She slid the clipping back into her wallet and blew on her hands, rubbing the insides of her knees together. She reached up and yanked on the graduation tassel, trying to rip out some of the silky threads. They were firmly knotted, though, so she just slapped at it in frustration. She understood that McFadden wasn’t completely to blame for everyone’s problems; she wasn’t the only one who’d created this town-wide hallucination about the magical power of college. It was the moms and the dads and the grans, worn to a nub by years of warehouse and prison work, blinded by the shine coming off those glossy brochures and the heavy, manila-colored promise of the acceptance letter. The ice-cream cake was long gone by the time they got the next letter, the one about tuition, and by that time, no one could bear to turn back.
Ivy was sick of it, and she didn’t mind saying so. She’d said it just that morning in the guidance office. But McFadden just kept feeding her the same old line about how she did her best to help kids rise above their circumstances, but she couldn’t control what they chose to do with their opportunities.
“You mean the opportunity to pay back eighty grand while making nine bucks an hour?” Ivy’d laughed. And McFadden had muttered something about kids growing up without role models in the home. Which caused a pellet of rage to burst behind Ivy’s eyes. She’d had to grip the armrests of her chair to keep herself from leaping across the desk and clawing McFadden’s lips off her face.
Really, the only thing that kept her in her chair was the promise she’d made to Colin a few weeks ago, to stop getting into fights. He’d told her she was going to wind up on the wrong side of the prison bars one of these days, and even though Ivy wasn’t sure there was a right side to those bars, she didn’t want to give him the chance to say “I told you so.”
So she hadn’t jumped McFadden, but the minute McFadden walked out to make a copy of something, Ivy had found the counselor’s purse under her desk, plunged her hand inside, and grabbed the keys. And as she roared out of the parking lot and flew toward the Pennsylvania border, she’d been filled with a soaring, laugh-out-loud kind of joy that she never, ever got from punching somebody.
It was fully dark now. Ivy tried not to think about what might be lurking in the woods, watching her. She tried to keep her mind from imagining a cold hand slipping around her ankle, or a hook scraping across the roof of the car. Colin had always made fun of her for being afraid of the dark; he’d mocked her Little Mermaid night-light until Ivy finally ripped off the cover and just used the bare bulb. But on the nights when she couldn’t sleep—when a nightmare jolted her awake, or strange shadows moved across her window shade—Ivy knew she could climb into Colin’s bed, where her fears would be muffled by his deep, rumbling snores.
She could barely make out the guard booth a few feet away. It looked like something a little kid would draw: peaked roof, window, door. She wondered what it would be like to have that job—sitting on a stool in a tiny house for hours, ass aching, just dying for someone to drive up and ask a really interesting question. She imagined a young kid all excited about joining the Park Service, so proud of his cop-like uniform, his brass name tag, all ready to tromp around in the woods counting owls and whatnot, only to be shipped off to fuck-all Pennsylvania to sit in a four-foot-square little house handing out trail maps. “You have to pay your dues,” they’d tell him. “Put in your time, and eventually you’ll graduate to sitting at the front desk at the nature center.”
Ivy imagined the kid sitting in the booth, seething with disappointment. Then one too many tourists would ask him one too many questions about where to buy beer or where to go to the bathroom, and he’d just snap. He’d grab his Park Service–issued rifle and march into the woods and start shooting owls out of the trees… Blammo! Blammo! Blammo!
Ivy chuckled half-heartedly. She wondered if the little house was heated. She got out of the car and ran stiffly through the darkness, the cold air like a steel door slamming on her body. She got to the little house and tried the door. Locked, of course, but it was just a push-button lock. She ran back to the car and got her driver’s license, then returned and slid the card down the crack between the door and the jamb, angling it slightly, feeling for the click.
