Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  “We can’t leave her there alone,” he said, catching up to me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t know her. She could steal everything we’ve got.”

  I laughed. “She can’t steal the car, because I have the keys. The rocks, technically, we stole from her. I have my purse and the money out of my backpack.”

  “Speaking of. Where did you get all that money, anyway? You’ve been hounding me for money since we started this idiotic trip—”

  “Not idiotic.”

  “And you have a fat wad of cash in your backpack the whole time?”

  “Pretty much.” I dodged a woman who was letting her toddler push a shopping cart.

  “So?”

  “So, the most she could take from us would be about twenty dollars’ worth of gas station food. She probably needs it more than we do.”

  “She could poison the food.”

  I snorted. “You think she’s hiding poison in Bo’s diaper bag? Come on, it’ll be fine. Consider it your good deed of the day.”

  He paused. “So? You never answered me.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to poison the food or steal the car or kill us on the highway, okay? She’s fine. We’re fine. Relax.”

  I plunged through the automatic doors, feeling the swish of Walmart wash over me—the banging of carts finding a home against one another, the beeps of scanners ringing up sales, the squawk of codes being called overhead, a mishmash of languages and crying babies.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Grayson said as I grunted, trying to pry two carts apart. “The money.”

  I stopped and looked him square in the eyes. “Is mine. It doesn’t matter where I got it, okay?” I gave another yank and the carts separated. I pushed one toward the restroom, wishing what I’d said was true. It mattered, all right. It mattered a lot.

  That money was going to be my saving grace. It was going to be the only prayer I had of getting out of this mess I was in. And with every dollar spent, my chances of being able to go home again and look Mom and Dad in the eye got smaller and smaller.

  I realized that at some point, I’d chosen this trip over my future. I’d laid all of my problems at Zoe’s feet, when I wasn’t even sure if she was still there.

  As I stood at the restroom sink, it really dawned on me what I’d done. And I couldn’t take another step until I’d tried to make it all right. I washed my hands and then backed against the wall, next to the paper-towel dispensers.

  Women with little kids whisked past me, pumping towels out of the machines and barking orders while I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and began dialing. A toilet flushed. A baby cried on the changing table. The phone on the other end rang in my ear.

  “Ken?” Frantic.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  There was the sound of clothes rustling, like he was walking somewhere, and then a door closing. “Kendra? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Gray’s fine, too.”

  “Your mother and I are worried sick.” I thought I heard a thickness in Dad’s voice, and immediately felt a lump in my throat, too. “Where are you?” His words sounded breathy, as if he was barely hanging on to them.

  “Listen, Dad. I can’t stay on very long.” A woman came in, towing a little boy gruffly by one hand and yelling at him, something about him ruining everything. The little boy was wailing, and once again I had to swallow back the lump in my throat. My parents had never treated me like that. They didn’t deserve what I was doing to them.

  “The school called. Something about cheating? We told them they had it wrong. But if that’s why you…”

  “Dad,” I said again, wanting to wrap my mouth around that word over and over again: Dad, Dad, Dad. My dad always meant safety for all of us. Even if he didn’t always know how to deal with Grayson, he always solved the problems, kept us even-keeled. Why hadn’t I thought I could trust him to help me? Why hadn’t I run to him rather than run away? He was so many miles behind us now. “Dad, I want you to promise me something, okay?” I turned and faced the wall, pressing my forehead against the tile. I didn’t care how gross it was, and only distantly worried that the fact that I was thinking of its grossness at all meant that Grayson’s thoughts had started to penetrate me at some level, too.

  “Whatever it is, Ken, we’ll work it out. It’ll be fine. Tell me where you are.”

  “Promise me that you and Mom will go to Italy next year no matter what, okay?”

  There was a pause, then in a confused voice, “Italy? What does Italy have to do with…?”

