#59 Over the Fence

By the time I got back outside the building, some older boys were playing keep-away with my little brother’s ball.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Give it back!”

Some kid with a hoodie on caught the ball. He gave me this, so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it? look, then shrugged and said, “Fine,” and chucked the ball over the fence.

The ball fell down the side of the steep slope, bounced off the rocks, and then landed in the water at the bottom. My brother’s green and white basketball, the one I’d got him for Christmas last year, his favorite thing to play with, there floating on the bay. It wasn’t too far out. I might  be able to go get it if I was quick. Then, as it started drifting farther out, I imagined myself hugging my little brother, telling him it was just a ball, and we’d get him another one.

Then I saw my little brother climbing down over the rocks and the dry yellow dead grass, trying to get down to the water.

I’d been staring at the ball, listening to the older boys’ cruel laughs, and hadn’t noticed him climb the fence. I shouted his name, called for him to come back, but he didn’t listen. I jumped the fence and hurried after him, scrambling down the rocks. I slipped and jammed my shoulder trying to stop my fall, but I reached my brother before he got to the water.

He was crying. I put my arms around him and was about to tell him just what I’d imagined saying, that we’d get him another ball, but then I looked up at the row of smirks on the other side of the fence, watching us. Didn’t they look pleased with themselves? Suddenly furious, I said, “Stay here, I’ll go and get the ball.”

I took off my jacket and my shoes, then waded out into the water. The rocks below the surface were slimy, and the cold ripples sucked against my jeans. The bank went down just as steep into the water as it had been on the side of the slope, and I had to push off and start swimming after only two steps.

From up on the pavement, the ball had looked really close to shore, but now down here in the water it seemed pretty far away. It was hard to move my arms and legs with all my clothes on in the cold water. For a while the ball didn’t seem to be getting any closer, but eventually it was bobbing there right in front of my nose. I grabbed it and turned around.

No way. The shore was so far behind me that the school and the fence along the top of the slope were only one tiny thing among a row of buildings and then the empty strip of airfield. My brother was still watching, there near the water, but the other kids were gone.

I started kicking, the ball held tight to my chest. The wind was picking up, so the swells often hid my brother from me, and sometimes even the whole shore. It was hard to tell if I was going in the right direction all the time. It was cold too, and I was feeling stiff and really tired. It took forever before I could tell I was getting closer.

By then there were more people at the fence. Someone had come down the bank and was standing with my brother, an adult. There was a police car at the top of the slope. Great. I was in big trouble now. No one was coming out in the water to help me, though. I guess they could tell I was doing okay.

I finally reached the shore and several pairs of hands pulled me out and someone wrapped me in a blanket. I offered my brother the ball, but he just threw his arms around me and hugged me tight.

#58 Memories

I must have seen this movie a hundred times, and so when the scene I was expecting next didn’t happen, I sat forward and squinted at the screen.

“Did it skip a scene?” I asked.

“No,” Ashley, my oldest daughter, said.

“What about that scene where they get back to the house, and they find out the dog has eaten the box of chocolates so they have to take it to the vet?”

“That was the last scene, Mom. It happened.”

I sat back in my chair. Had I dozed off? Maybe.

The next morning was Sunday, but I’d forgotten to shut off my alarm for some reason. I smacked the “off” button and rolled over.

“Aren’t you getting up for work?” Dale asked.

“Mfff!” I said, my face buried in the pillow. “It’s Sunday.”

“Sunday was yesterday,” Dale said. “Come on, get up.”

“No it wasn’t,” I said. “I distinctly remember that yesterday was Saturday.”

Dale stood for a moment, his belt in his hand, his suit coat in the other. He was headed to work. On Sunday morning? But what if he was right, and it really was Monday? I searched my memory for Sunday, but came up completely blank.

I sat in a doctor’s office, staring at a magazine. How had I gotten there? What was I doing there? This wasn’t my doctor’s office. Breathing fast, I glanced at the business cards in a little holder by the receptionist’s desk. Neurologist, it said. Why was I here?

“Chandra Clark,” the nurse called me. I set down the magazine that I couldn’t remember picking up and followed her down the hall.

“Now, what are we seeing you for today, Chandra?” the nurse asked, her voice pleasant but her eyes busy on her clip board.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t remember.”

