Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

Silence.

Then, “Excuse me?”

“Your hairline,” he explained carefully. “It’s starting to recede a bit.

Was your dad or grandpa bald?”

I laughed uncomfortably. “Shut up, Kid. You’re just trying to freak me out.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding dubious. “Maybe look in a mirror or something. You’re still pretty young for that to be happening. Wow, can you imagine if that were true, though? Bald by the time you’re thirty? Gosh, that would just suck.”

He walked out of the kitchen.

I stared after him.

Once I was sure he was gone, I leapt up from the chair and ran the opposite way, past boxes not yet unpacked, down the hall, until I reached the master bedroom and shoved my way into the bathroom, steam spreading across the mirror since Otter was in the shower. I could see him through the curtain, and for a moment, my mouth went dry at the thought of naked Otter all soapy and wet, those long legs, those big arms. Water falling in tiny rivers down his chest and stomach, leaving trails just begging to be licked. I adjusted myself, the front of my pajama shorts suddenly uncomfortably tight.

But then I caught my reflection. My hair.

I wiped away the fog from the glass and stared at my hairline, pushing it forward and back, trying to see if the Kid was right. My black hair looked like it always had, loose and floppy, in need of yet another haircut. But…

didn’t it look like it had receded a little bit? Didn’t it look like I was losing my hair? I stared in horror at the mirror, the brown eyes of my reflection getting wider and wider, my hands trembling.

“Motherfucker!” I grumbled.

“Bear?” Otter called out over the water. “That you?”

I couldn’t answer.

He pulled back the curtain and stuck out his head, giving me an evil grin. “What’re you doing?” he said in that low voice of his, that voice that tells me he wouldn’t mind one bit if I got in the shower and got on my knees and proceeded to blow the fuck out of him.

“You’re going to leave me,” I whimpered as a hair fell off my head and onto the white countertop.

He laughed. “What? What are you looking at, Bear?”

“White sheets,” I blurted out, refusing to look at him looking at me.

“What?”

“I want white sheets for the bed.” I thought hard for a moment. “And white pillow cases!” I didn’t dare say aloud that it would be so I could see any of the traitorous hairs that would flee my head during the night.

“Uh… you okay?” he asked me as he turned off the water, pulling the curtain completely to the side. I snuck a look over and saw all six foot one of glorious, tan, naked Otter. His dick swung out in front of him, begging to be grabbed. He looked like he had just stepped off a porno set, all wet and slick and raring to go. Something shorted in my head.

“White sheets!” I half screamed at him as I ran out of the bathroom.

I BOUGHT white bed sheets that same day (“Make sure you get five-hundred thread count,” my super diva princess boyfriend said. “Yo

u know I can’t sleep on anything less.”). I hurried home, throwing them in the washing machine, pacing in front of it until it dinged and then launched them into the dryer.

During this interminable hour and a half, a dozen different scenarios played through my head, each more realistic than the last as to how my life would be as a balding man in his twenties: So, if this is true, if this is really

happening to me, the first thing I’ve got to do is accept it. Acceptance is the key; it’s the only way I can get through this. First thing to decide: do I try and work with it or shave my head? Shaving my head would suck because I’m pretty sure my head is lumpy and shaped weird. Working with it would suck because every day my forehead would look like it’s getting a little bit bigger, like my head is growing. Okay, so say I work with it? Do I do a comb-over? Like, maybe let it grow out a little bit more so I have something extra to work with? Oh God! What if I get that little bald patch on the back of my head that looks like a helicopter landing pad? What if it falls off in clumps and creepy patches and I look like I have leprosy? Can people still get leprosy? For that matter, can people still get the plague? Didn’t I read something that someone got the plague or something recently? Maybe that was anthrax. Why do people send white powder in envelopes to government agencies? They must be really fucking bored. And crazy. Like, okay. Say you hate the IRS. You decide to be all devious and put laundry detergent into an envelope, and you mail it to them because you owe a bajillion dollars in back taxes. Panic ensues. The worst thing that happens is that people get a day off from work. Ooooh, so evil. You showed them. How neat are you? I bet those people that do that shit are bald too. Oh crap. I’m going to be bald and mail Tide to government buildings, and I’ll bitch and moan about how The Man is bringing us down, and I’ll live in a shack in the middle of the woods. That’s my future. I’m going to be a bald detergent terrorist. Damn you, genetics!

Needless to say, by the time the dryer went off, I was a wreck.

The Kid walked by the open door of the bedroom and stopped to watch me for a moment as I tore off the old sheets and spread on the new ones, muttering to myself. “New sheets?” he asked innocently. “And white even.

How sterile.”