heady whiff of gasoline. My car, right where I parked it. In Sabine’s spot, nothing but an oil stain on the concrete. My heart gives a painful kick.
I take the stairs by twos and threes, sprinting down the hallway runner and into the bedroom, even though I already know what I’ll find. The comforter, still unturned from where I’d made it. The pillows, still stacked and fluffed.
The bed, empty.
BETH
I stand at the bathroom sink of room seventeen in a grubby motor lodge on the outskirts of Tulsa and take inventory in the mirror. Chalky skin. Eyes shaded with purple circles. Hair too long, too thick to style.
You’re always telling me never to cut my hair. You say you like it long—dark, thick strands streaked with shiny ribbons of bronze, with just the right amount of curl. It’s the kind of hair you see on commercials, the kind women pay hundreds of dollars a month for. But it’s more than just hair to you. It’s a plaything, a turn-on, something to plow your fingers through or moan your orgasms in whenever we have sex.
But this hair you claim to love so much? You also love to use it as a weapon. To drag me by it from room to room. To pin me down. Hair is so much stronger than you think it’d be, the roots like barbed hooks in your skin. The scalp will rip open sooner than a hank of hair will break. I know this from experience.
I pick up a handful and a pair of shears and slice it in an uneven, stubby line.
It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be. A hell of a lot less painful than when you grab me by the ponytail and lift me clear off the bed. The strands tumble down my chest, sticking to the white cotton of my shirt. I feel lighter. Unencumbered. Free.
I keep chopping, brushing the strands into the sink to toss later, not because I think you’ll track me here, but because I believe in karma. One day very soon I’ll need a job, and it’s not unthinkable I’ll end up in a hotel room like this one, scrubbing someone else’s hairs from the drain. Not exactly what my parents were hoping for when they paid for my college, but a better paying job, a job I’m actually qualified for, would send up a smoke signal you might spot.
I’ve never cut my own hair before, and I don’t do a particularly good job of it. I was going for a pixie cut, but it’s more of a walk-in salon hack job, or maybe a sloppy bowl cut from the seventies. I pick up random chunks, pull them between my fingers like a hairstylist would, and slice in asymmetrical layers. When I’m done, I fluff it with my fingers and study myself in the mirror. With a bit of hair gel, it might not be half-bad.
You are not who you used to be. You are Beth Murphy now.
“I’m Beth,” I say, trying on the name like a questionable shade of lipstick. It’s the name I gave Nick, the one I signed on the hotel register, but only after forking over two twenties so the man behind the counter didn’t ask for my ID again. “My name’s Beth Murphy.”
Beth with the crappy haircut.
I dig the box of hair dye from the CVS bag and mix up the color. In my previous life, I was one of those brunettes who never longed to be a blonde. Blondes are louder, bolder, more conspicuous. Flashy and competitive, like sorority girls and cheerleaders. Not good traits when your goal is to disappear.
The picture on the box advertises an ashy blond, the least in-your-face blond of the blonder shades. Blond for beginners. I paint it in lines across my scalp with the plastic bottle, then slip off the gloves and check my watch. Ten minutes until we find out if what they say is really true, that blondes have more fun.
While I wait for the color to set, I flip on the television. It’s past midnight, and I’m three hundred miles away from Pine Bluff—too late for a local broadcast, and too soon for news of my disappearance to have spread across state lines and made it to cable. Still, I sit on the edge of the bed and flip between CNN and Fox, watching for the tiniest sliver of my story. An empty house. A missing woman. My face hidden behind