Sadie(6)

I do it in some public bathroom along the way. The ammonia mingles with the stench inside the dirty stalls and makes me gag. I’ve never colored my hair before and the end result is a muddy blond. On the girl on the box, it was golden but that doesn’t matter because all it’s meant to look is different.

Mattie would’ve hated it. She would’ve told me so. You never let me dye my hair, she’d whine in her thin voice and by thin, I don’t mean papery or weak. It just never came completely into itself. When she laughed, it would go so shrill and hurt my ears but I’m not complaining because when Mattie laughed, it was like being on a plane at night, looking down on some city you’ve never been to and it’s all lit up. Or at least how I imagine that would be. I’ve never been on a plane before.

And it’s true too. I never let her dye her hair. When she was burning through every rule in my book (call if you go to a friend’s house, don’t text boys without telling me, put your phone away and do your goddamn homework already) that was the only one she chose to honor: no dying your hair until you’re fourteen. Just missed it.

I think the real reason Mattie never touched her hair was because she got the blond from Mom and couldn’t stand the thought of losing what little pieces of her she had left. It always made me crazy how much the two of them looked alike, with their matching hair, blue eyes and heart-shaped faces. Mattie and I didn’t share a father and we didn’t look like we were sisters, not unless you caught us mirroring each other’s expressions in those rare instances we felt the exact same way about something. Between her and Mom, I was the odd one out; my unruly brown curls and murky gray eyes set upon what May Beth always called a sparrow’s face. Mattie was scrawny in a way that was underdeveloped and awkward, but there’s a special kind of softness that goes along with that, something less visually cynical compared to my makings. I’m the result of baby bottles filled with Mountain Dew. I have a system that doesn’t quite know how to process the finer things in life. My body is sharp enough to cut glass and in desperate need of rounding out, but sometimes I don’t mind. A body might not always be beautiful, but a body can be a beautiful deception. I’m stronger than I look.

It’s dark when the sign comes up for Whittler’s Truck Stop.

A truck stop. Closest thing to a pause button for people living on fast-forward, only they don’t pause so much as dial themselves down to twice the speed the rest of us operate on. I used to work at a gas station just outside of Cold Creek and my boss, Marty, never let me work nights alone was how little he trusted truckers passing through. I don’t know if that was entirely fair of him, but it’s how he felt. Whittler’s is bigger than what I come from, but doesn’t seem as clean. Or maybe you get so used to the mess of home you convince yourself over time everything’s exactly where it belongs. Nothing here is really trying for its best. The neon lights of the gas station sign seem duller than they should be, like they’re choosing to slowly go out rather than ending themselves with that sudden pop into darkness.

I head for the diner, Ray’s written in cursive paint on a sign that’s too small for the building it rests atop, making everything appear dizzyingly askew. BEST APPLE PIE IN GARNET COUNTY! a sloppy cardboard sign boasts from the window. TRY A SLICE!

I push through the heavy glass door and fall into the fifties. Ray’s looks just how it was described to me, red vinyl and turquoise, the waitresses in dresses and aprons styled to match. Bobby Vinton plays on an honest-to-God jukebox in the corner and I stand there, absorbing the nostalgia, the gravy-and-potatoes smell of it all, before I make my way to the counter at the back. The serving station and the kitchen is just beyond it.

I perch on one of the stools and rest my hands on the cool Formica countertop. To my right, a girl. Girl. Woman. She’s hunched over a plate of half-eaten food, thumbs moving fast across her phone’s screen. She has frizzy brown hair and she’s got so much exposed pale skin, it makes me shiver to look at her. She’s wearing black pumps, short-shorts and a thin, tight tank top. I think she works the parking lot. Lot lizards. That’s what they call girls like her. My eyes travel up for a better look at her face and it’s the kind of face that’s younger than it looks, skin ravaged by circumstance, not passage of time. The lines at the corner of her eyes and the edges of her mouth remind me of cracks in armor.

I rest my elbows against the counter and bow my head. Now that I’ve stopped, the drive is catching up with me. I’m not used to that kind of push behind a wheel and I’m fucking tired. The muscles in my back have tied themselves into tight little knots. I focus on tunneling each individual ache into a single pain I can ignore.

After a minute, a man comes out of the kitchen. He has olive skin, a shaved head, and beautiful, full-color tattoo sleeves on both arms. Skulls and flowers. His black Ray’s T-shirt strains across the front of him, tight enough to show off the parts of his body he must’ve worked hard for. He wipes his hands on the greasy towel hooked in his belt and gives me a once-over.

“What’ll it be?”

His voice sounds like a knife that sharpens itself on other people, intimidating enough that I can’t even imagine what it would sound like if he yelled. Before I can ask if he’s Ray, I notice the name tag on his shirt says SAUL. He turns his ear toward me and asks me to repeat myself, like there were words here and he only just missed them.