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Willow looked into the mirror before her. She looked exactly like she always had. The weird mouth with the thin lips, her round eyes and her long girly hair. She tried to change her expression, but it always reverted back to that same neurotic grimace. She either looked like someone who was trying not to acknowledge a really unpleasant smell or like someone who was just too socially awkward to meet the gaze of her own darned reflection.
The problem was that this face did not fit any more. Willow had faced down monsters. She had stood beside ... or more commonly right behind ... Sunnydale's vampire slayer. The cutest boy in Sunnydale's most wicked indie rock band considered her his very own and totally exclusive groupie. That wasn't all, though. She had touched the darkness. She had dared to peer through the veil of reality, something not even Buffy had done. There was a wildness about Willow now. Every night she struggled to fall asleep, because her heart would pond so hard. She felt every bit the wolf that her cool headed boy was, if not more so. Sometimes she thought she would need his help if she was ever gonna be able to sleep again.
Buffy had the face of a slayer. Willow bit her lip. She knew her friend was simply hiding out somewhere. Buffy was unbreakable. But Willow also knew that her friend was sad and probably terribly lonely. There were cracks in Buffy's mask, too. Willow's problem was that she had no mask. She could never hide how painfully out of depth she always felt, even though she had no business feeling that way any more. She was someone to reckon with now. Buffy was gone and it was Willow who had rallied Nighthawk and Wolfboy and turned the slayerettes into a fighting force.
Delilah emerged through the curtain of beads that separated her office from the rest of the salon. Willow spun round in her chair to watch her approach. Delilah ... Ly ... looked like your slightly unhinged aunt who never married. Her hair was a large nest of angry curls that she tried to restrain with a scarf. Xander once claimed he had dropped a pair Ly's scissors into her hair and that as far as he knew, they had never re-emerged from there. If it had not been for Delilah's competitive prices, it would have been a mystery why anyone would want to have their hair cut by someone who had become so utterly defeated by her own. Although, she did serve Willow the best cups of herbal tea that she had ever had. Herbal, because caffeine made Willow too anxious to have anyone snip their scissors behind and around her ears.
Delilah had all her scissors and other implements arrayed atop a tray that she wheeled around on a lab cart. They all looked like a collection of torture instruments. There was something oddly perverse about some of the smaller brushes, but Ly was always very gentle when she brushed someone else's hair, probably because the luxury of painlessly brushing her own hair was something she had never gotten to experience.
“Willow,” Delilah said and put both her long fingered hands through Willow hair. Another quirk about Delilah was her goldfish memory, which Willow had noticed becoming progressively worse over the years. During the time it had taken Delilah to pop into her office and out again, she had probably forgotten exactly who was waiting for her in her chair or that anyone was sitting there waiting at all. “Did you enjoy your tea, dearie?” she asked as she noticed the empty cup in Willow's lap. Willow nodded in confirmation. “The usual trim at the edges, is it?” Ly continued.
“No,” Willow said and shakily placed the cup on the surface of the styling station. “I want a change.”
“A change?” Delilah said, as if it was a preposterous demand. All her costumers … her clients, as she called them … were regulars, and they had all stopped asking her for new styles years ago. Delilah did not do make-overs. “I am not your life coach, dearie. I am only here to trim your hair.”
“You misunderstand, Ly,” Willow said. “I have already gone through a change … many changes, in fact. And I want a hairstyle that reflects that.”
“You want to be reflected in your hair?” Delilah exclaimed. It was odd having a person who looked like a gypsy from an old children's book stare at you as though you were speaking nonsense. Willow wondered how Ly had gotten all her regulars to begin with, because she was terrible at selling her craft. To Delilah, the growth of hair was an inconvenience – an inconvenience she could remedy by cutting your hair down to the exact shape it had when you left after your last visit.
“I look like a little girl with this hair,” Willow said. “I am going to be 18 this year. This hair … it isn't me any more.”
“Then whose hair is it?” Delilah said. It sounded more like a desperate attempt to keep the conversation rolling, rather than some clever rhetorical quip. Willow feared it might actually have been a genuine query. Xander had claimed that if you asked Ly something too complicated, her brain would overload and she would probably have a heart attack.
“It is the hair of the girl who sat at the back of the library by herself reading romance novels,” Willow said. “That isn't who I am any more. By cutting my hair, I am drawing a line in the sand.”
Willow heard the steps of someone approaching from behind them. She looked in the mirror and saw Ly turn to face the intruding presence. “Give the girl what she wants, Ly,” a man's voice said. “She is at that age, you know? She feels like she is all new.”
Willow saw Ly's reflection do a double take as she creased her forehead to remember the identity of the mystery speaker. “Hair is my business, Sam,” Delilah said.
“I am not trying to get in your business, Ly,” the voice said. “Just some advice, 's all.”
Willow wanted to look to see who was speaking, but Ly put her hands on each side of Will's head and kept her from turning. “Sit still, dearie,” she said. “We'll be cutting soon.”
