Chasing Spring(4)

I strolled down the soap and shampoo aisle, stopping short at a small display of hair dye. They had five colors: black, dark brown, light brown, blonde, and fire engine red. Most of the boxes were expired and the ones that weren’t had misshapen packages as if they’d been knocked off the shelf and replaced too many times. I hesitated over the box of blonde hair dye with a smiling woman on the front, and instead reached for the jet-black.

“Wait, don’t take that one.”

A thin hand reached around my shoulder to grab for a box at the back of the shelf. I turned to find a girl behind me, smiling and holding out the new box for me to take. Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner and her blonde hair faded to bright pink halfway down as if she’d dipped the strands into a bucket of radioactive paint that morning. She was tall, with spindly arms and hollow cheekbones.

I took the box and stared down at it. “Thanks.”

“Kids always mess with the ones in the front. Usually I get home to find half the stuff missing.”

“Makes sense,” I said, tossing the new box of hair dye into my basket.

“I’m Ashley,” she said, offering a gentle, awkward wave. The name confirmed that I knew her, vaguely. She’d moved to town our freshman year of high school, but I’d never had a reason to talk to her before moving to Austin.

“I’m Lilah.”

Her smile faltered at the mention of my name. She hadn’t recognized me at first, but as her eyes roamed my features, trying to extract my old persona, I knew it was too late to hope for anonymity.

“You’re back?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Looks like it.”

I knew why she was confused. I’d left Blackwater as a blonde dance team captain and had returned as a choppy-haired vampire.

After a few moments of her standing there dumbstruck, I stepped past her in pursuit of the cash register.

“Well, see you around.”

“Wait,” she said, reaching her hand out to stop me. “I don’t know what your plans are for the rest of the day, but I’m pretty good with hair dye…”

She let her gaze linger on my blonde roots.

“My house is just down the street,” she continued.

Her invitation took me by surprise considering the fact that we’d never been friends. Maybe I had a bright, scrolling marquee across my forehead that read “HELP. I’M IN NEED OF A FRIEND”, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, if going to Ashley's house delayed the inevitable return to mine, I was in.

…

Ashley’s house was just a few streets away from mine, close enough that I swore I could hear the rumble of Chase’s truck from my perch in her bathroom. She worked her way through my hair with the dye and I sat on a stool, watching her in the mirror.

“Nothing’s changed much since you’ve been gone.”

I raised my eyebrows, curious about what she meant.

“Kimberly and the dance team girls are still popular. Josh Hastings is still the quarterback and he’s tied with Trent Bailey for second. It sort of depends on if you prefer jocks or bad boys.”

“Second...like, second place?”

Her brown eyes met mine in the mirror. “For hottest guy at school.”

In a small town like Blackwater, it was slim pickings when it came to guys. I had forgotten that any girl in school would have been able to spout the most eligible guys in our class off the top of her head.

“I personally think Trent is cuter,” she said.

I remembered Trent. He had black hair and perfectly imperfect features. Before I’d left town, he’d already been arrested three times, ranging from small time drug dealing to underage drinking. If Ashley referred to him as a bad boy, chances were he hadn’t changed his ways during my time away.

“And you already know who holds the number one spot,” she smirked.

Chase.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “Can we talk about something else?”

She blushed and ducked her to head to reach for another hair clip.

“Oh, uh, sure.”

I’d embarrassed her.

“What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

For one, I wanted her to know that I wasn’t going to ditch her after she finished dying my hair; I wasn’t in a position to turn down friends. Also, I didn’t want to go home.

Her eyes widened with hope. “Actually, there’s this party over at—”

“Sounds good,” I interrupted, offering her my best attempt at a real smile.





Chapter Five


Chase





My dad had inherited a repair shop in the town square from his father, who’d inherited it from my great-grandfather. There was a 1950s sign out front that boasted, “If it’s broken, we can fix it.” As a kid, I’d learned how to fix everything from toasters to washing machines, but my real forte was repairing vintage cameras. We didn’t get many of them in the shop, so few in fact that my dad had always cast them aside to me. It wasn’t worth his time to learn how to fix them.

I broke the first four cameras he gave me. They were difficult repairs, but tinkering with them felt like a puzzle, a puzzle with big payouts in the end. Vintage Polaroid cameras went for a hundred dollars, but restored Leicas could go for a couple thousand. Leicas were my specialty.