"Four hundred and five days," said Winifred.
It was Monday again. One week had passed since I bet my hair on a charity drive and lost the bet to the entire internet. The total on the Hairloom page now stood at $96,240. My whiteboard still said DECISION: PENDING.
Nobody had erased it. I had noticed people walking around it, the way you walk around wet concrete.
"Item one," Winifred said. "Pump Station 6."
"Next fiscal year," we said.
"Not yet," said Winifred. "The county budget hearing is a week from Thursday, and they haven't voted.
"I'd like us to lose with dignity this year. Osman?"
"Let me pull up the map," said Osman.
The red dot was still there. So were the eleven thousand blue homes. The map had not changed. What had changed was that I could no longer look at it without three strangers emailing me about it.
That was the thing about the second week. The first week, the internet loved me. The second week, the internet felt it owned a share.
I am Dagny Gundersen. I am a thirty-seven-year-old hydraulic engineer, and for twenty years my hair had been the most private public thing about me. Everyone could see it. Nobody had an opinion about it, or if they did, they kept it to themselves like normal people.
Now everybody had one. They had several.
There was a group that called itself Keep the Braid. They made graphics and called my hair "a national monument," which seemed like a lot of pressure for something held up by four pins.
Another group, Cut the Braid, argued that a bet is a bet. A third, smaller group just wanted to know what brand of box fan I used.
"You're trending in the gardening community," Lucia told me on Tuesday. "I don't know why. Caption: junior engineer does not know why."
"I think they like the drying schedule," Osman said.
One account posted a daily status update about my hair, like a weather report: Braid status: nominal. Anchorage: holding. I didn't know who ran it. I found it deeply soothing.
Another account had analyzed one frame of the video and estimated my hair at fifty-six inches. They were five inches over.
I spent an evening drafting a correction and then deleted it. That was the second time I had not corrected someone in a week. I was growing as a person at an alarming rate.
On Wednesday I went on television.
Good Day Garnet is the local morning show.
It has a host with very white teeth and a weather segment that is mostly about his dog. The set looks like a living room nobody has ever lived in. Lucia came with me. So did Ramona Hedlund from Hairloom, who wore a velvet jacket and a pincushion on her wrist like a bracelet.
"Darling," she whispered in the green room, "remember. This is just the third act. Nobody gets to write your ending."
The host was nice. He thanked us for the money and showed the video. Then he leaned toward me with the expression of a man arriving at the real question.
"So," he said. "When's the big cut?"
I had prepared for this. I took a small whiteboard out of my bag. I had borrowed it from the second floor. On it, in the blue marker, I had written the same three lines.
DECISION: PENDING.
OWNER: D. GUNDERSEN.
SCHEDULE: WHEN IT'S READY.
I held it up to the camera.
The host looked at it for a moment. Then he laughed, which I appreciated, and moved on to the dog.
That clip did about four million views. The internet decided I had "absolutely destroyed" a morning host, which was not my intention. I had simply answered his question in writing.
The offers started on Thursday.
A shampoo company called Glossworth offered to sponsor the haircut if I did it live on their channel. They offered a lot of money for Hairloom and a lifetime supply of conditioner. I read the whole offer, including the fine print. Page four said the stylist would be chosen by them, and the length would be chosen by "audience engagement."
I declined. Ramona, when I told her, made a sound like a kettle.
"They're in the wrong theater, darling," she said. "Tell them the stage door is locked."
A company called Fernway Shears offered me a pair of gold-plated scissors in a velvet box. They did not ask for anything. They just sent them, with a card that said Whenever you're ready. I put them in my desk drawer, next to my spare hard hat suspension.
Rocco received offers too. A men's grooming brand sent him a comb. Just one comb, in a gift box, with no note. He took it as a threat.
It had been ten days since the bet. Rocco had not shaved in nine of them. He measured the result every morning with digital calipers he borrowed from the materials lab.
"Point one two inches," he said on Thursday, staring at the readout.
"Respectfully, I hate this. It itches. It has a texture. My pillow knows."
"Caption," said Lucia. "Senior engineer experiences hair."
"You don't have to do it," I told him. "Same rules as me. Winifred's notebook isn't a contract."
Rocco looked at me with a strange expression. It took me a moment to recognize it as solidarity.
"If you're still deciding," he said, "then I'm still growing. That's the deal."
On Friday, Rocco and I drove out to Pump Station 6.
The council would want photos for next week's hearing. They always want photos, and they always defer anyway. But I believe in taking good photos of things that are failing. Someday somebody will need the evidence.
The station sits low by the river, a squat brick building with a rusted door that you open with your shoulder.
Before going in, I did what I always do. I unpinned the anchorage and tucked the braid down the back of my safety vest. Then I zipped the vest to the collar.
Rule one. Nothing loose near a pump.
A jogger on the river path slowed down and stared.
"Are you her?" she called. "The Braid Engineer?"
"I'm an engineer," I said.
She held up her phone. "Can I get a picture?"
"Of the pump station?"
She looked at the building. She looked at me. Then, to her credit, she took a picture of the pump station.
Inside, Pump 3 was making the noise it makes. Some engineers call it grinding. I call it a cough. It is the sound of a machine that has been asked to keep going too long without anyone deciding to replace it.
"Twenty years," Rocco said. He had to raise his voice over the cough. "How long have you been asking for this one?"
"Since 2006."
"And how long since your—" He gestured at the back of my vest.
"Since 2006," I said.
We both thought about that for a moment. Neither of us said anything else.
That night, at home, I made the mistake of reading the comments.
Most were kind. A few thousand were not.
There was one account that had started posting under every video about me. Its handle was CountdownToTheCut. It posted every hour, on the hour, with the reliability of a well-maintained pump.
CUT IT.
She's stalling.
A bet is a bet. Liar.
Bet it's extensions anyway.
That last one stung, absurdly. Twenty-one rows in a spreadsheet, and someone thought I'd bought them.
Lucia had been quietly hiding the worst replies on our page for a week. She had not told me. I only found out because I saw her name at the bottom of the moderation log, at three in the morning, again and again.
At 11:58 p.m. I was about to close the laptop when CountdownToTheCut posted something new. It was not a comment. It was a link to a livestream.
The stream showed a digital clock, a pair of scissors and my face from the video, cropped badly. Under it, in big red letters, it read: THE CUT: NEXT FRIDAY, 12:00 NOON. BE THERE.
Forty-one thousand people were already waiting.
I read it twice. I had not picked a date. Nobody had asked me for a date.
But somebody, somewhere, had decided there was going to be one.
Up next: Load Path
Continue to Part 4 →