A/N: Set now towards end of July, which as I understand it is mid-summer in America. Still not endorsing what Alison does, but I do think it's probably at least a bit in character for her.
Chapter 7
Alison has been Claire-Clara for around nine weeks when she meets Rose. They're in a coffee shop – Alison permits herself the one indulgence on a weekly basis, thinks bitterly of a cup of coffee being life goals when she used to think on a much bigger scale – and the barista has just called the drink they both ordered.
Alison is quicker to reach the counter, taller blonde hot on her heels.
"That's my drink, thanks," and already she's extending a hand out for the cup. Alison curls her fingers around it, weaves her middle finger through the tiny handle.
"Actually I was here first, and it is my order," she snips back. They glare at each other, looking for all the world like they're ready to start really arguing over a cup of coffee.
Rose backs down first, but Alison can see the spark of respect in her eyes. Like recognizes like, after all. Triumphant, Alison takes her drink to the table and scans the room. Most tables are full, and the barista calls out the matching order to hers. Just for the fun of it, she starts counting down, waging a quick bet with herself that her table is the only one with a free seat.
Besides, this could be entertaining.
She reaches three and a half when the girl flumps into the seat, not asking if she can be there. She acts like she owns the place and stirs in another sugar.
(two mean girls in a coffee shop place the same order. it sounds like the start to a bad joke)
0o0o0o0
They drink in silence. Rose likes running too, she can see it in the blonde's eyes.
Maybe it's time she had a running companion.
She readies herself to go back to the campus and find something else for dinner. One of the things she learned recently is that she can persuade someone to buy her a dinner in the dining halls, someone with way too much money and also too much guilt over how Mom and Dad are bankrolling them even at twenty-one. All it takes is a wallet empty of cash and card, and there's usually someone behind her impatient enough to pay for her meal so she stops holding up the line.
She likes this strategy.
It's a good summer evening. There's music playing around campus, not loud enough to overwhelm, and the light is dropping in the sky. At least two different groups of people have barbecues set up and she snags a can of soda, a hot dog as she walks.
For a minute she does feel like the twenty-year-old student she's pretending to be.
0o0o0o0
Their paths cross a lot after that first meeting. Alison's in a supermarket, buying a bag of apples and bananas when Rose appears, snags a hand of bananas and runs off; they're in the same line at the understaffed bookstore and Alison is making a mental note to apply here, because from the looks of it they seriously need more people; they're sharing a conspiratorial eye-roll in the elevator at how slow it works.
It's both reassuring and terrifying.
One afternoon she's in the dining hall topping up her soda and Rose slides into the seat opposite. "I keep seeing you all over the place, so what's your story?"
Alison blots the table where her drink has fizzed over and smiles at her, the best smile in her arsenal. It's the one that convinces people to buy her drinks and food and tickets somewhere, and Rose seems immune. "Just, traveling. Gap year kind of deal," she decides on saying.
"Same. Travel's good. Broadens the horizons and all that," and her smile is that of someone who is parroting things she has heard a dozen times over. Alison doesn't buy it, but she reads in the girl's eyes that she doesn't buy the gap year story.
(neither of them cares enough to argue)
Alison introduces herself as Claire and finishes the lunch, suggests a wander to the nearby movie theatre. It's like looking in a mirror, looking at this traveling blonde girl who looks close to her fake age. It unnerves her, she'd far rather be in a dark room with the girl beside her than opposite.
There's less looking that way.
In the dark of the theatre her eyes glaze over and she tunes out the dialogue. It's an action movie, not her favourite kind, but she grabs M&M's from the bag lying between them and drinks enough cola that she's sure sleep will be delayed tonight.
On-screen there are explosions and she's sure she can already predict the rest of the movie. It's a formulaic one, but Rose had picked it and Alison likes to think that if someone is offering to pay her way, she shouldn't argue. She leans back and mentally totals the amount of money Rose spent on this one outing: movie tickets for two adults, armload of snacks, fresh drinks….
Her mind circles around and around a time or two.
By the end of the movie she's got a plan in mind.
0o0o0o0
They leave the theatre and there's the awkward sense of what happens now that hangs over them. It wasn't a date in any sense of the word, but she reaches forward awkwardly to take the other girl's hand. Stops her hand mid-movement.
Rose seems to read her mind and reaches up, links their fingers loosely before dropping her hand. "We should do this again," she says, and Alison is happy that she's made the first move. She doesn't know why, but that analysis can wait for another hour.
