If We Survive

Chapter 34

The day wears on, me half-expecting the group of murders to come up ove rhte hill to pilage and destroy. No one shows. 

I'm really not even sure how I feel about that. A part of me is still flakey, like always, but another isn't. I like this place. It's givin me hope, and a home, and a place to love and live. 

Ernist lent me his light blue safety scissors, so I con cut my hair. I've been holding them up to the first chunk of hair for the past like three minutes, while gravity slowly pushes my hand down. FInally, with a single shigh out, I begin to work on my bangs. They've long since grown into the rest of my hair, but I figure that I might look ok if I have bangs. I don't even remeber what I look like with them. 

My hair falls in a large ring around me, sticking occasinally to my clothing. After cropping my hair to just above my eye browsm I broceed to chop off the rest, using my jaw as a guide. 

When I'm done, I can't help but laugh. I rember when Dee's hair was longer than this. In one of Ernist's drawers, I find hairties, which doesn't really make since, but I decide not to queation it. I grin at myself in the mirror, my ahir a compete mess. 

Just like me, really. 

A mess. 

Anna sits on a wooden stool next to me, face competely blank. She insisted on getting a haircut along with me, although it may be instnsely painful to cut off all of her wavey, Barbie blond locks. 

What can I say? I'm a sucker for hair. 

"You ready?" I ask her, a little glad she agreed to come along. 

"Yes." She's acting like a big kid, I realize- or, at least trying to. She's damn good, I'll admit. I suppose we all have to grow up a little at the end of the world. 

I cut her's equally as short, although it looks notibly less sloppy than mine. 

I'm afraid, for a monent, when she first sees it that she'll yell, but instead. "I like it." She's quite blunt. 

"Me too." I reply, using a hand mirror to show her the back. 

"Now I have to fix your's." She announces, clambering off the stool. 

Of course. 

Of freaking course. 

But I don't say no. Instead, I sit right on down, and hand her the scissors. Adding to the pile her whiteish hair on the floor is mine, but I do admit that she does an allright job. Better than I could ever do at that age. 

"Thank you, Anna." I say, standing up, and pulling my hair back into the tiny pony tail. Looking at us both in the mirror, I can see how we're the same- and very different. 

It used to be said that looking in the mirror was a way to look into the soul- and I could almost tell by that they meant by that. 

Anna and I clash so much in appearence that it's hard to tell how alike I think we are. We almost have to same eyes, if you look at them right. 

We're stubborn as an old ass, no matter how the cards are played. 

"You know what else I found?" She asks, holding up a bottle. I squint to read the front, and then-

"No. Oh hell no." I'm half laughing at the notion. 

Anna is hilding a bottle of hair dye. The bright blue kind. 

"Anna, that would get us slaughtered by a Creeper in like ten seconds." I cover my mouth from laughter. 

"Yeah, well, Ernist has big guns." I'm not exactly sure what she's referring to- the shooting kind, or the muscley kind, but it's still pretty funny. 

"Do you even know how to apply that stuff?" I ask, looking at her with a sort of augast smile. 

"Sure, my mom used it all the time." She says casually. 

I furrow my eyes beows, thinking of my own mother. I wonder for a second how she's so casual talking about her mother; the way the Ernist raises her, I get the feeling that mom was out of the picture. 

But maybe it's because she's a kid, or maybe I'm a strung-up idiot. Or maybe I'm guilty. 

Either way, my mother did not approve of the dying of hair. She thought it was unnatural or whatever. Or maybe she just thought I would fall in with the wrong crowd if I did so. She was always worried about that, like I would suddenly become a terrible person because one of my friends thought differently than everyone else. 

News flash: that was me. And I hated myself for it. I wish I was like everyone else, blending in with the crowd, with normal friends and normal family, and more than one friend. 

I suppose that's the curse of the ages, though. 

It is eventually decided that our hair should not be blue, by both of us, although when it's all said and done, I sort of wish that I did have blue hair. 

Ernist laughes his head off over the enite manner, and I do too. 

Honestly, were did the guy even the get blue hair dye? 

I like my new hair. It's dark, dark brown, so unlike the usual light brown that I'm used to. If I pull my bangs back, and give the mirror puppy dog eyes, then I look just like Dee. 

"If you're watching me from wereevr the hell you went, Dee." I say softly. "I do miss you."