  “Just promise. Mom’s been learning all those Italian phrases, and I don’t want you guys to miss out because of… promise me. Okay?” I knew how ridiculous it sounded for me to be calling about Italy, of all things. But I had my reasons. It made perfect sense to me. My parents were good parents. And they deserved a break. And they were just the kind of parents who would use family drama as a reason not to take one. They didn’t deserve that. They didn’t deserve me taking their plans away from them like this.

  “Kendra. This is silly. Let me talk to your brother.”

  I flicked a look toward the door. My brother. Grayson was probably freaking out right now, wondering what happened to me. He was probably making a spectacle of himself, counting or making that throat noise or tapping the floor or walking in perfect circles or something. He wouldn’t want to get into the car with me, after I’d spent this much time in a public restroom. He’d probably think I was toxic.

  But somehow I knew that, even if he didn’t want to, he’d still go with me, because that’s what Grayson did.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I love you. Tell Mom I love her, too, okay? And I’m really sorry, Dad.”

  “Kendra, don’t hang up! Just tell me where you are and I’ll come get you. We’ll solve whatever this—”

  But I hung up and pushed the button to turn my cell phone off again. All I could think as I pushed through the door back into the hustle and bustle of Walmart was He never promised.

  To my surprise, Grayson was standing next to the cart with his arms crossed, looking very anxious but not doing anything weird.

  “What took so long?” he said, practically pouncing on me when I got out.

  “I called Dad.”

  He paused. Seemed surprised. “You called Dad? At work?”

  I shrugged, thinking about the rustling noise and the sound of a door shutting. He probably was at work. He’d have to call Mom now and he already sounded so upset. I’d probably totally obliterated his day. “I called his cell.”

  “What did he say?”

  I rolled my eyes. “We talked about baseball. Duh, what do you think he said, Grayson? He wanted to know where we are.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “No.”

  “Why’d you call him, then?”

  I ran my finger around the rim of a shot glass on a shelf next to our cart. “I missed him, okay? I wanted to hear his voice.”

  “If you miss him so much, why not just turn around and go home?”

  I thrust my purse into the cart seat and pushed down an empty checkout lane, scanning the overhead signs for the infant section. I was feeling very on edge about the conversation between Dad and me—he didn’t promise—and I just wanted Grayson to stop worrying for one second. If it wasn’t the germs, it was the hitchhiker in our backseat or the phone calls to Mom and Dad or… or… or… It never ended. “Have you seen the Hayward Fault yet?” I snapped. “Uh, no. So can we move on? Do you have to pee?”

  “I’m not peeing here.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I wound my way through the aisles until I reached the back, where the baby gear was. I pushed into the jungle of clothes, checking tags and sizes. “How big do you think Bo is?” I asked.

  “How would I know?”

  I shrugged. “Never mind.” I pushed past a couple more racks until I got to a shelf lined with pajamas. They looked warm. I threw a pai
r into the cart. I wasn’t made of money, but I couldn’t stand to see that baby’s mottled skin one more time. He made me cold just looking at him. I threw in a blanket, too. It was hard to believe that yesterday I was sitting in my car, afraid to walk into school, and here I was, not even twenty-four hours later, buying clothes for a baby I’d never met before, the entire state of Kansas between me and home.

  Half an hour later, we were at the checkout. I’d gotten Bo a pack of the cheapest diapers I could find. I’d also picked up a bag of apples, some cheese and crackers, yogurt, granola bars, a big box of Pop-Tarts, six small bottles of chocolate milk, and a little cooler to put them in.

  Grayson found a sweatshirt, a toothbrush, a towel, a bucket of antibacterial wipes, and a pack of soap. He also picked up an atlas, which I never would have thought of.

  At the last minute, I decided his sweatshirt idea was a great one and picked one up for me, too, wondering if my jacket was still in my locker or if they’d already cleared it out and sent all my stuff home to Mom and Dad along with a letter saying I could never return. I got a small pang in my gut just thinking about it, so I cleared my mind and concentrated on the clerk’s hands as she scanned our items and threw them into bags.

