On The Run

Mae touched the pink hair gingerly as if afraid it would fall off of her head if handled too harshly. 

It might, she thought. Still looks like a wig. No one’s gonna buy it.

She ripped her fingers through the ends. A few strands of hair tore from her scalp with a sting, but for the most part, the pink stayed intact. 

That’s that, then. It’s real. It’s hers. 

It looked like trash. More than that, it made her look trashy. 

Mae gave herself a shy smile in the bathroom mirror. Perfect. 

It wasn’t as if she was expecting a life full of glamour. If anything, she wanted the least amount of glamour possible. The less glamour she was surrounded by, the less attention she had a chance of drawing. And when running from the cops, diverted attention is everything. 

She started to pack up her supplies, the dye and the brush and the unused gloves, and shoved them into the small backpack she was carrying with her. It didn’t have much in it, but Mae assumed she wouldn’t want to be weighed down. 

Not that she had ever done this before. What is it that people do when they’re running from the police? All Mae has managed to do so far is induce a panic attack just by setting foot in the local convenience store. 

Her gaze caught on a bit of discoloration on her forearm, a drop of red. 

She scrubbed it viciously until the spot was washed away and the skin surrounding it was just as discolored.  

She tried to twirl her finger around the ends of her hair, a nervous habit she had picked up over the years. 

“Mae, stop twirling your hair, you look like a ditz,” her mother used to say to her during dinner, swatting Mae’s hand away from her hair. 

But the habit persisted through school, Mae’s hand inching involuntarily to the long, blonde strands when her heart rate would pick up during presentations or tests, and Mae’s mother was neither patient nor committed enough to thoroughly extinguish the habit.

Mae seemed to have done just well on her own, though, as her silky blonde locks were now sitting just above her shoulders, and they were bright pink.

She examined her reflection critically in the cloudy mirror. The bits of dye staining her forehead were new–she’d never dyed her hair before. The length was obviously new–Mae’s mother never let her cut her hair. She distantly wondered if they’d seen the news yet. 

Probably. 

They were bound to realize that their car was missing sooner rather than later. Mae had taken it when she left to meet up with the rest of the team, back before she really knew what they were doing. Even if her parents hadn’t turned on the TV themselves, Mae would bet anything that nosy Aunt Grace would be calling them within seconds to let them know their screw-up of a daughter was on national television. And not for finding the cure to cancer as they’d always dreamed, no–for armed robbery. 

The thought made Mae grin self-deprecatingly, letting herself realize for the first time just how much of a disappointment this made her in her parents’ eyes. It didn’t help when she realized, with a start, that her own grin didn’t quite reach her eyes the way it always had. 

“Stop smiling with your eyes, dear,” her mother would say, a firm hand gently guiding Mae through the crowds of fake people, all twirling under a glittering chandelier under a guise of nobility. “Smile like you have a secret.” 

Mae was 94% sure her mother got that line from some crappy early 90’s angsty teen movie, but the middle of her parent’s banquet wasn’t the place to take up that argument. 

If she could see me now, Mae thought bitterly. 

The truth was, Mae’s mother would have a heart attack if she could see Mae now. Her ripped jeans and worn-out hoodie in place of the preppy school uniform she would shove Mae into. The jagged haircut in place of the expert trim she would drag Mae to exactly every six months. The dark circles under Mae’s eyes in place of the high-end concealer she would make Mae dab on them every morning to make it look as though she slept, even though they both knew no one had a chance of sleeping through the screaming match that had taken place the night before. It was almost unbelievable just how much Mae had changed in under 24 hours. 

But, if she was being honest with herself, she never had been that dainty and painted porcelain doll her mother wanted so badly. And maybe that was the worst part–Mae had wanted to change so badly, craved a chance to finally be herself, to step out of the mold that was carved for her before she grew into it, and yet she wasn’t really this person either. 

She regarded her reflection again. Mae didn’t like the pink hair. She thought she would, when she bought the box dye at the convenience store, because her mother always said pink looked cheap and no daughter of hers would be touched by a color so foul. A baby pink, perhaps, but a fluorescent fuchsia? There wasn’t a world in which she would allow it. Mae could see her, stewing in the corner, looking distastefully at the bright locks. 

“It makes you look like a call girl, Mae, you know that.” She clicked her tongue. “Worthless.” 

She knew her mother was right. It did make her look cheap. And maybe when you’re on the road and have bigger things to worry about, the color of your hair shouldn’t matter that much because really, you should be wanting people to not pay attention, but it just sucked that she had finally had the freedom to make a decision and she made the exact wrong one. 

“How’d a rich girl like you get caught up in all this, anyway?” Roger had asked her, hoisting his burlap sack over his shoulder as they walked through the abandoned halls of the gallery, the rope running from Mae’s wrists to his hand chafing uncomfortably. 

Mae had just shrugged. She didn’t even know how she’d managed to get caught up in all this. All she remembered was complaining about how her parents care more about the pieces of canvas hung up in their gallery more than they care about their own daughter. The next thing she knew, that new kid was sidling up next to her, asking if she’d like to get revenge. And Mae had snorted, said some sarcastic retort along the lines of “Yeah, that’d be nice. What’d you have in mind, Oceans 8?” 

And he had just laughed, laying out a plan so outrageous that Mae was sure it was a joke. And she’d laughed, shook his hand, and said “I’m in,” rolling her eyes. And when he introduced her to the rest of his team, Mae had giggled into the back of her hand and greeted all these career criminals this kid apparently knew. And it went on like that, the “plan” apparently coming to fruition, Mae still entirely sure it was a joke, and the moment she turned around and asked “wait, you’re serious?”, this kid would cackle and proclaim that he’d fooled her and Mae would feel like an idiot because maybe she actually had wanted to rob her parents’ art gallery to show them just how materialistic and weak they were. 

And then, walking through the halls of the gallery, Mae suddenly wasn’t laughing anymore.

And now she was here, her feet sore from running, her skin sore from trying to scrub the speckles of blood away, her hair jagged from her shaking hands, and her mother shaking her head in the corner in disappointment. 

“I told you, Mae. You need me.”

Mae’s grip tightened on the rusted porcelain. She straightened, looking the hollowed eyes in the mirror in the face. And no, she may not recognize the face she sees there. She may regret everything, want to take it back and do it differently, but she had at least done it to herself. Yeah, it may have been the biggest fuck-up of her life. She may have ruined her entire life, in fact.

But at least she had done it to herself. 

She turned on the shadow-cloaked version of her mother, who suddenly looked much smaller. 

“I don’t need shit from you.” 

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the gas station bathroom, twirling the car key on her pointer finger with her chin held high. The person she wanted to be may not be a girl with pink hair and dead eyes, but at least she found that out for herself. 

And even though she had police on her tail, no money, and nowhere to go, she still felt free.