Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  What’s worse, I knew what was awaiting me at home. What betrayal I’d brought down on my parents. How disappointed even Shani and Lia would be.

  I wanted to get away from it all.

  Just like Grayson.

  I was coming up on the interstate exit, the green signs telling me to get into a different lane or I’d end up heading west. I turned on my blinker and peered into the rearview mirror. The headlights behind me were thick. My phone lit up in the backseat as it buzzed again.

  We could, I thought. We could get away. The two of us. Neither of us could go home and pretend life was wonderful. Both of us knew it never would be, even if it was for entirely different reasons. I could help Grayson escape his OCD. And I could get away, too.

  Away from all of it.

  The more I thought about it, the more it not only seemed like the best choice.

  It seemed like the only one.

  I turned off my blinker and eased the car onto the exit ramp. At the bottom of the ramp I pressed the gas pedal. Grayson’s body rocked as Hunka accelerated onto the interstate.

  I settled back in my seat and took a deep breath to steel myself.

  Grayson didn’t know it yet, but we were running away.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  I needed gas. I’d punched through rush hour, crossed the state line into Kansas, and made good time on the other side of it, blowing past towns I’d heard of in passing conversations over the years between my parents—Bonner Springs, Basehor, Tonganoxie, Lawrence—without even noticing the miles that stretched between them. Funny how when you had no idea where you were going, really, it seemed as though you would get there really fast.

  It was totally dark outside now, and the rumbling in my stomach told me it was well past dinnertime. Also, the rumbling in the backseat. I knew from the insistent buzzing of my cell phone that Mom had been trying to call.

  I didn’t want to ignore her, but I couldn’t reach the phone from the driver’s seat, and I didn’t want to stop. Something told me that if I stopped too soon, I’d probably chicken out and go home. And I couldn’t do that. Not until I’d had some good, solid highway time to think this over, to get a good grip on what exactly I was going to do.

  The plan was starting to make sense to me. What I was doing was for the best for everyone. Really. Grayson would get away. Get better. Somehow I knew it. If I took him away from his comfort zone—away from Newman Quarry, away from Mom, who wanted so badly for him to feel secure, away from his bedroom with the perfectly lined-up coins and the geology books and the even-numbered rock collection on his windowsill—he would get better. He would see that it was possible to be safe and be okay and be unplanned.

  Exposure therapy. That’s what Dr. St. James had called it. I’d heard Mom and Dad talk about it more times than I could count. Well, fight about it, really.

  You’ve got to make him get out there and face his anxiety, Linda.

  But he suffers. I can’t watch it. Who is he hurting, really?

  Himself! He’s hurting himself, Linda! Dr. St. James says it’s the only way. You have to put him in the situations that make him anxious and force him to cope.

  No. I won’t watch my child suffer. I’ll get another opinion….

  Mom was tough. Always calm and assured when she needed to be. But there was one spot where she was weak, and it was my brother. She babied him.

  But I could be tougher than Mom. I could watch him struggle. It would hurt and I’d feel bad, but I could hold the line and not give in and not coddle his compulsions. I could do it, and then she wouldn’t have to. I could do that for her, and then maybe what I’d done wouldn’t look so bad anymore.

  And if it worked, Mom and Dad would get some time off. Mom could learn her Italian, and Dad could come home from work without first having to stop and drag his son out of a pile of rocks, and they could spend some time being with one another, relaxed and happy.

  And, yeah, I knew I was using Grayson as an excuse for the fact that I was running away from my own troubles. But as far as I could see, at this point I didn’t have a whole lot of options. The music was too tough to face. I knew I’d have to face it eventually, but right now I needed some time—some space—to figure out just how I was going to do that.

  Grayson stirred as I pulled off the highway and crunched into the pothole-riddled lot of a tiny gas station. Hunka’s glove box popped open and bounced against Grayson’s knee.

  I winced and slowed down, rolling up to a pump so slowly it was almost as if the lot was moving rather than my car.