They go their separate ways and she lets herself into her shabby motel room, mentally picking Rose apart. She visualizes the clothes the girl was wearing and pictures the wallet, all sleek leather and fresh-looking embroidery of details.
Somewhere she knows it's a bit not good to date someone just so she can pickpocket them, but she doesn't mind doing it anyway.
Her face burns as she surveys the tiny room and bathroom she lives in, two blouses on coat hangers hanging over the open window and floors looking like they were clean once, five years ago. There's no way she'll bring someone back here.
(this is what passes for pride nowadays)
0o0o0o0
Rose has her own apartment. It's big, for an apartment. At least, that's what Alison thinks – all she's known is houses and motel rooms. It's on the tip of her tongue to express just this, but she stays silent, comments instead on a piece of framed art over the couch.
They curl up on the couch and marathon Netflix, and she gets caught up on at least two different series she's been missing since she died. It feels like having a friend.
She sits and basks in being able to flick on air conditioning instead of bunching up into a ball in front of a small fan that only covers two square feet. After functional motels for so long, summer in a comfortable, fully-furnished apartment is luxury. They alternate between junk foods and so many episodes of TV that Alison feels like her eyes are crossing.
Rose is an absent-minded hostess. She hops off the couch, flits into the kitchen to make drinks, and Alison forces down the ball of guilt when she says she's twenty-two, because Rose is actually twenty-five. Reminds herself that when she was sixteen she snuck into a bar five years before she legally could to meet a guy who was definitely over twenty.
She takes the drink and prods the ice maker in the freezer, drags a cube of ice over her face and collarbone.
They spend the weekend like this, absent-mindedly watching TV and meeting basic food needs. Rose digs out her wallet and tosses it to Alison so she can pay for the pizza while she showers. It's kind of incredible to Alison that she just trusts someone – more or less a total stranger – with her wallet. She unclips it and sets out a twenty, rifles through. It's thick with twenties and fifties, and three credit cards.
The pizza arrives and she gives him the whole twenty, tells him to keep the change. It's certainly easier to spend someone else's money.
They eat, and the pizza is the best she's had in months.
0o0o0o0
Alison learns that Rose is the kind of girl who falls fast. Three weeks after they meet, she wants to think of Alison as her girlfriend. It makes her happy, Alison can see this in the way her face brightens and her eyes soften.
She feels a little sorry for Rose, who is besotted with Claire. Claire, who doesn't exist, and only does cheap or free dates, while Rose doles out cash like she's trying to burn through it all. They sit in good restaurants – proper ones, with linen tablecloths and silverware, and Rose always pays. Sometimes, Alison makes token efforts to pay, but Rose always puts her fingers over her hand before she can reach her wallet.
Alison learns to stay her hand when there's a bill coming, and moves a toothbrush into Rose's apartment.
She agrees to the girlfriend label, and they carry on.
0o0o0o0
The drama course ends when August does. There's no real end date, just that it's on the last business day of the month that they sit in a circle and talk about what they've accomplished.
Alison is already making plans to skip out.
She promises herself that on that Wednesday she will be on a bus or train to anywhere but here.
0o0o0o0
Rose is proud to call Alison her girlfriend. Alison hears it in the way she meets the girl's friends, is introduced as my girlfriend Claire. She does her best to be mentally present every time, respond right to "her" name and charm everyone she meets.
This is a well-to-do crowd, she recognizes. She feels small and shabby beside them, feels young. Six years is not a long time, but she feels every one of those years she doesn't have when they're all talking about extended holidays overseas and graduations and serious jobs. One is in training to be a doctor; another is in law school. They all meld together as people she might have been like in a decade.
They all meld together as people who are living their fabulous lives on Mom and Dad's dime.
0o0o0o0
Alison doesn't mind the girlfriend title. It suggests attachment, some level of domesticity, and maybe a form of protection: anyone looking for wouldn't expect her to be cozied up on the couch with someone watching Netflix.
It makes for a good disguise.
Rose continues buying takeout and delivered meals, tosses her wallet to Alison to pay while she wanders off to wash up for dinner or brush her hair or any of a dozen other things. If she goes into the bathroom or bedroom, Alison can rely on her being there for a good few minutes while Alison chats with the delivery guy.
(they're almost inevitably guys, boys somewhere around her real and fake ages, and she flirts with every one of them)
The door shuts, leaving her with a wallet of cash and a bag of food. She draws a ten from the thick stack, shoves it into her jeans pocket, and noisily pulls plates from the cupboard.
The wallet goes back in the bowl by the front door, and if Rose ever notices she's down a few dollars, she doesn't notice.
