The Story Sisters. Alice Hoffman

reaching into the nineties. It was the kind of weather in which people did stupid things, such as throwing themselves off a dock into the cool water, only to break their necks on the rocks. Elderly residents were warned not to go outside. Birds died in their nests. On impulse, Claire decided to have her hair cut short. She usually was a follower and she thrilled herself with her own fierce determination to make a change. She was broiling in her casts, nearly fainting with the heat. Her scalp itched and there was no way for her to scratch it. Annie took her to the hair salon on Main Street, where a young woman named Denise fastened a smock around her shoulders.

      “Are you sure? You have such beautiful hair. It seems a shame.”

      Claire was sure. Denise cut her mane of heavy black hair to just below her chin. They would donate what had been shorn to Locks of Love and a wig would be made for a cancer patient. Claire loved her hair short—it was so much cooler—but when her sisters saw her they were horrified. The older girls were at home watching an old black-and-white movie about a werewolf. They had been captivated by the poor werewolf’s plight, enough so that they actually didn’t argue the way they usually did. When they saw Claire’s haircut, each let out a shriek. Elv said, “Who did that to you? I’ll bet it was Mom’s idea.” Meg, near tears, cried, “Oh, Claire. Now we don’t look alike.”

      Meg’s own long black hair was braided and clipped atop her head. She didn’t like anything to change. She favored long, involved books like Great Expectations, wherein the villains turned out to be heroes and there was always someone who would save the day just when it seemed all had been lost.

      “Now we’ll never look alike,” Meg said sadly.

      “There’s only one way to do it,” Elv advised, once their mother had left the room. “If that’s what you want,” she said to Meg. “But you’re probably all talk.”

      Meg tilted her chin. She knew her sisters had secrets. She could hear them whispering in bed. “You think so?” she said. “I’ll go first. Then we’ll see if you have the nerve.”

      They went upstairs and sat on the floor. Elv lit a black candle she had brought home from Paris. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt she’d found at a shop on the Rue de Tournon. It had been hideously expensive, but she’d wanted it so. She slipped it into her purse when the shop owner wasn’t looking. You could see right through the fabric but Elv didn’t care. She went to get the scissors and a towel to drape around Meg’s shoulders. Then she locked the bedroom door.

      “Are you sure you want to do this?” she pressed. “A thousand percent sure? This isn’t something you can change your mind about later.”

      Meg nodded. She was very calm. She hadn’t had her hair cut since she was ten years old. She thought of it as her only good feature. She was just as beautiful as Elv, but she didn’t realize it. Now she unplaited her hair. Perhaps she was even more beautiful than her sister when she wore her hair down.

      Claire sat on the edge of Meg’s bed. She felt guilty and responsible. “I only cut mine because I’m so hot in my casts and I can’t braid my own hair. I can’t even wash it. Maybe you shouldn’t, Meg. You don’t have to.”

      It was a surprise when Meg was suddenly decisive, as she was now. They had always looked alike and that was what she wanted. She firmly ignored Claire’s protests.

      “There’s no other way. Cut it.”

      Elv unclasped Meg’s braid and began to cut. It took a while because the scissors were old and hadn’t been sharpened. She handed Meg the braid when she finally managed to saw through. She kept cutting after that, to even out the edges. Hair continued to fall on the towel and the wooden floorboards.

      “You can donate it to Locks of Love,” Claire suggested. “For a sick child.”

      “Or you can burn it and put a hex on someone,” Elv recommended as she clipped some more. She was concentrating hard. She’d never cut someone’s hair before. At last, Meg went to look in the mirror. Elv had cut her hair very short. Too short. The ends were raggedy from the dull scissors. She looked like a boy.

      “It just has to grow out a little,” Claire said. “Right?”

      “I need a break,” Elv said. Once things were changed you couldn’t go back. She knew that. Now Meg would know it too. She went out through the window. The leaves outside their window were rattling. Claire could hear her climbing down the hawthorn tree. Meg was still looking at herself in the mirror. She seemed in shock. “She did this on purpose.” Meg’s face was blotchy, as though she might cry. She ran a hand through her hair. It stuck straight up. “She’s not going to cut hers.”

      “Of course she will,” Claire assured Meg. “We always look the same.”

      They waited, but Elv didn’t return. She didn’t come home until it was almost morning, climbing in through the window, exhausted. She’d spent the night in Justin Levy’s bedroom. She’d made him sleep on the floor. He did whatever she told him, which was pathetic, really. They smoked weed, which didn’t affect her in the least, and then she told him to get on the floor. She dreamed of black stars, black water, a black sun in the center of the sky. When the other girls woke up, Elv was finally asleep in her own bed, her long hair knotted, still in her clothes, as if she’d been out dancing in Arnelle all night long.

      Annie took Meg to the salon. Denise did the best she could, but Meg’s hair wound up being even shorter. She looked like an Olympic swimmer wearing a boy’s haircut. When they got back home, she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out. Annie and Claire waited in the kitchen. They could hear her quietly sobbing.

      “What made her do that to herself?” Annie wondered.

      It was ninety-nine degrees, utterly sweltering, and the meteo-rologists were predicting triple digits and thunderstorms. True summer wasn’t even here and it was already unbearable. Annie began phoning around to see if she could have central air-conditioning put in. There were fans set up all over the house. Some folks were paying double for air conditioners being sold out of the back of vans on Northern Boulevard.

      Annie felt panic-stricken. Three teenaged girls took up a lot of space in a house. They grumbled and were moody; they kept secrets and cried for no apparent reason. They were moving further away from her. She could not remember the last time they’d all sat down for a meal together, had a discussion, watched a movie. Claire was trying to get Meg to come out of the bathroom, speaking that awful Arnish. The panic spread into Annie’s chest. She called around for air conditioners, but there were no air conditioners to be had on all of Long Island. Everyone was hot and dissatisfied and out of sorts. If she wanted an air conditoner she’d have to buy it from one of the scam artists, who were over-charging like mad, and she wasn’t about to do that.

      “It’s a good thing we cut our hair,” Claire said when Meg finally emerged from the bathroom, her face splotchy, eyes red.

      Claire was getting her casts off at the end of the week. Maybe she’d be happy then. Maybe everything would finally be set right, the way it used to be when she didn’t always feel she had to choose between her sisters. “At least we’ll be cool during the heat wave,” she said to Meg. “And you-know-who won’t be.”

      Their mother was still busy on the phone in her search for an air conditioner. Meg leaned in close. She didn’t want Annie to overhear. She didn’t even want it to be true, but it was, and it was her duty to let Claire know.

      “Elv isn’t who you think she is,” Meg said in a strange, small voice. “Watch out for her.”

      

      ON THE DAY Claire had her casts taken off, the heat finally broke. It was wonderful and odd to suddenly have her arms back. She felt spidery and ill at ease. She was awkward doing the simplest tasks—pouring a glass of orange juice, brushing her teeth. She’d cut her hair, and now Meg and Elv weren’t speaking. When they passed each other in the hall, they looked away, as if a shadow was passing by, one they needn’t recognize. School would soon be over. Next year everything would be better. They would all go to Paris