Only, Colt didn’t seem disgusted or amused at all. He ran a hand through my long hair, his fingers grazing my neck and shoulder. His hand slid down my arm, then to my stomach, my hip. And even though he didn’t say a word, I realized that maybe Colt didn’t see me the way I saw me. I gave him a nervous smile before he leaned back down to kiss me again.
The longer we kissed, the more aware I was that we should stop, and the less I wanted to.
I’d never been totally sure about waiting for marriage, but Colt wasn’t even my boyfriend. He was leaving in a couple days, and who knew when or if I’d see him again. It was gonna be hard enough saying good-bye when all I had was a crush, but now …
He pulled away again, breathing hard. “Agnes …”
I didn’t let him finish. I grabbed for him, yanked him back down to me. Because every second we weren’t touching felt like agony.
He laughed. “Okay … But … You sure this isn’t too fast?”
“I’m sure. I want this.”
Truth be told, it probably was too fast. All the firsts weren’t supposed to come at once. But I’d spent my whole life standing still. And I didn’t want to be still anymore. Because as much as I knew doing this and then letting Colt leave would hurt, I was sure the regret of doing nothing would be worse.
Sleeping with a boy who wasn’t my boyfriend, who’d be gone by the end of the week—it sure hadn’t been part of my plan. But, then again, neither had becoming friends with Bo. And regardless of our fight tonight, I didn’t regret that for a minute.
So I decided to do what Colt had said—I was going after what I wanted for once.
And, tonight, I was all right with moving too fast.
“Of course this piece of trash ain’t got a spare. Damn it.” I slam my fist into the side of the car. My knuckles ache a little, but I don’t give a shit. The little dent I left in the door is worth it.
“So … what now?”
Agnes is standing on the side of the road—if you can even call it that. Our bags are by her feet, and she’s holding Utah’s leash. The dog’s just sniffing around. She ain’t got a clue anything’s wrong.
I reach into the car and pull out the book of maps Colt gave us. I open up the map of Kentucky, the one I drew our route on, hoping I might be able to figure out where we’re at. I run my finger along the line, tracing our trip, guessing where the gas station was. But I made so many fast turns after that, trying to get out of town, that I ain’t even sure what direction we’d gone.
I keep looking, keep trying, but the tiny lines all start blurring together.
“Fuck,” I say, throwing the book to the ground and giving it a good stomp with my right foot. And another.
“Bo?” Agnes’s voice is trembling.
I freeze, shame creeping up into my chest. Yelling, punching cars, tearing up books—my Dickinson is showing, and it ain’t pretty. I take a deep breath and step away from the trampled maps. Then I run my hands through my hair. I keep forgetting how short it is now, and when I remember, it makes me wanna cry.
“Bo?” she says again.
“This road ain’t on the map,” I say. “I got no clue where we are or where to go.”
“Oh … So … What do we do?”
“Only thing we can do.” I take a deep breath and swallow back the tears before turning toward her. “We gotta walk.”
“Walk where?”
I pick up our bags and sling them over my shoulder. It’s lucky we don’t got much. The bags are real light, which makes hauling them around a hell of a lot easier. “We just keep following the path. It’ll lead to a town eventually.”
“Yeah, but … how long is eventually?”
“You got a better idea?” I snap.
Agnes’s eyes go wide, and I hate myself for being short with her. But the truth is, I ain’t sure how long we’ll have to walk. And we’re deep enough in the mountains that the sun’ll disappear come midafternoon. If we’re too far out, it could take several hours to get back on a main road. And there ain’t no lights out here. She can’t see, and the ground’s uneven with several steep slopes and ditches. Not sure how much help me or that cane is gonna be then.
“Fine,” Agnes says. She’s gone a little cold, and it makes me feel even worse. “Let’s get going, then.”
She starts walking without me, and I hurry to catch up with her. “Here,” I say, taking Utah’s leash from her left hand. “I’ll take the dog. Hold on to my arm, all right? The ground is pretty rough around here.”
She takes my elbow, and we start walking. We don’t say nothing for a long, long time. And I know I oughta apologize. For yelling at her. For getting us lost. For bringing her along to begin with. I oughta tell her I’m sorry.
I oughta tell her a lot of things.
Instead, though, neither of us talks for almost an hour. I reckon we’re both too overwhelmed to say much.
Agnes is the first to break the silence, though.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she says.
We’re still walking, still on a dirt road where nobody seems to live. We’ve passed a couple trailers in the few miles we’ve gone, but they looked old and abandoned, grass grown up nearly as high as the broken windows.
My feet ache—these flip-flops ain’t meant for hiking through mountains—and my stomach’s started growling.
“How you figure?” I ask.
“You were right before,” Agnes says. “We’ll hit a town eventually. Maybe we can get a motel room. Just because the guy at the gas station recognized us doesn’t mean everybody will. Could’ve just been a fluke.”
“Then what?” I ask. I don’t even bother pointing out that that guy probably called the cops, who are probably out looking for us now. “We ain’t got a car. And I don’t got a clue how to lead anybody back to the Reliant, even if we did find a spare tire we could afford.”
