Hidden Under Perfection

Chapter 13: Doran

Claire turned to me smiling, and it is weird to see here without her signature chesnut locks. She looks at me expectingly and to fill the silence I say, "it looks great, but its going to take a while to get used to you having blonde hair."

"Really?" she says looking at me through the mirror, "you like it?"

"Yeah, I do. You are beautiful no matter what color or length hair you have." I assure. She stands up and walks towards me and wraps her arms around my neck, her grass green eyes meet mine and I wish we were alone. I get lost in her gaze until Lynn's voice brings me out of my trance, its more of a cough but the message is clear, under her breath she says, "make room for Jesus."

Me and claire take a step away from each other and pink shows up on her cheeks. I look at her as she looks at me and her eyes say, I'm sorry. I make a face that tells her that she is wrong. I turn my head to talk to Lynn, and ask, "How much for the wig?"

"It is $185, but for you my fugitive friends, I will take off 40 percent. But no more, because mama needs to get paid." She answered.

"Okay, thank you for your help." Claire adds. We make our way to the front of the store to check out but johns hand grabs onto my arm.

"you can't pay for that wig," he says.

"why not?" I countered, a little annoyed.

"Because, if you pay for that with your ID, they can use the records to find you. Let me, You can pay me back later." I turn my shoulder to let him pass.

"Smart." I agreed. He pays Lynn for the wig and before we go Claire gets Lynn's phone code so that she can contact her wheen we need her. As we leave all I can focus on is the swishing of Claire's new wig, and wonder what the toll of all of this will be.

The next place we go is an eyeglass shop. When we walk in the first thing Claire does is walk up to one of the shelves and put on a pair of glasses. She turns to me and the cat eye frames make her look like a librarian and my face cracks into a smile, she looks so cute. Then she starts pawing at the air and I burst out laughing, she can make any situation funny. The next pair she tries on makes her eyes look huge and she stares at me waiting for my approval, I shake my head and she puts them back on the shelf. The next pair she grabs compliment her face shape and when she turns to me she looks gorgeous. They have large frames and it makes her look very cute in her oversized sweater. I smile and she turns to the mirror, and slowly she smiles and looks at me and gushed, "these are the ones." John starts to make his way to the counter but Claire wraps her arm around him and turns him towards the men's shelf, "We need to make you look different too, the clandestine will have records on what you look like, so we need to change that, I already bought brown hair dye and contacts, now you need glasses."

She picks up a pair of rectangular frames and puts them on him, and tilts her head to the side, and then removes them from his face. She picks up another pair and he takes them and puts them on. He runs his hand through his hair and turns to us and nods. He takes the glasses from Claire's hand and pays for them at the desk. The glasses customize the perscription to the wearer so we don't need to stay there any longer.

On the drive home we are silent, thinking about what is to come and steeling our selves for what may happen. When we pull into the drive way my dad opens the front door and leads us into the living room. Jennifer is laying on the couch asleep. He looks Claire up and down, making sure she is okay, and lets out a breath when he realizes that she is not hurt.