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Four of a Kind by Bean, Kellie (20)

Chapter 20

We crowd together at the bottom of the stairs. The main floor of our house consists of a fair-sized hallway leading from a foyer at the front of the house. If you go straight down the hall, it leads to the kitchen or you can hang a right and go to the living room which connects to the back of the house by the dining room. From the sound of it, my dad and Reece are in the living room. I didn't hear my mom come home yet, but it's possible I missed it. I'm not sure what to expect when I take a breath and step through the hallway to the living room.

It looks like my dad had been watching TV, but he's now standing up in front of the couch with Reece ten feet away from him. She's also standing, with her hands in her back pockets and her newly colored blond hair hanging down loose over her shoulders. I wish I knew what she’d said when she'd walked in the room, probably whatever she thought would make the biggest impact. But the aftermath is impossible to miss.

My dad inhales a sharp breath fueling himself to start yelling at Reece, it’s a stance I know well. Instead, his eyes lock on me. "Reagan, not now."

Reece turns around to look at me, I can see plainly on her face she has regrets about the last few moments. If she’d taken even a second to think things through, she wouldn't have announced it like this. Or, maybe she knows she shouldn't have done it at all without talking to all of us, because this affects all of us.

I'm about to back out of the room and retreat to Reilly and Rhiannon, who still don't even really know what's going on, when we all hear the rumbling of the garage door being opened from outside.

Mom's home.

"Do you want to tell her what you've done or shall I?" My dad asks pointedly.

"Pretty sure she will figure it out on her own." I mutter.

I move back toward the hallway and find my sisters waiting for me. I cock my head toward the kitchen and the three of us make our retreat. It would be just as easy to watch what's going on from the other side of the room, but none of us wants to be anywhere between Mom and Dad for whatever happens next.

Rhiannon spots Reece for the first time from the kitchen. "She actually did it? Her hair is blond!" She stammers out, eyes wide. I nudge her to get her to be quiet.

"Yup." I whisper. "There was a highlighting kit in our bathroom. That’s why she wouldn’t let any of us in."

"That is a lot of highlights." Reilly points out. She’s right. Looking closer at Reece, who can see us staring at her, I can tell that her natural color is still the base of her hair, but the top is almost entirely streaked with a natural looking blond, even if the streaks themselves are a bit heavy handed.

"You guys would not believe the day I’ve had." my mom's voice cuts through everything else, she enters through the front door and dumps her stuff in the hallway.

Usually I'd shout out a hello, but today I stay silent. I’m totally content to pretend I’m not here right now.

I don’t know who will speak first, but it won’t be me. It looks like Rhiannon and Reilly have the same idea.

"Hello?" The sound of her heels clicks down the hallway toward us, but my dad's voice stop them.

"In here." he yells out. "Brace yourself."

I groan internally, not sure why my dad is insisting on getting my mom's back up before she's even seen what happened. "You girls may as well come in here too since we’re well aware that you're standing in the kitchen."

We come out of hiding as my mom enters the room from the front hall, looking confused and wary. Shortly after, she’s perfectly observant and notices exactly what's going on.

"Reece. What did you do?" My sister turns around but not before casting the three of us a pleading glance.

It's not like there's anything we can do to help her now. The fact that she didn't even tell us what she had planned, doesn't make me all that sympathetic to her cause.

Around this time last year, all I wanted to do was put one streak of pink in my hair. My sisters and I had all come up with different things we wanted to do to alter our own styles just a little. Back then, not one of us wanted to do anything drastic, just something to stand out a little. We came up with this big PowerPoint presentation, we even showed it to our parents. We’d all been on the same team, even when we lost miserably.

Reece decided she was doing this one on her own, so she'd have to fight for it on her own too.

"I put in a few highlights." Reece says, stating the obvious. My mom doesn't respond, she simply collapses down into the armchair behind her.

"Did you know about this?" she asks my dad. "You'll let them talk you into anything."

"Wait, what? No! I did not know about this. She did this all on her own! When she came home from school today, she looked just like the rest of them. Now she's a blonde. I didn't even realize you could do this kind of thing at home by yourself."

Reece shrugs, but doesn't point out just how easily someone can die their own hair. The whole thing cost her ten bucks and an hour of her life. "She knows what our rule about this is. None of them would die their hair until they were at least sixteen, even then we would have to discuss it. There were no guarantees. They have beautiful hair and adding chemicals to it is just a bad idea." My dad stamps his foot a little to emphasize his point. I'm honestly surprised he's as upset as he is. "How easy do you think it will be to dye back to its natural color?"

Everyone looks over to Mom as one. She furrows her brow but doesn’t speak.

"I'm not dying it back. It's my hair and I can do what I want with it. I needed a change, and this the best way I could think to do it."

Crap. I guiltily fix my eyes on the far window. I had wanted her to do something to mix things up, but I never considered that she would make such a permanent change. I can't even guess how long it would take for those highlights to grow all the way out again. Even dying over top of the highlights would still end up looking different from before.

Everyone stands still, waiting for my mom to place her verdict. There's no way Reece isn't at least getting grounded for this one, but I'm surprised that I can't see the smoke coming out of my mom's ears yet.

"One, you know you should've talk to us about this. We have rules, they aren't just there for your amusement." My mom's voice is steady, I can tell by the tone of it that her mind is racing with some idea or another. Which is kind of terrifying.

"But, Greg, I think she has a point. It is her hair. It wasn't too long ago that I didn’t like the idea of them dying their hair, because most of our girls couldn't be trusted to stick to one decision from one day to the next, let alone for months at a time. We weren't about to make rules that applied to some and not all of them. But, what's done is done."

I can't read Reece's expression, she has to be sensing the triumph coming her way. "I think we should let her keep it."