  Right now the last thing I needed was for Grayson to wake up. He’d obviously want to know where we were—where we were going. And, well, really, I didn’t know. We’d gotten past towns I’d heard of and had started seeing much longer stretches of field and shorter stretches of town.

  But he only shifted his weight, brought a hand up to sleepily swipe at his nose a couple times, and then snuggled his cheek against the seat and sighed back to sleep. I shimmied out of the car, grabbing my purse and cell phone off the backseat along the way.

  I ran inside and headed first for the restroom, a stinking hole in the back corner of the store, which also housed a crusted, empty mop bucket and rolls of paper towels on a shelf. On my way out, I grabbed a pack of beef jerky and two sodas, then handed the guy behind the counter the fifty Mom had had me stuff in my wallet on the day I got my driver’s license. Just for an emergency, she’d warned. You never know when you’ll be in a bind.

  I figured this is what she meant by “bind,” even if she probably never in a million years had thought my “bind” would be gas and grub out in the middle of nowhere while running away and kidnapping my mentally ill brother. I chuckled, thinking about it that way.

  The fifty would pay for the food and drinks and partially fill the tank, and I figured that’d buy me at least another couple hours on the road. By then, we’d have enough distance to really make a decision.

  I jogged back out to the car and stuffed the gas nozzle into Hunka’s tank, and then pulled the cell phone out of my purse, turning my back to the wind, which had me gazing at Grayson’s sleeping face in the side mirror on the car door. He looked so peaceful there, and my gut twinged.

  He was probably going to hate my plan. Probably, he was going to demand I take him home immediately. Play the “I’m the older sibling and you have to do what I say” card.

  But maybe not. He was fresh out of treatment, after all. He was feeling better. Maybe he’d be open to it. See that my idea was for his own good. It would be uncomfortable at first, but I had faith he would eventually see what a good plan it was, my kidnapping him.

  I’d missed nineteen calls and at least as many texts. I didn’t have to scan the numbers to know that at least eighteen of those calls were from Mom.

  I knew I couldn’t ignore her any longer, but I also knew she wouldn’t agree with my plan, either. She wouldn’t see the genius in it—not in a million years. And she might already also know about the calc final and be super pissed. And if I even gave her a little bit of time to argue with me, I might not see the genius in it anymore, either. I might wimp out.

  First, I had to call someone else.

  I dialed the number I knew by heart and pressed “call.”

  “Yuh?” a familiar voice said, deep, husky. I could hear video-game music in the background. Super Mario Brothers. Real earworm stuff.

  “Brock?”

  “Yuh.”

  “It’s Kendra.”

  The music in the background came to an abrupt stop. He’d paused the game. The phone rustled a bit. “Hey, Kendra, what’s up? G-Man still at crazy camp or whatever?” Brock was Grayson’s best, and only, friend. They’d met in ninth-grade P.E. class—Grayson’s OCD making it impossible for him to dress out; Brock’s extreme obesity making it impossible for him to do pretty much anything else. They spent a lot of time on the bleachers together, watching everyone else be normal. They were tight. I didn’t even mind, reall
y, when Brock called Grayson crazy, because I knew that, like me, Brock loved my brother, and sometimes calling him a nutcase or making fun of his quirks was the only way to keep from hating him.

  I remembered the first time Brock had Grayson sleep over at his house. Grayson’s compulsions had been getting worse, and Mom was a nervous wreck, sure that he would embarrass himself or have a breakdown of some sort. She’d sat by the phone all night, waiting for him to call, in tears, begging to be picked up.

  When he still hadn’t called by morning, she packed me up in the car and we drove over there to make sure Grayson hadn’t slipped out and walked to the quarry.

  Instead, we found Grayson and Brock in Brock’s front yard, tossing a football back and forth. Brock was lounging back in a lawn chair, eating potato chips, the folds of his stomach drooping down between his legs; Grayson was wearing a pair of green, elbow-length dishwashing gloves, a pile of discarded gloves on the ground by his feet.

