headcanon:    missing!    alison  dilaurentis.     would  be  16  now

the first year alison is missing, she dyes her hair every time she stops lingering in a town. she shoplifts cheap dye from cvs at first, not because she can’t afford it but because she doesn’t want receipts to prove she was there, and she watches the color change in the bathroom mirror of whatever motel she’s staying in. she picks the dullest colors she can in an attempt to go unnoticed.

by the second year, she’s an expert. she works odd jobs and stays in rotting motel sixes and chews her nails to keep herself unrecognizable. she doesn’t know if a is still after her but she’s stopped believing she’ll ever go home. she keeps a picture from a sleepover in her wallet anyways. 

she’s got shana now. she’d been in georgia, hair dyed a convincing enough shade of red even with blonde roots showing and hiding behind sunglasses, hoping she looks different enough now that childhood friends won’t recognize her. shana had been working in a starbucks, a disgruntled barista, and alison’s heart had stopped when she saw her and stopped twice when she saw that shana knew. she hadn’t wanted to talk but all shana wanted to do was help her. it was the first time in a long time ali believed someone wanted to help her.

and then aria moves back to rosewood and ali doesn’t mean to but she’s so scared for her girls that she has to start keeping tabs on them. she starts calling mona from payphones at gas stations for updates until she isn’t sure she can trust mona anymore (or is it her brother, lashing out at her the only way he can now? ezra, obsessed with her even more in death? melissa, a sister scorned and full of that hastings rage?). it’s only once hanna gets hit by a car that she knows and she’s so angry she let this happen that she’s in the car driving before she even registers the consequences of what she’s about to do.