  When we got back to the car, Rena was standing in the parking lot, bent over at the waist, head lolling, her hair and fingers brushing the ground. She straightened when I opened the passenger door and started stuffing trash into one of the plastic bags. I peeked over the backseat. Bo appeared to be sleeping.

  “That was fast,” Rena said, sweeping her hair out of her face and then clasping her hands behind her and stretching.

  “Got your milk,” I said. I dumped the bottles of milk into the cooler and hefted it up on top of the roof. “I also got Bo some stuff. Hope that’s okay.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said, catching the jammies that I tossed to her over the car. “I’ll put them on him later, I guess. He’s so sleepy. Didn’t eat much.” She rubbed the side of her chest when she said it, as if she was sore.

  “So I guess we’ll get on the road again soon,” I said, tying the bag of trash and walking to the back of Hunka to put it in the trunk. “It’s twelve-thirty.”

  “Okay,” Rena said, then put her hand lightly on Grayson’s arm. I saw him freeze under her touch and wanted to laugh out loud. He didn’t like to be touched, especially by strangers. Strangers who were also hitchhikers. “Show me where the bathroom is?” she asked, and to my surprise, Grayson nodded. As they walked away, I could hear his uh-uh-uh echoing down the parking lot.

  I sank down in the front seat of Hunka, hoping that picking up Rena was the right decision, and I hadn’t just piled another mistake on top of all the others I’d already made.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “It’s a good thing we stopped here,” Grayson said. He was bent over the atlas, his nose practically touching the page. “We have to change highways. Got to get up to I-80.”

  “Navigate me,” I said. My stomach growled and I pawed through a bag on the seat beside me without looking. The traffic was the worst we’d seen since we left home. Twice I’d almost rear-ended the person in front of me. The last thing I needed was to get in an accident and have some cop matching me up to a missing persons report from Missouri.

  I pulled out an apple and took a bite.

  “That hasn’t been washed,” Grayson said.

  “You got a sink I can borrow?” I grinned and risked a quick glance at him. He was scowling at me.

  “You could die from that. They spray those things with pesticide, you know.”

  “Mmm, pesticide.” I bit into the apple again. This time I chewed for a minute, then opened my mouth and showed him the mashed-up apple inside. “Pesticide is delicious.”

  “Fine. You’ll love E. coli.”

  “Mmm, E. coli,” I said in the same moaning voice. “Tell me where to turn, Safety Officer Sam.”

  “I hope you shit your pants,” he mumbled, and Rena laughed out loud in the backseat. “Turn off up here.”

  I hit the highway and headed north. The day had heated up a little, and I rolled down my window a crack, letting that crisp mountain air whip through me. For the first time since we left home, I felt like smiling. We drove out of the city and up where the trees were thicker.

  I could see Rena staring out the window, her fingers twisting her little stone earrings round and round. Grayson lined rocks along the highway lines on the atlas, mapping our route to California.

  “Holy shit, Kendra, we’ve still got twelve hundred miles to go.”

  “That’s not bad.”

  “Not bad? We’ve already been on the road for nine hours. It’s like, another eighteen!”

  “See? Less than a day.”

  He gaped at me, then shook his head and turned to look out the window.

  After a long stretch of silence, I turned to him. He was chewing on a cracker. “You don’t freak out about overpasses anymore.”

  “Yeah, I do. I just don’t do it out loud,” he said. He swiped the rocks off the atlas and started lining them up on the dash instead.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “Why do I do any of it? If I had a damn clue, I wouldn’t.”

  “Dude, you can’t say ‘damn’ around babies.”

  “He doesn’t understand what I’m saying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s okay,” Rena said. “Trust me, he’s heard far worse from Archie.”

  “He’s asleep, anyway,” Grayson added.

  I hit a bump in the road, and the glove compartment door flopped open onto Grayson’s knee again. I smiled and took another bite of my apple. This was what those trips to Grandma’s felt like before Grayson started fearing overpasses. “Today actually kind of feels like we’re just on a road trip,” I said.