  Mom pulled to the curb and rolled down her window. “I hadn’t heard from you. Everything okay?”

  “It’s all good, Mrs. Turner. G-Man cleaned my room for me. Totally arranged my video games.”

  Mom’s eyes got moist and she kept swallowing, and for a second I thought she was going to bawl. “Good” was all she said.

  “We’ve got four more pairs of those gloves,” Brock shouted. “My mom’ll bring him home after that.”

  “I’m good, Mom,” Grayson had called, and the feeling of happiness that swelled through the car almost made me feel light-headed. Mom and I went home and baked cookies together, and I decided right then and there that Brock was a really great friend for my brother. Like Zoe, Brock never expected my brother to be anything other than who he was.

  Just hearing his voice over the phone as I stood in a gas station parking lot somewhere in Kansas brought that feeling back. I knew I could count on him. “No, he’s home from treatment now.”

  “Cool. Tell him to come on up. I got the new Zombiesplosion 5 game. It rocks. You should see what happens when you blow their heads off.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him. But, um, Brock? I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Um, I need you to cover for me. Well, actually, for Grayson. For both of us.”

  “Okay. How?”

  “My mom is probably going to call there in a few minutes. Can you tell her that Grayson is at your house and he can’t come to the phone? Just make something up. Tell her Grayson will call her later. I’ll take care of that.”

  There was a pause. I could hear his trademark heavy breathing whistling into the phone. Grayson never made fun of Brock’s weight, and neither did I, but everyone else did. “What’s going on?” he said, his voice laced with suspicion. “G-Man okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my voice breezy. The nozzle thunked and the pump switched off. “Yeah, of course. We’re going… we’re taking a little trip. And Mom will get worried. You know how she is.”

  “Huh. A trip.” He sounded skeptical. “Where?”

  The wind gusted across the Kansas plain behind me again, and I stiffened against it, wishing more than ever I’d gotten my jacket out of my locker before Black Lung had opened it up. Good question. Where are we going, exactly? “I don’t… just… just tell her he’s in the shower, okay?” She’d believe it; Grayson went through phases when he showered twenty times a day.

  “And everything’s okay? You wouldn’t bullshit me, right?”

  I took a deep breath. “I totally wouldn’t bullshit you, Brock. Can you do this or what?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”

  “No problem,” he said, and the music started up again. Brock’s attention span only went so far. “But have G-Man call me, okay?”

  “You bet,” I said, then hung up and leaned back against the car. Step one, done. Step two… coming up.

  And then I didn’t even want to think about step three: convincing Grayson that this was a good idea.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  I tried to keep my conversation with Mom short, partly because I didn’t want the lack of motion in the car to wake up Grayson, and also partly because I didn’t want Mom to figure out yet what was really going on, and I figured the longer I talked to her, the more time I had for it to dawn on her that there were highway noises in the background.

  Fortunately, luck was on my side, and I took it to be a sign that I was doing the right thing. Mom was ticked, sure, but easily calmed, which meant she hadn’t heard from the school yet.

  “Kendra! For crying out loud, I’ve been calling you for hours. Where on earth are you? Where is Grayson?”

  “Sorry, Mom,” I mumbled. “I had to turn my phone off for a science quiz, and I forgot to turn it back on. But everything’s cool. Did Gray forget to call you?” I made a frustrated grunting noise for authenticity. “He was supposed to call you and tell you I gave him a ride to Brock’s. I’m at Shani’s house. We’re working on a psych project. Do you mind if I just crash here tonight?”

  “On a school night?”

  “Mom, seriously. We’re working on homework. And if I’m sleeping here I won’t have to get up early to pick up Shani on the way to school. This way I get more sleep. You can talk to her mom about it if you want.” I was bluffing, but I knew it was a risk I could take. Mom didn’t talk to anyone else’s mom, ever. Not since Zoe’s mom went away.