Inside, she flicked on a light switch and looked around. There was a padded stool, a ledge with a rack of maps and brochures, a small radio, and at the bottom of the wall, a miniature baseboard heater with a dial on it. Ivy set her license on the ledge, then twisted the dial on the heater and held her palms out, waiting to feel something. It didn’t take long. She knelt in front of the clicking, animating heater, her fingertips burning as blood bloomed inside them.
She got up on the stool and spun around a few times, her breath leaving trails in the still-chilly air. She pulled a map from the rack, idly perused the names of trails and lookouts: Pleasant View, Hopewell, Piney Point. So far, Pennsylvania seemed pretty ho-hum. Ivy was impatient to get further west, to see something worth writing home about, like the Rockies. The key was to do it all without getting caught. She wasn’t sure stealing a shitty old Buick would land her in the Pen or the Supermax, but one way or another, getting caught would lead to some sort of confinement. And if there was one thing Ivy absolutely could not risk, it was that.
Ivy flicked off the light and sat on the floor next to the heater with her back against the wall. She reached up and turned on the radio, which was tuned to an oldies station. She circled her knees with her arms, lowered her head. The DJ’s voice came on, low and soothing, and Ivy let her thoughts drift just out of reach, her forehead heavy on her knees, a well of breath and body heat warming her face.
At some point, she must have turned off the radio; at some point, she must have slid all the way down to the floor. She didn’t remember doing it, but that was the state of things when the door to the hut whooshed open, sending a gust of freezing air across her legs and onto her face. Ivy sat up fast, barely catching a glimpse of a man’s darkened face haloed in morning sunlight before the face withdrew and the door slammed shut again.
Ivy stood up, steadying herself against the ledge as her heart struggled to get blood to all the right places. She blinked out the window. There was an old man outside, not in a park ranger outfit, just green work pants and a tan canvas coat, backing slowly away from the booth. He met her eye through the window and stopped moving. Then he squinted and walked resolutely back to the hut, jerking open the door.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“Sorry.”
“How did you even… Is that your car?” Ivy shrugged. The man studied her, his face tired and uncertain. “You a runaway?” She shrugged again. “Well, where are you—”
Ivy darted forward, and the man, taken by surprise, moved back half a step. She pushed past him and ran to the car. The keys were still in the ignition. She backed out of the parking spot fast, making the man jump aside; then she clunked the car into Drive, sped toward the main road, and turned right.
Just around the bend, she pulled onto the right shoulder and swung around in the other direction, almost going into a ditch as she made the U-turn. She wasn’t sure if he was going to radio the cops, but she might as well head off in the opposite direction of where he thought she was going. There was no sign of him as she passed the park entrance. She drove a few miles, turned onto a dirt road, and bumped along for a while, her heart still motoring in her chest. It was early; the landscape was blurred with morning mist. She lowered the armrest and leaned on it, trying to calm down. She noticed her wallet sitting on the seat, open.
“Oh, Jesus.” Ivy picked up the wallet, slammed it back down. “God fucking damn it God fucking damn it motherfucker motherfucker!” She pounded the heel of her hand against the steering wheel harder and harder, screaming through gritted teeth. Her license. She’d had to use her fucking license. And she’d had to leave it on the ledge. Now it was only a matter of time before they connected her to McFadden and called Ma and put out an
APB for a skinny teenage runaway/car thief.
The dirt track met a two-lane paved road, and Ivy turned left. She had no idea if she was headed east or west at this point; she just needed to get the hell away from Gardner State Park and not go near any interstates or tollbooths. The two-lane road climbed to a long ridge where the trees became bent and scrawny, black heaps of coal rising behind them. Up here, the morning light flattened out, leaving the landscape indifferent and dull. Something on a nearby ridge was pumping out black smoke, and down below she could see clumps of small, dusty-looking houses, close together but closed up. The map she’d bought filled the whole front seat when it was open; how much sooty hopelessness did it contain? This place was no better than Good Hope.
