Chapter 2
It’s nearing the end of August, and though Alex would usually be dreading the months of schooling ahead of him, he’s almost giddy with excitement.
Turns out, John’s parents had scheduled their sessions with the counselor for every two weeks, meaning that Alex got to see him three more times after their first encounter. Ms. Martha didn’t particularly approve of his skiving off of duties to hang out with a near stranger, but she knew that the youth had never really had friends before, so she mostly kept quiet.
Mostly.
“Boy, you better get back here! If you must hang ‘round that browning boy every second of the day, then he can be put to work just like you.” She shoves a broom into John’s hands. “You don’t have to keep leaving out like you’re on lunch break!”
Alex decides that’s fair. He really had been kinda irresponsible with the whole ditching thing. Plus, John doesn’t seem to mind, as he takes to sweeping up the floors like a fish to slightly-polluted-with-hair-spray water. The two make a game out of reorganizing the bottles of hair tonic, and, once the place is relatively spotless, John takes a whole box of fruit snacks out of his backpack for him and Alex to share.
“You just made my day, John. Like, seriously.” Alex hadn’t had fruit snacks in a long time. It’s not that his foster dad never bought it, because he did. It was just that his foster siblings always got to the box before he did, and Alex was not going to find a bus all the way to a supermarket (which were few and far between in his area) just to get some damn candy. He knows he told John all of this weeks ago, but had no idea he would’ve remembered.
John chuckles as he eats his third (fourth?) packet. “No problem, dude. Just thought I’d give you a little something-something for being so nice to me.” John gives him a look filled with so much warmth that it makes him almost overwhelmed, like he’s being filled with all the good things he missed out on during his childhood, with a thousand missed hugs, a thousand unseen tender looks, a thousand uneaten fruit snacks.
Alex can feel his face heating up, but thankfully his skin is dark enough for it not to be noticeable. “You getting sappy on me?” John’s face falls at this, slightly, but the smile on his face returns and he laughs, though it sounds out of place. Alex regrets saying anything.
“Hell no, you jerk.” He pops one last candy into his mouth before shoving the empty wrappers into his backpack, before Ms. Martha can accuse them of making a mess. “My parents should be down soon. You can have the rest of these,” he pushes the half-empty box into Alex’s arms, causing his heart to swell. Jesus, here Alex was, 16 years old and gushing like a lovesick puppy over some fruit snacks.
After he rushes to deposit the box in his secret corner in the backroom, where his own ratty backpack filled with overdue library books lies, he saunters back to his new friend and grabs one of his locs to twirl around. In the short time that Alex knew him, he learned that John really likes having his hair played with. “You ready for school on Monday?”
“Pssh, no. Are you?”
“Yes,” he responds, honestly. He heard that Ashburton was a good school, which is new for Alex. Hopefully, it’ll be the first school he’s been to where all the chairs aren’t balanced by old tennis balls, and the hallways don’t constantly smell like urine. “You’ll be there, so I don’t have much to worry about.”
John’s mouth slowly morphs into a smirk. “Who’s getting sappy now?” Alex swats at the much taller boy, ignoring the heavy fluttering in his chest.
He's so screwed.
_______________________
It’s late, the only people left in the salon being Ms. Martha, one of the younger stylists, and himself. The counseling service is closed for the evening, and John had left with his family hours ago.
In walks a girl, only a year older than Alex, with dark skin and large eyes. She walks with a grace that mesmerizes Alex every time he sees her. Her hair is wrapped in a pink bandana, tied in a way so that no one can see the damage done to her hair since her last appointment. Upon seeing Alex, she winks.
“Hey, Peach Fuzz.” Alex can’t even be annoyed by the old nickname, anymore.
“Hey, Angelica,” he greets back, somehow even more giddy than before. Angelica Schuyler, for the past year, had been one of Alex’s favorite things about working at the salon. Her youthful snark and exuberant laugh brought a jazz to the salon that tended to only cater to middle to older aged women. She always joked with Alex while getting her hair done, much to the chagrin of whoever was put to the task of doing said hair.
He’d be lying if he said that he didn’t have a crush on her at first, because, really. The girl was beautiful, even when her hair was a Hot Ass Mess™. She was rich, from the northwest side of the city, where only the wealthiest of the wealthy lived in lavishness. When first asked, she told him the only reason she came all the way over east to get her hair done was because she couldn’t “find anyone who can braid hair like Ms. Martha and her girls” in her gated community.
