Banished

“I think deep down I knew something was wrong. But it’s amazing what you can convince yourself of when you’re in denial. Here, I’m going to start with the color, okay?”

She began to dab it onto my hair, starting at the roots and working out to the ends. It smelled terrible and stung my scalp.

“What did you like about him?” I asked. “I mean, at the beginning.”

A little bit of the dye dribbled toward my eyebrow. “Well, for one thing, I thought he was hot.”

I brushed the dye away. “In what way?”

“Kind of a, I don’t know, clean-cut look. He dresses well-really well. He likes expensive clothes. And he’s always worked out a lot. He’s a little compulsive about it, I guess you could say. He’s average height, but he’s got a naturally athletic build. Broad shoulders, strong arms…”

“Light hair or dark?”

“Brown… kind of a medium brown, I guess. And brown eyes.”

He didn’t sound bad, but he also didn’t sound all that special. “What else?”

“Well, he’s incredibly smart. I think that was the biggest thing, to tell you the truth. He has a doctorate, or at least he says he does, though now I don’t know how much of what he told me was true and how much was lies.”

I thought about that. The smartest guy at Gypsum High was Mac Blair, but it would be a pretty huge stretch to call him hot. He wasn’t a geek, exactly-it was just that his mind was always on something else, usually some random fact he’d picked up online. “How did that make you like him?”

Prairie didn’t answer for a moment. Her hands on my hair were confident and efficient, distributing the dye evenly over my head.

“Part of it was, I guess, that I hadn’t known anyone like him before. Most of the guys I’d known-well, you know how it is in high school. It’s not like anyone was even all that curious about the world outside Gypsum. And I went to this little junior college and night school, anything I could do to get enough credits to graduate, and it wasn’t like I was around geniuses there, either. Even when I was working in the labs, a lot of the guys I met, they weren’t really all that happy to be there, they weren’t committed to the work. Not like Bryce.

“But it was also… I wanted so badly to do something with my gift. I wanted to matter. And Bryce seemed like he could make that happen. I guess it was a little bit of a power thing, you know?”

“You thought that if you were with Bryce, he could open doors for you? Get you a better job, more money, stuff like that?”

“No, not exactly. More like, with his background and resources, he made me think the things I dreamed about were actually possible. That they could happen in my lifetime. I mean, now I know I was only seeing what I wanted to see and believing what I wanted to believe. But it was just so easy to put my faith in Bryce, this incredibly successful guy, and I was blinded by the fact that he wanted me.”

“But what about other people? The people you worked with? Didn’t any of them get suspicious about him? If they were closer to the data, didn’t they wonder what he was researching?”

“Well, yes. About six months ago, Bryce started replacing a lot of the employees who’d been there a long time. He brought in people from all over the country, even a couple from other parts of the world. They were his inner circle, and when they weren’t meeting with Bryce, they kept to themselves. I think they knew exactly what was going on… I think they’re in on it. He can’t do this on his own, not without getting caught.”

“What about the people he fired? Weren’t they angry? Or suspicious about what he was doing?”

“Bryce gave them a lot of money, made them sign all kinds of nondisclosure documents. And most people knew about my relationship with Bryce and kept their distance, so I didn’t stay in touch with the ones who left. I did have this one friend…” She smiled at the memory. “He was hilarious. His name was Paul, and he was our tech guy, just this brilliant, geeky guy who could make you laugh. He only left a few weeks ago. I think Bryce had trouble finding someone who could do what Paul could; he was a genius at security and computers and all that.”

“Weren’t you mad when Bryce fired him?”

Prairie’s smile faltered. “Yes… I guess I was. I mean, when I think about it now, I am, since he was the only person besides Bryce who’d have lunch with me or get coffee or whatever. And I don’t think he really trusted Bryce. He made me a backup of some of the security systems without telling Bryce, said it was in case anything happened to him.”

“Maybe he had a crush on you.”

Prairie laughed. “Maybe. He was always blushing when we talked. His only hobbies were paintball and computer games, but you know, he probably would have been a better boyfriend than Bryce. Guess I need to work on that, my taste in men.”

As she finished dabbing the dye around the crown of my head, I wondered if I’d ever have a boyfriend, and if so, whether I’d pick a good one. Maybe, being Banished, we didn’t have the common sense other people did. We were attracted to people like us, and as far as I could tell, most of the men weren’t great. Although Bryce wasn’t Banished… and Prairie had still made a mistake.

“Did you ever think about dating Paul?”

“He never asked. I don’t know… if he had, maybe things would have been different. I liked him a lot. He was shorter than me, not that it matters, and he had a ponytail, so if you like that… But it’s a good thing we were friends, because he made me keep a spare prox card when they rekeyed the lab.”

The familiar anxiety stirred in my gut. “Why is that a good thing?

Prairie didn’t say anything for a minute as she wound the dye-coated strands of hair on top of my head. “It will let me get back into the lab. This won’t be over until I destroy the data. I can’t let Bryce move forward with… what he’s doing.”

“How are you going to do that?” I tried to keep the hysteria out of my voice, but all I could picture was the killers in our kitchen. “You think he’ll let you just walk in there and-”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Prairie said gently. “We need to focus on the moment, on-”

“Is that why we’re going to Chicago? Can’t we go somewhere else? Somewhere he can’t find us?”

“We will. I promise. As soon as we do this last thing, we’ll go far away and start over. But Hailey, neither one of us is going to be safe as long as Bryce is still active.”

“But couldn’t we wait a while? Let things die down? You could get your friend Paul to help you, and when it was safe, you guys could, I don’t know, sneak back in or something.”

“I’m afraid it would be even more dangerous to wait,” Prairie said. “I don’t know how far Bryce has gotten. They were close to some key breakthroughs. But Hailey, you really need to try not to worry about that right now. Just relax while the color sets.”

While Prairie cleaned up, I watched SpongeBob with Chub until it was time for me to rinse. On the sheet she had spread out, my hair lay in glossy piles, but I tried not to think about it.

I undressed in the bathroom and stepped into the shower, making the water as hot as I could stand it. I spent a long time lathering and even longer rinsing, standing under the shower with my head tipped back.

When I was finally done in the shower, I felt both worse and better. Worse because now I understood what was driving Bryce, and we were headed right back into it. Better because I was finally starting to believe that Prairie wouldn’t abandon me. I dried off and wrapped the bath towel around my body. Then I took a washcloth and wiped away the steam on the mirror.

I was shocked. My hair was a pale, pale shade of gold. Nearly all the color was gone-and it hung in a heavy, straight line below my ears.

I felt my eyes fill with tears, and swallowed hard. It was ridiculous-my appearance was the least of my problems. But I still looked away from the mirror as I got dressed.

When I came out of the bathroom, Prairie pointed to the Walmart bags. “There’s a new shirt in there. Go ahead and keep your shoes-I didn’t know your size, and people won’t be looking at those. Or your jeans. So really, it’s just the top.”

I unfolded the shirt. It was black with gray sleeves, and printed on the front was a silver skull with a leering grin, flames shooting out of its sides.

“I know, you hate it,” Prairie said. “Sorry. I thought we’d do kind of a rocker look for you.”

“It’s… not so bad,” I lied.