Night Shield

by Nora Roberts

  above her waist, pants that rode below it. She bought thongs. And she rode that tsunami to shoes with silver heels that she’d have to practice walking in.

  And she laughed, like any ordinary girl shopping with a friend at the mall.

  She bought a digital camera, then watched Julie make up her face in the bathroom. She took Julie’s picture, and several backups, against the pale gray of the stall door.

  “That’s going to work?”

  “Yes, I can make it work. How old should you be? I think it’s best if we stay as close as possible to the legal age. I can use everything from your valid driver’s license and just change the year.”

  “Have you done this before?”

  “I’ve experimented. I’ve read and studied identity fraud, cyber crimes. It’s interesting. I’d like to …”

  “Like to what?”

  “I’d like to study computer crimes and prevention, investigation more seriously. I’d like to join the FBI.”

  “No bull? Like Dana Scully.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “X-Files, Liz. Don’t you watch TV?”

  “My viewing of popular and commercial television is limited to an hour a week.”

  Julie rolled her big, chocolate brown eyes. “What are you, six? Jesus Christ.”

  “My mother has very definite opinions.”

  “You’re in college, for God’s sake. Watch what you want. Anyway, I’ll come to your place tomorrow night. Say nine? We’ll take a cab from there. But I want you to call me when you finish the ID, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I tell you what, breaking up with Darryl was the best thing I ever did. Otherwise, I’d’ve missed all this. We’re going to party, Liz.” Laughing, Julie did a quick hip-swiveling dance right there in the ladies’ room. “Big time. I’ve gotta go. Nine o’clock. Don’t let me down.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Flushed from the day, Elizabeth hauled all the bags to her car. She knew what girls in the mall talked about now.

  Boys. Doing it. Julie and Darryl had done it. Clothes. Music. She had a mental list of artists she needed to research. Television and movie actors. Other girls. What other girls wore. Who other girls had done it with. And back to boys.

  She understood the discussions and topics were a societal and generational trope. But it was one she’d been shut out of until today.

  And she thought Julie liked her, at least a little. Maybe they’d start to hang out. Maybe she’d hang out with Julie’s friend Tiffany, too—who’d done it with Mike Dauber when he’d come home on spring break.

  Elizabeth knew Mike Dauber, or she’d had a class with him. And he’d passed her a note once. Or he’d passed her a note to pass to someone else, but that was something. It was contact.

  At home, she laid all the bags on her bed.

  She’d put everything away in plain sight this time. And she’d remove everything she didn’t like—which was nearly all she owned—box it up for charity. And she’d watch The X-Files if she wanted to, and listen to Christina Aguilera and *NSYNC and Destiny’s Child.

  And she’d change her major.

  The thought of it had her heart spearing up to her throat. She’d study what she wanted to study. And when she had her degrees in criminology, in computer science, she’d apply to the FBI.

  Everything changed. Today.

  Determined, she dug out the hair dye. In the bathroom she arranged everything, performed the recommended spot test. While she waited, she cleaned up the shorn hair, then purged her closet, her dresser, neatly hung or folded her new clothes.

  Hungry, she went down to the kitchen, heated one of the pre-labeled meals and ate while studying an article on her laptop about falsifying ID.

  After she’d done the dishes, she went back up. With a mix of trepidation and excitement she followed the directions for the hair color, set the timer. While it set, she arranged everything she needed for the identification. She opened the Britney Spears CD Julie had recommended, slid it into her laptop’s CD player.

  She turned up the volume so she could hear as she got in the shower to wash the color out of her hair.

  It ran so black!

  She rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, finally bracing her hands on the shower wall as her stomach began to churn in anticipation and not a little dread. When the water ran clear, she toweled off, wrapped a second towel around her hair.

  Women had altered their hair color for centuries, Elizabeth reminded herself. Using berries, herbs, roots. It was a … rite of passage, she decided.

  It was a personal choice.

  In her robe, she faced the mirror.

  “My choice,” she said, and pulled the towel off her hair.

  She stared at the girl with pale skin and wide green eyes, the girl with short, spiky raven black hair that framed her narrow, sharp-boned face. Lifting a hand, she scratched her fingers through it, feeling the texture, watching it move.

  Then she stood, and she smiled.

  “Hi. I’m Liz.”