The road finally hairpinned down off the ridge, making her ears pop, and rolled into a town that, according to the sign she passed, was called Forks. Ivy liked the sound of that: forks, knives, spoons. Pancakes, coffee with cream, hash browns, bacon. She had the money. She’d be able to think more clearly with some real food in her stomach. There was a diner on the right, the mostly empty parking lot wrapping around to the back where she could park out of sight. But as she slowed and got ready to turn, she saw a cop car parked at the side of the entrance. She kept going.
There was a strip mall with a dollar store and a liquor mart just beyond the diner. Ivy pulled in, her belly cramping hard. She’d be quick.
Afterward, sitting in the parking lot, she swigged from a two-liter orange soda bottle and moaned as sugar surged through her bloodstream. Mashed cookies were packed into her molars and the roof of her mouth. She knew in twenty minutes she’d turn all heavy-lidded and slow, but she figured fear would keep her heart on the job. She capped the bottle and backed quickly out of the lot.
It wasn’t until she was a mile outside of town that she looked in the mirror and saw the cop car, bulging hood and broad windshield staring her down, about a car length back. “Fuck,” Ivy muttered, taking another cookie from the package on the passenger seat. She became painfully aware of her driving, accelerating smoothly up every hill, braking carefully on every down slope, keeping her speed just a few ticks above the limit so as not to appear paranoid. The cop car matched her every move, even when she carefully eased onto a side road that wound up into a piney neighborhood of vacation rentals. “Fuck,” she muttered again, watching the mostly empty driveways go past. She could turn into one of them, pretend she’d reached her destination, and maybe the cop would just keep going. But what if he pulled in behind her? What if he asked to see her license?
The road was branching here and there, leading deeper into the development. Ivy picked a random street; the cop followed. She rounded a turn and cursed: a cul-de-sac. It was now or never. Park and be confronted, or act lost and prolong the game. She rounded the cul-de-sac, headed back out. Behind her, a blue light began to flash.
“Nooo…no no no,” Ivy wailed. She pretended not to see it for a few moments, continuing as before, but then the cop car chirped at her, loud and commanding. “No!” Ivy hollered. She wasn’t ready. She was just getting started. She clenched her teeth, stomped on the gas, and leaped down the hill out of the development, feeling something inside her start to spread its wings.
She fishtailed back onto the main road, the cop now whooping close behind, lights whirling. Ivy came up hard on the tail of a green pickup, then did something she never would have imagined doing before this moment. She pulled into the other lane and roared around the pickup, narrowly missing an oncoming station wagon. This bought her nothing, however, as the pickup swerved to the right to let the cop by, and in seconds, he was back on her tail. Now she came up on a black SUV. She whipped around it, and this time the cop came with her into the other lane, screaming past the black car. This is it, Ivy thought. This is how it’s going to end, like one of those dumb cop shows, crashing her car and bolting out of the driver’s seat, only to be tackled in someone’s backyard, her stupidity caught on video by the helicopter that should be appearing at any moment. Handcuffs, shackles, a toilet with no seat, and beatdowns in the yard.
Ivy pressed the accelerator as far down as it would go. The road had been pretty straight for the last few miles, but now it began bending and humping, making it hard to stay in her lane. She rounded a curve with a shriek, then swerved left to avoid another pickup that had suddenly appeared in front of her, practically at a standstill. Ivy’s head jerked back at the sight of what was lumbering toward her in the other lane: a cement truck, as tall and wide and fastened to the earth as a mountain. Ivy screamed again, jerked the steering wheel to the right without checking if she’d cleared the pickup, then winced at the sound of tires screaming back at her. In the rearview mirror, she could see the cement truck and pickup skidded sideways in the road, blocking her view of the cop car. She could still hear sirens, though, from many directions, getting louder. The cop was gone from her rearview, but there were more on their way, closing in fast.
