"So, are you excited?" Dylan asked me as we walked home, her eyes shining.  I grinned at her. "Are you kidding?" I laughed, my breath smoking in the glacial atmosphere. "I've been waiting for this for weeks!" 

She sighed. "Imagine, Eve. Days and days of freedom are ahead of us. Waking up at two in the afternoon, reading in front of a crackling fire in oversized sweatshirts, the winter wind screaming past our windows outside..." She stared dreamily into the distance, as if in a trance, until I started giggling and jabbed her with my elbow. 

"Hello?! Earth to Dylan? You're speaking to me, not writing a novel, you know." She blinked a few times, her eyes clearing as she shot me a still slightly-clouded smile. Along with her awful memory, Dylan was always 'away with the fairies', as her mum so often put it after her daughter had informed her of yet another detention for daydreaming. When I told her about this, she had wrinkled her nose, her eyes twinkling. "Fairies?" She'd said in mock-disgust, the corners of her mouth tugging upwards into a wry smile, "I think the phrase you're looking for is 'away with the dragons'. Oh, I'd love to be a dragon..." And off she had gone again, wandering in the vast wonderland that was her imagination.

 I smiled, slinging a jovial arm round her shoulders. She reacted oddly to this friendly gesture, stiffening for a fraction of a second before relaxing and blushing a light crimson. I glanced at her for a moment, but let it go and turned my attention to the sky. At that exact moment, the gunmetal-coloured clouds finally opened and bullets of rain showered our faces. "Quick!" yelled Dylan, running towards my road, her arms bobbing about in front of her like overcooked noodles. Her tall, slim body and lanky limbs had cursed her with a complete lack of any sort of co-ordination, making PE and Dance lessons a living hell. My heart swelled slightly at the sight of her sprinting down the pavement, stumbling every so often over a non-existent obstacle. 

Oh, so you're in love with your best friend now, Evelyn? That's a bit unnatural, isn't it? I gritted my teeth. Shut up. Pushing the voice from my mind, I caught up with Dylan, and together we sprinted to the dry safety of my house, pulling each other back as we ran and giggling until we were breathless.

Once I had let us in, we pulled off our boots and I went off to get us both towels. I returned to see Dylan sitting on the kitchen floor, staring transfixed at my aquarium tank full of tropical fish. "Now, where's my little friend..." she muttered, not yet aware of my reappearance. "Aha! There you are!" She pointed at a bubble-eye goldfish named Pearl that was weaving in and out of a rippling clump of reddish seaweed. Dylan had bought me Pearl a few months ago from a garden centre and the fish seemed to have taken a shine to her. I laughed at her enthusiasm and she turned around, beaming at me. Pearl had become her new obsession and she greeted me every morning with a fact that she'd found out about various species of tropical fish on our walk to school. 

"So, should we drench our hair in blue and purple chemicals-that-could-be-potentially-harmful-but-oh-well?" I asked, chucking her a towel. She looked up at me and grinned madly. "Let's do it."

 We wrapped our still-damp hair in the towels and raced up the stairs to the bathroom. I opened the bathroom cupboard and took out the two boxes of dye, two dyeing-paintbrushes and a small tub of Vaseline while Dylan pulled a couple of old shirts and towels out of her bag. "Do you want to go first?" I asked her. "Sure." She changed into an old shirt and I unwrapped the towel that held her hair and draped it around her shoulders. Then I squeezed the contents of the two tubes of dye into a pot, mixed them both and showed her the colour. "Eeeee!" she squealed. "That's perfect!!". I sniggered . "You sounded like a deranged squirrel," I remarked, and we both laughed hysterically. I stirred the dye mixture again to mix in any colour marbling, and idly wondered exactly how many times she had brushed her hair that morning. Hopefully an odd number. Odd numbers were safe.

 'Odd numbers were safe'?! What exactly is wrong with you? Ah yes, that's right: you HAVE to have everything around you in order, otherwise you'll die. Okay, then. That's not weird at all... I sighed almost without realising, and Dylan turned round, her eyebrows furrowed. "Everything okay?" "I'm fine. Now, turn back around and I'll try not to dye your ears."

 After clipping back all but a small section of her buttery curls, I smeared the Vaseline along her hair line and over the tips of her ears. Then, rather hesitantly, I dipped the brush into the small bowl of lilac dye and began colouring a section of her roots, spreading it along to the tips. Slowly but surely, Dylan's hair turned a gorgeous lilac colour, darker at the roots and lightening towards the ends. After an hour of colouring and waiting, all her hair was drenched in purple dye.  As I rinsed her hair, I wondered how it would look when it had dried. I was both eager and a little apprehensive to see the final result. When I had been actually painting the dye through her hair, I had been careful that it wasn't patchy and especially careful around the roots so that no blonde hair could be seen , but even so, I was still a little nervous. 

The dye we'd both chosen was semi permanent, which meant that if we made any mistakes they would be difficult to erase. When all the purple chemicals had spiraled down the plughole, I gave her hair a hot blast with the hairdryer and stepped back to survey the result. But I had forgotten something. 

Picking up the hairbrush that had lain abandoned on the windowsill for the last hour, I began dragging it through the mass of now-lilac curls that sprouted from her head, counting the strokes carefully as I went. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven - did I brush those strands once or twice? I ran my fingers through it, erasing my progress, and started again, feeling the familiar sensation of an icy hand squeezing my heart. One, two, three, four five...thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Perfect. The hand disintegrated; I could breathe again. 

The darkish pastel shade suited her and she looked amazing. "You want to see?" She nodded and grabbed the hand mirror from me, inspecting her hairline.  "I love it! I can't even see roots!" She threw her arms around me, and I wrapped my arms around her slim frame, stroking her hair. Why are you stroking her hair? She's your best friend, not your long-term girlfriend. "I'm glad you like it," I whispered. She stepped back, grinned at me and said, "Now. It's your turn."

An hour and a half later, I was sporting wavy turquoise bunches, and Dylan's lilac hair fell softly around her shoulders. After we'd cleaned up the huge blue and purple mess in the bath, I pushed open the door to my bedroom and called over my shoulder, "So, what should the topic of discussion be today, Miss Holmes? I had a few in mind myself, but I..." My eyes fell on the framed photograph of Jack, and I trailed off. I never heard Dylan's reply, or even if she had replied at all. Hot needles stabbed the backs of my eyeballs, but I refused to cry. There was no use in crying. No amount of sadness would bring back my brother. Not when he died six years ago.