It was why I still came back even though my mama now worked in a nasty little motel off the highway. I pushed the thought of that place away, feeling a little shiver of disgust. My mama had been hired to clean the rooms, and I helped her sometimes when her back was really bad, but no matter what you did, you could never get that place truly clean.
I tilted my face up, letting go of the image of the filthiness of the motel and filling my mind instead with the clean, pure blue of the open sky. The sun slanted through the leaves of the tree, forming shapes of light on the bare skin of my arm as I held it in front of me, turning it back and forth slowly to watch them dance.
The day grew hotter, then slightly cooler as clouds drifted lazily by—a sad dog, then a parrot, then the three-toed foot of a giant.
I watched as a chain of ants moved a seed down the line, wondering what it felt like to have that many family members all working together, and questioning whether ants felt love.
A small sound surprised me from my half-dazed state. Peeking around the tree trunk, I expected to see a chipmunk or a bird, and not the boys walking across their yard unhurriedly toward me. My heart lurched, my first reaction to grin at the sight of their identical faces.
I turned around, beginning to stand, and suddenly remembered my destroyed hair. Oh no. I groaned, realizing there was no chance to get away now. I’d just have to hope they didn’t notice. Standing, I pulled the bandana low over my forehead and came out from behind the tree, tilting my head and smiling as they approached.
Cole was grinning in that way of his that always made me think he had some big secret, and Preston looked serious as usual. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We live here, remember?” Cole’s grin was slow and easy as he leaned his arms against the split rail. “We were up on the tractor and saw something red behind the tree. We thought it might be you sitting out here.” Oh. Well, that was a stroke of bad luck. I didn’t think anyone would spot me hidden behind the large tree trunk.
We still played together once in a while if I walked by and they were outside in their yard, but I knew their mom didn’t approve of me, and there’d been less opportunity since my mama had stopped working on their farm. It wasn’t as if I could just go up to their door and knock. Tell that little Mexican girl with the dirty feet to run along home now, I’d heard Mrs. Sawyer say, and it had made me ashamed and sad and so very, very small.
Lately I’d felt too old to play hide ‘n’ seek and the other games we used to play and I figured they must, too, since they were three years older than I was. So I’d been spending more time just sitting alone at the edge of their property, close enough to enjoy it, but far enough that I thought I’d be alone.
“What’s with the bandana?” Cole asked, swinging himself easily over the fence.
I shrugged as Preston joined us. I pulled the thin piece of material wrapped around my head down over the ear on the side Cole was standing on, making sure not to allow him to see the back of my head where my orange hair was visible. “Just trying out a new look,” I answered, attempting to keep the nervousness out of my voice.
“Hmm,” Cole said, seeming to consider it, “well, it’s kinda dumb. You look better without it.” He reached up and pulled the bandana off my head. I let out a little yelp, lifting my hands to my head in an effort to grab it back, but was too late. I heard both boys suck in a breath.
My eyes moved slowly from the flimsy piece of material in Cole’s hand to his face to see a look of wide-eyed shock. Humiliation climbed up my neck and settled hotly in my cheeks.
He simply gaped for a minute before he pointed at my hair. “That’s . . . what happened to you?” I narrowed my eyes and looked over at Preston who was still gawking at me, his eyes fixed on my hair.
I felt tears burning the backs of my eyes, and before I started crying in front of them, I grabbed the bandana out of Cole’s hand and stomped away through the crunchy, brown grass.
“Annalia,” Preston said. He grabbed my arm and I turned toward him, ready to tell him to leave me alone. “Wait.”
I tried to conjure up some anger, but the concerned look on Preston’s face caused a huge lump to move from my chest to my throat and I choked slightly, a small hiccup giving me away. The tears I’d attempted to hold at bay sprung to my eyes and I turned quickly, walking away again. “Hey, hey, wait,” Preston said again, catching up to me. “How’d that happen?”
I stopped. “I did it, okay?” I threw my arms up in the air and let them fall. “I tried,” I glanced at Cole who was walking toward us, “I tried to go blonde and it didn’t work, all right?”
Cole snorted softly and Preston shot him a nasty look before turning his eyes back to me. “Why would you want to be blonde, Lia?” He looked so completely baffled, and it made me feel stupid and even more alone. They would never understand what it felt like to wish they were someone else. They had everything—a huge, beautiful house, two parents who loved them and didn’t pray every day that they’d never been born. They loved going home as much as I loved leaving mine. The truth was, I spent more time outside my house than in it because I could hardly bear to be there at all.
I sighed and shrugged. I didn’t have the words to explain it to Preston and even if I did, I wouldn’t have used them. “I don’t know.”
He sighed, too, and then stared at me for a few long moments. “You like it?”