  “It feels like we’re running away,” Grayson said, slipping another rock onto the dash.

  “You sort of owe me a good road trip, since we never got to have any when we were kids, thanks to your overpass issues that are suddenly gone now.”

  “My whole life was like one big road trip,” Rena said, then chuckled softly and gazed out the window again at the passing trees. “One big, stupid, crappy road trip.”

  “So I’m finally getting my road trip,” I added.

  Grayson lined up another rock. “Uh-uh. You’re running away and justifying it.”

  “Whatever,” I mumbled. “Can’t you ever lighten up? Have fun? Just once?”

  We drove along in silence some more, my happiness evaporated. Suddenly, all that road trip fun was gone, and it did feel like we were running away. And it felt as though we had so very much to run away from.

  Then, very softly, Rena said, “In spring I look gay, dressed in beautiful array.”

  “What?” I glanced in the rearview mirror.

  She turned to meet my eyes, an embarrassed flush creeping up her face. “Oh. It’s part of a riddle. My grandma used to tell them to me all the time. Said riddles made you smarter.”

  “There’s truth to that,” Grayson muttered. He was slouched forward, using the binding of the atlas to push his line of rocks into perfect formation on the dash.

  “Anyway. She died a long time ago, but I still remember some of them.” She shifted and fussed with Bo’s blanket. “Looking out there reminded me of one of her riddles. It goes like this: In spring I look gay, dressed in beautiful array. In summer more clothing I wear. The colder it grows, I fling off my clothes. In winter I’m naked and bare. What am I?”

  I thought about it. I’d never been very good with riddles. They never made sense to me. “A person?” I guessed.

  “A tree,” Grayson said. He placed another rock just so, then scrubbed his hands with one of his wipes and fished another cracker out of the bag. He popped it into his mouth and turned sideways to look at Rena. “That’s the answer, right? The clothes are leaves.” He glanced at me. “A person? Really? You run around naked in the winter?�
�

  Rena beamed.

  “It was just a guess. I forgot to tell you Grayson is Genius Boy,” I said, cutting my eyes to the rearview mirror. “He has a brain the size of Wyoming. Hey, speaking of…” I pointed to a sign ahead, telling us we were crossing over into Wyoming. So many states away from home now. But neither of them seemed to notice.

  “Yep,” she said. “You got it right.”

  Grayson grinned as Rena reached over the seat to rummage for a granola bar. “Give me another. I love riddles.”

  She opened her granola bar, took a small bite, and chewed, scrunching her forehead in thought. “It’s been a long time. Let’s see… okay. Here’s one. “I have two bodies, but they’re both joined as one. The stiller I stand, the faster I run. What am I?”

  “An hourglass,” he shot back immediately. “Come on, that one was easy.”

  Rena laughed and tossed her granola bar wrapper at his face. It bounced off his forehead and landed on my leg.

  “I’ve got one,” I said. “If two nerds drive to Wyoming together, how long before the normal person in the car goes crazy?”

  But they both ignored me.

  “Okay, okay,” Rena said. “How about this? I can’t remember the rhyme, but this is close enough. Elizabeth, Elspeth, Besty, and Bess found a bird’s nest with five eggs in it. They all took one and left four eggs inside. How did they do that?”

  “It was the same egg—they just passed it around,” I said, then pointed at Grayson. “Ha-ha, sucker! Beat you to it!”

  “Those are just nicknames. Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess are all the same girl,” Grayson said over me, then tossed Rena’s crumpled granola bar wrapper at my head and added, “dumbass.”

  I grabbed the wrapper and threw it back at him. “That’s tough talk from a guy whose ass I kicked at the bottom of a quarry yesterday,” I said. “And it’s a good thing I did. You’d still be there counting if I hadn’t.” It was barely out of my mouth before I realized I shouldn’t have said it. I could see him wilt a little next to me, and I wanted to kick myself for bringing up the one thing I was hoping to help him forget about. After a few seconds, he turned forward again and relined the stones on the dash.