Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  I scooted into an empty stall and sat down on the toilet, holding my head in my hands and taking some deep breaths. I’d told him I was in trouble. Of course he was going to have questions. But was I ready to answer them?

  “Okay, Zo,” I said, my voice echoing off the metal stall walls. “Remember that time in seventh grade we decided to sneak into the country club swimming pool after it closed? And someone saw us and called the police?”

  I chuckled. When the cops had rolled into the parking lot, we knew we were in deep trouble. Our parents had thought we were upstairs in Zoe’s bedroom watching movies. We were sure the police officer would make us go back and tell our parents and we’d be so busted. Probably grounded for life.

  “But you talked your way out of it, Zo, remember? You convinced the police officer that we had been in the bathroom when the pool closed and that we got locked in. You even cried.” I wiped my face, grinning. “God, you were brilliant.”

  And she was. We’d simply walked back home as if nothing ever happened, our swimsuits balled up and dripping in our purses, and none of our parents ever found out.

  “So how do I talk my way out of this one?” I asked the empty stall. I strained to hear an answer, even though I knew none would come. “Yeah. I didn’t think so.”

  After gathering my thoughts, I washed up and wandered back out into the dining room. Grayson was actually still eating, pushing fries into his mouth one at a time, taking each in exactly two bites.

  There was a slip of paper facedown on the table. I flipped it over, trying not to notice that the waitress was eyeing me intently. She chewed a thumbnail while she watched me, her eyes slitted as though she expected me to make a run for it.

  I rummaged through my purse, feeling a pang of guilt when my hand brushed against my turned-off cell phone. I could only imagine how many messages and texts were on there now. I’d promised myself I would listen to them. That I’d text Shani and apologize and give her answers, tell her why I’d used her. But the more time that went by without my acknowledging that the world I’d left behind was buzzing angrily, the harder it would be to say anything at all. The idea of talking to Mom made my heart beat faster. The thought of texting Shani the truth about what was going on made my palms sweat. It was so much easier to continue pretending that I was the good girl when I wasn’t getting a front-row ticket to how I’d ruined everything, courtesy of phone and text.

  When did this happen? When did I turn into this person who runs away? Had I always been? I’d always thought of myself as someone in control. But maybe that wasn’t who I was at all. Had I gotten so used to letting Zoe do the talking and letting Grayson get the attention, that the only thing I knew how to do was not be there? Or was it that I was always so busy being perfect, things never got tough for me?

  I pulled out my wallet and slipped Mom’s credit card out, then took the slip of paper and the card to the checkout. The waitress took both without saying a word, and peered at the card.

  “You got ID?” she asked. She turned her head to the side and spit a fingernail onto the floor.

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “Hang on.” I took the few steps back to our table and grabbed my purse, pulling out my driver’s license as I made my way back to the counter. I held it out, trying my hardest not to touch the waitress’s hand while passing it to her. She had chewed a hangnail and it was bleeding. Grayson was right; this place was disgusting. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. If he survived eating at Edwina’s, he’d survive pretty much anything I could throw at him during this trip. At least that’s what I was hoping for.

  She peered at my license, and then shoved it back into my hand. “The names don’t match,” she said.

  “That’s my mom,” I answered, pointing at the card.

  She held the card out as well, and I noticed another of her fingernails was bleeding. Gross. “We don’t take credit cards unless you got the right ID.” She dropped the card onto the counter. “Sorry. Policy. Cash only.”

  I looked around. “I don’t see a sign saying that,” I argued. I could feel my ears get hot. All of a sudden it seemed as if nothing was going to go right on this trip, and I wanted to stomp my feet and pout and cry and demand what I wanted, even though I knew it would get me nowhere.

  “I’m saying it right now,” she said, and I noticed that her ears looked red, as if they were hot, too. “Cash only.”

