Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  She picked up her tray and swayed a little, looking as if she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to stay or leave or fall through the floor. Finally, she tossed her hair over one shoulder, turned her back on Shani and Lia, and pursed her lips at me.

  “Just so you know,” she hissed, “I’m not Chub, and I don’t have a crush on you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Go away, Bryn,” I said, and poked another piece of rubbery orange chicken into my mouth. Shani and Lia both snickered. My tongue felt fat and mutinous.

  But everything on the inside of me said I probably really could use Bryn on my side.

  After Bryn left, Shani leaned across the table. “So it’s true that Chub got expelled?” she whispered. “Skylar Tomason was sketchy on the details, but she was saying this morning that by tomorrow half the school is going to be expelled.”

  Lia was nodding furiously as she poked a strawberry into her mouth. “I heard it, too, in French. Somebody was saying the school called the cops.”

  “The cops?” I said, looking at Lia amusedly. Even I wasn’t scared enough to believe the police would get involved. “Who said that?”

  She shook her head and swallowed. “I don’t know. I just heard it.”

  “That’s kind of stupid,” Shani said, biting into a biscuit. “Unless it’s, like, drugs or something. Chub Hartley is hardly a drug dealer.” I looked down at my orange chicken and wished I had their appetites. But the two pieces I’d eaten for show with Bryn were sloshing around in my stomach disagreeably as it was. I set my fork down.

  “I can’t help it,” Lia said. “It’s just what I heard. And I heard that a lot of really smart students are caught up in it.”

  You have no idea, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. I’d never told Shani and Lia what I’d been up to, mainly because they didn’t have calc and it didn’t really seem like that big of a deal when it started, and by the time it escalated into something way big, I didn’t know how to bring it up with them. I would’ve told Zoe about it, but then again Zoe wasn’t answering my e-mails.

  Also, Zoe never expected me to be perfect.

  But listening to Bryn and then to all the rumors, my earlier thoughts that maybe God or Chub would save me were looking more ridiculous by the moment. I was going to be caught. And then everything I’d worked so hard for would be over.

  I took a long sip of my soda, and when I looked up again, Shani was staring at me hard, her fork holding a cube of pineapple an inch or so in front of her lips.

  “What?” I asked, attempting a lighthearted laugh to offset my cheeks, which felt like they must have been giving off steam, they were so hot. “Do I have a sesame seed in my teeth or something?”

  “You sick?” she asked. “You look weird.”

  “No.”

  “She’s right,” Lia said. “And you’re not eating.”

  I pasted on a smile, my mind racing to come up with an explanation. Anything to throw them off the current conversation. “Grayson’s back,” I said, offering up my brother as an excuse for why things weren’t right with me, a tool I’d learned to use to get out of sticky situations since I was about seven. Of course, most of the time it wasn’t an excuse. Brothers like Grayson tended to ruin a lot of school days. And birthday parties. And Christmases (especially Christmases). And good moods.

  “Oh,” Shani said, turning back to her lunch. “Is he still nutso?”

  Lia smirked. “Yeah, does he still count his cereal?”

  “Did he bring home any of the little green germ monsters who lived in his closet at Camp Crazypants?”

  I tensed.

  Over the years, I’d vented to Lia and Shani about Grayson more times than I could count. And, sure, I’d made some pretty snide remarks about him behind his back. Sometimes it was the only way to keep from blowing up at him at home. Sometimes it was just a way to clear my own mind. Sometimes it was just a way to break the tension and get a laugh.

  But even though I know they only thought it was okay because I’d done it so many times before, I kind of hated it when Shani and Lia made fun of him. I could do it because he was my brother and I was the one who had to deal with him. When they said mean things about him, it just felt mean. But I tried not to act upset by it. I didn’t need that battle on top of everything else.

  And I guess some part of me believed he deserved it in a way. Like, people wouldn’t make fun of him if he’d simply act normal every once in a while. If he’d just be the Grayson who played CSI with Zoe and me down in the creek behind Zoe’s house. Or the Grayson who ate superlarge jalapeño-and-cream-cheese pizzas with Brock and who stuck an alarm clock under my ear.