“Well … Then maybe wherever we end up is the city we’re meant to stay in,” she says. “We can find a place and—”
“We can’t.”
“Yes, we can. It’ll be tough, but maybe we don’t need your daddy’s money,” she insists. “You can get a job at a store or something. I can … I’m not sure what I can do, but I’ll find something. We’ll figure it out.”
My stomach starts aching again, and it ain’t got nothing to do with hunger. “Agnes …”
“If we really have to, we can call your daddy. Maybe he’ll come to us.”
“Agnes—”
“Even if the place is real bad, it’s all right. We’ll save up. Then we can find a better place. With a yard and—”
“It ain’t gonna happen, Agnes!” It comes out a scream, echoes through the holler. “We ain’t getting an apartment or jobs or a yard. It ain’t gonna happen! It was never gonna happen!”
She drops my arm, backs up like I’ve burned her. “What are you talking about?”
“I ain’t looking for my daddy so we can get money, Agnes! I’m looking for him so I can live with him.”
Agnes stares at me, her mouth open just a little. The truth gets shouted back at us from a dozen directions. All the phantom voices have faded, though, before she says a word. Just one word.
“What?”
I’m shaking all over. My hands. My legs. And I think I might throw up again. Utah can tell something’s wrong, too. She rubs her face against my leg, trying to comfort me. But it’s no good.
I never meant to tell Agnes this way. Never meant to scream it at her on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. But now the words are out, and I can’t bring them back.
“I wanna live with him.” I say it quiet enough so the eavesdropping mountains can’t repeat the words. “That’s why I wanna find him. Not for money, but because I wanna see if he’ll let me move in.”
“You … But I thought … You said—”
“I know,” I say. “I lied, Agnes. I … I’m sorry.”
Everything goes still. Everything but my trembling hands and feet, at least. No birds fly over.
Utah don’t move, don’t even sniff at the ground. Even the crickets have gone quiet, just for a second.
Then, slowly, Agnes turns. She holds her cane out in front of her, sweeping it along the dirt road as she starts moving in the direction we been headed for the past hour.
“Agnes?”
“It’ll be dark in a few hours.” Her voice is like a bucket of ice water being dumped over my head. “We better keep walking.”
Colt drove me to Bo’s house the next morning, and it was probably the most awkward five-minute drive of my whole life.
Last night, we’d fallen asleep, squeezed in his tiny bed, and it felt safe and easy. But something about daylight had shifted things. We hadn’t said much to each other since we woke up, and I could barely look at him without feeling embarrassed.
Not that I regretted what had happened—I didn’t. At all.
Just thinking about the night before gave me butterflies. Colt had been so patient and sweet and slow. And even when it was weird or uncomfortable, we’d mostly laughed through it. It was fun, and we’d been safe; Colt had used a condom. I had nothing to regret, honestly.
But still. When morning comes, what do you say to the boy you shared your first kiss with, then slept with an hour later? Especially when that boy is leaving town the next day? I had no idea.
And Colt wasn’t making things easier. I couldn’t see faces real well, but I’d gotten pretty good at reading the energy in the room. And Colt’s energy was uncomfortable. I might not have regretted last night, but maybe he did. Maybe he was wishing he hadn’t slept with some stupid high school girl. Did he think I wanted him to be my boyfriend now?
Did I want him to be my boyfriend now?
The truck came to a stop as we pulled up in front of Bo’s trailer. We both just sat there for a minute, the engine idling.
“So …” Colt said.
“So … You’re leaving tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. I’m … sorry.”
“For what? Leaving?”
“I guess.”
I let out a breath.
“Or, I dunno,” Colt said.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
Another long pause.
I swallowed. “So, I guess this is good-bye, then.”
“Yeah. Reckon it is.”
I finally got the nerve to look at him, and he was looking right back at me. And I started wondering how I was supposed to get out of this truck. Was I supposed to kiss him good-bye? Or just wave? Waving seemed kinda weird. But maybe kissing him did, too.
After neither of us moved for a second, I cleared my throat. “Um, I should …”
“Yeah. All right.”
I reached for the handle and opened the door. But before I’d unfolded my cane, Colt said, “Agnes?” And I turned back again.
He learned forward and kissed me. On the cheek, not the mouth. Which was even more confusing, really. “I hope y’all work it out,” he said.
“Thanks. Me too.” I slid out of the truck and looked back up one last time before shutting the door. “See you, Colt.”
I stood in the yard and watched the truck drive away. Then I took a deep breath and tried to get myself together. I was here to see Bo. I should be thinking about her, not what I’d done with her cousin.
I tugged my coat a little tighter and turned around, heading for the front door. Just like last time, Utah started barking the minute I knocked. And a second later, the front door swung open.
“Agnes? What’re you doing here?” She didn’t sound angry, just surprised. Like she didn’t think I’d show up. Like she didn’t expect me to come and apologize.
“Colt dropped me off,” I told her. And I hoped saying his name didn’t make me blush. “I’m sorry. I know it’s early. I just … Bo, I shouldn’t have said that last night. The truth is, everything you were saying—all those adventures you had planned—those all sound great. Better than great. And I want to go on all of them with you. But I knew there was no way, so I got mad. And I’m real sorry.”
