by Donya Lynne
Not even twenty-six years old, and she was already in the middle of a cataclysmic identity crisis, and didn’t that just piss her off? Who the hell was she? More importantly, who did she want to be?
It was time to change. Time to take control and figure out exactly who she was. Screw the machine. Screw Trent. Screw everything!
Spurred by a force that felt like it was coming from outside herself, she yanked open the top drawer of her vanity as she angrily slapped the tears from her cheeks. She shoved the contents side to side, looking…frantically searching.
Scissors! Damn it, where are the scissors?
Not finding them, she slammed the drawer shut, opened another, then another, until finally, success!
Snagging the shears from the bottom drawer, she threw them on the counter and dug an elastic band from the glass dish beside the sink. She couldn’t work fast enough. Now! This had to happen now. More tears gushed from her eyes, making her vision blurry. But her mind was clear. Finally, clear.
She knew what she had to do. It was as if seeing her new brown irises had awakened her. Inspired her.
Stretching the elastic band around her fingers, she cranked her wet, multi-hued hair into a ponytail then snapped the band in place and tugged her trademark long tresses through. The wet ends fell and slapped her lower back.
She snatched the shears in a death grip.
No more. She was done being Lacey Moon. Done being a puppet for the media, her sponsors, the machine. Just…done!
Grabbing her ponytail with her free hand, she yanked it taut and poised the open blades around the bundled, damp mess just below the nape of her neck. Then, with a war cry to rouse the dead, she began sawing. Over and over, she squeezed, sliced, and ripped. She was closing the book on this part of her life. Lacey Moon, the puppet who did everything she was told, was no more.
Gone.
Over.
Dead and being buried this very moment.
After several gut-wrenching seconds of aggressively sawing through her hair, the final strands severed. She’d been pulling so hard on her ponytail that her head flew forward. She had to drop the scissors and slam her palm against the counter to keep from nose-diving into the faucet.
Gasping, she pushed herself up. Her cheeks were soaked. Her eyes bloodshot. And in her hand hung almost two feet of dark-brown and red-streaked hair. What was left attached to her head was half brown, half blond, and a couple inches longer than shoulder length.
She felt lighter than she had in years. Not just physically, but mentally.
She’d read somewhere years ago that hair holds energy, and that the best way to shed negativity was to cut your hair. That by doing so, you eliminate the negative influence from periods of antagonism and adversity and can gain a fresh start.
With the sublime lightness infiltrating her mind, Lacey believed it was true. Without a doubt, she had just chopped off at least ten years’ worth of poison. She could already breathe more easily. Hold herself taller. Feel a glimmer of excitement reaching up from the depths of her soul. She almost seemed to be vibrating…like she was tuning into a great cosmic energy field humming with hope.
But she wasn’t finished. If she was going to make this transformation complete, she needed more than just a new eye color and shorter hair. She needed to ditch the brown and red, as well.
Tossing the ponytail in the trash, she flew from her bathroom into her parents’ bedroom, into the master bath, and rifled through her mom’s cabinets until she found the box of hair coloring Mom used to hide her greys.
Back in her own bathroom, Lacey haphazardly dried her hair then applied the blond dye. She hadn’t had blond hair since she first covered her natural color at sixteen.
Twenty-five minutes later, she rinsed her hair, trimmed the ends, dried it again, and then stared in the mirror.
She couldn’t recognize herself. Not only was her hair shorter than it had ever been, but even with brown contacts, her eyes appeared brighter. She fingered the blond strands falling just past her chin and grinned, her tears long since dried. If she went shopping right now, not a single person would know it was her. How terrific would that be? To go out among the people and not be recognized? To be just another common, everyday citizen going about her normal life. She could drive cross country, stop in every major city, stroll openly along any major thoroughfare, and no one would be the wiser.
Finally, she could actually get away if she wanted to. Take a vacation. Today. Now.
With a gasp, her mouth fell open.
That’s it!
She knew what she needed to do. And the open road was the answer.
Chapter 3
Lacey parked and hoisted her bag from the backseat and made her way inside the hotel on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho. She’d been driving for five hours and needed a break.
“Welcome to Fairfield Inn, may I help you?”
Lacey smiled at the young man behind the counter. This would be her first test. Would he recognize her? “I’d like a room for the night, please.” She set down her bag and fished out her wallet.
“Certainly.” With an amenable air, the man tapped a few keys on his computer. “King or double?”
“King, please.” Lacey nibbled her bottom lip and absently raised her hand to twirl her hair, which she did when she was nervous. Only there was no hair to twirl. Feeling foolish, she dropped her hand to the counter.
The man slid a keycard across the counter toward her. “That’s ninety-nine dollars plus tax. How would you like to pay?”
“Visa.” She handed over her card. Thank God her credit cards showed her first name. Lacey was her middle name, but she preferred it to Mathilda, which she hadn’t gone by since first grade. The only people who still called her Mathilda were her family, and even then, only rarely. Everyone knew her as Lacey now.
