“Ava, a brown wig is just sad. If you show up in this, you’re making a statement.” She stretches out her zebra-striped arm next to my beige one. “Like our compression garments. No one thinks those dullsville nude ones are your real skin anyway. Why not have some fun with it?”

The Goth lady behind the counter watches us as Piper’s voice gets louder. She spins her wheelchair in a circle, sending the blond hair flowing behind her.

“It’s like the universe dealt us this horrible hand in life and it’s our duty to scream back: ‘Well played, craptastic cosmos, but you haven’t met me yet.’ ”

“So zebra stripes and pink wigs are like your big middle finger to the universe?”

Piper smiles and wiggles her eyebrows at me through the glass.

“I also have my eye on a sweet tattoo, and if you’d hurry up and buy that amazeballs wig, we might have time to stop by the shop next door before your aunt gets back.”

The pink hair tickles my face as I whip around to Piper. “A tattoo? Are you kidding me?”

She nods, eyes wide. “You should get one, too!”

“More than half of me is scar tissue. Why in the world would I intentionally add to that morbid statistic? Why would you?”

Piper reaches up to bop me on the nose and says in a singsongy voice: “ ‘Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you.’ Ava Lee. Party pooper.”

I turn back to my reflection.

“One ridiculous cliché at a time. Let’s start with this zombie streetwalker wig, and then we’ll talk tattoos, okay?”

Piper squeezes in next to me so the glass captures both of us, me giving the wig one last shake. “So you’re getting it?”

“People are going to look at me.”

Piper rolls her eyes at me in the glass.

“Right. Might as well give them something to see.”

Before I can stop her, she grabs my phone, presses her cheek against mine, yells, “Cheese!” and clicks.

“See, that wasn’t so bad was it?” she says.

I stuff my bandana in the bag Goth lady gives me and wear my new hair all the way home.

“What in the blazes is on your head?” Glenn says before he even has his boots off that night.

“You like?” I shake my head so the bobbed strands shimmy in front of my eyes. In my peripheral vision, I see Cora giving Glenn a “cut it out” sign, as if I don’t know I’m sporting hot-pink hair and the best thing to do is ignore it like she did all the way home in the car, her eyes never veering from the road.

“Do you?” he asks.

“It’s different,” I say, shrugging.

“Good different?”

“Different. Piper thinks it’s time for a change.”