Not Pretty Enough Read Free Page B

and it’s all thanks to Delia Smith.
My channel hopping lands on Delia’s cookery programme, where she’s icing a cake
of some kind, and that’s when it hits me. I have everything I need to put red
streaks in my hair right here, or more precisely, downstairs in the kitchen
cupboards: red food colouring.
    Beat that, Einstein.
    I’ve seen people doing
highlights on TV; all you need is foil – also in the kitchen cupboards – and
you’re set. You paint the dye on, wrap the hair in kitchen foil and sit under a
big hairdryer for an hour. I might not have a big hairdryer, but I have a
little one shaped like a frog, and I’m sure I can improvise on the small
details. Teenagers the world over are going to thank me for this. I can’t be
the only person in the universe who has very little time to dye their hair and
limited cash flow.
    My mum is in work so I’m on my
own in the house, which is good because Mum might not like me raiding the
kitchen. I briefly consider calling Debs and asking for her help, but really,
how hard can it be? Imagine how impressed Debs will be when she sees my hair
tomorrow. She’ll probably ask me to do hers as well. Then word will spread
around the entire school that I’m some kind of virtuoso hairdresser, and
everybody will be begging me to do theirs, and if Lloyd doesn’t notice me for
the red streaks in my hair, then he’ll notice me because of all the people
raving about my hairdressing skills.
    I know we’re not allowed to dye
our hair in school, but it’s the holidays now, inset Friday to be exact, so I
have two weeks of freedom in which no one can moan at me for having red
streaks. Also, assuming my hair is going to look really cool, and it will take
off around the whole school, shouldn’t the teachers be proud of me for being so
imaginative? Even if they aren’t, what’s the worst they can do? Tell me to wash
it out? I hope it’ll be like permanent hair dye, in which case, it won’t wash
out. Nothing I can do about that. It’s not like they can expel me for something
beyond my control, is it?
    With that in mind, I decide that
it’s now or never. I head downstairs and root through the cupboards until I
find what I’m looking for. I find the food colouring buried in the back of a
cupboard. It’s unopened. I reckon my mum has forgotten she ever bought it.
That’s good because she won’t miss it. I can’t remember the last time we ate
red food anyway. That’s probably why it’s three years out of date. I wonder if
that matters?
    I decide to do the deed in my
room, mainly because if I spill dye on the carpet anywhere else, my mum will
skin me alive. I grab my towel from the bathroom, set the things out on my
window ledge and debate the best way to do this. My blonde hair is just past my
shoulders, and I decide that I need three chunky streaks on either side of my
middle parting. That’s what the model in the magazine has, and I don’t want to
get ahead of myself. I’ll have plenty of people to practise on if it goes well.
I section off six equal chunks of hair and clip the rest back. So far, so good.
I really think I’m going to be good at this. I’ve got some rubber gloves to put
the food colouring on with, and a plan. I have six pieces of foil cut to exact
size and length, and as soon as the dye has evenly coated each section of hair,
I’ll wrap it in the foil and then, when they’re all done, I’ll turn the
hairdryer on them for an hour. Easy.
    I pour the red colouring into a
plastic tray, coat my rubber-gloved fingers in it, and begin stroking them down
the length of the hair. The first streak goes really well. The dye just sort of
sinks into my hair, which is good because at least it’s not running anywhere or
getting on the bits that are meant to stay blonde. This is so easy I can’t
believe I haven’t thought of it before. Within minutes the first streak is
done, wrapped in foil, and I’ve started the next one. The whole process takes
about twenty minutes.