Except the credit card companies. To them, she was Mathilda L. Moon.
She signed for her room, and with a relieved sigh that she’d passed her first test, headed for the elevators.
Once settled, she called her mom.
“Lacey? Honey, oh my God, where are you? I came home, and you weren’t here, and—”
“I’m fine, Mom.” In hindsight, she really should have left a note so her mom wouldn’t have worried. But she’d been in such a hurry to split and get on the road she’d forgotten that part.
Her mom exhaled heavily. “What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I’m just…” What? Running away? Adults didn’t run away. That was something kids did. “I’m taking a vacation.” Much better.
“A vacation?” Mom made a noise that made Lacey envision her shaking her head and pinching the bridge of her nose. “Now? Why?”
Of course Mom wouldn’t understand.
Lacey flopped back on the bed. “Because now seemed like a good time, Mom.”
“Lacey, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
How could she explain something she didn’t fully understand. She just knew she had to leave. Get away. Go somewhere no one knew her. Call it intuition, but hauling her ass to God knew where—literally, because she was driving without a map or a destination—seemed like the right thing to do.
“I just need a break, okay? I just need…” She sighed. She couldn’t sum up in a few short words what she needed. The list was too long. “I’m tired, Mom.” She stared up at the white ceiling. “I’m tired and confused and…I don’t know who I am, anymore.”
Long pause.
“Honey…” It was the tone Mom used when she consoled her or was about to make an attempt at talking her out of something, but right now Lacey didn’t need to be consoled or talked out.
“Mom, I need to do this or I’ll lose my mind.”
Mom sighed. “I’m worried about you.”
“Well, don’t be. I’m an adult. I know what I’m doing.” Or at least, she should know what she was doing. Having been coddled by a staff for so long, she’d never really had a chance to learn.
An
d, honestly, wasn’t the anxious yet exhilarating hum that skittered like static along the edges of her nerves a good sign? Like she was alive for the first time in years. Riding out this thrum of energy to see where it led felt like the right thing to do.
“You have been through a lot this year, honey,” her mom said. “But don’t you think—”
Lacey didn’t want to hear where her mom was going with that thought and cut her off. “This isn’t just about the past year, Mom. It’s about everything. My life hasn’t been my own since I was twelve.”
She’d missed out on so much. Half her childhood had been spent practicing, traveling, competing. Like a gerbil in an exercise wheel, she felt like she’d been running forever but going nowhere. The machine had become her life. How could she figure herself out when she was never given the time or a chance? From the moment she began training, someone else—usually her coach Trent—had controlled everything. What she ate, when she slept, school, conditioning. When had she had a chance to just be a girl? Once she began competing in the big events, she hadn’t even been able to attend a normal school. Most of the time, she’d had tutors.
“I’m sorry, honey, I thought you were happy.”
“So did I.” It wasn’t that she’d been unhappy, but year after year, the hole in the center of her soul where her identity was supposed to be grew larger and larger. She’d reached a breaking point.
“I wish you would have talked to me before you ran off, though.”
Lacey closed her eyes. “I need to do this on my own, Mom. If I’d told you, you would have tried to talk me out of it.”
For once, she needed to experience what life was like standing on her own two feet without an overlord watching her every move. She wanted to experience life without fans and paparazzi following her everywhere. She wanted to eat junk food without hearing her coach’s voice in her head. She wanted to laze around for a week without feeling guilty that she wasn’t training. She just wanted to…be!
“So, where are you going?” Mom said.
“I don’t know. Away. Somewhere I’ve never been.” She didn’t know her destination, but her intuition told her she’d know it when she got there.
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes, I guess.” She wasn’t going to put a deadline on this.
“You know, you can’t just run away. The problems will still be here when you get home.”
Lacey frowned resiliently. “I’m not running away. I’m getting away. There’s a difference. And the problems won’t be there once I figure things out. That’s the whole point of this trip.”
“What are you trying to get away from?”
She didn’t need her mom lecturing her or planting any seeds of doubt. For once, she just wanted her mom’s unquestioning support. “Mom, can’t you just tell me to have a nice trip? You know, give me your blessing? I mean, God, I just want a little support for once.”
“Well then, help me understand this, Lacey. This isn’t like you.”
And that was the point, wasn’t it? This wasn’t like her. At least not like the Lacey Moon everyone had come to expect. She needed to stop being what people expected and start being who she was. But she couldn’t until she figured that out.
“I’m trying to get away from everything, Mom. The media. My broken leg. Doug. Trent. The constant badgering. Me!” She slapped her palm on her chest. “I need to get away from this person I’ve become and don’t know, anymore. I need to find myself, Mom. I need to remember why I started down this path and decide if I want to stay on it. I can’t do that at home. I can’t do it with you and Trent and everybody else constantly hanging over my shoulder!”
“Okay, okay.” Mom huffed. “Calm down.”