I was inside a machine. It was white, and humming, and I was staring at its metal panels that encircled my head. Blank as my memory of how I got here. I felt like I’d been there a long time, long enough to get bored, but I couldn’t remember any of it.

“Help?” I said, almost laughing. “What is this?”

“It’s okay, Chandra, you’re getting an MRI,” I heard Dale say. “Just lie still or they’ll have to do it over.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Another hour. You can go back to sleep if you like.”

My hands, how had my hands gotten so thin? All speckled and wrinkly, like old ropes. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t stand. I was in a wheel chair. When did my body start aching like this? I glanced around the white-walled room. Strange, everything was so strange. The blue drapes, a bedside table with flowers, and there on the wall, pictures! Photographs, tacked up, pinned, taped, along with drawings that must have been done by small children. What children I didn’t know, mine were teenagers. I tried to make out the faces in the photographs. There was Dale, but what had happened to his hair? It was all gone. I found Ashley, in a wedding dress, next to a stranger, and then another picture with her, the man, two children. There was my son Carl in a military uniform. I know he had always wanted to be in the army, but he was only sixteen. This man had to be in his twenties.

So much time had passed! All of it had slipped away from me.

“How long?” I whispered again. “How long?”

#57 Pacific Gyre

This used to be a fishing boat, back when there were any fish.

I wondered if the boat thought it strange that we were hauling a net on board again. Torn, ragged, but still a fishing net. Did the boat remember what it was like to have a hold full of fish instead of old plastic?

The net was so big, my brothers began to laugh, exclaiming that we could head for home after this, back home with our catch of garbage, to be sold and melted down into fuel.

All around us, things drifted on the rust-red surface of the water. The ocean used to be as blue as the sky. I wondered what it had looked like. Here was an old plastic oil barrel, bumping up against the boat. There an empty bucket, cracked, drifting. I hauled the net into the boat, hand-over-hand, and wondered what giant fishing vessel had once dragged it behind. Our little fishing boat could never have pulled it. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to bring it all on board.

Something moved under the murky water, something huge. I stopped hauling to stare as it broke the surface. It was no piece of garbage. A smooth hide covered with dead barnacles, it was a whale!

My brothers shouted, cries of surprise. A whale! Maybe the last one alive. It wouldn’t be alive for long, though. A length of bright blue plastic rope was cinched around its body, so tight it dug into its hide. I could feel its pain, almost as if the rope were around my own shoulders. But there was nothing we could do.

Or was there? The whale had come close to our boat, so close I could almost reach out and touch it, almost as if it wanted help.

I jumped into the water.

My oldest brother shouted angrily for me to come back, but I struck out strongly and reached the side of the whale. I took my knife from my pocket and started to work on the rope. The swells pushed me against the whale’s side and the barnacles cut into my shoulder, but I kept working at the rope, tearing fiber by fiber.

Maybe the whale hadn’t really wanted help, or maybe it changed its mind, because it blew out its top hole, then dove. Determined to get the rope free, I took a deep breath and held on. I would not see this last whale sentenced to death by some careless ancestor’s cast away rope. I could feel the water rushing past me, the light got dimmer, but still I worked. It was almost free.

No use, I had to give up or I would drown. I tried to push myself upward against the whale, but it dove so fast as soon as I let go it was gone. Above me the sun shone an angry red through the algae. I kicked and stroked, dropping my knife, cursing my clothes that dragged at me. My vision darkened as the air inside me turned poison and burned my lungs. Even when I could no longer see, I groped through the thick water for the surface.

My head broke out into the air and I took a long, deep breath before stretching out on my back in the waves. I heard my brothers shouting, and the soft whine of the electric motor as the boat came to pick me up.

“Stay in the boat,” was all my older brother said to me by way of a scolding. I think he understood.

#56 The Rabbit Cart

When I came out into the meadow I could see what the squalling was about. Those squeaky little wails came from a rather small woodsprite. He lay on the grass with a little cart the size of one of Pa’s boots upturned over the top of him. The rabbit that drew the cart lay on its side, kicking frantically but ineffectively.

“Poor little beastie,” I cooed, coming closer. I was a bit afraid the woodsprite would bite me, but it didn’t pay me much mind as it was too busy feeling sorry for itself. I could see it wasn’t strong enough to right the cart on its own. “Let me help you.”

