on the back?”

I’m officially going to dig my own grave and die because how can I recover from this?!

I can’t.