"Our rules are there for a reason. What’s this going to teach her?"

"I’m not sure this is as black and white as all that. You tell me that all the time!" How often are our parents talking about this kind of thing when we’re not around? "We need to take the punches as they come." She turns toward Reece, "It’s just us looking out for you girls. I, for one, don't think anyone else should make decisions about your bodies. Except for punching holes in them. That, I still hold the right to weigh in on. Only because I've seen just how wrong those things can go."

My dad stammers, but he doesn't formulate any real response. I don't think this was the moment he'd had in mind when he called my mom into the room. It’s not at all what I thought as coming. If she'd waited just a little longer to come home, this could have gone very differently. "So much for a united front," he grumbles.

"You're right, I wish we'd had the chance to discuss this, but Reece has taken matters into her own hands. Since we’re talking about this here and now, her vote needs to count for at least as much as ours. Reece, I assume you want to keep your hair like it is?"

"Hell yeah!"

Mom’s expression tightens, not enjoying Reece’s enthusiasm. "Fine. Give us a few minutes. Your dad and I will discuss this and then we can go from there."

Reece knows when to call it and heads back to the kitchen. We follow her in. I don't think anyone of us knows just how far we’re supposed to go, or how much time to give them. They don't start talking until we leave the kitchen and trudge back up the stairs. We can only hear a faint whisper of voices. Rhiannon stops at the top of the stairs, and we plant ourselves down on the landing.

Reilly leans over and touches Reese's new hair, pulling a strand toward her. "It's blonde. That's weird."

"You guys like it though?"

"Yeah, it's great!" Reilly reassures her.

"I kind of wish I'd had one of you help me," she admits. "It was hard to do the streaks at the back on my own." She turns her head so we can see the back and sure enough, a couple of the highlights she's put in are a little blotchy near the top. I won’t be the one to point that out to her. It's still too weird looking at my sister and seeing her hair that doesn’t look like mine.

I’d never have thought this would upset me even a little, but something about it is sitting weird in my gut. Reece now looks different from the rest of us. Before this, we were a matching set.

"So why didn't you tell us?" I ask, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. "Why did it have to be such a big secret?"

"I don't know. It was kind of spur of the moment."

"How spur of the moment could it have been?" Rhiannon asks. "You obviously took the time to go buy the hair dye. We all know you well enough that you wouldn't risk screwing up your hair without at least giving it some thought."

Reece has the decency to look at least a little ashamed. "Okay, so I've been thinking about it for a few days. I wanted to make the change and this seems like a good way to do it. I loved the idea of having blond hair. I would've done my whole head, but I know you're not supposed to do that much bleach at home on your own. I wanted to see how the highlights went before jumping into something more drastic."

"Well I think it worked. So, that's something," I say, the ords coming out harsh. This feels still like a betrayal. I was supposed to be coming home today to confide in my sister about something that I am super sensitive about. Instead, she pulls this. Deep down as far as Reece knows, everything is always about her.

“Relax, Reagan. Not everything has to be an identicals thing. Not everything is about you.”

I blink.

Reilly slides down the wall she's leaning against slightly, until her head rests on Reese's shoulder. "I like it." she says. "It suits you."

"Then it would probably suit you too, if you wanted to do something like this. If I get away with this without permission, they're not going to hold the same thing back from you guys."

"I have some ideas." Rhiannon is grinning, looking way too excited. I'm not sure I even want to know what she has in mind.

"I wish we'd at least gotten one last picture with the four of us having our hair the same." I say, pouting a little. "Who knows if we'll all ever have the same hair again."

"Yeah" Reece says, sounding thoughtful. "I actually didn't think about that. Eventually we'll all get old and stop caring about our hair so much. We'll be identical little old ladies."

"Oh good." Rhiannon says. "Something to look forward to."

Just then, my mom calls up the stairs. "Girls come on down. We’ve made our decision."

* * *

Reece was right. My parents agreed that it was our hair and that we were old enough to decide what to do with it. They even mentioned the bright pink highlights I'd been imagining last year. The only caveat is that we’ll only be allowed to do it every few months, no changing up the color whenever an idea pops into our head.

Which means while the rest of us would get haircuts and professional coloring done that same weekend if we want it. Reece is stuck with the amateur job she did in the bathroom. A bathroom she’ll have to scrub thoroughly as part of her punishment. The bleach smell that has now permeated everything.

"That is so unfair. If I hadn't done mine, you never would have agreed to let us do dye our hair at all. There was no way for me to win that conversation."

"Oh, I don't know..." my mom says. "...you could've tried having a discussion with us."

"We tried that last time," she argues. "It didn't get us anywhere."

"Well this time, you got what you wanted. But you're going to have to wait and live with the hair you've got until early next year. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two about spontaneous, and potentially reckless decisions."

With that, Reece storms off, swearing under her breath. I’m still mostly just stunned. When I’d woken up this morning, we'd all had the same hair. Now I would be going to a salon soon to change mine, if I want to. After that, a chunk of what makes my sisters and I so similar will be gone forever.

On one hand, maybe we won’t get mistaken for one another as often, but probably not. If I’ve learned anything from being an identical quadruplet, it’s that people are not particularly observant about anything that doesn’t directly involve them.

As for me, I’ll see the difference every day when I see my sisters or look back on old pictures of us. Even when we first moved to Fairview, we made a point of doing our hair the same in order to give the newspaper what they wanted from us. Identical sisters. That wouldn’t be an option anymore.

If this had happened on a different day or in a different way, maybe I would've felt more excited about it. As it is, I'm having trouble getting my head around any of it. This feels like way too big a decision to make this fast. I don't like change on a good day, and this change feels like it’s stripping away part of my identity.

Yay.