Ivy slowed down and turned left into a modest housing development, then left again, trying not to go too fast so she wouldn’t attract attention, fear clawing at her insides. It was early; the neighborhood was quiet. Behind a row of one-story houses, beyond the carports and clotheslines and trampolines, she saw a muddy field edged by thick woods, and a gap in between that could be a dirt road or, just as easily, a ditch. She followed it with her eyes to a break in the trees. Might as well find out.
She yanked the wheel to the right, then stepped hard on the gas. The tires bounced energetically over the field’s caked furrows and grassy mounds, throwing Ivy up and down in her seat like a rubber ball on a wooden paddle. At the edge of the field, she found what was neither a road nor a path. It was something in between, but it looked like she would just fit. She eased the car down into it, then rolled hopefully toward the break in the woods where—yes—the track turned toward the trees. She felt the forest close around her like the softest, warmest blanket in the world. “Praise be,” she muttered, sounding like Gran.
The track turned out to be less of a road and more of an impression, picking its way through blank spots in the trees. Here and there, she could make out two ruts where someone’s tires had been, but mostly it was covered over with a thick layer of pine needles, dead leaves, and ferns. Eventually, she figured, the track would lead to a road, which would empty out into a state park or maybe a town far, far away from Forks.
After a while, the road became more clearly dug out of the side of a hill, climbing a little, tall weeds making a line up the middle. She came across a fallen branch that looked too big to drive over, so she got out to clear it away. Pausing by the warm hood, she thought she heard the sound of a highway in the distance, faintly constant and hopeful. She shoved the branch down the hill, then squinted and cursed under her breath. At the bottom of the slope, glinting sharp and clear among the bracken and sounding very much like a highway—but offering a lot fewer options for escape—was a creek.
“Ah, shit.” She got back in the car and started driving as fast as she dared. She rounded a bend and stopped abruptly. A tree was lying across the road, and it wasn’t the kind she could just push out of the way. She got out of the car and shoved the tree with her foot. Its trunk was almost three feet around, and its upper branches were braced against two pines, wedging it in place. She took hold of a branch stub and yanked uselessly in the direction of the ravine, then kicked it again.
The road at this point was just a narrow, flat interruption in the steep downward progress of the mountain. Turning around was not an option. Ivy walked back around the bend to see if there was any change in the situation behind her, but she would have to drive backward for a long time before finding a wide spot. She walked back to the tree and studied its roots, which fanned dramatically out of the slope just above the road. She thought about pushing the tree with the car, but the roots were so big she knew that even if she got the tree pushed parallel to the road, the roots would never clear it.
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Exhaustion began to creep across the edges of her mind. Ivy got back in the car, shivering, and clunked it into Reverse. The engine made an adenoidal whine as she started going backward. She strained to see the road over her shoulder, but the trees were throwing thick, disconcerting shadows across the way. When she came to the bend, her hand hesitated on the wheel, then yanked it to the left, but the car jerked toward the ravine, so Ivy pulled quickly in the other direction, which just made the car swerve into the hillside. She tried stopping, but her foot was confused by all the backwardness, and instead of stomping on the brake, it stomped on the accelerator at the same moment that Ivy overcorrected her turn. The back wheels bumped heavily over the edge of the road into the forest floor, and the car tipped like a seesaw, the soda bottle rolling under the passenger seat and Ivy’s stomach rolling along with it. She lunged against the brake pedal, putting all her weight on it, but the ground was soft and the angle was steep, and for a few long moments, the car seemed to be considering its options.
2
Mary Ellen sat on the edge of the hotel bed, fully dressed and ready to go, watching her daughters sleep in the bed next to hers. Shelby was on her stomach, one arm hanging over the edge, her pillow pushing her slack mouth into a lopsided grimace. Sydney was on her back, her mouth also open, breaths struggling wetly past her unusually large tonsils. Mary Ellen was enjoying the chance to watch them like this, unguarded and uncomposed, elbows and knees going every which way, long blond hair hiking itself out of their ponytail holders. A rare chance to get a good look at them without being met with an affronted What.
The Runaways Page 2