Carefully, I knelt beside the cart, picked it up, and held it steady. The rabbit, frantic and terrified, tried to bolt, but its harness kept it back. At first the woodsprite kept wailing, but then it noticed me. For an instant it didn’t dare breathe. Then it let out an even louder cry, this one with an angry note in it, and leapt for my hands.

“I’m only trying to help you!” I snapped at it as I jumped back, not wanting the feel of woodsprite teeth in my fingers. The sprite leapt into the cart and held on tight as the rabbit charged forward. I noticed again how very small the sprite seemed. Full-grown ones could get to be about knee height, but this one was maybe half that tall. It seemed to be having a bit of trouble with the reins too. The rabbit bounded this way and that, back and forth across the meadow. The woodsprite didn’t seem to mind it too much, but whooped with excitement every time the rabbit made a crazy sharp turn.

I followed after, slowly, glancing down at my berry basket and my mind on picking enough for a pie. When I looked up again, I was just in time to see the woodsprite charge his rabbit cart straight into the river.

The little thing had a look of sheer terror on his odd, nut-brown face. The rabbit disappeared at once under the surging water, but the sprite stayed afloat, clinging to the cart, until the pale green hand of a river nymph reached up and snatched him down. He vanished with a gurgling squeak.

I stood and stared while a small troop of woodsprites came riding into the meadow, one astride a fawn and the rest in rabbit carts. They saw the cart in the river and set up a wailing and a moaning.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “He drove right into the river. I couldn’t stop him.”

But of course they didn’t speak my language. Sadly, I took my basket and left them there in the meadow.

Only as I walked away did I realize it. If I’d left the poor woodsprite alone, he wouldn’t have gone into the river. His clan would have come along to help him. I glanced back over my shoulder, but really, there was nothing I could do.

#55 Parents, Guardians, and Mentors of Underage Crime Fighters

Mrs. Flanders walked in through the open doors of the high school gym, surprised by the number of parents she saw there. At least fifteen people were in the center of the floor, either seated in a ring of chairs, or standing around and talking.

When she reached the chairs she sat down next to a smiling woman with sunglasses stuck on top of her black, frizzy hair. “Hi,” the woman said. “My name is Traecia. Are you new?”

“Yes, hi, I’m Laurie,” Mrs. Flanders said. She sat down and said in an undertone, “So all these parents have kids who…”

“Who fight crime?” Traecia laughed. “You betcha. More than you thought, right? You should have seen it when I belonged to the New York chapter. We had to break into districts. Who told you about the PGMUACF?”

“The policeman who came to arrest the fellow that my Julie Ann caught, he handed me the flyer about the meeting.” Mrs. Flanders glanced down at the slightly wrinkled paper in her hand. Parents, Guardians, and Mentors of Underage Crime Fighters Meeting. She shook her head. “It’s all a little overwhelming.”

Traecia smiled and was about to say something, but a woman at the center of the circle of chairs called for order and asked everyone to get in their seats.

“Good evening, it’s nice to see several new faces here. We’ll start out with a presentation by Mr. Case on the most important thing you need to remember as a Parent, Guardian, or Mentor of an Underage Crime Fighter. Mr. Case.”

Mrs. Flanders shifted in her seat as Mr. Case got up. He was very tall and thin, with wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a plaid shirt with thin lines, and had a couple of pens clipped to a pocket-protector. “Good evening, everyone. I’m here to tell you how to avoid an untimely death.”

Mrs. Flanders burst out in a nervous giggle, but all the other parents nodded their heads solemnly.

“Yes, we’ve got a dangerous job, but death can be easily avoided if you do one simple thing,” Mr. Case said. “Can anyone tell me what that is?”

A woman across the circle raised her hand. “Feign incompetence,” she said with a nasal drawl.

“Absolutely,” Mr. Case pointed at her emphatically. “Feign incompetence and practice preoccupation. If your kids are sneaking out at night to fight crime, what do you do?”

“Pretend you don’t notice!”

“If you find out they’re investigating a crime, do you call the police?”

“Never!”

“If they have a crime-fighting-related problem they can’t seem to solve, do you take over?”

“It’s too dangerous!” said a bald man who was taking up two chairs over to the left.

“And why is this?” Mr. Case said.