“Let's hear her out,” the voice said. “Tell us girl, what are these changes you have been going through?”
“Well,” Willow started, looking as she spoke at the reflection of her own insecure face and Ly's confused body hanging over her. “I am dating someone. Finally. He's a musician. Plays in a band.”
“She's dating,” the voice said. “Girl's in love. Of course she needs a haircut that reflects that.”
Delilah scoffed. “Love,” she said. “What is love to a girl like this? Mathematical genius. Terminal junkie. Collector of stamps extraordinaire. She will have no problem filling a lonely life.”
“So, the girl has some smarts,” the voice said, “but she also needs to live her life. Having a special someone, it can really make a difference.” Once again, Willow turned to look to see who was speaking … he sounded like he was standing just beside Ly … but Delilah was busy putting the cape on Willow and poked her in the neck with safety pin.
“He is really sweet,” Willow said, feeling the fresh puncture wound with her fingers, until Ly slapped her hand way. “His name is Oz and he changes his hair all the time.”
“Her sweetheart likes to change his hair,” the voice said. “He is a bona fide chameleon, sounds like. Girl just wanna catch up. You gotta make it happen for her, Ly.”
“I don't know,” Delilah said, sounding genuinely stressed as she rotated Willow's head in her hands, examining it from every angle. “A girl should not let her man define her. It would not be right.”
“He does not define me,” Willow argued. “I like him, but he is he and I am myself.”
“See,” the voice said. “He does not define her. She wants to change her hair for her own sake.”
Delilah had started to hyper-ventilate. “Does she really, Sam?” she said. “All I know is that this is not the Willow I have known for near 10 years. I have always given her the same cut.” She pulled Willow's hair out in opposite directions. “I am afraid changing it would only make matters worse.”
“Relax, Ly,” the voice said. “You're getting way too worked up over this.” Willow was sure he heard him from just over her shoulder. “Girl said she had gone through other changes as well. Let's hear her out.”
“I am more confident than I used to be,” Willow said.
“See,” the voice said. “Girl's confident. She needs confident hair.”
“My friends and I … we have been helping people and stuff,” Willow said. “I've been getting really good at it, too.”
Delilah just shook her head. “Helping people?” Willow could see from Ly's reflection that the old woman's world was coming apart.
“The girl is talking about monsters … surely,” the voice said. “Ain't that right, girl? You're one of 'em monster slayers been going around town?”
“Maybe,” Willow said.
“Come on,” the voice said and Willow felt him punch her in the shoulder. “Admit it! You're like the neighbourhood watch.”
Delilah rested her chin atop Willow's head, so that all of her enormous hair came curtaining down over Willow. “There are no monsters, dearie. It is just something us locals like to pretend.”
“That's not right,” the voice said. “We all know there are monsters in Sunnydale … and this girl is one of them kids who kill them. She and her fair haired prince. I'm right, ain' I?”
“Darn tooin' right you are, mister,” Willow said. “I am a monster slayer. I've been hunting monsters for two years.”
“For two years, she's been doing this, Ly,” the voice said.
“I am darn good at it, too,” Willow said.
“Girl's good,” the voice said, “and with a new haircut, I doubt anyone would dare doubt that.”
“What's more,” Willow continued, feeling herself getting a little carried away. “I am a Satanist. A maléfica. I'm a witch with terrible powers.”
“The girl has special powers,” the voice said. “You better start cutting right away.”
“All right,” Delilah screamed and plunged her hand into her gigantic hair to retrieve a pair of scissors from its curly depths. Willow could hardly believe her eyes. With inhuman speed and precision, the old woman started cutting away at Willow's hair without any apparent plan or thought. Willow closed her eyes in fear and heard the blades of Ly's scissors snipping away from seemingly several directions at once.
When Willow eventually opened her eyes, she feared her scalp would be as patchy as her dear old dad's. To her surprise, she discovered that quite a lot of her hair remained. It fell beautifully down to just short of her shoulders. Delilah was swiftly raking her fingers through Willow's hair to restore her side part.
It was only a small change. Her hair was still long. It was not dramatic. Her mother would probably not even notice it. But it still meant the world. It was enough to make Willow look just a bit unfamiliar to herself. Maybe now the changes in her life would start to feel more permanent … more real.
“Could you bring me my rucksack?” Willow asked Delilah. “My wallet is in there.”
“You can pay at the desk,” Delilah mumbled.
“Just hand it to me, please,” Willow said, unable to take her eyes off the mirror. She felt a soft breath of air on her neck. It all felt so much lighter, after all the shedding.
Delilah returned with Willow's rucksack, but instead of her wallet, Willow retrieved one of her wooden stakes. She then spun around and locked eyes with the mysterious speaker, who had been standing right behind her the entire time. The man lunged at her, but Willow deftly thrust the stake through his chest and he exploded into ash.
Delilah was already sweeping up Willow's hair with her broom and did not seem to notice that the man was gone or that there was suddenly almost as much ash as there was hair on her floor.
“Thank you,” Willow said, as she eventually got out her wallet. “I needed this.”