  “Fine.” I sighed. “Why not? It’s not like it ever has to be easy,” I grumbled, and, as if to punctuate my fury, I heard Grayson’s telltale uh-uh-uh in the background. I threw up my hands exasperatedly. “Of course!” I grabbed the card off the counter and turned on my heel.

  “Grayson,” I whispered, slapping my purse down on the booth seat. “You sure you don’t have any money?”

  “Positive,” he said, looking alarmed. “Why? We can’t pay for this?”

  “You’re positive?” I grilled him. I rooted through my purse, even though I knew there was almost no cash left in there, as if some miracle might have happened overnight and my emergency fifty might have reappeared.

  He turned his hands, palms up, on the table. “Where would I be hiding it?” Uh-uh-uh.

  I zipped my purse shut with such force, the zipper pull came off in my hand. I tossed it onto the table and held my face in my hands, thinking.

  “We can’t pay for this?” Grayson repeated, and when I didn’t answer, his voice notched up and got a little squealy. “What’re we gonna do, then, Kendra?”

  “Let me think, okay?” I said into my palms. I could feel eyes on me, coming from all corners of the restaurant. Especially from behind me, where the waitress stood at the register, no doubt ready to call the police if Grayson and I bolted.

  “This was such a stupid idea,” Grayson muttered, then followed it with uh-uh-uh-uh. “I can’t believe you would just run away across the country without any money.”

  “Say it a little louder next time,” I hissed, pulling my hands away from my face. “I don’t think they heard you next door.”

  “This was a stupid plan,” Grayson hissed back.

  “Well, do you want the police to know we’re runaways?”

  “Actually, yes. They’ll make us go home like I’ve been trying to get you to do since I woke up halfway across Kansas.”

  “This isn’t just about you, Mister Center of the Universe,” I said. “Just. Shut up. Count. Or something. I have money.” I couldn’t believe I was encouraging him to count, but I needed him to stop talking for ten seconds until we got out of this place.

  And I did have money. Lots of it. In my backpack. But I didn’t want to use it. I couldn’t use it. That cash was the last thing that might save me when we went home again. As long as I still had all the cash in my backpack when we got home, maybe I wouldn’t be in quite as much trouble. Without it, I would probably manage to be in even bigger trouble.

  But I had no choice. I had to pay for our lunch, or Mrs. Cash Only would definitely call the cops. And I’d have to go home and face the music anyway, and Grayson would still be sick. Maybe sicker. And then this whole thing would’ve been for nothing. Actually, for worse than nothing, because I’d have only served to make everything worse. I took a deep breath and pulled Hunka’s keys out of my pocket. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Grayson, then said it louder and jiggled my keys at the waitress as I walked past the counter. “I’ll be right back.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she glared at me, her mouth working a fingernail between her front teeth.

  I unlocked Hunka and leaned into the backseat, pulling my backpack to me and unzipping the small front pocket. Inside, curled up in a tight roll, were bills. Tens and fives, but mostly ones. More than three hundred dollars’ worth. Just looking at the money sent a wave of guilt over me, but I squashed it down. I ignored images of Bryn and Darian and Tommy pressing the bills into my palm at my locker. Ignored the memory of me standing in a closet and stuffing money hastily into my pocket, my palms sweaty with nerves. I couldn
’t think of those things right now. I needed to pay for lunch and get back on the road. That was all that mattered right then. Nothing else. I pulled a couple bills off the wad and clenched them in my fist, then turned and walked back into the diner.

  “Here,” I said to the waitress, shoving the money at her. She held up the bills to peer at the light through them, as if they might be counterfeit, then started pushing buttons on the register. “Come on,” I said to my brother. “Grab my purse.” He slid out of the booth and walked toward the door, my purse held out in front of him like a sack of garbage.

  The waitress crammed my money into the drawer and counted out the change. She dropped the coins into my palm as if it aggrieved her to do so. I closed my fist around the money and shook it a little in the air.