“Well,” Tracia said, “for some reason, we don’t know what, the kids have to do it themselves. If any of us interfere too much, then…” She stuck her tongue out and made a strangling noise.

Mrs. Flanders stared around at all of them in absolute disbelief.

“You mean if we help our kids solve crimes, we’re going to… to… die?”

Tracia shrugged. “Welcome to the club, Laurie.”

#54 Bad Hair Day

I slammed the bottle of gel down on the bathroom counter. “This time, hair, you’re going down!”

I popped open the lid and squeezed a wad of purple go into my palm, then stared at the one spike of blond hair sticking out stubbornly from the side of my head. I usually didn’t use gel on my hair, but this was a serious case. I totally needed a haircut, that was obvious. I’d just been too busy lately, what with being in the play, and science fair, and everything.

I slapped the gel onto the side of my head, then combed down the sticking-out part. The piece of hair stayed down, but now I looked like someone had sneezed on just one side of my head. I rubbed gel everywhere, to make it look even, and combed some more.

As soon as it dried, that one piece of hair stuck up again.

“I give up!” I yelled. It was too late to try anything else. For a moment I thought about getting the scissors, but instead I grabbed my backpack and headed off to school.

“Nice look, bro,” my friend Kyle said when he passed me in the hall. “Was it 80’s day and nobody told me?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” I put my hand up to feel where my hair was sticking out, then froze. There was a ton more of it sticking out than there had been before. I ran into the bathroom to check in the mirror. Sure enough, a big patch of hair on the side of my head was all standing on end. I got my hands wet and slicked it down again. It sort of stayed.

The bell rang. Snap. I ran to class.

By third period, my hair stood out all around my head. Most people didn’t seem to notice, but Shyla raised her eyebrows and almost giggled, and Sam asked me if I’d stuck my finger in a light bulb socket. That was kind of what I looked like, I thought when I saw my reflection in the steel countertop in the cafeteria line.

As I crossed the lunchroom with my tray, I nearly ran over Anneliese Blair. She stood right in front of me, her frizzy brown hair doing its best to escape from the sideways braid that snaked down over her shoulder, and her eyes about twice the size they were supposed to be, staring at me through her thick, rectangular glasses.

“Did you do that to your hair on purpose?” She asked me.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“No you didn’t,” she reached up to touch my head.

I ducked away and tried to get around her.

She gasped, “You’re becoming a surge point! Quick, don’t move.”

I wasn’t sure how to not move quick, so I just kind of stood there and stared at her while she dropped her massive backpack to the cafeteria floor and started throwing out books and papers. “Aha! This will work!” she pulled out a stick of gum that looked like it had been down there for about six months.

Anneliese unwrapped the gum, then popped it in her mouth while she twisted and fiddled with the wrapper. She made the wrapper into a long silvery worm, curved it in a C, and handed it to me.

“Stick this behind your ear!” She said in an urgent whisper. “That way, when the energy blast strikes, it won’t take you into another dimension. It’s sort of like a lightning rod. It’ll protect you.”

I stared at her as she scooped up all her backpack stuff and put it back away. Slowly, hoping no one was watching, I put the gum wrapper behind my ear. Just in case on the crazy odd chance she was telling the truth. At least no one would be able to see it there, not with my hair going all spiky.

#53 Must be the Mouse

A lot of things were going missing from the Hansen’s house.

“Annie! Bryce!” Mom shouted. “Who left out the Monopoly game last night?”

“Bryce got it out,” Annie said.

“You played it too,” Bryce said.

“You both can pick it up, right now,” Mom said.

“We’re missing some pieces,” Bryce said. “What did you do with them, Annie?”

“Nothing!” Annie said.

“Does anyone know what happened to my stamps?” Mom asked. “I had them pinned right up here on the tack board, and now they’re gone.”

“Mom, can you see any Monopoly pieces over there?” Bryce asked.

“No,” Mom said. “Annie, are those your markers on the table? Pick them up, we need to get ready for breakfast.”

“Where’s the green one?” Annie asked. “It was right here with the others.”

“What’s happening to all our stuff?” Bryce asked.

“Does anyone see the crossword I was working on last night?” Dad asked. He picked up a section of the newspaper and flipped through it. “The whole page is just missing from the newspaper.”

“It must be the mouse,” Mom said.

