Chapter 4
At a certain point in your life, you're going to change. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a speech about your body or anything. But anyway, at one point in your life you face change, it's just in my case and Austin's case, we have to change quicker. We have to grow up, and in more ways than one.
"What are we doing here?" Austin sits on the ground, toying around with his stuffed dinosaur.
"Well, we're going to do some blending in? You know what that is right? We're going to try to look different, get a new life," The town of Brayton isn't big but it's definitely bigger than Wyland. It's about six towns over, a little ways around Nashville.
"Like, changing your name?" He doesn't look up.
"That's right. But it's more physical this time. We're gonna check the times for the buses and then we're gonna change some stuff, alright?" I turn and walk over to our bags that prop up, half-opened, by the wall. "Do you have your baseball hat from this year?"
He nods and digs around in his bag until he pulls out a dusty Braves hat, holding it out to me. "There you go. I can't tell the difference." I ruffle it down on his scruffy brown hair.
"Yes you can!" He laughs, knocking my hand away and attempting to tame down his hair I messed up. "What are you gonna do?"
"I.." I push up the hood from my jacket and smirk. "..am going to wear this. Convincing?"
He shakes his head. "Not at all."
"It'll have to do," I force a laugh and walk to the door, bag in hand. The train starts to slow enough, as it does at the start of every town. I call Austin up with me, telling him we have to get off while moving, and he staring at me like I'm crazy.
We head to the nearest convenience store first. I needed a change desperately, I'm just realizing it now, but I do. Starting with doing something with my hair, different. My curly hair makes me stand out like a sore thumb and if they issued some kind of a wanted report, it'd be so easy to find me. They literally wouldn't have to try, they could just say 'have you seen the girl with obnoxiously curly hair' and they'd find me without even looking.
"What do you think, keep blonde or change the color up?" I ask Austin, who stands by my side, fiddling with the color dyes.
"Keep blonde, it looks prettiest," He says, barely giving me a glancing. I smile and add a pair of scissors to my basket of a straightener, two bags of chips, four honeybuns, 2 waterbottles, and comb. An unusual pairing but helpful nonetheless.
"Thank you for that; blonde it is, then." In normal situations, Austin would be jumping around, asking for candies and everything but this time is different. He knows not to ask for things and he's been growing quiet ever since I woke him up last night. At least he understands the situation we're in right now.
"Hi," I murmur at the desk, careful to keep my head not in view of the camera but enough that it looks normal as I dig out some spare cash in my pocket. I have credit cards and I grabbed my savings when I left so it should last us a good while. Thankfully, I have enough money that I could buy a house if I wanted, which should come in handy. How does a 17 year old get that much money? I'm really good at Panic.
"32.24." the lady says and hands me 3 bucks back. She has such a monotone voice, it almost makes me laugh. "Have a good day."
"You too," and we're out safely. Well, first dangerous step goes without flaw, that's relieving at least. Hopefully, after we get ourselves together, we'll be harder to recognize.
The streets of Brayton are a lot similar to those in Wyland. Lonely yet friendly, the only passerby's being the elderly with groceries or something. I simply pull Austin along, nodding to those who smile and to the nearest gas station, where I push into the bathroom and lock the door.
"Okay, we're going to look a lot different, Aus." I say, fishing through the bag and pulling out the hair supplies. "Hold still."
The image in the mirror for both of us is changing desperately by the second. I've never straightened my hair, too much work, but now I really don't have a choice. I flat-iron it to the brim, using the scissors to give me sidebangs. Being in the popular group at least gave me the knowledge from late night sleepovers of how to do haircutting.
I also cut it short, really short. It's a lot different and it gives me a lot..older look. After I'm done, I turn to Austin to finish up on his own look. He was dying it a lighter brown from his natural almost blackish color brown. Also, I was cutting it from his shaggy current style to a shorter, floppy cut.
He actually looked presentable and normal, but not very recognizable, which is good. Together it'd be hard to pick us out. The only thing was if Austin used his full name, which wouldn't usually come up but it's still a threat.
"Your middle names Lee, right?"
He frowns and stops ruffling his hair to look at me in the mirror. "Yeah."
"Aw, can I call you Leelee?" I tease, messing up his hair even more.
"Why can't I be something cool, like Loki," He grumbles, pouting down at the action figure resting on the sink.
"I can call you Loki but I don't think many people will buy it,"
"Do I have to go by Lee?" He whines again.
"How about Charlie? Because it kinda has the Lee at the end," I begin to stuff the supplies into my bag along with the other things we bought.
"That's fine, I guess. I like Loki better though,"
"I know." I pull out my phone and quickly check the time. I've been trying not to use my phone, they could track it. At least that's what they do on CSI and every other tv show and I'm not into getting caught that easily. "We better get moving, we're about to miss the bus."
