closed was audible to everyone in the dining room.
Justin drew his hands through his hair as he weighed their options. His brother was looking at him pleadingly, and had started biting his nails.
“Look, Dad. Don’t cut our hair, okay. This is how everyone looks at school. It’s cool. I’m going to be the laughing stock of the school.”
“Like Kendall?”
“What?”
“Does everyone wear their hair like he does? Is that cool too?”
“Yeah, some people do.”
“Do I look like a fool to you, son?”
“No.”
“Do you want to be like him? A freak? I’ve seen the posters of the music he listens to. Men who dress like women with their long hair and make-up. It’s profane, and I won’t have it in my house. I know you think he’s okay, but you’re going to listen to me when I say this: I won’t allow you to turn into something disgusting,” bellowed Gregory, red in the face.
There was a terse silence.
“Are you going to just stand there?” Gregory shouted at his wife who was in the doorway holding the pair of scissors like it was a sacred object. He slammed his fist down hard on the table.
Justin stared at his father, equally angry. Kendall had witnessed his brother explode a few times before when his dad pushed him too far, but for the most part he usually backed down. Kendall found it easier just to remain silent, as the tirade passed quicker that way. Justin had had enough, though.
“I hate you!” he exploded looking at both Gregory and his mother. “You’re both insane. You speak about Kendall like he’s not here, but he’s sitting right in front of you. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see what you’re doing to us?”
Debbie Mullins looked down at the floor as her son glared accusingly at her, wishing that she would stick up for her sons just once.
“Will you still be needing the scissors, dear?” she asked her husband in a small voice.
Gregory shook his head and stared at Kendall with a look of deepest disapproval.
“It is not my influence my son wants any more, but an influence of a more unsavoury nature.” With those words he slid his chair back and left the table.
“You’re not going to finish your dinner, dear?” Debbie quavered.
He didn’t answer, but stalked heavily up the stairs towards his bedroom. They heard the door slam and something break. The evening’s festivities obviously weren’t over just yet.
Debbie was shaking her head at her sons. “Oh dear. Why do you boys always have to upset him so?”
Justin looked at his mother incredulously. “You wanna go to my room?” he asked his brother.
Kendall nodded.
They left their mother in the dining room wringing her hands as she looked up the stairs, wondering what it was of hers that her husband had just broken.
Justin’s room
Justin’s room was the polar opposite to his brother’s. While Kendall’s room was his dark sanctuary where everything had a special significance, Justin’s room was glorious in its chaos.
It resembled an ordinary teenager’s room with a small television set (borrowed from an ex-girlfriend who in all likelihood would never get it back), a PlayStation console for which he had saved up and various other electronic gadgets he had to have, but hardly ever used.
Kendall picked a pair of his brother’s jeans off the bed and put it over a chair so he could sit down.
Justin was looking at his reflection in a mirror on the wall between numerous band posters. Various photographs of friends and party pamphlets had been stuck to the glass at odd angles to create a colourful collage.
“Do you think my fringe is getting too long?” he asked, turning his face back and forth.
“Don’t listen to Dad,” Kendall replied, switching on the PlayStation console.
The sound of Gregory Mullins’s raised voice could still be heard echoing from the next room. “Lock that door, Kenny, before he comes in here.”
Kendall got up to turn the key in the lock just as the all too familiar sound of his father’s fist hitting a cupboard door reverberated through the house.
“He’s really angry tonight. Maybe we should just sit and wait it out and not make a noise,” Kendall said, staring at the locked door with a worried expression.
“No way, screw him. Let’s play something. Come and sit down, before you stare a hole in that door.”
Justin flopped down in front of the console and rifled through the games on the floor. Kendall took a seat behind him on the bed. His expression became glassy as he stared into the air in front of him, twisting his ponytail nervously.
“You okay, Kenny?” his brother asked, tapping him on the leg.
Kendall blinked and managed a smile to cover up his embarrassment. “I was quite scared when Dad asked for the scissors,” he admitted, “I don’t know what I’d do if he cut my hair, you know?”
“Don’t think about it. As long as I’m under this roof, I will make sure Dad doesn’t touch our hair. I mean seriously, have you seen his? It’s practically a mullet and not the cool kind either. The man is still living in the eighties. Here, take this.” Justin pushed a game controller into Kendall’s hand and took a seat on the floor at the foot of the bed. “Need for Speed will take your mind off it.”
The game interface flashed on the screen and the brothers pushed their long hair out of their faces simultaneously.
“You know what gets me, though?” Justin said as their cars pulled onto the track.
“What?”
“Our mother. I don’t understand how she can take his abuse. She just stands there like a zombie while he treats us like crap.”
“It’s her way of coping, I guess.”
“She’s supposed to protect us, but she’s just as bad. ‘Will you still be needing the scissors, dear?’ ”
Kendall didn’t have an answer to that. He had his brother to protect him. His mother had no one to protect her.
“Do you hate her?” he asked.
“Don’t you?” Justin replied, surprised.
“I honestly don’t know. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have met you. I might still have been in that home. The kids at school are nothing compared to that lot.”
“I hate them both,” Justin said through his teeth as his fingers squeezed the controls.
