Kyla and Biff finished their work in a comfortable silence, appreciating one another's company without needing to verbalize it. They re-examined all of the books once in place to ensure they hadn't gotten anything mixed up. And then Kyla turned to Biff with a warm smile on her face.
"Come sit with me," she beckoned as she found a study table.
Biff followed her lead. It felt good to follow. Weightless.
"Turn so your back is to me," Kyla guided once Biff had sat down in a chair. "I forgot about it yesterday, but over the weekend I saw this claw clip in the drugstore that just gave me real Karyn vibes. Can I do your hair?"
Biff nodded. And then Kyla's fingers were reaching for his temples from behind, pulling back locks of hair, running her fingers through the strands, making contact with his scalp. And it made him feel safe. Cared for. Kyla's physical attention lasted only a minute before she pulled out her phone, took a picture, and showed Biff what the back of his head looked like. But for Biff, it felt like a wonderful eternity.
"See?" Kyla presented the picture to Biff. "It's just your style." The clip wasn't overly large, just big enough to hold onto about half of his mane, just enough to pull away the hair that would otherwise get into his eyes. The clips were shaped like butterfly wings, the plastic a swirling mix of green and gold that matched both his blonde hair and his green sweater. There were four emerald rhinestones embedded across the top of each wing. A little sparkle, without being too overwhelming.
"It's beautiful," Biff breathed before he'd even realized he was thinking the words. But then he heard himself say them, and the logical thoughts followed: 'That's me. That's the back of my head. That's my hair. I'm beautiful.'
Kyla gushed some more about how it didn't work with Kyla's hair color, and she wanted Karyn to keep it, and it looked just as perfect as she'd imagined it would.
But Biff was only half playing attention. He just couldn't pull himself away from the image of the back of his own head. Karyn's head, but he was occupying it for now.
Biff set down Kyla's phone and took out Karyn's, snapping a selfie of the front of his face, and then a side angle so that the clip was partially visible at the back of his head. Just a minute of pulling back some hair, and a little piece of plastic, and the face he was seeing looked completely different from the one he'd found in the mirror that morning. Or at least, if not completely different, then just different enough where his aura seemed to change. It was like magic. Styling a girl's hair, Biff realized, was like magic.
"Okay, now let me do yours," Biff said before the thought of whether or not he knew how to do a girl's hair even entered his mind. But the two switched chairs, and just like he somehow knew to get to the library, Biff's hands somehow knew how to gather Kyla's deep brown hair at the temples, just like Kyla had just done for him, and begin twisting it into a half-braid that sat atop Kyla's lower locks. Biff didn't even think twice as he finished the braid, holding the end with his left hand as his right dug into a pocket of his backpack, of Karyn's backpack, for a hair tie that he knew was there.
It wasn't a complicated look. But with the hair away from Kyla's face, just as Biff's hair was, and with the small half-braid sitting as an ornament on the back of her head, she had transformed just like Biff had. At least, just how Biff had transformed a moment earlier, in a small subtle aura type of way, rather than how Biff had done that morning, into a completely different person's body.
"Styling a girl's hair is magic," Biff gave voice to the thought this time.
Kyla giggled. "I guess you could say that." She was dismissive, as though Biff had meant it like a joke. But for him, it was a revelation.
Kyla pulled some homework out of her backpack, and Biff followed her lead. And the two worked side-by-side in silence once again until the bell rang. But every few minutes, Biff looked up so that he could appreciate the little magic on Kyla's head that he was responsible for.
