Dollar Runaways

Chapter 3: Redheads

MOM WOKE ME up by undoing the harness buckle on the car seat and nudging me awake. "Come on Ashley, time for lunch." I heard.

'Who's Ashley?' I thought for a moment.

"Come on Princess," I heard again.

Suddenly I remembered where I was and nearly screamed when I looked down at the dress I was wearing. "Okay," I sheepishly said.

Mom had stopped at a Burger King. Before we went to order she grabbed me by the hand and led me to the bathroom. She pointed me to a stall and I pulled my dress up, panties down, and sat down. I didn't take long to go and pulled everything to where it should be. I washed my hands and stared at my reflection. Before I had woken up, Mom had put one of the new barrettes in my hair. It had a pink flower on it and coordinated well with the dress.

"I really do look just like a little girl," I said quietly to myself.

Mom came up from behind me right then and said, "Princess you can't stare at your pretty face all day silly."

I giggled a little bit as she poked me and we walked out to order food to go. I ordered a kid's chicken meal. Mom ate quickly in the car, tossed her trash, then pulled out of the parking lot while I continued to eat. "At least this seat has a cup holder," I said aloud.

"You actually look like you're more comfortable in that than you normally are," she told me.

I blushed, "Well... I fit in it... But I'm only doing this because we're pretending I'm little!" I told her.

She laughed at me and we talked a bit here and there about different things I needed to be careful of. It made me blush when she talked about needing to be careful of how to sit with my dress. I was well aware of how close I had already come a couple times to showing off my panties!

"Where are we stopping tonight?" I asked.

"Hopefully Dallas. I'd like to stay there tonight and tomorrow night. We can do some more shopping and hopefully I can get in touch with Gloria."

"Who is Gloria?" I asked.

Mom sighed, "Gloria is the aunt of one of my friends from high school. My friend Kaitlyn and I spent a summer there between our sophomore and junior years. We both needed to get away from our parents desperately – and Gloria was more than willing to take us in."

"What's she like?"

"Well, she's older now of course, this was twenty years ago... But she was probably only in her forties then. Picture a stereotypical cowgirl... She was tougher than nails and had to be to run the ranch her family had left her. Gloria still had her husband then to help out though. They had a really large tract of land and a ton of cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, you name it they had it!"

"Sounds weird," I admitted from having grown up in the city.

"For you it would be, but where I grew up, I had friends with similar places. I had helped them with their farm chores often and done enough horseback riding that I fit in at the time."

"So, you never went back after that?" I asked.

"Kaitlyn and I stopped being as close the next couple years... Boy problems," she said with a thin pained smile like she was communicating something I should understand. "We ended up getting a bit closer in college again when I came home one summer, but neither of us went back together to the ranch after that."

"Why are we going there?"

Mom sighed, "I know Gloria would be more than willing to help hide us there. It's rural and it's not an obvious place. Your dad has never met Kaitlyn or Gloria... and I'm pretty sure that I've never mentioned that summer to him. I also don't have any pictures from the two of us there anywhere..."