Alison forms her plan better.
0o0o0o0
Her girlfriend gives out money like it's going out of fashion, and Alison is running steady with her cash reserve. After the long-term rental for the motel is paid, and her pay checks come in, she just about breaks even.
One day she counts out what she does have in cash, and compares it to all the notes in Rose's wallet. That one wallet contains hundreds more than she has in thirty-one hidey places around her motel room, and she debates asking for money.
It's not like she'll be here much longer.
0o0o0o0
She decides against asking for the money and just skimming a small note every time she thinks it's safe to do so. One morning she leans against the wall of an ATM as Rose withdraws enough cash to last a month in a very cheap motel and cover generic groceries, and thinks about how much she can get away with taking.
She likes to take the denomination that there's most of. If that means a quick five, so be it.
Sometime she wonders if it's a trust thing, if Rose is trusting her to not go stealing from her. Alison's never been stupid though, she's been playing dead for almost a year now and she knows how to do things subtly. Knows that if someone has fifteen of any particular note in their wallet, then they're probably not keeping a log of every time one goes out.
(this, she knows from experience)
So August passes and she carries on skimming notes from the wallets around her. It's not just Rose, but anyone who passes her a thick wallet. She teaches herself to gauge at a glance how many notes are there and doesn't settle for coins.
She does it with a light hand and learns a sense of how much time has passed, how to read a situation so that she can tell if it looks natural for her to remove money. A lot of the time, it does.
Her hidey places are not exactly filling up, but one night she invents a birthday call to her aunt that needs to be made and spends the evening in her motel room, going through everything she's got. It's mid-August and she already has more than she needs.
Sitting back on her haunches, she considers just skipping town already.
0o0o0o0
In the end she decides to make the most of the month. Nearly three months is the longest she's been in any place, but summer is ending soon and she doesn't want to stick around for awkward classes as a girl who doesn't exist in any definition of the word.
Doesn't want to stick around for more domestics.
She loves the running, after all.
0o0o0o0
It's the end of August and she's got her bags all packed up. The motel rental runs out soon, but she's been assured of a refund of what she doesn't use. The cash is light in her hand and she heads out into the bright day.
Leaving in daylight is a new thing that she's testing out to see if she likes it. Normally she leaves under the cover of night, under shadows and streetlights, but this time she's trying sunlight.
Someone's calling for Claire, and she sits up at the bus stop, condensation dripping off the water bottle and into her jeans. Maybe they mean someone else – but no, Rose is hurrying toward her, eyes bright.
She curses herself for not waiting for night, it would have been so much easier to ghost at night, but she tells Rose a half-hearted apology and brushes her thumb over her wrist. Rose has an expression on her face, one she can't quite decipher. There's hope and disappointment and something wary. It's a lot, and Alison does better with single emotions.
"It's not actually my apartment," Rose says out of nowhere. Alison just looks back at her, raises an eyebrow and Rose seems to feel the need to fill in the silence. "I was house sitting, but the owners are coming back soon anyway. I'll have to find something else to do."
The implication is clear. Alison lets her mind tick over, exploring the idea. She won't be alone. Anyone looking for her would be looking for her alone. Her pace is quick, when she's just hopping from one place to another. "A" wouldn't expect her to be with someone.
Rose sits quietly, shoulder bag on her lap as she waits. Alison makes a snap decision that bringing someone with her can only be a good thing.
0o0o0o0
They run back to the apartment and Rose grabs her gym bag, a small suitcase. They rush through the rooms, gathering up all the things that actually belong to Rose, and pocket tiny things that won't be missed: a bar of good soap, a cheap bottle of wine (the owners have an actual vault of wine somewhere, Rose tells her), some trashy magazines for long bus trips, and a couple of other disposables.
Alison sits on the suitcase and prepares the argument for why Rose needs to dispose of half her things. She'll get into it later.
0o0o0o0
They lock up the building and leave the key with the doorman. With their stack of luggage all crammed together they look a bit odd, inconspicuous. It's not at all suited to Alison, but she has learned how to be patient.
At the bus stop Rose leans her head on Alison's shoulder, jeans-clad legs sprawled out before her, and twines their fingers together. They got here too early for the last bus, so they people-watch and wait. Alison talks about how she doesn't ever stay in one place too long, prefers running far and fast to idling.
Rose likes the sound of this. She's never done it before.
The bus wheezes into the station, and they do an awkward shuffle to get all of their luggage on.
Alison falls asleep on the bus to the feeling of someone's fingers scratching through her hair, and it's the most comfortable she's felt in months.