  But, honestly, I didn’t think that Grayson even existed anymore. I hadn’t seen that Grayson in so long. That Grayson had fallen into the black hole Zoe left behind. For three years he’d been scrabbling at the sides of that hole—sometimes coming oh-so-close to getting out—but he always fell back in. It was like watching someone you love be buried alive.

  I waved my hand dismissively at Shani’s and Lia’s questions. “I haven’t really talked to him since he came back,” I said. “I’ve mostly been avoiding everyone.”

  “Speaking of avoiding,” Lia said, holding up her left hand to block that she was pointing to something at the far end of the cafeteria with the fork in her right hand. Both Shani and I looked toward the doors, where Tyson, Shani’s belligerent boyfriend, was entering with his muscles-for-brains crowd of friends, including Tommy, my jerk ex-boyfriend.

  Shani made a face. “Whatever. Idiots.”

  “You guys still fighting?” I asked.

  “Hello, check your texts every now and then,” Shani answered, wadding up her napkin disgustedly and tossing it onto her plate. “Ew. I can’t look at him. I just lost my appetite.”

  “They broke up last night,” Lia said. “Again.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Duh. Because you don’t read your texts, like, ever.” Shani glared at me and then took a deep breath, her face softening. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’ve got family issues right now.”

  I let out a puff of air. “When don’t I?” I murmured, even though I knew that my “family issues” were the least of my worries. For a change, my life wasn’t being dominated by Grayson’s problems. But it was just easier… and safer… to let my friends believe that was what was going on with me.

  All three of us were silent for a minute—Lia scraping the last bits of fruit from her plate, Shani tearing little pieces off her napkin and dropping them into her soda can, and me gazing at the muscles-for-brains gang. Three of them—including Tommy and Tyson—could be in big trouble, too, if Bryn was right.

  When Tyson caught my gaze and nodded in my direction, his face serious and determined, my hands seized the sides of my tray.

  “I should go,” I said. “I’ve got to turn in a paper.”

  And before either of my friends could say a word, I was gone. My uneaten orange chicken and rice were at the bottom of the giant gray wastebasket by the kitchen conveyor belt, and the two pieces I had eaten were floating in the toilet water of stall three in the science hallway before Tyson could even get to our table.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  It happened right after the final bell rang. I rounded the corner by the library, my plan being to grab my jacket and get the hell out of Dodge and put an end to this rotten day. Go home. Try to eat something. Get some sleep, hopefully. Figure out how I was going to get through tomorrow. How I was going to stay under the radar.

  But Mrs. McKinley, my English teacher, was pegging something to the bulletin board by the library entrance and caught me.

  “Oh, hey, Kendra,” she said around a mouthful of thumbtacks (“Oh, fey, Fendra!”). She pulled them out and dropped them into a pocket on the side of her flowy brown skirt, which looked as though it had come straight out of the back of a Volkswagen bus. “I was going to talk to you about tonight’s NHS meeting.”

&
nbsp; “Oh,” I said, inwardly cursing. I’d totally forgotten about this month’s National Honor Society meeting, which couldn’t be at a worse time.

  “I was thinking,” Mrs. McKinley continued, which must have meant that my fear wasn’t visible on my face, “as head of the community outreach committee, maybe you should do a little presentation at tonight’s meeting about your plans for the rest of spring semester. Nothing fancy or formal, of course, but I know you have that program with the preschoolers coming up and—”

  “I can’t,” I blurted out. And then I tried to paste on my best goody-two-shoes smile. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McKinley, but…” I paused, feeling a brief pang of guilt for using my brother twice in one day, but then figured I had nothing else. I couldn’t tell her I had to stay away from the school because I might find myself in huge trouble by morning. For the first time, I realized that if I was found out, I would definitely be kicked out of National Honor Society. Worse, Mrs. McKinley would know what I’d done and would be so disappointed in me. And she wouldn’t be the only one. Probably the whole world would be disappointed in me. The thought made tears spring to my eyes, but I cleared my throat and said, “My brother came home from treatment yesterday, and I want to be home for him tonight. I’m going to miss the meeting.”

