First I hear the door and then in the mirror I see the two girls coming in and standing behind me. One has red hair and freckles and is tall and the other shorter girl has blond hair. The first thing I do is take Father's bracelets off the counter and put them back on my wrist. These girls are about my age and they both wear headphones whose cords come out of a Walkman in the short girl's hand. They take off the headphones so they're not attached together but don't move apart or go into the stalls. They just stand there watching.
"What?" I say. "What is your problem?"
They step back a little without leaving.
"We saw you out in the mall," the tall girl says. "We followed you. At first because we thought you were a cute boy but then you went into the women's room so we wondered."
"I wanted you to think that," I say. "I knew you were following me."
We're talking to each other in the mirror. I haven't turned around. Our voices are loud with all that tile.
"She means," the short blond girl says, "that you could be a cute girl, too."
"I don't care what you think," I say.
"I was only trying to say something nice," she says.
"That's fake," I say.
For a while I keep cutting my hair and the girls keep watching me without saying anything. Then in the reflection I see the tall girl point at the floor:
"Look," she says. "This is bad. You're hurt."
"I'm fine," I say and I don't look down since it might be a trick and I don't want them to think I'll look where they say. Also I'm right at the tricky back part of my hair. I snip around to connect the lines of the right and left sides and then with my hand I sweep the cut hair off the counter and into the sink. I scoop it up to throw in the trash can.
When I look to pick up the hair on the floor I see what they were saying. There's smeared red on the yellow and tan tiles, blood tracked all around in the tread of my sneakers. It's red footprints walking over each other. The front of my left sneaker is red and wet.
I try not to let my face show anything. The girls just stand there still watching. "You're hurt."
"So what?" I say.
"Go get Mom," the short one says. "Right away."
The tall girl is gone, the door slapping.
"I'm fine by myself," I say even if now I don't feel fine. I pick up my pack and set it back down since it feels so heavy. I close my eyes for a moment and open them. The girl has stepped closer without me noticing.
"You're sisters?" I say.
"Yeah," she says. "Don't worry, we're going to help you."
"I could go if I wanted," I say. "I could get right by you."
"Are you crying?" she says. "Don't cry."
"I'm not crying," I say.
"Don't," she says, but she doesn't touch me and I'm past her, out the door.
I turn right and not left, not back to the mall but out the emergency exit so an alarm starts ringing. The scissors are still in my hand and the sun is bright. I slip away slow between all the cars in the parking lot, my footsteps silent and holding my breath. When I carefully look up across and over the cars no one is following. I am already thinking what to do next.
Eight
These days I have a mountain bicycle with nubbed rubber tires that can make it up and down the muddy gravel road. It's all downhill from where I live on Wildwing Road to the library so it only takes about half an hour. Under the tall trees, in and out of the ruts. I have neighbors up here who raise llamas and others who raise dogs that are half wolf. This means there must be at least one wolf with them who teaches all the dogs to howl like that. When they start in at night I think of Lala and wonder if I really saw her back in the snow and how far a dog can run and how old a dog can get. Late at night I also think of Nameless and the decisions he made and wonder if he's still trying and he's gotten further or has given up or has been caught or maybe has become a different kind of animal who can't communicate at all. I wonder where he came from that made him become like that and whether he remembers it, if he had parents or a family, whether he is trying to forget it or whether he has truly forgotten it.
All I want to tell is about Father and me but how I came out of it and how I put it together starts to become part of the story too.
That day after the mall in Boise I am afraid people will follow me, that those girls know I was there, so I catch the bus back and downtown I find a bank with an ATM on an outside wall. I take the card Father gave me and I close my eyes and remember the right numbers and where they are on Randy's body. I withdraw forty dollars and can see the balance of what Father left me which is plenty and surprising. But when I withdraw the money I see that the balance counts down and I'm thinking and thinking.