  “You would’ve gotten a tip if you’d let me use the card,” I said, then turned and walked out, feeling half vindicated for having told her off for treating me so condescendingly, and half rotten because it wasn’t her fault I was in this mess. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own.

  Grayson was waiting for me by Hunka, still holding the purse as if it might bite him. I grabbed it out of his hand and tossed it into the seat next to my backpack, then climbed into the car and leaned over to unlock Grayson’s door.

  He got in just as Hunka roared to life, but put his hand over mine as I clutched the gear shift to get us out of there.

  Uh-uh-uh-uh. “We need to talk. What did you mean you’re in trouble? Did that Tommy guy get you…?” He trailed off, and even though he was making his throat sound, he looked surprisingly calm. Almost like the old Grayson who made milk shakes in his persnickety way but drank them with a smile.

  I licked my lips, trying to figure out how to form the words. He needed to know. I needed to tell him.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not in that kind of trouble. I’m not pregnant.”

  “Then I don’t get it,” he said. “You were at the quarry for no reason. First you say you want to save me. Then you say we’re going to the Hayward Fault. And now you say you’re in some sort of trouble and that you can’t go home. What’s the big deal? What could be that bad?”

  I swallowed, but didn’t know where to begin.

  “You remember when that Doug guy kept bothering you at school?” he said.

  I looked at him sharply. “Grayson, don’t.”

  But he kept going. “The guy was seriously out of line. Remember?”

  I nodded, looking into my lap. Doug Barker was two years older than me. We’d met at a party about six months after Zoe left. He’d hit on me and, even though I’d lied to him and told him I already had a boyfriend, he wouldn’t let up. He’d stop by the house on the weekends, show up at the movies when I was there. Constantly trying to get me to go out with him. And when I finally told him that it was never in a million years going to happen, he started saying all these nasty things about me. About my body, mostly. Making it sound as if he’d seen it.

  Finally, one night, not sure where else to turn, I knocked on Grayson’s door. I told him everything.

  The next day, Grayson and Brock waited for Doug in the school parking lot. My brother looked as if he wanted to melt into the concrete, and he kept making that uh-uh-uh sound, but when Brock grabbed Doug by the back of the neck and threatened him, Grayson had gathered himself up tall, and they both looked tough. Doug never bothered me again.

  “You owe me one,” he said. “You said so that day. I’m calling it in.”

  And I did. I owed him at least one. I’d dragged him into that mess, and now I’d dragged him into this mess. The least I could do was let him know why.

  “I cheated,” I said. My voice sounded tiny and uncertain, like it might have come from someone else.

  “What?”

  “My calc semester final. I cheated,” I repeated, a little louder. Sounding confident and almost feeling as if I were coming clean, even though I knew I’d only told him part of the story.

  “You cheated? Like, how?”

  “Someone gave me the answers,” I said, also only partially true. “And I used them. And the school found out.”

  “That’s it?” he asked, and my breath got jagged, because part of me really wanted it to be true, that I had cheated and that was it. An even bigger part of me wanted to spill the whole story, but I’d kept it all a secret for so long, the words just would not come out. The part of me that would always remain the Superior Sibling, I guess. The part of me that never messed up, because messing up was what Grayson did. I made the family look good. And part of me couldn’t stand the thought of letting that go.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I said, trying to sound irritated. “I’m going to be in huge trouble. Like, expelled trouble.”

  “For cheating on a final? I doubt it. You’ll probably get ISS, and it’ll be over with.”

  “I wish,” I said, remembering Bryn telling me that Chub had been expelled, and how Lia and Shani said that the word was lots of people would be expelled. Getting suspended would be getting off easy, if that was the case. “It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.” I put Hunka into gear and started to back out. I could see our waitress kneeling in our booth, an empty milk shake glass in her hand, peering out the window at us, as if she still expected us to do something totally delinquent.

  “No,” Grayson said, but I backed out anyway. “This is stupid. You’re running away because you cheated on a test?”

