Battle of the Salons

Battle of the Salons

## Synopsis

Tress It Up! Salon finds itself facing stiff competition, when a new salon opens nearby. Taylor and Kylie meet Jasmine Malone, an African American hair stylist and salon owner, who's successful salon may send *Tress It Up*! out of business. Kylie goes undercover to check out Jasmine's salon. Bianca forms a friendship with Jasmine. Darcy and her husband, Kevin learn that they are expecting a baby again. Karen returns to hairdressing and the salon. Kylie holds a hair-coloring event at the salon in the hopes of advancing her career and her color prices.

## Excerpt

*Tress It Up*! Salon is about to get some stiff competition!

*Tress It Up*! Salon finds itself facing stiff competition, when a new salon opens nearby. Sibling hairdressers Taylor and Kylie Ferguson meet Jasmine Malone, a African-American hair stylist and salon owner, who's successful salon may send Tress It Up! out of business. Kylie goes undercover to check out Jasmine's salon. Bianca forms a friendship with Jasmine. Darcy and her husband, Kevin learn that they are expecting a baby again.

Chapter 1

Taylor Doyle unlocked the door of her salon, Tress It Up! on a sunny, but chilly Tuesday morning. Around eight-fifteen. The shop usually opens at nine in the morning. From 9:00AM to 6:00PM. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The salon was closed on Sundays and Mondays for day offs or for Education classes.
Whenever she entered the salon, the giddiness took over Taylor. In the years she had been a hairdresser, Taylor's goal was to open her own salon. She achieved that dream years ago with help from her mother, Karen, a fellow hairdresser. Now, Karen had retired from hairdressing and Tress It Up! had become the top beauty salon in Santa Teresa, a upscale suburbian neighborhood of Los Angeles. Taylor co-owned the salon with her sister, Kylie, who is also an hairdresser. The sisters worked hard to make Tress It Up! the best go-to salon in their neighborhood. There were many beauty salons in Santa Teresa and the sisters strived to make their salon stand out in the crowd.
Taylor entered the salon manager's office at eight-ninteen. The office was pretty organized and the desk at two chairs. One for Taylor and one for Kylie. The two share the office. They each had a picture of their families. Taylor's picture had her, her husband, Billy, and their twins Josh and Jessie in the middle. Taylor was holding Josh in her arms in the picture, while Billy held Jessie in his arms, with happy smiles on their faces. Kylie's picture had her, her husband, Brian, and their daughter, Lily. Kylie was cradling Lily in the picture.
Taylor emerged from the office to find Kylie entering the salon. She was wearing her pink beaded sweater, indigo jeans, and beige ankle booties. Her usual shoulder-length brown hair had changed to a light-ash brown color with blonde highlights and grew a few inches. Since having Lily, Kylie had made changes to her image. This was a surprise to Taylor. Kylie had always promised herself to never change her image if she ever became a mother. And that was the one thing she said to her sister since she entered her twenties, which was a lifetime ago. Kylie had not been a blonde since high school. After her eighteenth birthday, she dyed her hair to a dark brown. She wanted to distance herself from Taylor and developed her own identity.
"I'm still getting used to your new hair color, Kyles," said Taylor.
"Yep, you are," Kylie smiled.
Since marrying Brian and having Lily, Kylie had moved to a vacant apartment in the same apartment complex the sisters lived in since childhood. She wanted her own space for her family. But the salon was the one thing she loved doing with Taylor. It was the thing in their lives where they can spend some time together and continued their longtime passion for hairdressing. Their family always thought that Taylor was a working mother and Kylie was a career-driven girl. But, Kylie got a taste of what life was like to continued her career in hairdressing while being a wife and mother like Taylor. These weren't the same sisters who first started working together at the salon while their mother was recovering from a brain-hemmoraghe. The two had grown into working mothers and business owners.
As the sisters set up their stations and got the salon ready to open, Jenny Slade and Darcy Payne entered the salon with warm, friendly greetings. Darcy and Jenny were Tress It Up! Salon's star stylists. Jenny was the rebel hair stylist with auburn red hair, leather jacket, a fedora hat, and black ankle booties with spikes. She was like Kylie, career-driven and always putting hairdressing first. But she squeezed dating into her busy schedule. The open lesbian hair stylist had dated a nightclub barmaid, which involved great sex. Then she dated a makeup artist, who visited the salon to give a makeup class to one of Jenny's co-workers. Jenny was a serial dater, but hairdressing remained Jenny's true love. Darcy was a polar opposite of Jenny. She was straight-laced, kind-hearted, and more wholesome. She was happily married to her soulmate, Kevin. The two married after high school, upsetting her parents. Both Kevin and hairdressing were Darcy's biggest and true loves. She worked hard to find the balance between them. She and Kevin were parents to a little girl named Mia. Kevin was a paramedic. They were ready to add to the family again with work and taking care of Mia. Plus, Darcy wasn't ready emotionally and financially to own a salon for herself. She had way too many priorities in her life at the moment.
Megan Benson and Katie Irwin arrived at the salon, just four minutes behind Darcy and Jenny. Megan and Katie were best friends, besides being co-workers, and roommates. They were also the salon's junior stylists, eagerly ready to become senior stylists. Megan was the stylish employee of the salon. She always hated sweeping the salon floor, wiping the dust off the hair care products, and answering the phones. S

