The teddy bear Wade had won for us was sitting on our bed, and I took a packet of money over and stuffed it down in the bear’s overalls. When the toilet flushed, I ran around the bed and dropped to my knees and zipped up the bag and pushed it back under the bed. Ruby walked into the bedroom just as I made it back to our bed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I crossed my legs Indian-style and looked at the TV like I was interested in those stupid cartoons.
“You look mad,” she said. “Your face is red.”
“Well, I’m not mad,” I said. “I’m just sunburned.” That part was true. But Ruby wasn’t sunburned at all. Her skin was an even darker brown than it had been that morning, and her hair looked even thicker after being in the ocean with me and Wade. She climbed up on the bed and sat beside me.
“I don’t feel like watching cartoons,” she said.
I tossed the remote on the bed in front of her. “Put on whatever you want to,” I said. “I don’t care what you watch.” I picked up the bear and held it to my chest, and I leaned back against the headboard and closed my eyes and thought about how much I hated Wade for sneaking into our room and convincing us to go with him. I couldn’t believe that it all had happened just two nights before, and I couldn’t believe that in just two days I’d gone from hating Wade, to wanting to believe in him, all the way back to hating him all over again.
A key turned in the lock a little while later, and Wade tried to open the door and walk into the room, but the chain was still on and it only opened a little bit. He closed the door and knocked.
I climbed off the bed and slid the chair over and looked through the peephole. Wade was staring right back at me. “Who is it?” I asked.
“It’s your dad,” Wade said. “Open the door-hurry up.”
“Who?”
He cracked the door again. “It’s me, Easter,” he said. “Open the door.” I hopped down from the chair and moved it back under the table, and then I undid the chain. Wade walked in with a bag from Eckerd’s in his hand. “Hey!” he said like everything was just fine.
“Where’d you go?” I asked, but what I really wanted to know about was the bag of money he’d stuffed under the bed, but that question was going to have to wait until we were alone.
“I went shopping,” he said, smiling. “I got us some disguises.”
“Disguises?” Ruby said. She climbed down off the bed. Wade pulled out a little box of something and handed it to me.
“What’s that?” Ruby asked.
“It’s hair dye,” I said, looking at Wade. “What’s this for?”
“It’s for you,” he said. “You’re dying your hair brown.”
“Am I dying mine too?” Ruby asked.
“No,” Wade said. “That’s for you, Easter, but I got something for you.” He pulled out a pair of pink sunglasses, and Ruby put them right on. “Now,” Wade said, “you have to make sure you wear those glasses whenever we go somewhere. I don’t want anybody to know I’m traveling with the world-famous Ruby Chesterfield.”
“Quillby,” I said. Wade turned around and looked at me.
“What?”
“Quillby,” I said again. I stared right back at him. “Her last name is Quillby, and mine is too.”
I’d always wanted my hair to be brown, and I hoped it would be as dark as Ruby’s, as dark as Mom’s.
After reading the directions, I put on the plastic gloves and stood in the tub with the shower off and squirted the dye all over my head, and then I used my fingers to rub it in. I counted off the minutes, and then I turned on the shower and rinsed it out.
When I finished bathing, I wrapped a towel around me and opened the bathroom door. The mirror in the bathroom had been too fogged over to look in, and that was fine; I wasn’t ready to see myself anyway. Wade and Ruby were sitting side by side on one of the beds. Ruby was wearing her new sunglasses. She had her head leaned up against Wade and he had his arm around her.
“Cardinals are playing tonight,” Wade said. “McGwire’s going for fifty-eight.” I acted like I didn’t hear him, and I looked at Ruby and gathered my hair over my left shoulder so she could see it.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Is it brown?”
Ruby just stared at me, and then she lifted up her sunglasses to get a better look. She wrinkled up her forehead like she was thinking of exactly how to put it, and then she dropped her sunglasses back over her eyes. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “It’s too wet.”
That was the last thing I wanted to hear, and I went back into the bathroom to put on my T-shirt and shorts, which I realized were the only clothes we had with us except for our nightgowns. I heard Wade out in the bedroom. “I think it looks great,” he said. “I really do.”
I walked out of the bathroom in my towel with my wadded-up shirt in my hand. “We need clothes, Wade. And underwear. We can’t wear the same thing every day.” I went to unfasten my towel and put on my shirt, but then I caught myself. “And we need our own room too. I bet you’ve got enough money to pay for it.” I picked up all my clothes and walked toward the bathroom.
“Hold up,” Wade said. “I need a shower. You go ahead and get dressed out here.” He picked up a couple of things and walked toward the bathroom, but before he closed the door he looked back at me. “We’ll go shopping for more clothes tomorrow,” he said. “I promise.” He smiled at me and closed the door.
I rolled my eyes and sighed and hung my towel on the back of one of the chairs and started getting dressed. I looked at Ruby. “Is my hair brown or not?” I asked.
“It’s wet,” she said. “I told you it’s too hard to tell.”
“You probably can’t tell because you’re wearing those stupid sunglasses.”
“You’re just jealous that he didn’t get a pair for you,” she said.
“No-I’m not,” I said.
There was a little sink and a counter just outside the bathroom, and I walked over and opened one of the drawers. I heard Wade turn the shower on. I found a hair dryer and stood up and plugged it in, careful not to look in the mirror; I didn’t want to see myself until my hair was dry and I knew for sure just what it was going to look like. It took a few minutes to blow-dry my hair, and then I turned the dryer off and brushed my hair back with my fingers. I walked around in front of the bed where Ruby was sitting. She lifted up her sunglasses and looked at me for a second, and then she took them all the way off.
“It’s brown,” she said, smiling. “It’s definitely brown.”
I wanted to believe her, but I just couldn’t, not after seeing how much dye had been washed out of my hair and down the drain. I walked back to the mirror and stood in front of it with my eyes closed. I took a deep breath and held it, and then I opened my eyes.
Ruby was right; my hair was brown. I turned my head back and forth, looking at myself from all the different angles I could. The girl in the mirror didn’t even look like me, and I saw that with the brown hair and all the sun I’d gotten yesterday that I looked more like Ruby than I ever had before, and I finally looked like Mom.
Ruby had crawled off the bed and come over to get a better look. She stood beside me and both of us stared in the mirror. We looked like sisters for the first time in our lives.
“You look different,” she said, “but I like it.”
“I do too,” I said, still turning my head and looking at myself out of the corners of my eyes. “I love it.”
The shower had turned off in the bathroom, and now the toilet flushed. The knob turned and the door opened. Me and Ruby both looked over. Wade stepped out of the bathroom, smiling, already dressed like he was ready to go somewhere.
“What do y’all think?” he asked. I couldn’t believe it; he’d shaved off his whiskers and gone and dyed his hair brown too, and he’d gotten just as much sun as I had. He kept smiling and turned around slowly like he was a model. Ruby laughed and clapped her hands; I felt like crying.