  When Zoe left, Mom lost her best friend, too. I remember Mom standing on the deck behind our house, shouting across the yard at Zoe’s mom, who was having some sort of party with some moms I recognized from school. Mom was screaming, “You changed his diapers, Rachel! How could you treat him like some sort of danger? I thought you and Rob were better people than that!” and Zoe’s mom was sitting with her back to our house, but I could see the faces of the other moms looking uncomfortable around the patio table.

  It went on for months, the feud between our families, until finally Zoe’s family gave in and moved out. But even after they were gone, the grudge had affected Mom so much that she went into a deep depression and had to get medication. Even after three years, Mom still didn’t trust other parents. She was polite but separate.

  In a lot of ways, Dad was all Mom had. Dad and Grayson and me. But given the grief Grayson had always brought her, and the grief I was about to bring her, we were little consolation.

  Mom paused over the phone. “No, no. It’s fine. And your brother is at Brock’s?” Her voice had gotten much calmer. Mom still loved Brock, even if he couldn’t help my brother with a pair of elbow-length dishwashing gloves anymore.

  I started to relax. See? Everything is going to be fine. Great. By the time they get the call from the school, I’ll be too far away for them to make me come home. And by the time I actually do come home, Grayson will be normal, and things will look so much better to all of us. We’ll all be so happy to have a normal family, we won’t even care about the damage I’ve done at school.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I saw Gray walking when I was leaving school, so I picked him up and took him to Brock’s. I figured it would be good for him. I can’t believe he forgot to call you. I reminded him, like, a billion times.”

  “I’ll call him,” she said. “I’m glad he’s seeing Brock again. That’ll be good for him. Did he seem relaxed to you at all, Kendra?”

  “Sure, Mom,” I lied, and then I felt really, really horrible for all the lies. Mom wanted nothing more than for Grayson to be happy. And she was always trying so hard to make him that way, even though Dr. Sellerman, Dr. Houston, Dr. Fantaglio, and especially Dr. St. James had all warned her about enabling his OCD. Poor Mom couldn’t deny him. “He seemed really happy to see Brock. When I left, they were playing some video game. Blowing up zombies or something.” I tried not to think about Grayson counting the rocks at the bottom of Newman Quarry a couple hours before, or about him crying, telling me to just drive, and say
ing he wished he could run away from it all. Mom would want to know those things. Mom would need to know them.

  I promised her I would call the next day and told her I loved her, then hung up and turned my phone off completely.

  There was no turning back now.

  I got into Hunka, shutting the door as softly as I possibly could, and pulled out of the gas station parking lot. I turned the vents to blow hot air onto my fingers as they were wrapped around the steering wheel. The headlights carved little tunnels out of the extreme dark of the Kansas highway. Grayson snored steadily, the glove box door tapping against his leg.

  I opened my soda and the bag of jerky and headed west, imagining all my lies dropped unceremoniously on the ground by the gas pump. This was going to be a new beginning, where none of that old stuff would matter anymore.

  All that mattered was what was ahead of us.

  Even if I wasn’t certain what exactly that was.

  Or how I’d know it when I found it.

  Or if any of this would work at all.

  I couldn’t think about those things. I took a deep breath, popped a piece of jerky into my mouth, and focused on the highway ahead.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  To understand how I got into the mess I got into, you first have to understand what it’s like to be born under the shadow of a sibling’s extreme failed potential.

  Grayson was everything to Mom and Dad. Their first, a boy, just as they’d hoped for. He was sweet and cuddly and rough-and-tumble and smart and what they saw as the culmination of everything good about themselves. Of course, this was back when they thought that only good could come out of their children. Only perfection.

  He was gifted. Of course he was. He could throw a tight spiral on a football by the time he was five, and by the time he was six could explain the physics behind it. Science was his thing, and, they figured, math was, too. Before he could even walk, he could count to ten and seemed to be stacking blocks in a particular order. Before he went to school, he would melt down if a puzzle piece went missing under the TV or if Mom picked up his toys from their permanent perch on the piano bench.