Wednesday evening I left school both nervous and excited. I found the salon easily and settled into the waiting area to kill the last few minutes before my appointment. Missy had warned me that it was a pretty expensive place, but her mother had been going to this stylist, Dinah, since before Missy was born, and she was worth the money. Missy had told me of a time in high school when she’d been obsessed with a particular look, but when she’d brought in the picture, Dinah had gently told her that the style would look awful on her. Her alternative, however, ended up being Missy’s favorite haircut ever, and she swore to give Dinah her business for life.

A seven-month-old issue of People sat on the table. I flipped through the pages, scanning articles and pictures to see if there was a hairstyle I liked better. Toward the end was a montage of photos from a slew of charity events, and there in the middle photo was Jack, dressed in a black tux with a red ribbon pinned to the lapel, standing behind a podium handing a small gold statue to a teenage boy. The caption read:

Hollywood AIDS Project spokesman Jack Harrington presented the annual HAP AIDS Awareness Award to Warren Michaels, a Los Angeles high-school senior who raised over three hundred thousand dollars through fund-raisers over the past year to donate to AIDS research. Michaels was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994. Dianne Wallington, Harrington’s onetime girlfriend and coworker on the network drama Deep Cover, was diagnosed with the disease in 1999; she died in a car wreck in 2000. Harrington has been the spokesman for HAP for two years.

I stared at the picture and began to read the article again when I heard someone call my name. Dinah was smiling from the hallway. “Are you ready?”

“I think so, yeah.” I stood and set the magazine down, then pulled the photo page out of my purse.

Dinah led me to a station in the back. I was getting more nervous every second, so I forced myself to relax as I sat down in the swivel chair and handed her the page. “I’ve never had my hair shorter than this,” I said as I indicated a length that fell right below my jaw. “I saw this photo, and I don’t even know if it would look good on me, but that’s the kind of thing I want to do: short, easy to deal with, not a lot of work. But still feminine.”

Dinah stood behind me and looked at me in the mirror. She took the picture and stared at it intensely for a moment, then back at me, her eyes slightly narrowed and her red lips pursed. She ran her hands through my hair, and after a minute looked up and smiled. “Love it. I think it’ll look great on you. Fantastic choice!”