Ms. Martha looks up from where she's counting the revenue from the day to greet the young lady. “Evening, Miss Angelica. Woy! You look sharp, today, missy.” She does. She’s wearing a crop top-maxi skirt combo, baring her wide stomach for the world to see. She stopped caring about people’s comments of, “fat girls shouldn’t wear crop tops” ages ago.
The teen grins, her purple lipstick shining in the fluorescent lighting. “Thank you, Ms. Martha. I hope I’m not too late? I know my appointment was at 5:00, but the traffic on the way here was horrendous.”
“Don’t worry about it, one bit, ti chouchou. Go sit by the sink, and I’ll have someone be right with you.” She spots the weary woman clearing off the containers of hair gel and oils to make way for something more specific for Angelica’s hair. Ms. Martha tuts, and rushes over to stop her, putting both hands on the woman’s shoulders. “Dominique, you’ve been here all day. Go take care of that newborn of yours.” Though this was met with half-hearted protests, Ms. Martha ended up successfully shooing the grateful mother out of the salon. With a precision of an army general, she turned on her heel with her hands on her hips. “Alex, go wash Miss Angelica’s hair while I get everything ready.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he guides Angelica over to the sinks near where the Haitian flag is, even though she’s been to the salon enough times to know the works. He makes an “after you” motion with his hand as Angelica sits herself down in the leather reclining chair attached to the sink. Alex busies himself with reaching for the appropriate bottles, fingers already tingling. Hair washing was always a weirdly intimate event for him, and not even in a sensual type of way. The process of washing away all the build-up in someone’s hair felt like washing away all the sins, all the memories, good and bad, since their last washing, and helping the person in the chair start anew. He decides that when he’s writing his autobiography, years from now after he’s served two terms as president, the cover art will definitely have something to do with some pseudo-deep, cathartic hair washing. “Lather, Rinse, Repeat: The tale of Alexander Hamilton’s Rise to Glory” he’ll call it.
Angelica reluctantly removes her scarf, revealing the jungle that was her previously kempt box braids. All signs of the meticulous repair from her last appointment had vanished. The shine: lackluster, her tips: split and fuzzy, her edges: nonexistent.
“Shit…Angelica, what did you get up to in the past month?”
“It’s called heat, Alex. It is summer, and so I sweat. Don’t judge me.”
“But, it looked so good last time…”
“You say that every single time. Of course it looked good. Now, it doesn’t. If it did, I wouldn’t be here for maintenance, now would I?” She’s got a point there.
He rakes a hand through her hair, ignoring the observation that it somehow feels different than John's. “So, how have you been?”
“That’s kinda a loaded question.”
“What? Had a bad August?”
“No, not bad, just." She huffs a little, staring at the various cracks on the ceiling. "I start my senior year in two days, and I haven’t started a single college application. I’m not even sure where I want to go!”
Alex wants to say that she should get a start on that immediately, that she shouldn’t have waited so long in the first place to figure things out for herself, because if she waits too long she might miss out on her shot—something like that. But, he doesn’t want to piss her off (he’s seen Angelica pissed off, and it is far from pretty), so he says, “Don’t worry. You got more than enough time.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. But, everyone keeps breathing down my neck about it. Especially one of my little sisters. She seems to care more about my getting into college than I do.” She sets her head back into the bowl, letting the remainder of her braids fall in. She grins at Alex as he turns on the faucet, and squeezes some shampoo onto his hands.
“So, I know you haven’t figured out which college to go to, but do you know what you wanna do?”
“I was thinking public policy? That or human resources. I’m pretty sure both would require me to be a communications major.” He nods, despite knowing that she can’t see it. He starts kneading her head with the shampoo, dispersing it evenly through her scalp. The stuff is herbal, definitely straight from Haiti, and the smell is thick. While he’s rinsing the shampoo out, it dawns on him that he has no idea what school Angelica even attends, which he really should, because come on, he’s known her for a year. He decides to ask, “Hey, what school do you go to?”
“Ashburton,” is her response, because of course it is. “I know what you’re thinking: what’s the rich girl doing at some public school—“
“A very nice public school down the street from a Whole Foods. A Whole Foods, Angelica.”
“How’d you know it was by the Whole Foods?”
“I’m starting there in two days, too. Thought I’d do some research to see what I’d gotten myself into.”
“Aye, maybe we’ll have some classes together! You check for your schedule on the website yet?”
He had, and memorized it as well. He used the digital map on the website to pinpoint where his classes were ahead of time, so people wouldn’t immediately look at him running around like a chicken without its head (which, he saw a lot of at the market he and his cousin worked at back home. Very disturbing imagery, much like an angry Angelica.) and see a newbie. “I skimmed it, yeah.”
