Hair Salon

The first day had been fairly normal for Henry. The new receptionist at his sister Regina’s hair salon, he had simply sat at the front and checked women in for their appointments and swept up the hair from the floor. Plus, he got to check out not only all of the hotties that worked with his sister but all of the hot trophy wives that came in for cuts.

Things started getting weird after the first month. Lots of whispering and glances in his direction and weird looks from the customers, like they all knew something Henry didn’t know. Still, only a couple of months until he could leave for college. He could put up with some strange stuff until then.

Six weeks in, his breasts were sore and tender. Regina took him to a doctor, who wrote out a prescription for Henry. Henry didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he injected his medicine twice a day as the doctor had told him to.

An accident in the seventh week was a total disaster. At the salon, some sort of chemical got all over his clothes. It was too far away to return home, but Regina’s boss found some spare clothes that she loaned to Henry for the rest of the day. He felt weird and blushed at the first few customers who saw him in women’s clothes, but the feeling went away as the day wore on and he found the soft material quite comfortable by the time he and Regina headed home to find the next disaster.

Henry’s dirty clothes had been kept in a garbage bag since he’d arrived. Today was supposed to be laundry day, since the clothes that had been ruined at work were his last clean clothes. The bag of dirty clothes was missing! Regina helped him look all around the apartment, but none of Henry’s clothes were to be found. While he sat and cried, Regina phoned her housekeeper, who had found the garbage bag and tossed it with the rest of the garbage. She said she had no idea it was full of clothes. Who keeps their clothes in a trash bag?

The next day began the prolonged period of Henry working in women’s clothes. Regina gave him some and the other girls at the salon donated bags of their old clothes that they had forgotten to take to Goodwill. There was enough to fill Henry’s closet, but he insisted he would have new clothes in two weeks when his next paycheck came in.

The girls took to calling him Hannah at the salon so the customers wouldn’t get suspicious of the boy in girl clothes. They helped him with his hair and makeup and by the end of the week, no one would have been able to tell that Hannah was a boy. It was disconcerting for Henry, but he played along, at least until he could buy himself some new clothes. Hannah however, spelled Henry’s doom.

Hannah was much more popular with the clientele than Henry had ever been. The women talked to her, and their overall experience was much more satisfying with a cute girl at the front desk. They could relate to her. Hannah did her best to chat with the customers, but she didn’t know that much about girly stuff. So it was that Regina began an intensive training program to teach Hannah everything she needed to know to work at the salon. It was an immersion program, that Henry balked at. He didn’t need to know all this stuff. He was starting college in a month and he’d be back to being Henry in a week. But Regina insisted that if he wanted to keep working, he would learn. Reluctantly, he agreed.

Regina made him stay away from anything “boy” related during Henry’s learning period. There were lots of fashion and hair magazines, lots of girly TV shows and movies, lots of Tumblr. She made him practice all of the cool nail art he saw and binge watch every season of every “girly” TV show she could think of. His room was pinkified and by the time two weeks had passed, he knew the lyrics to every Taylor Swift song. His iPod was filled to the brim with Taylor and Meagan Trainor, Katy Perry and One Direction.

After an intense weekend of training in which Henry had been in heels almost 24/7, Hannah came back in on Monday to find things had changed a lot at work. She actually got into deep conversations about Gilmore Girls and provided input on cute hairstyles. She was a huge hit with the clients and an even bigger hit with the stylists. They treated her like one of them now and invited her out with them to the clubs. Regina insisted she go, so they all went, and Hannah found herself shaking her cute butt at the clubs 5 days a week. She didn’t have time anymore for anything but work, hanging out with her girlfriends and making sure she looked good. Time flew by, and she didn’t even notice when the calendar blasted past her first day of college. She was having too much fun and Regina always kept her free time occupied. There was always more to learn.

Over the months, Hannah developed a genuine interest in hair, and the girls convinced her to go to school for it while still working at the salon as their receptionist. A year later, Hannah was fully qualified and joined the staff as a stylist, a popular one at that. She never thought about her old life, or the life she had planned for herself before she worked at the salon. She was a salon girl now and proud of it. She’d never had closer friends in her life. There was only one thing missing.