If He Had Been with Me
: Chapter 40

The smell of bleach stings my nostrils and Sasha is laughing in my ear as I bend over her. It is Thursday after school and we are dying her hair, first blond, then we will add blue chunks in the front. I’m trying to spread the white cream through her hair without getting any of it on her skin or mine. My fingers work intimately over her scalp, twined in her hair.

“Don’t move your head,” I say. My hands are sweaty inside the thin plastic gloves the kit provided. The window behind me is open. The air is still a little chilled, but the sun is warm and the smell is too strong not to leave it open.

“When are you going to dye your hair again?” Sasha says. Her head is tilted back, and her eyes follow my face as my hands move through her hair.

“Never,” I say. “It’s too much trouble.”

“Is it because you don’t think Jamie would like it?”

“No,” I say. “Jamie says he would think I was beautiful no matter what.”

“You guys are so cute. Sometimes I’m jealous.” Sasha is the only single one in the group now. Alex has taken up with a freshman girl with a fake diamond in her nose. We don’t like her. We think she is presumptuous and kinda slutty looking. Jamie calls her “Alex’s bitch” when they aren’t around.

I peel the gloves off of my hands and set the timer for twenty minutes, then slump down on the edge of the tub.

“I wish you would get back with Alex,” I say.

“I’ve been thinking about that lately,” Sasha says. I sit up and grip the ledge of the clawfoot tub.

“Really?” I say.

“I miss him,” Sasha says. “But he’s with that Trina girl now.”

“If you took her place, you would be doing us all a favor.”

“Yeah, I know.” We make faces of disgust at each other. I jump up.

“We need to get to work on this immediately—I’m going to call Jamie.” I dash out the door and down the hall to my room, where my cell phone sits on my dresser.

Jamie picks up on the first ring.

“Hey,” he says.

“We’re going to break up Alex and Trina,” I say.

“Awesome,” he says. “How?”

“We’re going to get Alex and Sasha back together.”

“Oh. Can we break them up without doing that?”

“No, Sasha wants to get back with him. And this will make the group all neat again.” I twirl around and cross my room.

“She does?”

“You sound surprised.” I begin to make my way back toward the bathroom. I can hear the ticking of the timer again.

“I dunno if I liked them as a couple,” he says.

“What?” I stop in my tracks outside the bathroom door. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. Never mind. We need to get rid of Alex’s bitch.”

“Exactly,” I say. I open the door and the smell of bleach hits me again. “Why don’t you come over after I’m done dying Sasha’s hair and we can plot?”

“What color are you dying it?”

“Blue.”

“Cool.”

“I know. She wanted green but I changed her mind. I’ll call you okay?”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you more.” Sasha makes a gagging noise and I swat at her arm. Jamie hangs up. “He’s in,” I say. Sasha laughs. I look at the timer. There are still ten minutes left. I sit down again. “You’re going to love your hair.”

***

At school the next day, we complain to Alex that we never see him anymore. We make up private jokes that he missed because he was hanging out with Trina. The next night, we go to a movie and Angie brings Preppy Dave, but we do not tell Alex to invite Trina. Sasha sits next to Alex in the theater, and they share a bucket of popcorn. Alex spends the night at Jamie’s. Jamie tells Alex that he doesn’t like Trina. That nobody likes Trina. That everybody likes Sasha. That Sasha misses him.

It isn’t until the following Monday, after Alex has broken up with Trina and is holding Sasha’s hand on The Steps to Nowhere, that I see anything frightening in what we have done. I had not known that my friends and I held such power over each other, that we could change Alex’s heart as easily as I had dyed Sasha’s hair. We have created among ourselves something that is more powerful than any of us could hold separately. Over, around, and through us, we are a force, woven, tied, and bundled together. If in the future we separate, it will look so simple on the outside, a falling away, a slipping of ties. And on the inside, we will be ripped and shredded, torn as the bonds that hold us are pulled away.

We grew apart, we will say. It was an accident.

I sit on The Steps to Nowhere with my friends, and we laugh. It is spring and a breeze is ruffling our hair like loving fingers. We sit so close together that we constantly brush against each other. We touch each other with the casualness that love allows. Noah and Alex thumb-wrestle. Angie pokes me and asks what I’m doing after school. Brooke reaches out to admire Sasha’s new hair. We have sat like this for a hundred days and we think we will for another hundred and one.

This is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.