As I step out on the front porch, with the flimsy hundred dollars in my pocket, I suddenly think of all the poets we read. Of the writers behind those words I’d read aloud to Agnes and quiet to myself so many times. People who could turn pain into art.
I always wished I could do that. And especially right now.
I wish I could turn to my dad and say … something. Something beautiful and biting. Something that’ll rock him. Make him feel this awful hurt I feel.
I wish I was a poet.
But I ain’t never been real good with words. Ain’t never been able to turn my own pain into nothing but tears and trouble.
And when I look back at him, with the door already closing on me, the only words I can manage sure as hell ain’t poetry.
“Fuck you.”
Colt’s mama agreed to let Bo and me take her car—but only if we paid her a hundred dollars.
“Might only be by marriage, but she is a Dickinson,” Bo said after she told me the news. “People in my family don’t give nothing for free.”
Between my leftover birthday money and her tobacco money, we’d be able to pay for the car, though. Nothing was gonna get in the way of our trip.
Nothing. Except maybe my parents.
I decided to talk to them about the trip on Saturday night. It was one of those rare dinners where Bo didn’t join us. She’d called to say she was tired after working in the fields. That was all right. I thought it might be easier to get my parents’ permission on my own.
“Gracie says cheerleading tryouts end on Friday,” Mama was saying as she handed me a bowl of spaghetti. “She says we can come pick her up in the afternoon.”
“Oh no. I’m gonna have to stay at the store that day,” Daddy said.
“That’s all right. Agnes can come with me.”
I looked up from my dinner. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Mama said. “It’ll be fun. You, me, and your sister can do a little shopping. Maybe get dinner.”
“And load all of Gracie’s junk into the car again,” Daddy said. “That’ll be really fun.”
“Oh, stop. It won’t be that bad.”
“That sounds great,” I said. And then, seeing my chance, I added, “Speaking of going somewhere … I wanna talk to y’all about something.”
“What is it, sweetheart?” Daddy asked.
“Well, it’s summer now, and without school, Bo and I have been talking about what we wanna do. And … we were thinking … about maybe going on a road trip.”
“A road trip.” The way Mama repeated it, with a low, flat voice, I knew we weren’t off to a good start.
“Not a long one,” I said. “Just over Fourth of July weekend. We wanna go see her cousin, Colt. He lives just outside Louisville. Just a couple hours from here.”
“We know where Louisville is,” Mama said.
“Well, he’s got a job and an apartment there, and we wanna go see him. And a few other places, too. We already made up a schedule, so you’d always know where I am and—”
“I don’t think so, honey,” Mama said. “You want some garlic bread?”
“Wait— Why not?”
“It’s just not a good idea. Your daddy and I wouldn’t be comfortable with it.”
“Is this because of Bo?” I asked. “Because she’s a Dickinson? You don’t want me going somewhere with her?”
“Of course not,” Daddy said. “You know we like Bo. It’s not about her.”
“Then what?”
He sighed. Like this was already making him tired. “Agnes.”
“But you let Gracie go to Florida when she was seventeen,” I argued. “And that’s a lot farther than Louisville.”
“Yes, but Gracie’s friend’s parents were with them,” Daddy said. “There were adults there.”
“Colt’s an adult.”
“He’s also a teenage boy,” Daddy said. “A teenage boy we don’t know at all.”
“Gracie rode home for Christmas with boys you didn’t know, though.”
“Gracie’s nineteen now,” Mama said. “She can make those decisions for herself.”
“Are you gonna let me make decisions when I’m nineteen?”
I didn’t mean to raise my voice. Didn’t mean to slam my fist down on the table so hard that our plates rattled. I’d been doing so good at keeping calm. At keeping my voice soft and careful. But just like that, my self-control snapped.
“Agnes.” Mama’s voice was full of warning.
“I’m serious!” I shouted.
I didn’t want to be shouting, honestly. But now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I could feel this going downhill. Could feel the walls closing in and the hope I’d clung to starting to fade. Maybe I was doomed to suffocate here, but I wasn’t gonna go gentle.
So here I was, raging. Just like Dylan Thomas said.
“Because I have a hard time believing that when I’m nineteen, you’ll let me make the same choices Gracie does. I’m seventeen, and you won’t even let me walk home from the bus stop—right around the goddamn corner—unless Bo is with me. And even then, one of y’all is waiting for us at the door.”
“Watch your mouth, young lady,” Mama said. “You’re acting real ugly right now. We have rules for you because we want to keep you safe.”
“I can keep myself safe! I’ve been blind my whole life, not for five minutes. I know better than you what I can and can’t do!”
“Where in the world is this coming from?” Mama asked.
“Everywhere!” I screamed. “Everything is an ordeal with y’all. I can’t walk out the door without answering twenty questions. I can barely get down the road, let alone leave this stupid town! And say what you want, but you treated Gracie different. And I’m sick of it! Sick of being trapped in this fucking house!”
“Enough!”
When Daddy’s hand slammed down on the table, it was a lot louder than mine. Loud enough that I flinched and scooted back in my seat.
