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They move from motel to motel every few weeks, most are dingy places with roaches on the walls and lizards on the windowsill basking in the mid-August sun.
Jinx sits by the edge of the pool, dangling her toes above the water and watching a bug float by.
Her old man is watching. That's what Silco is, an old man and he's hers just as much as she is his. Looking at her in a bikini with her hair dyed black to keep them from standing out.
"Don't go in there, Jinx. It's filthy." He says between puffs of a cigarette. He won't let her smoke just yet. She's got the craving for it and the stashed pack of Virginia Slims at the bottom of her bag. Old men will give anything for a flash of her tits. Jinx wants the menthol flavour crawling into the empty spots inside her chest, where the true her under the hair dye and coloured contacts lay.
If she can't have it, Jinx will just take the pool, the water is mostly clear; a dying wasp circling with the wind, a hair tie clinging to the bottom. "Jinx," Silco warns, looking at her over the edge of his sunglasses.
She knows the chlorine will run the dye out, have her fading back to brilliant, identifiable blue. Jinx braces her hands behind her and plunges into the cool, chemical water before Silco can grab her.
Clouds of washed-out grey float around her, and when she emerges for a breath Silco is standing there scowling. "Enough." He demands, arms crossed over his chest.
"What? I just wanted to go for a dip, this is the only pool we've seen all summer," Jinx whines and swims to the middle of the pool when he tries to grab her arm.
"Out. Now." Oh he's serious.
Jinx sighs, dunks her head under the water one last time and swims towards him to climb out of the pool.
Silco drags her back to the room; she's laughing, hot humid air filling her lungs. "Get dressed, we're leaving."
"Why? It was just a swim old man."
"Let me think, for one you've ruined that pool, if you want another go look in the mirror. Be packed and ready in ten." Silco grabs his bag he never unpacks and slams the door on his way out.
Jinx strips out of her bathing suit, stolen of course because Silco wouldn't let her buy something so frivolous so she'd gotten rather good at nicking clothes. She peeks at the bathroom mirror and feels a bit of pride seeing her natural hair only slightly darkened by the latest round of colour. No wonder Silco was pissed.
She squeezes out her clothes and digs through her bag for shorts and that hooded sweatshirt she pulled from a laundromat; everything else goes in her duffle and backpack.
Silco is waiting in the banged-up '92 Chevy, their car until Silco decides it isn't safe anymore. Jinx keeps her head down and ducks into the car when that nosy bitch in room 203 finally looks away. "Where are we going?" Silco throws her the pack of cigarettes she thought he didn't know about.
The mood sours. "We talked about this." He says sharply, pulling out of the motel parking lot and not even looking at her.
"You can't be disappointed in me. You're not my dad. You gonna tell me not to smoke next I'm bouncing on your dick?" Jinx snaps, bringing her knees up in the seat. Silco taps her leg until she stretches it back, scowling.
"Everything I do is to keep you safe, Jinx." Silco's hands tighten on the wheel, his knuckles turning white. "And that includes keeping you from destroying your lungs."
Jinx rolls her eyes. "Because you care so much about not smoking?"
"When it pertains to you. Yes. Now put your legs down." She does.
There's silence for a long time after that, no talking, radio off, windows up, just the AC blasting in her face and the car clicking and humming and revving.
"Where are we going?"
Silco doesn't answer for a while, his eyes scanning the businesses they roll by. At random he pulls into the large parking lot of a little strip mall. Only then does he answer her. "First, we are going into that store to find bleach; after that, Arizona. Now, red or blonde?"
Jinx guessed they were as done with jet-black hair as they were with California.
The beauty store is a tiny little thing, a small crt behind the counter next to a bored high school student just a bit younger than Jinx sitting, she doesn't even look at them.
She stays at Silco's side, plucking things from the sleeves while the attendant flicks through a magazine. "Blonde," Jinx says absently. It was a far cry from blue but the closest she would get until they were down in Mexico until Silco could get them new IDs and a passport to cross into Canada.
Silco grabs bleach, bottle blonde, and scissors. Jinx doesn't like the look of that last part.
In the car Silco drops the little plastic bag in the back seat and Jinx shows off her goodies to his dismay. "Will you at least take that damn thing off? You're going to suffocate."
Jinx looks away, a small smile forming. "Well, I'm not wearing anything under it silly."
Silco stares at her, eyes scanning her face. "Need proof?" She asks, already reaching for the hem of her sweatshirt.
"No. No I do not need proof, Jinx."
When the sun goes down they park at a rest stop, in a dingey bathroom Jinx is left with clear instructions to cut her hair. It's the second time they've done this now. The first was right after she crawled out her window at 3 am to run away while Vi was on the other side of town. That was back in Redding two hundred miles ago.
Under the endless buzz of a lightbulb about to shoot, Jinx brings her hair up to her shoulders. Silco will fix the blunt edges later, when they get another motel and ditch in the middle of the night before hitting the interstate. She'll be blonde before Arizona, and her blue eyes will stand out less so maybe they'll be done with coloured contacts too; she'd like to be done with them.
Jinx emerges from the bathroom as a new woman who just as easily falls into Silco's arms as she did before.