“Must be,” Dad agreed.

I froze, the green marker in my paws poised above the first square of 29 down. I glanced around my snug little room, nicely decorated with postage stamp pictures on the walls and a beautiful, green, wall-paper-like design. The monopoly pieces stood like little statuettes on either side of my front door, which I still needed to chew a bit to make it more even and less ragged-looking. On my floor, a lovely carpet of pale green tissue paper, a table and plastic chair stolen from the doll house upstairs. I twitched my ears and stared out my hole, watching the narrow space under the entertainment center, past which I could just see Bryce’s fingers groping around in the carpet, looking for his monopoly pieces, I presumed.

How did they know? I wondered. How did they know it was me?

#52 Spellmender

Spellmender

The Leechdell Witchs’ Sircle met on the first Friday after every full moon. At this particular meeting, Elder Witch Grizzel had given a wonderful lesson on truly understanding your victim in order to match them with the perfect hex. After that, the sisters of the Sircle began their spell critique session.

Malinda kept her spell tucked inside the pocket of her cloak, patiently waiting her turn. She watched Cholerella perform a lovely wilting spell on a potted violet that had been brought for the demonstration. One by one, the other witches made remarks. Malinda sat on the edge of her seat, her mind in an excited twirl. She knew just what that spell needed.

“Have you tried adding a pinch of toadstool powder?” Malinda asked ever so demurely when it was her turn to speak.

“Why, no,” Cholerella said in surprise. She took a vial from her witch’s kit, and spoke the spell again, sprinkling the powder as she did so. The violet shriveled to dust, the nightshade flowers in Viperena’s hat dropped all their petals, and even the floral print of Ashen’s robes shriveled. The ladies applauded happily. Malinda smiled.

All through the evening, Malinda was able to help every sister improve her spell. She showed Trichsie how to take a spell for a single boil and make the victim instead break out all over. She helped Gastra transform a little thunderstorm spell into a terrible hurricane. When the sisters of the circle had all collected their hats, at last it was Malinda’s turn to share her spell.

It was a very complicated conjuration, and Malinda was a little nervous about it. She had brought a cow for demonstration purposes. The sisters had all watched that cow curiously throughout the night, and now they were about to see what its purpose had been.

Malinda brought the cow to the center of the circle. The cow seemed a bit sleepy, but that didn’t matter. As Malinda read the spell the cow shifted uneasily and bellowed a little. The ladies of the circle let out oohs and ahs as something began to sprout from the cow’s back and color began to spread unevenly over her body.

The admiring sounds stopped when the transformation was complete.

They were as polite as witches could be. “What the devil is that?” Trichsie squawked.

“It’s a dragocow,” Malinda said. The witches stared at her blankly. Malinda added apologetically, “She gives hot milk.”

The cow hadn’t changed much, but now she had short bat wings sprouting from her back, a snake-like scaly tail, and patches of shiny dragon skin raggedly among the coarse hairs of her coat.

On the way home Cholerella tried to comfort Malinda. “You’re just lovely when it comes to mending other’s spells, but you don’t seem to have much gift for writing your own. Why don’t you be content with what you can do? You’re a fine spellmender, and that’s a rare thing.”

“But why can’t I mend my own spells?” Malinda grumbled.

“And it might help if you give up this obsession with dragons, dear. They’re not real, you know.”

read the next part

#51 Beach Clean-Up

Do the beaches of my childhood all look like this? Or is it only here in the center of the Pacific that the sand is coated with chips of crumbling plastic like alien sea shells.

When I was young, and would visit the beach in Los Angeles, there would be soda straws, cup lids, occasional shards of glass, but never these hard plastic chips, bright blues and greens and pinks.

Now I could sit in one spot for an hour under this cloudy sky and pick them all out of the sand, each tiny bit, but there would still be so much beach to cover, and the plastic chips are not the only trash here. I find parts of rope, frayed squares of fish net, bottle caps, bottles, rubber tubing, pens, plastic flower pots, a broken part of a five-gallon bucket lid. An old toothbrush head makes me pause. It’s long, oval shape reminds me of the toothbrushes in a cup sat on the bathroom counter at my grandma’s house. The handle is snapped off and the bristles are worn down, and there’s brown slime growing on it. How long has this been in the sea?