  “It’s not just that,” I said, pulling out onto the main road again. I turned toward the one gas station I could see. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I do understand. I understand that you’re running away because of a stupid test.” His face started to take on an agitated look, getting red from the bottom up, his eyes getting small and beady. “You’re making me… all because of… What are you, Little Miss Perfect now?… It’s not right….”

  “No, you don’t know the whole story, Grayson. Calm down, okay?”

  I pulled into the gas station and parked at a pump, ignoring the stares of a woman standing on the other side. Her hair was in curlers and a little boy crouched next to her, making designs in the dust on the ground with his fingers. She watched us pull in and said something to the boy, who looked up and then disappeared into the backseat of her car.

  I could only imagine how we looked to strangers—bedraggled and filthy, my bangs still wet from washing my face in the restroom, Grayson red-faced and agitated.

  “I don’t understand this, Kendra. Why are you doing something so stupid for such a dumb reason?” He was not going to let this go easily. I was going to have to tell him more, like it or not.

  “Because it wasn’t only one test, okay?” I said. “It was a whole bunch of them. I’ve been cheating on them since October. And the administrators know. I’ll flunk the class for sure. I’ll be lucky if they don’t expel me. I’ll get kicked out of NHS and God knows what else. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to face my teachers again, or Mom and Dad. Everything I’ve worked for. Everything. Basically, I’m screwed.”

  I opened the door and stepped out into the soft spring breeze that drifted through the air. I ducked into the backseat and pulled more bills out of my backpack, then palmed my cell phone. I felt so embarrassed. Saying aloud what I’d done humiliated me. Admitting being a cheater made me feel so small.

  And I still hadn’t told him the whole story.

  Straightening up, I took a deep breath and headed toward the clerk in the doorway.

  I’m so screwed.

  And I am definitely not perfect, big brother. So far from it.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  When I got back in the car, Grayson was working the toes of his shoes in the rocks on the floorboard, and his face had gone back to its normal color. He had rocks clutched in both of his hands, and was rubbing his thumbs across them like worry stones.

  I had stocked us up on road trip goodies—candy bars and bags of chips, bottles of juice and soda and water, some
smushed-looking sandwiches and little packets of mayonnaise. I set the bags on the front seat between us, then stood by the side of the car, thumbing on my cell phone.

  My heart raced as I waited for it to power up. For some reason, trouble didn’t seem to loom as large when you were disconnected from the world. I wanted to stay disconnected. To pretend that nothing had happened. To forget about Grayson’s outburst and my admission and get back that Grayson who took off his shirt and joked about the restaurants and see if I could make him stay around longer. Most important, I wanted to find Zoe and let her help me fix this. If she could. If she was even there. Why hadn’t she answered me?

  I pushed the worry away. There had to be a logical answer. Had to be.

  I checked my texts first. They weren’t as bad as I thought. Looked like mostly people had given up on me. Even Shani, from the sound of Lia’s last text:

  WTF?! Ur mom showed up @ Shani’s house. Shani = srsly pissed. She sez don’t call her.

  I felt bad, even though I knew I wasn’t going to call her anyway. If I was being honest with myself, Shani and I were never close enough friends for me to confide in her about what was going on. She was my stand-by friend. My stand-in friend. The one who would never replace Zoe, even though that’s exactly what she was meant to do.

  And now I felt bad for getting her into the middle of this. I texted back, knowing Lia would show my text to Shani:

  Sorry I didn’t tell u guys what was going on.

  I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the buttons. What else could I say? I was scared? I never really trusted you? I’m a spoiled brat like Grayson says, and the only thing that’s ever mattered to me was being perfect and getting some of the attention that he always seemed to get by being sick? That I always just wanted to be better than him; I always just wanted to matter? And that even though I knew those things, I couldn’t do a damn thing to change them?

  I couldn’t say any of those things, so I hit “send” and then deleted all of my texts.