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again, then I will fall apart too. I’m not without feelings. I just do my best to hold them inside because that’s the only way anyone can get through the really hard stuff. My mother told me that.
    I remove paper towels by the fistful from the dispenser next to the sink and lay them on the floor. I’m not trying to make a bed, not in the true sense. I’m thinking like a hamster or gerbil and just trying to get some insulation between me, Hayden, and the hard, cold tile floor that will surely suck any of the warmth our bodies can generate in the short night in the bathroom. With the engines turned off, the boat becomes surreal in its silence. I never knew a quiet as loud as the roaring of the engines. Hayden snuggles next to me and I cradle him like a baby.
    “I’m scared, Rylee,” he finally says.
    “We’ll be fine,” I say for the umpteenth time.
    “I know,” he says, in a way that almost suggests that he really does have faith in me.
    I put my fingers to my lips and Hayden closes his eyes. I wait. Keeping your emotions inside is a bit like holding your breath. You can only do it so long or you will pass out. Or worse, if you don’t suck in any air, you will die. I feel his breathing slow. I feel the weight of his body increase as he falls into much-needed sleep. Then, and only then, one tear manages to crawl out from the corner of my eye and I just let it roll, then another. My face is hot and wet, but I do not move my body. I do not wake my brother in the middle of my moment of weakness. Mom told me that she learned to control her feelings. She said that she knew that emotions only made the punishment greater. Her reactions, she said, made the man who held her captive, who hunted her, dig into her misery and revel in it. Don’t get me wrong, Hayden isn’t like that monster. Not at all. He is good. He is my brother. He needs me to be strong because I’m all that he’s got.
    Hayden is asleep and I gently lift him away, deeper into the nest of paper towels. I get up and look in the mirror. My hair is the longest it’s been in years. I realize I love it even in its current nondescript brown. I can twist it into a luxurious ponytail. I can French-braid it. I know that I should not even be thinking about my hair, but suddenly I feel really attached to it. My mother is missing. My father is dead. My brother and I are alone. I turn in the dim light of the ferry bathroom and hold up my hair with one hand. I reach for the crappy scissors and start cutting. Locks fall like autumn leaves over the dingy countertop and into the bottom of the pitted white sink. I cut and I cut. Tears roll down my cheeks but I don’t make a sound. I have lived a life in which I’ve had nothing of my own. No family pets. No birthday parties with relatives. No true friends. Nothing to brag about. Nothing to tell the world that I am here, that I am an individual. Now even my hair must go. I cannot look like the girl that lived on Salmonberry. Hayden is a little boy. Little boys blend in. A girl never does. A girl’s hair, even in its nondescript brown, can be memorable.
    “ She sucked a strand of her hair, ugh! ”
    “ She had soft, loopy curls. ”
    “ Her cut was terrible. ”
    “ Her bangs swallowed her eyes. ”
    I can no longer look like the me of Salmonberry Avenue, the me of South Kitsap High School. Even though I’m not pretty like Mom, I am young. A girl. Mom always said that a teenage girl is remembered by other girls, other boys, all men. I guess this is flattering but it’s also creepy.
    Mothers look at girls too, and they see a younger version of themselves.
    I open a box of dye and apply it with the thin plastic gloves that come in the box. I smell the chemicals as my hair eclipses from brown to blond. I rinse in the sink, the acrid odor wafting through the still air of the bathroom. I use the paper towels to wring out the water and then, in what I think is a brilliant move, I turn on the hand dryer and rotate my