Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  If they kept talking, I didn’t hear them. I was busy dreaming of unicorns and leprechauns and giant hopping jackalopes, my brother and I happily riding on the back of one.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I woke up with my stomach growling again.

  I looked around the room, which looked no better under the sunlight streaming in between the curtains. Grayson was curled up in the vinyl chair Rena had disinfected for him last night. Rena was sprawled out across the other bed, her head at the wrong end, her arm stretched protectively over Bo’s middle. Bo was asleep with his mouth open, his little arms stretched over his head in a victory pose. He was wearing the new pajamas I’d bought him. They were huge on him.

  Grayson was right. That baby was too quiet. If he woke up crying in the night, I never heard him. But Rena didn’t seem worried about it.

  The TV was still on, but the sound was muted. The remote was on Rena’s side of the night table. They’d found a news station, the kind with headlines constantly scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I had a pang of homesickness, thinking of the number of times my mom had said, Those stations make me crazy! I can’t decide if I should be listening to the person talking or reading the words at the bottom, and I end up trying to do both. It’s exhausting!

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes, squinting at the words at the bottom of the screen, looking intently for any stories about two missing Missouri kids. After a few minutes, I decided maybe we were safe. Maybe calling Mom and Dad had calmed them down. Maybe they figured we were old enough to handle being out alone.

  And if that’s what I thought, maybe I was still dreaming.

  Mom might be okay with me being out on my own, but not Grayson. Grayson was her “sick child”; and as much as I loved Mom, she was way too overprotective of him. She lived her whole adult life waiting for Something Horrible. She must have spent countless days fearing… When would his illness take him away from her forever?… When would he kill himself?… When would he simply walk away, down the highway in that awkward way of his, and never come back again?… When would he be buried under an avalanche of the rocks that he loved more than anything he’d ever loved in his whole life?

  For Mom, everything non-OCD-related Grayson did was an accomplishment. Things the rest of us do every day without thinking twice. Did he get dressed in less than two hours? Walk outside and pick up the mail? Make lunch? Any sign that Grayson might be getting a handle on his illness was a reason to celebrate.

  Everything else… was tragedy waiting to happen.

  If only she could’ve seen him yesterday. She would have been so happy.

  I knew then that no matter how many times I called Mom and Dad, they would not stop worrying. I knew that even though Dad said he was on my side and we could talk it out, when I got home, I would be punished. They would fawn over Grayson as if he were a puppy saved at the last moment from execution. They would tell me I’d let them down. They’d have betrayed quavers in their voices, and I knew that no matter what I did, there would never be a moment in my life when I would make up for this. The time I ran away. The time I thought of myself first. The time I made everyone suffer with worry. Poor, poor Grayson. As if he didn’t have enough cards stacked against him, his sister had to go and do this to him.

  I reached over and grabbed the remote, pressing the channel button until it was back on the cartoon channel. I left it muted and stared at the fuzzy screen, imagining myself as the characters, being pummeled by giant rocks and having my hands slammed in doors and my tongue run through blenders. Would any of that ever be enough?

  Probably not.

  After a while, the rumbling in my stomach got to be too much, and I slipped out of bed and walked over to the table where the pizza boxes still sat. The top one was empty, but there was still half a pizza left in the bottom box. I pulled out a slice and scooted behind the curtain to eat it.

  The sunlight made me blink and squint, but at least it felt warmer, as if spring had actually decided to really get here after all. In the light of day, the parking lot of the motel revealed a straggly-looking clientele—beat-up cars and potbellied men in ripped undershirts coughing and spitting while their dogs peed on tires and rooted around beneath the overflowing Dumpster. I gazed up and down the road as far as I could. Everything had a faded look to it, as if this was a town that had given up.

  I heard movement behind me and turned to see Grayson blinking up at me.

  “Close those,” he grouched, his voice scratchy. “You’ll wake up the baby.”

  As if Bo had heard him say this, he started fussing. I let the curtain drop to a close and now was blinking in the dark room, trying to make out the shifting figures of Rena and Bo on her bed.

  “What time is it?” she asked groggily.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We should get on the road, though. Sorry I woke Bo.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m surprised he slept the whole night. He hasn’t ever done that before.” She got up and padded around the bed to the diaper bag she’d set on the dresser top. She rummaged around inside and came out with a diaper.

  By then, Bo was screaming like crazy. Someone pounded on the wall next to us, and Rena made shushing noises while she wriggled him out of his pajamas and changed his diaper.

  Grayson had gotten up and gone into the bathroom. I could hear the water running in there.

  Rena finished changing Bo’s diaper and pulled him onto her lap, scooting backward to the head of the bed and cozying down under the covers on her side. Bo’s cries got more frantic and then were suddenly replaced by slurping noises and Rena’s soft singing.

