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understatement. Someone made fun of my hair this morning. Someone … kind of … cute. And boylike.” Not that I considered Hunter as any sort of potential boyfriend or anything, especially not after today, but he did still count as a boy. Sometimes what they—the boy species—thought counted.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    I briefly considered telling her everything: the mean trick with Hunter, the altered news text, the clown face Cassidy had painted on me, the chocolate bras.
    “But maybe he was just trying to be funny. I mean, was it really that bad?” Mom reached out and touched my shorter hair.
    “When I went to get it cut today, the stylist said it looked like peas. Which is funny because Hunter Matthews said it looked like seaweed. Which isn’t as bad as Alexis calling it overcooked spinach.”
    “Ew. Well, what do they know? Green is the new black.” She laughed.
    I glared at her. “Not funny. My hair used to be strawberry blond, remember? Not veggie-green. That edamame concept you had? Not good.”
    “Sorry about that. But why didn’t you let me cut it?” she asked. “I’ve always cut your hair.”
    “I know, but the thing is, Mom? I needed it colored, too. I needed everything to be fixed as soon as possible. And … look. I need to be a little less … experimented on in the future.”
    “Oh.” She put her hand to her throat, which wascovered with a pashmina. She nodded. “Okay. I get it, I think.”
    “Thanks.” I headed upstairs to my room.
    “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes!” she called up the stairs after me.
    I’d have to see it to believe it. I dumped my backpack onto my desk, and sat down to snuggle with Rudy for a minute, like I did whenever I got home from school. My cat loves to sleep in my bed when I’m gone—sometimes even under the covers.
    We live on this tiny peninsula jutting out into the ocean. My bedroom has a long, rectangular window that I love to look out of while I lie on my bed writing or talking on the phone. I watch lobster boats, seagulls, sailboats—sometimes even just the clouds. That afternoon the storm was providing lots to admire: crashing surf and water spraying into the wind. I loved it when the sea was dramatic.
    I jumped up and checked my reflection in the mirror above my dresser. The new haircut still looked good. Maybe I’d get sick of looking at it soon, but not yet. I wondered what everyone at school would think when I showed up the next day.
    Did I kind of look more like Gianni, my biological (and so far, only) dad now? Stylish, sort of?
    On my dresser I had a framed photo of me, Mom, and Gianni. I didn’t see him very often, and I didn’t know if it was his fault, my fault, or my mom’s fault. Sometimes I wondered why my mom wanted to do this parentingthing on her own. Sometimes I wish there was another parent around because my mom’s advice isn’t always that helpful.
    Gianni had been a good friend of my mom’s at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where she went to college, living outside of Maine for about ten years. Mom and Gianni both ended up leaving FIT and going into the “hair couture” field instead. Gianni thought it might be a good match for my mom, but
he
wouldn’t be a good match for my mom because he had a boyfriend.
    Oops.
    She was crushed, or so she says, but they worked it out to become best pals. When she wanted kids but didn’t want to get married (she’s the kind of person who really gets a kick out of doing unusual things, which annoys my grandparents to no end), she decided he was the perfect guy to have them with.
    Sometimes I don’t know why she tells me this stuff, because it’s really
personal
. You know?
    She named me Madison after Madison Avenue, which I guess is a big destination, fashion-wise. My little brother, Parker? He was also created in a test tube (sorry—TMI), but he wasn’t named after a New York street. He was named after our Grandpa McCarrigan, which made my