"Pia. Pia, talk to me. What's burning?"
"My head." She was crying now, the hard hiccuping kind. "The water just stopped. It just stopped, Dad, I turned it all the way and nothing's coming out, and it's still on my head, and it's burning, it's really burning, it wasn't supposed to burn this much."
"What's on your head?"
There was a pause. In the pause I could hear her breathing, short and fast, and the shower handle squeaking as she wrenched it back and forth.
"Lightener," she said. "Bleach. For my hair. Mom said wait till school started and I didn't want to wait. I put it on at six-thirty and I was supposed to rinse it at seven and I was rinsing it and the water stopped and I only got some of it out, and it's all still in the back, Dad, it's really bad, it's like my whole scalp is on fire."
I want to be honest about what went through my head in the next two seconds, because I've told this story enough times now that it has worn smooth in places, and the smooth version makes me sound calmer than I was. What went through my head was a picture of a bottle of developer, forty volume, the kind they sell at the beauty supply on Cedar Avenue to anybody with a debit card, and a picture of my daughter's scalp under it, and the word chemical, and the word burn, and the thought that I did not have any water.
Then I thought: yes, I do.