  Her face fell momentarily, but then she smiled understandingly. Mrs. McKinley had had Grayson for American lit his sophomore year. She used to let him file papers for her in the back of the room while she was lecturing; filing calmed him. Anything regimented calmed him.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll have Alison Wells do it, then.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And tell Grayson I said hello and I hope he’s feeling better.”

  I nodded and moved around her, heading for the science hallway, where my locker was.

  The crowd in the hallways had thinned out. Locker doors were slamming, and the squeak of the west entrance opening over and over again filled the air. I turned the corner, looked toward my locker, and stopped dead in my tracks.

  There, at my locker, was the custodian everyone called Black Lung, his giant key ring jingling and clanging, metal against metal. He poked a key into my combination dial and pulled the door open, then stepped back.

  Mrs. Reading, who had been standing behind him, stepped forward and began pulling things off the shelves, letting them drop with echoing slaps onto the floor. Mr. Floodsay, down on one knee, sifted through my stuff as it landed.

  For a minute, it was as if nothing existed in this world but those three people and the slap, slap, slap of my books and notebooks on the tile. Everything else just sort of faded away—the squeak of the west entrance door, the chatter of people on their cell phones, the metallic rattle of lockers shutting, and the shuffle of feet going up and down the stairways.

  My arms hung slack at my sides, and my mouth opened as I tried to catch my breath. Someone had sold me out. Chub, probably. Or maybe Bryn. Could’ve been anyone, really. I knew they wouldn’t find anything—I wasn’t that stupid—but the fact that they were even looking meant I had reason to worry. Okay, to panic.

  This is it, my mind kept repeating. This is where you get busted. All they have to do is turn their heads and they’ll see you here. You’ll get dragged into Mrs. Reading’s office, and it’ll be all over.

  But before any of them could turn their heads, I was suddenly slammed back into reality. Literally. By Bryn, who came barreling out of the ladies’ room so fast she rammed into me, knocking me backward onto my butt with a resounding “Oof!”

  Bryn had also fallen to a knee, and she glanced back at me over her shoulder while she got up, glaring at me reproachfully. Neither one of us said anything. We didn’t need to.

  I told you so, her eyes said.

  I know, mine said back. I know you did.

  She got up and raced for the west entrance. I heard the door squeak, and then it was just me and maybe six other students in the hallway.

  And them.

  I couldn’t face them. No way. I was one of Mrs. Reading’s “star pupils.” Whenever she wanted to make an example of how well her school was doing, she’d inevitably turn to Macy Nastrom, Ralph Storius, and me.

  Facing Mrs. Reading right now would somehow be worse than facing Mom and Dad. Because Mrs. Reading had never seen me do anything wrong before. She would be more than shocked and angry—she would be confused.

  Hell, I was confused. How had I even gotten into a mess this big?

  I scrambled to my feet, as quickly as Bryn had done, ignoring the sore spot on my butt where it had struck the tile, then darted back around the corner and down the stairs to the lower science hallway. I took the U of hallways as fast as I could without running, and plowed my way through half a dozen cheerleaders up the stairs at the other end of the school.

  And then I really did start to run. Right out the east entrance, around the front of the building, and over to the side where Hunka waited for me. I was barely in the seat before I had the car started and was speeding away from the school.

  I didn’t realize until I was out of the parking lot and halfway down the highway that I’d left my backpack on.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  I pulled over on the side of the outer road and parked. Not next to the highway, of course. If you parked on the highway side of the quarry and a cop drove by and saw your car, he’d come get you and threaten you with trespassing (“This time I mean it, you two. I won’t come out here again!”).

  But if you took the outer road around to the far side of the quarry, where the road was nestled between the enormous piles of rock and a grassy, untouched hill, nobody would bother you. You could leave your car there, climb the tall chain-link fence, and drop to the edge of the pit on the other side with nobody ever being the wiser.