Bo sighed. “Well, it ain’t like anything you said was a lie.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Yeah … Me too,” she said. “I shouldn’t have kept pushing.”
“You know if I could go, I would.”
“Yeah … Guess I just don’t know what it’s like to have parents like yours.”
“Ones that smother you half to death?”
“Ones that care.”
“Care too much.” There was a long pause where Bo didn’t reply, so finally I asked, “Do you wanna come back to my house? It’s freezing out here, and Mama always makes a big dinner on New Year’s Day.”
“Uh, sure. I guess. But don’t your folks think you’re with Christy?”
“I called and asked Gracie to pick me up at the church. My folks think Christy’s volunteering there again today. I’ll just tell them you walked by and I invited you over.”
Bo laughed. “You’re getting awful good at the lying.”
She said it like it was a compliment, but I wasn’t so sure if lying was something I wanted to get good at.
Utah followed us to the church. There was snow on the ground, the sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled just yet, and it crunched beneath my boots. Next to me, I could hear Bo’s teeth chattering, and I wondered how many years she’d gone without a real winter coat or boots. But I didn’t think that was the sort of thing I ought to be asking right then, so instead, we both stayed quiet.
We were standing on the front steps, waiting for my sister, when Bo said, so quiet I almost didn’t hear, “Thank you for coming today.”
“Of course. Did you think I’d just say something like that and never come apologize?”
She didn’t answer, and I realized that’s exactly what she thought. That we’d fight and never talk again. That I’d leave her, like so many others had before me.
“You’re the most important person in my life, Bo Dickinson,” I said. “I don’t know if I could make it without you. So no matter what we fight about, I’ll still be around.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder just as a fresh flurry of snowflakes began to fall. “I got a better idea,” she said. “Let’s promise to never fight again.”
“All right. I think I like that plan. So last night was the first and the last fight you and me will ever have.”
“Promise?” she asked.
“I promise.”
Agnes ain’t talking to me.
We’ve been walking for hours, and it’s dark now. Real dark. There ain’t no streetlights on this dirt road, and the mountains block out about half the stars. Even I can hardly see, but she still won’t hold on to my arm. Insists she’s better off just using the cane.
And maybe she is, I think, stumbling over a rough patch of ground.
The silence and the darkness and the hunger are starting to drive me crazy, though. And every time Utah, who’s gotta be starving, whines up at me, I feel like the guilt might eat me alive. I can’t control the dark or the food, but maybe I can get Agnes to talk to me if I try hard enough.
“Seems like I might need one of them canes,” I say.
She stays quiet.
Utah pulls on her leash, lunging after something I can’t see. Maybe a rabbit or maybe just a cricket. She likes to chase both. But I pull her back. “This damn dog,” I say to Agnes. “Walking this long, and she ain’t tired at all. Still trying to chase anything she sees.”
Nothing.
I don’t think I’ve ever been cold-shouldered before. When Dickinsons are mad, you can’t get us to stop yelling. But I think the quiet is worse.
A few minutes later, I give it another shot.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I say, hoping maybe our old game will get her talking to me.
But all she does is sigh.
“All right … I guess I’ll go first,” I say. “So, when we were kids, Colt nearly drowned me. We’d gone down to the river by ourselves to sw
im. He was twelve and I was ten. And he dared me to jump off that big wall—you know, the one by the Thomases’ bait shop?”
She don’t answer. Don’t even look at me. Just keeps walking.
“Well, he dared me to jump. He went first, and he was fine. So I did. And I went under the water, but when I tried to come back up, I had a hard time. Colt hadn’t thought about the current. I was so little, it about washed me downstream. Thank God he caught hold of me and pulled me up on a rock.”
I don’t tell her the part about how I cried. Or how I was so mad at Colt for daring me to jump that I threw a rock at his head once we got back on dry ground. How I’m the reason he’s got a scar right above his ear. I ain’t even sure if Agnes knows about the scar. Her eyes probably ain’t good enough to notice it.
And right about now, with how Agnes just keeps ignoring me, I’m wishing Colt hadn’t bothered saving me at all. Maybe we’d both be better off if I’d just washed away that day.
I clear my throat and say, “Your turn,” just as we round a curve and—
Light.
Headlights. Small, twin pinpoints of white way off in the distance, speeding past. They’re far, but they’re there.
I almost shout. Because that’s a road—a real road—up ahead of us. And in a few more steps, I even spot what looks like the giant sign of a Shell gas station. We’re probably still a quarter mile away, but that ain’t nothing compared to how far we’ve already walked.
“Holy shit!” I shout. “Agnes—can you see that? There are cars up there. And a gas station. Oh, thank God. Finally.”
Her voice is flat when she says, “Good.”
“Good? It’s great. If there are cars, then there are people and we can get a ride or—”
“Bo.”
“What?”
Agnes takes a deep breath, and then she plays the game I started. It’s her turn, after all. And with the lights looming in the distance, she takes away all the relief and joy I just felt. She tells me something I didn’t know.
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