"That spray did more for my hair than I thought," Amy thought to herself as she and Lina approached the front counter. The old man from before was gone. In his place was an old woman, who peered at them through a pince-nez clamped to her nose. She wore a business suit of a much more refined taste to what the girls had seen on the other shopkeeper, but equally worn and dusty. A mixture of gray and white hair was clumped in a large, tight bun on her head. Her visage gave off a chilling impression, which pulled Amy away from contemplating her hair.
Lina held the large book in two hands and carefully placed it on the counter. The woman glanced down at it, raising an eyebrow. "Um... Hi," Lina said somewhat softly. "I'd like to buy this?"
The woman adjusted her glasses and turned the book so its title was oriented toward her. "Fates have mercy. I was ready to tell you girls I had a mistaken impression." She sounded painfully disappointed.
Lina scratched her head. Her scalp still tingled. She liked it. "Uh, sorry? What do you mean?"
The woman gave a theatrically heavy sigh. "When I first glanced you down the aisle I came to an admittedly short-sighted judgment about you both, but when I saw you approaching with a book, I felt quite terrible for coming to such a conclusion. That only lasted a fleeting moment, however..." She tapped the book's title, stamped with foil into the leather cover. "Of course my initial assessment was correct. Only a pair of airheaded blondes would come to a magic shop and only buy a book of fairy stories."
Amy nervously turned to Lina, seeing her friend visibly recoil at the venomous put-down. "W-what the fuck?" Lina spat. "What's the matter with you?" She gave Amy a sympathetic glance as both girls recalled Lina's earlier concern about Amy's new look.
"Only that I seem to be one of the few people in this world with any ounce of rational thought." Her eyes swiveled to Amy, making the girl jump upward a centimeter. "And now I see you've availed yourself of our hair sprays. Trying to catch the eye of a boy, or several?" She glanced back down at the book, running her palm across the cover. "I told him not to move us to this town. So many precious things are wasted on the young."
Lina's tone grew fierce. "First off, shut up about my friend. She's allowed to choose what she does with her look." She pointed to the tome. "And we're not 'wasting' anything. This 'blond airhead' is looking forward to reading this cover to cover. Now are you gonna to sell it to me or not?"
With a grunt of acquiescence, the woman slouched her shoulders slightly. "If you insist. But I doubt you'll even make it through one chapter." Her voice was stone cold in its spitefulness. Amy felt a chill shoot down her spine all the way to her toes. She didn't understand why the woman was looking at her and not Lina when she said that. She felt like she had somehow done something horribly wrong, even though she hadn't the faintest idea what it could be. She wanted blond hair, so what? Part of the reason was to attract boys, but part of it was just personal taste. Who was anyone to judge her for that? She gripped the hair at one side of her face protectively and started wondering how often Lina faced this sort of thing.
As Lina silently bored holes in the woman's forehead with her stare, the woman primly opened the book and located the price penciled in on the inside cover. She punched it into a register that looked as old as anything here. It didn't even have a screen displaying the price to the customer and made heavy clunking sounds with every button press. Without looking up, she said "Forty dollars."
Lina snapped back. "You'll sell it to me and my friend for twenty, unless you want word getting around about how this store discriminates against customers." Amy's eyebrows rose. Smart thinking. She always admired Lina's go-get-'em attitude. She needed to take inspiration from that.
The woman was unfazed. "Offer accepted, if only to end this most unpleasant transaction."
Lina fished her pocketbook from her purse and got out her debit card. At sight of it, the woman said, tiredly, "We accept cash only." She pointed to a very worn plaque on the wall stating as much. "Perhaps you're only buying the book to pretend that you can read?"
Lina growled. "You fucking bitch." Her hand shook as she tried putting her card back in its slot. "Not every blond is a fucking dimwit. ... Shit, I barely have any cash."
"I got it," Amy said, happy to be of some help. She pulled two twenty-dollar bills from her own little purse and gave them to the woman, trying very hard not to accidentally touch her wrinkly fingers for fear she'd catch frostbite.
The woman looked at the money as if it had kicked a puppy. After a heavy silence, her hands snapped the bills away from each other and she handed one back to Amy. "The deal was for twenty."
"Oh. R...right...," Amy said sheepishly, taking the extra bill back. She felt really rattled now. Even Lina had a tiny look of disappointment on her face, as if Amy had in one second proven for all time that this woman was right to call them bimbos. Her head slouched forward heavily and a few locks of golden hair slipped over her ear to obscure her view of her friend and the woman, as if forming a shield around her.
A minute later, they were outside and walking as fast as they could away from the shop. Lina was storming forward, her chin up and a scowl plastered on her face. She hugged the big book to her chest. Amy noticed it squished her breasts a little.
"Thanks, Amy. I'll pay you back." Lina's words pulled Amy's eyes up to her face and Amy immediately wondered what the hell she was doing glancing at her friend's rack. No, it was the book she was looking at, surely. She had long been aware of her jealousy toward the breasts Lina had grown, but she'd gotten over it by now. They weren't large by any stretch, but Amy felt like a slab by comparison. She'd convinced herself she could live with it, if she didn't turn out to be a very late bloomer.
Amy realized she hadn't responded to Lina yet. "You're welcome. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. LIVID, but fine. Nobody's ever been that... direct about that before."
Amy frowned at the subtle confirmation that Lina had experienced similar incidents.
"But are YOU okay?" Lina asked. "How do you feel about being a blonde now?"
Amy shook her head. "It's fine. If you can put up with bitches like that, I can, too. I still like the way my hair looks. And I'll wear it more proudly now that I see how awful people can be to something as stupid as hair color. What?" Amy noticed Lina was giving her a surprised look.
"I've never heard you call someone a bitch before." Lina wasn't judging, rather, she sounded proud.
Amy looked away and shrugged, surprised at herself now. "I guess I just never experienced that kind of dissemination before."
Lina tilted her head, her footsteps skipping a half-beat. "You mean 'discrimination'?"
Amy scrunched her eyebrows and looked at Lina. "Yeah...what'd I say?"
"Nothing. Let's just forget this whole shitshow. I kind of don't even feel like reading through this just yet. It'll just remind me of what just happened. Do you want to take it home with you for a day or two? You're a faster reader than I am, anyway."
"Uh, sure." Amy felt bad for Lina, but accepted the book into her outstretched hands. It really was heavy. She looked down at it and noticed her hair on both sides of her face was hanging lower, covering more of her peripheral vision than she thought it should. She was definitely ready to go home. So many strange things had happened, she felt disoriented. She wanted nothing more than to dive into tales of fantasy for a little while. She hugged the book to her chest just like Lina had. She was surprised to feel it squishing her breasts so much.