I find a piece of white plastic with a few barnacles clinging to it. That I leave on the sand, not wanting to put something living in my trash bag with the other garbage.

“Mommy, I’m tired of holding the bag,” my son says.

“This is a service project,” I told him, “So we keep working even when we get a little tired. Here, I’ll hold the bag. You pick up ten things. We’ll count together.”

We don’t have to move from one spot. A plastic streamer with a soggy dead balloon tied to one end, a strand of blue-green plastic rope, tiny plastic chips, one piece of glass…

“You can leave that. It’s a seed shell. That’s natural. It can stay.”

Sometimes even I can’t tell what’s natural and what’s trash. I find a long, white thing that could be the bead for a window-shade pull, but I decide it’s the shell of some creature and leave it on the beach. I find the soggy remains of what might have been a nerf football, though at first I think it’s a dead fish.

Tired of scraping up the tiny pieces, I move along the beach now, looking for larger trash.

“Make footsteps, Mommy, and I’ll step in them!” My son says eagerly.

“All right,” I smile, and trudge across the beach, towing my bag, with him hopping behind.

What will his world look like, when he’s my age? Will he be able to follow my footsteps anymore, or will they be buried in strangeness, or washed away by some unbelievably high tide?

Together we move down the beach. I stop to show him the skull of a bird. There’s no mistaking this for something plastic. Even the density of the bone varies in the structure, I can tell from the way the clouded light comes through. Here is a masterwork of nature lying in among the detritus of the twentieth century. I almost overlooked it.

Is this the inheritance I leave to my children? A lifetime of cleaning the beach.

#50 The Queen's Hair

The queen wanted to wear all of her hair today.

Jada took the precious sandalwood boxes one by one from the large chest and laid them out on the queen’s bed. When the chest was empty she unlatched the first box and carried it, head bowed, into the queen’s dressing chamber. There in the box lay a silky coil of deep reddish hair, a strange color, unlike any that Jada had seen, except in the queen’s collection.

In the queen’s dressing chamber, the queen waited in her chair, her face unreadable, her own long, black hair looking strange and thin falling down her back. It was only in the early morning, as the queen readied for the day, that Jada saw her like this. The queen’s two chief maidservants stood by, readying their tools. One of them took the box from Jada with a bow. The maidservant set it open on the table and reverently lifted the length of hair from the box. The two of them began weaving it in with the queen’s own hair.

Jada took the empty box back, studying it carefully. No, not this time. It was perfectly empty. She brought another box, this one golden brown, and then another one white-blond. Box after box was empty as she carried them back. The maidservants were careful today. Jada wondered if they knew.

She had to be quick, because with each length of hair the queen’s power would be growing. With each length of hair, Jada’s chances of being caught increased. At last she could wait no longer, and when she opened a box of slick black hair, she very carefully removed a single strand.

The hair did not want to come without disturbing all the others around it. Jada clenched her teeth and tried to brush the others back in place with her fingers. At last the long, nearly invisible strand was free, and Jada quickly tucked it into the sash at her belt. Trying to keep her face still, trying to silence the pounding of her heart, she took the box into the next room.

Jada desperately tried to think about something else, something other than the fact that she had just stolen one of the queen’s hairs. She tried not to think of being hung over the edge of the eastern wall of the castle until the sun burned her dry. When she handed the box to the maidservant, the woman took it without a pause. The queen did not open her eyes, or even move when Jada passed.

Jada rubbed her own bald head self-consciously as she went to get another box. The maidservants didn’t have enough hair to read minds, only single locks were left on their heads, locks divided and woven with beads to make it look as if they wore mesh caps of hair, just enough that they could use a little magic to do their work.

Hours later, the queen was transformed. Her hair stood out from her head, the way light shone from the sun. All the warm colors of earth surrounded her face. Jada made the mistake of meeting the queen’s eyes.

The queen stared back, and for a moment Jada was sure the queen knew. But then the queen rose from her chair and passed by as Jada bowed her head, more in relief than in reverence.

Jada found the quarters where she slept to be empty. She ran to the curtain where a few loose stitches in the hem had made a safe pocket for her to hide her growing stash of hair.

Her fingers slipped inside, but felt nothing except the rough, plain cloth of the curtain. She dug and searched, her panic rising. All the hair she had been collecting was gone!