  I’d done it enough times with Grayson to know.

  When we were little and the quarry owners threatened to sue my parents if they had to come out one more time to unlock the gate after hours so we could retrieve my counting brother, my parents began parking on the secluded side of the outer road and lifting me so I could climb over the fence instead. I was nimble, and they knew Grayson would come with me, even if they didn’t know what it took for me to get him to leave.

  As soon as my feet hit the ground on the other side of the fence, I’d always stand at the top of the pit, feeling like the queen of the world, hearing the swish of unseen cars on the highway and feeling the chalky breeze blow my bangs around on my forehead. I’d stand there and close my eyes, inhaling the earthy scent of the quarry, tinged with motor oil and exhaust emanating from the bulldozers padlocked in their sheds, and for that brief period of time, I totally understood my brother. We were one, both of us wanting to capture the perfection and beauty of the earth’s crust around us—both in our unique ways. There was something exciting about the quarry for both of us. I wanted to own it, to master it; Grayson wanted to dissolve into it.

  My parents would let me stand there for a minute before they’d begin hissing at me to find my brother.

  Only then would I open my eyes and begin searching the piles of rocks for a familiar scrap of clothing or the glint of the dying sunlight off a pair of glasses somewhere deep in the shadows below.

  And the spell would be broken. I was no longer queen of the quarry. I was the parent, tugging on his shirt and promising him things if he would come up to the top with me; my older brother was the child.

  For me, Newman Quarry always felt like broken spells and frustration and harsh, ugly reality. Our family’s personal hiding place.

  Which, I guess, was why it made so much sense for me to go there, even though I never had gone on my own before. My backpack was still strapped on and pinned between my back and the driver’s seat, the image of Mr. Floodsay rifling through my writing journal and history books fresh in my mind.

  I don’t think I was intentionally going there. Probably, had you asked me, I would have told you I was going home. And then, whe
n I passed the turnoff into my neighborhood, I might have said I was “going for a drive.”

  I don’t even think I realized I was pulling off the highway onto the outer road until I’d rolled around to the hilly side of the quarry, my tires crackling on the dirt, which got rockier and rockier as the road became more secluded. I hit a pothole and Hunka’s glove compartment door dropped open. I reached over without even thinking—Hunka’s glove box opened on its own a hundred times a week—and closed it.

  I pulled off the road, right in the same spot where my parents had parked the minivan a million times before.

  And I sat there. I squeezed my eyes shut, hard, then opened them wide. No tears. Just… numbness.

  Weird. I was expecting tears. Expected my eyes, like Bryn’s, to be tired and swollen and red, maybe a hitch in my breath as I berated myself over and over again for how stupid I’d been. I expected… something, at least.

  I unsnapped my seat belt, leaned forward, and shimmied out of my backpack, tossing it into the backseat. I reached into my front pocket and palmed my cell phone, which had buzzed three times while I was driving. I glanced at the screen—it was Shani—and then tossed it, too, into the backseat with my backpack. Then I opened the driver’s door and got out.

  For a few minutes I stood, my fingers laced through the holes in the chain link, resting my face against the inside of my right elbow, which hung at face level.

  “What now?” I breathed into the hollow of my chest. Here I was, three weeks before finals… four weeks before graduation… and I was about to lose everything. “What do I do now?”

  No answer came to me, but the gooseflesh that popped out on my arms spurred me to action anyway. Ignoring the spring chill creeping in around me, I moved my fingers from the holes they were in to holes much higher, gripped tightly, stuffed a toe into a hole at about knee height, and leaped up, pulling myself most of the way to the top of the fence in one motion.

  Even though it’d been months since I’d last been here, the climb was like second nature to me. Fingers here, toes there. Watch the sharp, clipped edges of the fence at the top. Swing over the right leg, balance, swing over the left leg, balance, and then push off. But not too far—you didn’t want to tumble, ass over teakettle, as my dad always used to say, down the quarry wall.