Chapter 2

A young woman walked into the salon, around ten-fifteen. She had her hair in a one-side braid and the hair color had seen better days.
"Hi, Welcome to Tress It Up! Salon," Courtney Lewis greeted the girl.
Courtney was the salon's receptionist. Her job was the answer the phones and greet walk-in clients.
"Hi, I have an appointment with Darcy."
"And you are?"
"Chloe Davis. This is my first time here."
"Okay, Chloe. If you can sit at our reception area, she'll be right with you soon. She just had to finish up her client."
"Thanks you."
At the salon floor, Jenny was teaching Megan how to add the bead extensions to the hair. Katie was washing out all of the shampoo of her client's hair. Darcy was spraying extra-hold hairspray on her client's head. It was a usually busy day at the salon. Jenny showed Megan the beaded extension technique.

Chapter 8

Jenny Slade was in the living room of her parents' house. She was doing her sister, Jill's hair, with a collection of bobby pins, hair clips, a curling iron, and hair elastics on stand by.
"Who needs to go to the salon, when I can have my hair done by my big sister," Jill smiled.
"Yeah, the best part about that is... you don't have to pay me!" Jenny exclaimed.
Jenny was close to her younger sister. Jill was the first person in the Slade family, to learn that Jenny was a lesbian. When Jenny was sixteen, towards the end of her junior year in high school, Jill, a fourteen-year-old freshman at the time, asked one simple question to her sister: Do you like girls?"
Jenny finally admitted to Jill that she did like girls. Jill didn't understand why her sister like girls. They were both pretty and could get any guy they wanted, but Jenny perfered girls. Still, Jill kept Jenny's sexuality quiet, until she was ready to their parents. What terrified Jenny is that her father wouldn't be as accepting as her mother. Jenny's father was more on the conservative side and would never imagine that one of his daughters would be a member of the LGBT Community. Before she had a chance to come out to her parents, her brother Jamie came out as gay. It lead to a falling out between him and his father. The incident upset Jenny. Had she came out to her father, he would have done the same thing to her as he did to her brother.
After her father found out about Jenny's sexuality, he made amends with his son and accepted his two children as his gay son and lesbian daughter. He was happy that Jill was the only child to be straight.

Chapter 10

Jenny and Bianca were walking down Kimball Street on a partly cloudy Friday morning in Santa Teresa. They were at the Jack in the Box, ordering their usuals; Minute Maid Orange Juice. It was a dollar-ninty-nine. But Bianca spent ten dollars on both juices, just to get change back.
As the girls were leaving the restaurant, they see a African-American woman, who looked to be in her mid-to-late twenties, passing out flyers.
"What's she doing passing out flyers?" Bianca asked.
"I don't know. Let's check it out," Jenny suggeested.
The two approached the woman, who was wearing a lavender tank top and a printed skirt. Her hair was in a high sleek and shiny ponytail with bronze hoop earrings. Her long nails were stilleto shaped and bright orange.
"Hi, come to the grand opening of Eclectic Salon!" the woman said, ethusiastically.
Jenny and Bianca turned to one another, looking surprised.
The flyer said: ECLECTIC SALON GRAND OPENING. THIS SATURDAY.
What shocked Jenny was the location of the new salon. It was located on 3323 Stone Canyon Blvd. A block from Tress It Up! Salon. This was something to worry about. A new salon was about to open and it could drive Tress It Up! out of business.
"So, uh.... What.... does.... the salon.... specialize?" Jenny stammered.
"Oh, we specialize in black hair. From silk presses to relaxers. Weaves to extensions. We also do haircuts to color."
"So you're a full-service salon?" Bianca asked.
"That's right. I'm