Angelica hums as Alex massages conditioner into her hair. “Don’t worry, I got you, boo. You can hang out with me for the first week.”
“Um, excuse you, who said I needed your charity?”
She shrugs. “I was just looking out for you, Peach Fuzz.”
“Okay, one, you can call me that here, but do not call me that at school. And, two, what if I said I already had friends? Or, like, a friend?”
“How, when you haven’t set a single foot into the school?”
Alex begins scratching at the girl’s head, which causes her to sigh. “There’s a guy in my grade who’s been coming in here with his parents for the past couple months.” Out of respect for John, he doesn’t give details. He doesn’t need any gossip spreading around about him before the first day of school. It’s not that Alex thinks Angelica would tell, but he knows how rumors can grow. “He’s new too, went to that all-boys school that’s in the middle of the woods.”
“Ew, you mean the one with the boys that my dad’s always trying to set me and my sisters up with? With those ugly ass uniforms?”
“The very one,” Alex rinses the remainder of the product out of her hair, leaving her hair feeling fresh and revitalized. Angelica feels like a weight has been lifted off of her.
“Oh, for the love of God, please don’t let this be an Alexander Hamilton 2.0.” Alex rolls his eyes, before playfully throwing a towel at her dripping head, temporarily blinding the girl.
“He is not. I mean, we have a lot in common, but...he’s cool. And thoughtful, and just,” he realizes how gay he sounds, but doesn’t care. “John’s really cool.”
Angelica can’t see the smile on his face, but he can hear it in his voice. She decides it’s not worth commenting on.
Yet.
_______________________
It’s Sunday night. He can hear the sounds of the train whistle blowing from afar outside his window. There’s a couple the floor below him having the same argument they always do (“You always smell like another woman, always, you fucking—“ “Well, maybe if you weren’t such a frigid bitch, I wouldn’t have to go to someone else!”), and the hisses and howls of feral cats fighting by the trash cans make for a good distraction. He leans over to check his alarm clock: 2:45 AM it reads. Welp, there goes his idea for getting his sleep schedule on track before the school year starts.
Its dark, the only source of light being the digital flash of the clock and his younger foster brother’s Pokémon nightlight. The boy’s 13 years old, but Alex knows not to judge. The foster care system has a way of fucking kids up; he's seen it with his own eyes.
He considers getting his flashlight out to read something—he bought all the books he needed for his AP English class weeks ago, all of them secondhand, but better than nothing—when he hears a buzz from his phone from underneath his pillow. When he extracts it from its hiding spot, he finds that the reason for the notification is John. They had exchanged phone numbers after their second meeting, and had mostly only sent each other stupid memes or links to articles on systemic oppression (romantic, Alex knows). He can’t help but be curious about what this specific text is. The phone buzzes again before he can even enter in his security code.
John (Cena): u up?
John (Cena): cause if ur not im sorry don’t read this
Alex chuckles, but not loudly, as he doesn’t want to wake up his foster brother. He sits up a little in his small bed, and works on texting back a reply.
A.Ham: its cool im always awake
Maybe that’s a bit too honest, but he shrugs it off. It’s too late (early?) for overthinking.
John (Cena): cool cool so um
John (Cena) is typing…
John (Cena): im like freakishly nervous I kno u said not to be but Ive been going to the same school with the same ppl since I was like 5 so
John (Cena): this is kinda a lot for me
John (Cena): and now im whining to u at almost 3 in the fucking morning
John (Cena): nvm u can go to sleep now while I drown in self pity
A.Ham: jfc and I thought i was neurotic
John (Cena): I kno leave me be
A.Ham: no no no its perfectly reasonable 4 u to be nervous its ok
A.Ham: just stick w/ me and u will b fine :)
John (Cena): ill hold u to that alex
John (Cena): thanks
Alex wants to reply with something like “anything for u <333” but he has at least some tact, dammit. So, he ends the conversation with the sunglasses emoji (though since his phone is a cheap Samsung, it’s more of a bastardized version of the emoji) and turns off his phone, letting it sit on his chest. He watches it rise and fall with his breaths, and fights a losing battle with the smile creeping onto his face. In the morning, he will race to the bathroom to take a shower that runs cold within two minutes, go to the kitchen fully dressed and steal one of his foster dad’s tasteless vitamin bars, ignore the sound of the old Cuban lady next door to him crying to herself over her husband who died thirty years ago, and make his way to the bus stop to be taken to the west side of town. He will be vibrating with excitement, ready to take on this world that’s inherently set against him, one step at a time.
But now, for the first time in a while, he sleeps.