Honey Blonde Chica

1 Evie Gomez woke up on Saturday morning with two things on her mind. The first was that her best friend, Raquel Diaz, was definitely no longer just that, a best friend. Raquel had proven herself to be, as of 10:32 a.m. that late September morning, a 100 percent pinche beyachee. And why? Because after two weeks of no phone, no friends, basically no life, Evie wasn't under her mother's house arrest anymore for coming home a piddly-ass twenty (okay, maybe it was forty) minutes past her curfew. Her ankle bracelet had been officially clipped off, but did her girl Raquel bother to call so they could celebrate Evie's first night of freedom? No. Raquel hadn't even had the decency to return any of Evie's phone calls, text messages, or the desperate IMs Evie had sent to SexyMexy08. Raquel was no Sexy Mexy, Evie decided, but she was definitely a bitch. The second thing Evie realized was how light her head felt. She ran her hand from the back of her neck and, yup, her long, dark brown hair was much shorter. All of it. She pushed up from her pillows and got a look at herself in her closet mirrors -- her hair was now short, chopped in haphazard fashion with streaks of uneven blue. Cancun Blue No. 32 to be exact. But it should have been called Abuelita Azulita because it had come out the same exact blue tint you see on, well, abuelitas. What had she done? She yanked down at the sides but they barely reached her shoulders. Who the hell cuts their own hair? Is this what happened to prisoners in solitary confinement? After being isolated from their peers for too long, did they eventually go mad and commit self-inflicted acts of hair assault with Ginghar craft scissors too? Evie looked hideous and she had no one to blame but...yes, Raquel. It was her fault that Evie had gotten grounded in the first place. Raquel had insisted they go to Tracy Tankerson's party two weeks ago. It was the first party on the first Friday of the new school year and Raquel promised she'd have Evie home by her curfew. But, as Evie should have known, by the time it was time to leave, Raquel was just getting her drink on. There was no way she was gonna get Evie home by her curfew, and she didn't. Evie glowered at the sight of her reflection. Why, why hadn't Raquel just called her back last night? As a best friend, she owed it to her. When nine o'clock rolled around, it had become painfully obvious to Evie that she was going to spend another long night at home alone. And after clicking from one reality makeover show to the next, she realized it was she, not another midwestern housewife, who needed a change. She wanted something that demanded attention, respect. She wanted...hair the color of the Cancun ocean! And that's how The Reinvention of Evie Gomez, Mex-treme Makeover, Friday Night Home Edition came to be. But as of now, Saturday morning, it was sadly evident that she had truly lost her senses the night before. Her rookie dye job screamed beauty-school flunk-out. The bleach she'd used to strip her brown wasn't dispersed as evenly as it should have been and now her head looked like a patchwork of beige, white, and blue, the national colors of...whatever country's flag was beige, white, and blue. She looked like crap. "What do you think, Meho?" She toed her male tabby, nestled at the foot of her bed. "Punk rock, or goth-metal dork?" But Meho couldn't care less about her state of blue disrepair. He lifted up his hind leg and started to lick behind it. "Cla-see," Evie smirked as she gave him a slight tap with the rest of her foot. She heard Lindsay, the Gomez's housekeeper, turn up the volume of El Mercadito on the kitchen radio downstairs. Other than that, the house was quiet. She was sure her father, Ruben Gomez, had left hours ago for one of his several panadenas and her mother, Vicki, was probably in the pool doing her obligatory fifty laps. Evie pulled her Dean Miller sheets upSerros, Michele is the author of 'Honey Blonde Chica ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416915928 and ISBN 1416915923.