“You just missed her though,” he continued. “We’ll have to introduce her to Harvey later.”
I wasn’t surprised to find that Lilah wasn’t part of my welcoming committee, but a part of me wished she had been waiting for me in the house. I was done playing the silent game. I’d been done the first day she’d started to ignore me, but she’d moved off to Austin and left a gulf between us. Now that she was back, I wondered if her silence would last.
Chapter Four
Lilah
Addiction is a powerful thing. One hit, one taste of a drug can generate an itch that a lifetime of scratching can't soothe. Contrary to what most afterschool specials preach, the substances themselves aren't powerful boogeymen that ruthlessly conquer the strong wills of stable people. No, they're all just differently colored sparks, and some people are more flammable than others.
My mother was addicted to everything under the sun. Pain pills hoarded from an embellished chronic back injury. Alcohol, a staple from her youth. Meth, a rural infection whose toxic tendrils tore away the shards of her slowly shattering life. Her dependencies occupied the driver’s seat for most of my life. After her funeral, I sat in the front of the church as relatives in ill-fitting formal clothes took turns offering some variation of “just know that your mother loved you more than anything”. But I knew better; if what they said had been true, she would have still been alive to tell me herself.
I browsed through the aisles of Crosby’s Market, trying to stretch out my grocery store run as long as possible. I carried my empty basket down one aisle and then doubled back, confirming the absence of the things I needed. They didn’t have places like Whole Foods in Blackwater. There wasn’t an organic, gluten-free, vegan, or free-range label in sight. If it wasn’t canned or processed, chances were you weren't going to find it at Crosby’s. Fortunately, I wasn’t there for food.
I strolled down the soap and shampoo aisle, stopping short at a small display of hair dye. They had five colors: black, dark brown, light brown, blonde, and fire engine red. Most of the boxes were expired and the ones that weren’t had misshapen packages as if they’d been knocked off the shelf and replaced too many times. I hesitated over the box of blonde hair dye with a smiling woman on the front, and instead reached for the jet-black.
“Wait, don’t take that one.”
A thin hand reached around my shoulder to grab for a box at the back of the shelf. I turned to find a girl behind me, smiling and holding out the new box for me to take. Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner and her blonde hair faded to bright pink halfway down as if she’d dipped the strands into a bucket of radioactive paint that morning. She was tall, with spindly arms and hollow cheekbones.
I took the box and stared down at it. “Thanks.”
“Kids always mess with the ones in the front. Usually I get home to find half the stuff missing.”
“Makes sense,” I said, tossing the new box of hair dye into my basket.
“I’m Ashley,” she said, offering a gentle, awkward wave. The name confirmed that I knew her, vaguely. She’d moved to town our freshman year of high school, but I’d never had a reason to talk to her before moving to Austin.
“I’m Lilah.”
Her smile faltered at the mention of my name. She hadn’t recognized me at first, but as her eyes roamed my features, trying to extract my old persona, I knew it was too late to hope for anonymity.
“You’re back?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Looks like it.”
I knew why she was confused. I’d left Blackwater as a blonde dance team captain and had returned as a choppy-haired vampire.
After a few moments of her standing there dumbstruck, I stepped past her in pursuit of the cash register.
“Well, see you around.”
“Wait,” she said, reaching her hand out to stop me. “I don’t know what your plans are for the rest of the day, but I’m pretty good with hair dye…”
She let her gaze linger on my blonde roots.
“My house is just down the street,” she continued.
Her invitation took me by surprise considering the fact that we’d never been friends. Maybe I had a bright, scrolling marquee across my forehead that read “HELP. I’M IN NEED OF A FRIEND”, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, if going to Ashley's house delayed the inevitable return to mine, I was in.
…
Ashley’s house was just a few streets away from mine, close enough that I swore I could hear the rumble of Chase’s truck from my perch in her bathroom. She worked her way through my hair with the dye and I sat on a stool, watching her in the mirror.
“Nothing’s changed much since you’ve been gone.”
I raised my eyebrows, curious about what she meant.
“Kimberly and the dance team girls are still popular. Josh Hastings is still the quarterback and he’s tied with Trent Bailey for second. It sort of depends on if you prefer jocks or bad boys.”
“Second...like, second place?”