Excerpt of Tapped Out

“Uh, Carmen? That hurts a bit. Carman?”

The woman holding the hairbrush over my head—and what looked like a considerable chunk of my hair in her left hand—had a glazed, slightly off-kilter look on her face. I could see her in the mirror we both faced, and it wasn’t a comforting sight.

“Carmen? Can you let go?” It seemed some of my hair was trapped in the brush, too, and it was in danger of joining the hair in her hand. Somehow, I just knew that bald would not be a good look for me. I should have known this would be a mistake.

Since I never had any money, I was always looking for ways to pinch pennies. One of the ways I did that was working in trade. I did something for the psycho dance moms that inhabit my studio, and they did something for me in return. Usually this worked. Sometimes it backfired. The more psycho the mom, the more often it turned into a huge mess.

I’m Jenny T. Partridge, and as you might have guessed, I’m a dance teacher. I live and work in Ogden, Utah, land of the Mormons, lake stink, and winter inversions that bring bitter cold temperatures and zero visibility. Everyone who went through the public school system in Utah knew how the Mormons got here–It was a part of our fourth-grade curriculum. I heard once that the Great Salt Lake stunk because it had no outlet, but my father—a retired school teacher—told me that it was because of the dead plants and animals and the shallow water. Eww. And the inversion? My good friend James Marriott, who just happens to be a very flamboyant gay man, something everyone knows except his Mormon mother, claimed it was God’s curse on Utah for being so culturally backward. You can’t take that too seriously, because of course, James also claims a distant relationship with the very wealthy Marriott hotel chain owners, too. Something I highly doubt.

And I didn’t agree with James that Utah was culturally deprived. After all, we had Ballet West with its internationally known production of The Nutcracker; we had Odyssey Dance with their annual production of Thriller; and they even shot movies down on historic 25th Street in Ogden, which is where my studio was located, just above Priceless Pearls, an antique and pawn shop. Oh, and the lead singer of the new wave-inspired band The Killers is from Utah. Please do not ask me about the Osmonds. I am not going there.

Nonetheless, I didn’t love my home state much during the month of February. Despite the fact it was the shortest of all your calendar months, it could seem very, very long. During an inversion, you could go weeks without seeing the sun—and sometimes your hand in front of your face. Think of an inversion as the thickest of fogs. One that brings bone-chilling temperatures along for the ride. If Stephen King planned to write about a killer fog that came to stay one winter day, froze everything, ate the sun, and turned the residents of a town into raving lunatics, he could come hang out in Utah in the winter.

But, this is where I lived, and where my dance studio was located, and so I had to make the best of it.

Since I had the February blahs, I thought Carmen Jensen’s offer of a free hairdo, in exchange for some private lessons for her daughter Melissa, sounded like a great deal.

Goes to show you what I get for thinking. I probably should have scheduled the appointment for a time before I rearranged the Petites dance, and put her daughter in the back row. Melissa loves to dance, but her body isn’t listening to her brain, and the coordination is not there.

I was all for a love of the art. But when it came to butchering one of my choreography routines, I was just not that sympathetic to a love that isn’t followed by a body able to do the moves.

Melissa was hopelessly uncoordinated. And all the tea in Japan was not going to get her going in the right direction.

So when I rearranged the dance—preparing the team to compete at the Hollywood StarMakers Convention and Competition, which was coming to town at the end of the week—I moved Melissa back to the third row, far right. I understood that this was the equivalent of putting a baseball player in right field, but I always hoped that the psycho dance moms wouldn’t have that same understanding.

They usually did. And Carmen obviously did. Based on the fact I was now missing large chunks of my hair, Carmen was totally clued in to what had happened.

“Uh, Carmen? My hair is attached to my head, and you’re hurting me by pulling it. Ouch. Carmen, it hurts!”

The multi-colored blonde standing over me narrowed her eyes, and I could almost swear evil flashed out from them. We were in the salon she ran out of her house, and I was suddenly fearful she was going to chop me into pieces and hide my body where it would never be found. You might laugh, but I promise, this dance teacher business could be very dangerous.

It hadn’t been all that long since someone killed one of my psycho dance moms and tried to frame me for the murder. It hadn’t been the best time of my life, even though I met a really hot detective because of it. Even with that factored in, I did not want to repeat the experience. I shuddered, and looked up at Carmen. Another psycho dance mom, just like the one that tried to kill me. When I called them psycho, I was not kidding.

Carmen yanked at the brush holding my hair and I winced and cried out.

“Carmen, maybe we should just do this another day, huh? Maybe, say, when you aren’t quite so stressed out?” Or maybe have been dosed with some heavy duty anti-psychotic drugs.

“It hurts, huh?” she said, laughing without humor. “I’m really sorry. Sometimes these things do hurt. Yes, they do. They hurt really, really bad, and then someone tells you ‘Well, sorry. That’s just the way it is.’ That’s life. Life in a nutshell. Sometimes things just hurt.”

“Oh, man, I just remembered, I have a solo lesson. Let’s reschedule this,” I said, anxious to get out of the chair and Carmen’s house before I was completely bald. I tried to stand up, but she still had my hair caught in the brush—that was, the hair she hadn’t already pulled out of my head.

“Nonsense, you said you really needed a change. Some highlights. A few layers would do wonders for this…er…your hair.” She dropped the hair—my hair!–she’d been holding in her left hand to the floor, and picked up a pair of sharp scissors from a rolling tray positioned next to the chair where I sat.

“Yes, but you know how upset these mothers get when…I mean, I really have to….” I stumbled over the words, not wanting to trigger her even more.

“No, no, it’ll be fine. Just sit tight and I’ll make you a new woman.”

Those just might be the most frightening words you will ever hear coming out of a psycho dance mom holding chemicals and garnishing a pair of scissors.

I was in big trouble.