She’d gotten carried away. But that was a good thing, right? She was finally passionate about something again. Okay, so maybe she was channeling that passion like it was a bulldozer, but still. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“It’s okay. I don’t fully understand what’s happening with you, but I get what you’re trying to do. I just wasn’t ready for all this.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve thrown me off, honey.” Her mom chuckled, but it was an uncomfortable sound, as if she were trying to shift gears and wrap her mind around the situation. “It’s been a while since you surprised me.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“I don’t know. Ask me again in a few days.”
Lacey laughed drily. “I will.”
After a moment of awkward silence, her mom said, “Lacey, I love you. Do what you need to do. Just be safe and make sure you call me, okay? I’ll worry if you don’t.”
“I will. I promise.”
After saying their goodbyes, Lacey lay back on the bed, her hands cradling the back of her head, and stared up at the ceiling. Where would this journey lead? She had no idea. But that was what excited her so much about it.
* * *
The next morning, Lacey made her way farther north, deeper into Idaho along Highway 55. The longer she drove, the more the landscape began to resemble something out of the old west. The architectural motif was more or less rugged log cabin chic, and many places had foregone paved parking lots in favor of plain old dirt or gravel.
Around lunchtime, she saw a sign for Hope Falls. She liked the sound of that. Hope Falls. Would she find hope there?
Even if she couldn’t, could she at least find lunch? She was starving. Her stomach had been rumbling nonstop for the last five miles.
Following the highway into town until it dead ended at a lake, forcing her to turn either left or right, she turned left and searched for a place to park. She needed to gather her bearings and decide whether to backtrack or search for a route to the nearest interstate. Or stay.
After parallel parking along the side of the street, she plucked her jacket and handbag from the passenger seat and hopped out into what really did strike her as a Wild West town, only with cars instead of horses, although she was sure horses were around here somewhere. The place was too rustic not to have a horse farm or two.
The buildings lining both sides of the street had the same feel as those in one of the many spaghetti westerns she’d watched with her grandpa as a kid. One even looked like a converted saloon, with an upstairs balcony where she could imagine the working girls in their full skirts and low necklines waving down at the cowboys below, beckoning them to come up for a romp.
Damn, there was a lot of brown. Brown paint, brown shingles, brown brick. Brown roads. It looked as if a constant stream of muddy water melted down from the surrounding mountains during every rain, staining the pavement, and the locals had just learned to accept it.
In the direction she’d come from was Hotel Hope Falls, which seemed to be the most updated building in the area. Of course, it was still brown. She crossed the street toward it and began walking south along the sidewalk. She’d passed a bunch of restaurants just a short ways down.
The sidewalk steadily inclined away from the lake, and after a couple of blocks, her leg began to ache. Even though she’d been in physical therapy for months, she’d never exerted herself this much in the real world. Still, it was surprising how weak her leg still was. She would need to start walking more and build up her strength.
Another two blocks later, she came to a cozy corner diner named Pappy’s. Black, wrought iron tables and chairs dotted the front patio, and a large pink and green neon sign was centered on the front. The motif reminded her of something out of the fifties.
Once inside, she felt like she’d stepped back half a century. Old school rock and roll played from a jukebox, and a large U-shaped counter dominated the center of the room. Booths lined the perimeter and white Formica tables dappled the remaining space. This had to be what the old malt shops of the fifties felt like.
“Have a seat wherever you like, sugar. I’ll be right with you.” A waitress holding a coffee decanter winked and gestured toward a nearby booth. Her nametag read �
��Shirl.”
Lacey bit her bottom lip and brushed back the blond strands hanging around her face as she slid into a booth with red, pleather seats.
A moment later, the jukebox changed songs to “Runaround Sue,” and Lacey smiled. She liked this place. When she was little, she’d spent a lot of time with her grandpa. He had always listened to the oldies. Had said that music these days was weak and not really music. Music from the fifties was fun, carefree, something to tap your feet to. True to form, she was tapping her sneakers against the black and white tiled floor and drumming her fingers on the table. In a way, it felt like Grandpa was sending her a sign.
This is where you’ll find yourself, Mattie.
Grandpa had never called her Lacey. He’d always insisted on referring to her by Mathilda. Or Mattie. That had been his nickname for her.
She had loved those times with him. He’d died the year before she won her first X Games, so he’d never gotten to see her compete. Now she realized just how much she missed him. How much she longed to spin and dance to those oldies but goodies again.
“Hiya.” Shirl returned with a smile. She was slim, maybe in her early fifties, with coiffed, red hair. Her darker roots showed traces of grey. She handed her a menu and held up the decanter of coffee she was still holding. “Coffee?”
“No, thank you.” Lacey had never been a coffee drinker. “Do you have tea?”
“Sure do. Be right back, honey.”
Lacey watched her shimmy away then looked out the window at the—yes—brown stone and wood three-story office building across the street. Evergreens jutted skyward all around. Fir trees were definitely the dominant vegetation in Hope Falls.