Staring at the bright blur on my phone, I mumbled, “More like a walking supernova.”
Amon continued to study the other travelers and then asked suddenly, “How do you see me, Young Lily?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I have no way to classify you. Are you an Egyptian god? A mummy? Are you human? A ghost? Immortal obviously, but really there’s just no frame of reference.”
“No. I mean to ask you, what is wrong with my appearance?”
“Um…nothing, really.” At least, no girl I know would have a problem.
Amon frowned. “Do you know if this…airport has a room for baths?”
“You want to take a bath right now?” I asked, confused.
“No.”
And then it hit me. “Oh, a restroom. Sure.”
“I do not wish to rest, either.”
“No, I know. That’s just what it’s called—a bathroom, a restroom, or a men’s room.” I looked around and spied one not too far away. “Do you see where that man is going? That’s the restroom for men.”
“Will you wait for me here?”
“Yes.”
As I watched him walk away, an idea popped into my head. On a whim, I headed over to a cart that sold earbuds. I knew Amon would find them very interesting and was buying him a pair when I felt a tug in my gut.
Signing the receipt quickly, I gave in to the pull and was drawn back in the general direction of where we’d been sitting. The chairs were now occupied by other travelers, and Amon was nowhere to be seen. Turning in a circle, I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked for him.
The tugging sensation was gone. I assumed it had been generated by Amon, so its abrupt absence worried me.
A familiar voice called my name quietly and I spun around. “Amon? What…what have you done?” He’d changed out of my father’s baggy workout clothes, and as I glanced around I realized how he’d gotten a different outfit. Three young men stumbled from the bathroom wearing articles of clothing that had once been my father’s. Each had a confused look on his face and one of them plucked at the old T-shirt as he walked away.
The fact that Amon had switched clothes with them was the least startling part of his transformation. The young man with the devastatingly gorgeous smile had somehow added hair to his head. “Is that a wig?” Reaching up, I tugged on the hair and found it solidly stuck to his head.
“It is my own hair. Is the style correct?”
If I thought Amon was handsome before, he was handsome to the nth degree now. His hair was dark brown, short in the back and on the sides, and a little longer on top. It was thick, layered, voluminous, and a little messy. The sort of hair a girl could bury her fingers in as she kissed him. Stop it, Lily!
“It’s…not bad,” I finally said. “How did you do it?”
“I just accelerated the natural growth.”
“I thought you were bald because you couldn’t grow hair.”
“No. Egyptian princes shave their heads.”
“I see. So…why did you change clothes and grow your hair?”
Amon shrugged. “It has not escaped my attention that I do not look like other men my age. It will be easier for me to move about if I’m less…noticeable. There is not much I can do to alter my behavior except to follow your example, but I can attempt to at least look like I am from your world. I have not seen any men my age with shaven heads.”
“Right, but—”
“Do I look better?”
“You look great,” I said, and he did. He now wore a pair of dark, straight-leg jeans, a fitted blue blazer, a white henley shirt, and gray Converse sneakers.
“I have a new belt, too. See?”
He lifted his shirt to show me, but I was too distracted by the tight muscles of his abdomen to notice the belt. “That’s…that’s nice,” I murmured, and turned away to hide the red warming my cheeks.