of the corner of his mouth.
“Everything was fine and the food was delicious,” he says, mocking me.
“I didn’t say that it wouldn’t be. There’s just a good chance that someone could recognize you both and I don’t see the point of taking the risk.”
“Well, there was a good chance that we couldn’t have gotten away from that prison and now look at us. Free men.”
“You won’t be free men for long if you keep it up. Your faces are everywhere. There’s a big reward for your arrest or capture. You may not care about that, but I care about Tyler and I don’t want anything like that happening to him.”
“I care about Tyler, too, and I promise you nothing will.”
“You can’t make that promise. You can promise it, but you can’t keep it.”
“You know,” Mac says, leaning on the car and narrowing his eyes like James Dean, "you would be a lot more fun if you loosened up.”
I clench my jaw. That’s the kind of thing that men say when you don’t agree with them and when they’re losing an argument.
When I get back in the car, I don’t mention any of this to Tyler.
We drive for hours into Texas. A big part of me wants to bring it up, but the moment passes.
I can’t wait to get to the room and to talk to Tyler in private, but then it dawns on me that Mac will probably be there tonight as well.
It’s difficult for me to rent two rooms without looking very suspicious but after that little exchange in the parking lot, the last thing I want to do is share a room with him again.
When we stop to get gas that evening, the pump doesn’t work and I go inside to pay cash. There’s a large television above the clerk’s head, with a primetime story about the escapees and the reward.
My heart skips a beat.
Back in the car, Mac refuses to believe it, Tyler does. He then agrees that we need to find a Rite Aid as soon as possible so that I can buy some box color and give them new looks.
That evening, we pull into another Motel 6 with another bored clerk behind plexiglass.
Again, she asks me for my ID and credit card in case there’s any damage.
Again, I wonder if all of these charges are going to be bread crumbs for the FBI to find Tyler, Mac, and me.
At this point, I don’t think that the story about holding me as a hostage is going to work.
15
Isabelle
When we’re alone...
After getting to the motel room and grabbing a bite to eat, I let the guys argue about who should get which color.
I got one box of chestnut color and another in dirty blonde. Both should be pretty natural-looking, but still different from the pictures they have all over television.
I prefer for Tyler to go lighter, but I’m afraid that if I were to voice that opinion, then it wouldn’t happen. Instead, I sit back and relax, flip through the channels, and wait to see what happens.
They go back and forth, fighting over the small mirror in the bathroom. They examine each other’s hair and then compare. They talk about the models on the boxes and debate which one would look better with which color.
They remind me of twelve-year-old girls examining themselves in the sixth grade bathroom. It really makes my day.
“You’re laughing, but this is harder than it looks,” Mac says.
He is back to being the easy-going gregarious guy who I was first introduced to.
We haven’t talked about India again and for that, I’m thankful.
“Those are the best colors they had. L’Oréal is a good box color. I’ve used it myself a number of times.”
“You have?” Tyler asks. “I thought that women always went to salons.”
“Not everyone can afford $200 stylist fees for a color and a cut. That’s every six weeks if you’re lucky.”
He looks concerned and worried about how it’s going to turn out.
“It’s going to be okay,” I reassure him. “You’re not going to have green hair.”
“I don’t want to have orange hair either.”
I see that he’s leaning toward a lighter shade.
“It’s not going to be,” I promise.
I know that it’s harder to go lighter than it is to go darker. His hair isn’t that dark though and the lighter shade isn’t that light, so I hope that this will work out.
Eventually, they reach an agreement and Tyler goes with the lighter one and Mac goes with the darker one.
Instead of reading directions,