By dint of having rushed out the door, Miles managed to arrive at school early. East Cowsills High School was only about a mile from where the Johnson family lived. It was reasonably well kept-up, although it didn't look much different than it had when Nellie had attended the school.
"How do **I** even know **what** it looked like back then?", wondered Miles to himself.
To his equal parts relief and bemusement, no one he encountered seemed to take any notice of his hair - not even that little smartmouth Joey Moran, who had something to say about everything.
Miles arrived in his homeroom early, for once, and was hailed by his two closest friends, Bill Daniels and Wendy Harper.
Bill Daniels was shorter and more muscular than Miles, with a bluff, friendly face. He and Miles had been partners in shenanigans more than once. Despite this, Molly liked him, as she knew that Miles was the ringleader, and that Bill was more or less Miles' well-meaning but malleable sidekick.
"Hey, babe, good morning!"", said Bill.
"Babe"?, thought Miles, even as he returned his friend's greeting. Since when does Bill call me "babe"?
Miles was distracted from this thought by the look of exasperation on Wendy's face. Wendy was a short, pretty girl, whose dark hair and olive skin tone betrayed that fact that despite her family name, she was largely of Sicilian heritage. She was a mother hen to the two boys, doing her best to curb their excesses.
"What have you done with your hair?", she demanded.
"I...um...I...", replied Miles, cleverly.
Wendy pulled him into the seat in front of her.
"Let me handle it", she said. "Honestly, what gets into your head, sometimes? Hair like yours should be let free!"
She took the hair-tie out, and then produced a comb, seemingly from nowhere. (Wendy had a gift for producing hair care products from thin air, in much the way that Bugs Bunny could produce a mallet from out of nowhere when he needed to bop Elmer Fudd on the head.) She quickly combed Miles' hair until it satisfied her.
"There", she said, "that's much better. " She handed back the hair-tie. "Give that back to your little sister. Someday, I'll come over and teach her some style, too."
She sighed. "I would kill for hair as luxurious as yours. If you'd only pay attention, you could be prettier than any girl in this school."
Miles' mind boggled. Why would I **want** to be pretty? Why would Wendy **think** I would want to be pretty?
Wendy continued, "At least I've trained you to look after your nails properly!"
Miles looked at his fingernails and gasped. They were long and feminine-looking, with a sheen of clear nail polish on them.
But - but they weren't like that this morning!, he thought, They weren't like that five minutes ago!
At that moment, their homeroom teacher, Mister Jackson, came in and started the class.