I was shaking. My hands and my knees and even my bottom lip. I almost never yelled at my parents before. And I’d definitely never cussed at them. Part of me felt triumphant, glad I’d raised my voice, glad I finally had one. The other part of me just felt scared.
“This conversation is over.” Daddy’s voice was soft now. Dangerous. “You’re not going on a road trip with Bo. That’s final.”
For a second, everything was quiet. No one moved. No one spoke. And the silence hurt more than the yelling.
Finally, Mama let out a breath. “Okay. Well … Agnes, do you want some garlic bread?”
“I’m not hungry.” I pushed my chair back from the table, and the legs scraped the wood floor.
“Agnes …” Mama’s voice sounded sad. And exhausted.
I turned in the kitchen doorway and looked back at the table. I couldn’t see much. Just blurry figures where I knew my parents were seated. “Tell me something,” I said. “If I asked to go to Florida, like Gracie did, and there were gonna be adults there—would you let me go?”
They didn’t answer.
Which was answer enough.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
I had a thousand memories of Gracie slamming her bedroom door. A thousand fights ending with a thud that shook the house and Gracie locking herself in her room for hours.
I learned from the best.
“Agnes!” Mama yelled from downstairs. “If you break that door, I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” I screamed, loud enough so she could hear me. “Ground me? I’m already stuck here, so what does it matter?” I kicked the door, just to piss her off, but instead of hurting the wood, I hurt my foot.
I limped over to my bed, tears of pain and anger streaming down my face. I hated them. I hated Mursey. I hated this house and this little girl’s bedroom I’d been trapped in for seventeen years. I grabbed a stuffed rabbit—Hopsy—off the shelf above my headboard and hurled it at the closet. It didn’t make a sound, though. Just fell quietly to the ca
rpet.
Frustrated, I started looking for something breakable.
“Agnes,” Daddy said, tapping on my door. “Can I come in?”
“No!”
I heard the knob twist, but the door didn’t budge. “Agnes Atwood,” he said, voice firmer. “Unlock the door.”
“Why? You wanna keep me locked up anyway. You got your wish. I’m not going nowhere.”
“Anywhere,” he corrected. “Oh good Lord. I’ve been married to your mother too long. Come on, honey. Open up.”
“Fuck off.”
“Agnes!” he said, voice low. “Don’t you speak to me that way. What in the world has gotten into you? This isn’t you.”
But he was wrong. This was me. I just wasn’t the daughter he’d known a few months ago. The daughter who’d never thought she’d get out of Mursey. The daughter whose biggest adventure was a walk in the woods behind her own house. That had all changed. Bo had given me a taste of real freedom. She’d helped me see how much I wanted it. She made me see how capable I was of surviving outside of this bubble, even when no one else thought I could.
And I’d been dumb enough to believe it was possible. To believe I could escape, even for a short time.
Daddy was wrong. This was me. It was just an angry, heartbroken me he’d never seen before.
There was nothing to smash in my room. Except maybe the TV, but that was too big, too hard to pick up. I curled in a ball on my bed, buried my face in my arms, and cried so hard that the back of my throat ached.
“Agnes …” Now it was Mama outside the door. “Honey?”
But I didn’t answer. Not then. Not the half dozen other times she and Daddy tried throughout the evening. I stayed quiet, shutting them out for shutting me in. Until, finally, it was past eleven.
“We’re going to bed, honey,” she said. “We’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
I didn’t answer.
“We love you, Agnes.” Daddy said. “Just remember that, all right? We love you.”
I wander the streets for a while, watching as people leave their houses and climb into their trucks. It’s Wednesday morning, and for most people, the world’s still spinning. Even if mine’s falling apart.
I make a right turn. Then a left. I ain’t sure where I’m going. Ain’t sure what I’ll do next. Until I end up in front of a run-down motel with a crooked sign on the front door. COAL COUNTRY INN it reads. It’s the kinda place that ain’t gonna care how old I am.
I give the hundred dollars to the man at the desk. He gives me some change and the key to room 5A.
It’s small and dirty and gray. The carpet smells and the curtains got holes in them. I sit on the bed, hugging my bag to my chest. I ain’t sure how long I sit there, just staring at the wall, listening to some people argue in the next room. But I sit and stare until my eyes feel dry and cracked.
When I take the bottle of bourbon out of my bag, it don’t feel near as wrong as it should. I stare at the label for a long time. It’s the same brand Daddy used to drink back in Mursey, before he left us. It’s the same brand Uncle Jeff would get drunk on when me and Colt were younger. I’ve even seen Colt with a bottle just like this before. It’s practically a Dickinson family tradition. Some kinda rite of passage. I put it off so long.
I’ve never taken a drink in my life. Not one. Because I didn’t want to be like them. Because, other than Colt, every Dickinson I know has taken drinking too far. I wasn’t gonna let that happen to me. I was gonna be better.
But when I take a swig, I know.
There ain’t no way to fight destiny.
And this bottle, this gross motel, this lonely feeling—this is my destiny.
The first drink burns. The second’s not so bad. And by the fourth or fifth, I don’t feel a thing.
I turn on the black-and-white TV, watch an episode of M*A*S*H, and drink. I drink long. Drink fast. Drink it all. Until I pass out on top of the unwashed blankets.
