A Girl in New York (Pre/Sequel to The Outsiders: A Girl in the Gang)

Chapter 13- Double Take

Note to Readers: Sorry for this chapter being so long, but I hope you like it anyways.  Please comment and vote!

        I entered a gas station right on the edge of the town of Muskogee, and looked around, pondering if I should swipe some stuff to eat or not.  I decided not to when I saw a bunch of other teenage kids milling around. 

        It was around noon, and they were probably off campus getting lunch before heading back to school.  I was missing school right now myself, and I had missed yesterday, too.  Oh well, I didn’t really care.  I just hoped Johnny would be okay around the Socs with his broken arm, although Ponyboy and Two-Bit were with him.  Unless of course they had all skipped school to look for me, but I’m not sure if Darry would have let them do that.

        If I really thought about it though, an education was probably way more important than a runaway.  Even if the runaway happened to be your girlfriend—ahem, Ponyboy—or your sister.  Though I’m not sure how much Dally really missed me.

        I was trying to figure out which class I would have been in right now if I hadn’t accidentally broken a certain Soc’s bones as I paid for my coke, apple, and bag of chips. 

        I headed back outside and glanced around, and across the street I spotted an old rusty pick-up that was so dirty you couldn’t tell what the original color was.  It was pulled up to the curb, and the guy inside had the window rolled down and was talking to a man on a motorcycle.  I didn’t think much of it and just continued on my way, until I passed the truck and the guy inside recognized me.  Sort of.

        “Winston?  Is that you?” the rough but familiar voice called.

        I shouldn’t have looked up but I did, and I saw Buck Merril.

        He did a double take when he saw me, blinking, surprised, before figuring out who I was. “Damn kid, you look just like your brother.  What the hell are you doin’ all the way out here?” he inquired in his cowboy drawl.

        “I could ask you the same thing,” I said smoothly, though I didn’t think I looked that much like Dally.  My hair was brown, and I was shorter than him, and…well, I guess that’s pretty much it.  In my leather jacket and jeans I did look a lot like my brother, especially from a distance in the right light.

        He chuckled and answered, “I was pickin’ up some quarter horses.  But what’s a kid like you doin’ out here all by your lonesome?” he asked me again.

        “I was kidnapped and left here for dead.  See ya,” I replied curtly, not bothering to give him a real answer before I continued down the street.  

        I had thought no one out here would recognize me, because no one out here knew me, but I guess I was wrong.  Buck would probably tell Dally that he had seen me when he got back to Tulsa, so I needed to get out of Oklahoma, fast.  And more than sunglasses for a disguise would be nice. A baseball cap would work, but I was thinking something a bit more physical.

        I had to disguise myself first, just so I wouldn’t be recognized by anyone else picking up quarter horses as I tried to figure out how to get out of here before my brother and all of the gang showed up, searching for me with bloodhounds and helicopters.

        I spotted a drug store up ahead and as I opened the glass door to go in, the bell signaling that a customer had arrived rang over my head.  There was only one person clattering around behind the counter, they obviously weren’t paying attention to me, so I swiped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and locked myself in the bathroom.

        How stereotypical, I thought to myself as I pulled out my blade and started sawing at my brown hair that just brushed my shoulders.  Every movie where someone gets in trouble they hide in a bathroom and transform themselves into an entirely different person.

        I cut my hair as short as I could with a blade.  I cut my hair myself all the time, scissors if I had them when it got too long, and a blade if I was feeling lazy.  But I had never cut it this short before, and I looked at myself in the mirror, at the choppy sections sticking up all over my head.

        I looked like a feral animal, with my defined cheekbones and pointed chin and blazing blue eyes.  I grabbed the hydrogen peroxide and leaned over the sink, dousing my hair with it and hoping it would work.  I climbed out the bathroom window to let it dry in the bright sunlight before climbing back in, finger-combing it, and staring in the mirror again.

        I nearly did a double take when I saw myself, because I could have sworn it was Dally staring in the mirror back at me.  Sure, my hair was quite a bit shorter because he never got a haircut, but with it now blond I looked so much like him it wasn’t even funny.

        I hoped to stay on the run for a long time, until the bleached white-blond color grew out back to my basic brown, because I did not want to deal with Two-Bit’s dumb blond jokes that were sure to come my way if he saw me.  Dying my hair was a bad idea, now I looked just like my brother instead of the opposite of him, but I had to make it work unless I wanted to make a wig out of the hair I had chopped off and thrown in the garbage.

        I sighed and pitched the empty hydrogen peroxide bottle in the trash, pulling on my sunglasses and fixing the collar of my leather jacket as I walked out of the bathroom.  Now for a way to get out of here, I thought to myself as I left the store, completely unnoticed by the person behind the counter even though I had been hiding out in the bathroom for about twenty minutes.

        A motorcycle, the guy Buck had been talking to earlier who owned it nowhere in sight, was parked on the curb. I vaguely wondered what it would be like to ride a motorcycle, and then I seriously wondered if I could maybe get out of here on it.  I’m not dumb enough to try and steal something as big as a motorcycle in broad daylight, but it was an idea up for consideration.  I’m sure the guy who owned it was probably in the bar it was parked in front of getting black-out drunk, and I’d be doing both of us—and the police—a favor if I took off with it. 

        I’d just have to wait and see.