I wake up with my stomach on fire.
At first I think I’m dying. I’m sweating and I’m panting and I gotta run to the toilet. My vision is fuzzy, edges faded like an old photo, and my brain ain’t moving right. When I trip over the empty bottle and have to crawl my way to the bathroom, I can’t keep my head straight. Can’t focus on what’s going on. Why am I on the floor? Why am I dying?
I barely make it to the toilet bowl before I’m puking so hard it makes my whole body shake. And it just keeps on. And it hurts. And all I wanna do is sleep. And I’m clinging to the toilet for dear life, knowing if I don’t, I’ll fall onto the tiles and never be able to get back up.
This is my punishment. This is what I get for everything I done. I’m just like the rest of them. Just a lying, stealing drunk like my daddy and his daddy before him. I lied to Agnes, chased away one of the only people who’s ever loved me back. And all I got for it was a hundred-dollar bill and a bottle of bourbon. Sounds about right for a Dickinson.
And then I’m crying. Sobbing between retching. I heard once the human body is made of 70 percent water. But with all the crying and the puking and the sweating, I think there can’t be none left in me.
When I think I can leave the toilet, I try to stand, but it ain’t no use. My body’s weak and empty, and all I can do is crawl. Drag myself back to the bedroom, to the phone by the nightstand.
Even with my head swimming and my vision full of black spots, I can still dial her number.
When she don’t answer right away, I start to panic. Because I think I’m gonna die here. In this motel room. Alone.
And when she does answer, I start crying harder. Because I’m an awful person and I did awful things and I’m being punished and she ain’t got no reason to answer the phone for me.
“Hello?” she says again. “Is anyone there?”
“Agnes …” My throat burns and the words crack like snapping twigs. I gasp between sobs as I clutch the phone to my wet face. “Agnes, I need you.”
“Agnes?”
Bo’s voice on the other end of the line almost made my heart stop beating. I’d never heard it sound so fragile.
But then, she’d never called me at two in the morning, either.
I was downstairs, my face still swollen from crying, when the phone had started to ring. I’d snuck out of my room, knowing my parents had long since gone to bed. No matter how angry I was, I still needed to eat, and I knew Mama would have saved the leftovers from dinner. I hadn’t even opened up the fridge yet, though, when I heard the phone.
In all my life, I couldn’t remember anyone ever calling our house in the middle of the night. For some reason, my mind immediately snapped to the horror movies Gracie made me watch when we were kids. Mama and Daddy hated horror movies, but when Gracie babysat me, she always wanted to watch them, even though she knew they scared me. Even thinking of them just then, of the creepy calls girls always got in those movies, with heavy breathing and weird voices threatening them—well, it made me shiver and look over my shoulder.
Not that I could see if someone was behind me. I hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights when I came downstairs. I was regretting that now.
But then my thoughts shifted to worry. What if something was wrong? What if it was Gracie? What if something had happened to her? What if someone was calling in the middle of the night because the thing they were calling about couldn’t wait until morning?
Another ring, and this time I moved toward the counter, using both hands to feel for the phone. It only took me a second to find it and answer.
“Hello?”
And that’s when I heard her voice. The way it shook as she said my name. “Agnes?”
That’s when I really got scared.
“Bo? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“It’s Mama,” she said. “She got arrested.”
“What? How do you know?”
“Heard on the police scanner.” She sounded half out of breath, like she was moving around her trailer as fast as she could. I hear
d rustling and the sound of a zipper.
“Bo? What’re you doing?”
“They’re gonna come here soon,” she said, the panic rising in her voice. “I told you, Agnes. I ain’t going back into foster care again. No fucking way.”
I felt like all the wind had been knocked out of me. Like I’d fallen and landed hard on my chest. Because I knew exactly what she was gonna say before I even asked the next question.
“What’re you gonna do?”
She stopped. For a minute, I didn’t hear any more rustling, no more movement on the other end of the line. Just Bo, trying to catch her breath before she said it.
“Run.”
I know it must take the Atwoods hours to get to me. But everything after that phone call comes in flashes.
I’m lying on the floor with my face in the carpet, which smells like liquor and piss.
Then the door’s opening and Agnes’s daddy’s picking me up like I’m just a sack of potatoes.
And then I’m lying in the backseat of their car, my head in Agnes’s lap as she whispers, “You’re okay. It’s gonna be okay. I’m right here.”
“Should we take her to the hospital?” Mrs. Atwood sounded so far away, even though I could see her in the front seat.
“I don’t think she’s got insurance,” Mr. Atwood says. His voice is coming from a distance, too. It’s like I’m underwater, listening to the conversations happening on the shore. “She’s just drunk. She’ll be all right in a little while.”
“That bottle was empty,” Mrs. Atwood says. “And she’s so small …”
“Bo,” Agnes whispers, her fingers combing through my hair. “What happened?”
It’s too bright. I ain’t never seen the sun so bright. I gotta shut my eyes, but I can still see it through my lids and I’m worried I might puke again, but I don’t wanna do it in the Atwoods’ car because they already hate me.
I have to push the words out. Because saying them makes them true. Makes the pain worse.
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