  I bent to put on my shoes as the bathroom door opened and Grayson emerged, towel and soap in hand, his hair slicked back on his head. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and he walked with a confidence I hadn’t seen in him for… ever.

  “Come on,” I said, trying not to look too surprised. (Mom would have made a huge deal about this step—probably held a party in his honor—and I so didn’t want to act like Mom.) “We can go get gas while she feeds the baby. That way when she’s done, we’ll be ready to hit the road.” I grabbed my purse and dug the keys out of it. Grayson didn’t move from where he was standing. “Come on,” I said.

  He went back to his chair and sat down, rolling the soap into his towel on his lap. “Why don’t you go and I’ll stay?” he said. “I’m sick of the car. And I want to eat a little.” He reached over and fumbled with the pizza boxes.

  “Okay,” I said, and opened the door to leave.

  Grayson chewed, looking straight at the TV, but Rena didn’t move at all. I thought I heard a soft snore coming from her bed.

  As I pumped gas into Hunka, feeling the early spring breeze coax goose bumps up on my arm, I remembered the last time I spent the night with Zoe. Her parents had long since stopped letting her spend the night at our house. We always had to stay over at hers, even though she and I would wait until her parents were asleep and would sneak out to meet Grayson in the backyard.

  “He’s not that weird, you know,” Zoe had said, closing her door softly for the third time. She’d been checking every fifteen minutes to see if the light in the den was off yet, signaling that her parents had gone to bed. They were still up. “When it’s just him and me, he’s almost totally normal.”

  “I know,” I said, even though I knew Grayson and totally normal were a far cry from each other. But Zoe was my best friend and I wanted to support her. And Grayson was my brother, and even though he was a pain sometimes, I still wanted to defend him from people like Mr. and Mrs. Monett—people who think that just because someone isn’t like them, there must be something wrong with him. “And he loves you.”

  “Exactly!” Zoe had said, pointing at me over the magazine she was pretending to be interested in. “You’d think they’d want me to be with a boy who loves me. Especially one who’s known me my whole life.” She slapped the magazine shut and sighed. “I wish they’d see that he can’t
help it that he counts sometimes, but it doesn’t make him a bad person.”

  He can’t help it.

  I knew this. He couldn’t help it. So why was I, all these years later, standing at a gas station in Wyoming expecting him to change? Would Zoe be disappointed in me when she found out what I’d been doing to him over the past two days?

  I finished filling the tank and stood leaning against the car for a few minutes, my eyes closed, my face turned toward the sun. The wind felt so good.

  I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on. There was a text. Eagerly, I opened it, hoping it was Zoe finally responding to one of mine.

  It was from Mom.

  We know about the money. We are confused. Come home. We need to talk.

  They knew. To my surprise, my knees didn’t buckle and I didn’t start to hyperventilate. I didn’t pass out, and the ground didn’t open up and swallow me whole. I didn’t even feel like crying.

  They knew. And I wasn’t going to die from it.

  But if I admitted that, even to myself, then I would have to admit that running away had been a complete overreaction. And I wasn’t prepared to admit that. I was too far in.

  My call to Dad had probably tipped them off about the money. I guess on some level I knew that all along. Maybe on some level I wanted them to put the pieces together, to find out what a horrible person I was when I was still hundreds of miles away.

  That way I couldn’t feel anything but the sun and the wind and the rumble of the cars passing by on the highway. That way I couldn’t get caught up in the drama of being caught. I was here and they were there and we wouldn’t have to face one another with the truth that I wasn’t as perfect as any of us thought I was. They couldn’t yell at me if I wasn’t there; they would have to accept it without understanding it. And, more important, I would have to accept it without understanding it, too.

  Maybe I would never go home. Maybe I would stay gone forever.

  I flipped through my contacts until I got to Zoe’s name and pressed “call.” The phone rang three times and went to voice mail.

  Hey, yo, you’ve got Zo! her voice rang out in a singsong. The mere sound of it brought happy tears to my eyes. I laughed out loud, imagining her making her gangsta face while saying this. I could see her so clearly in my mind—lips pooched together, head cocked to one side, making signs with her fingers and crossing her arms like she was tough. Leave me a message and… whatev. You know. This last was followed by giggles, but they weren’t just Zoe’s giggles. Another girl’s voice intertwined with Zoe’s. You’re a poet and you didn’t kn—, the other voice said before it was cut off. My smile wilted, and a tiny voice nagged in the back of my mind: That’s probably Zoe’s new best friend. That’s probably the reason she never answers your texts or e-mails, Kendra. Zoe’s a poet and she didn’t know it, and you are yesterday’s news.

  But I knew Zoe. She was my best friend. Best friends are for life. The girl on the message was probably just some other girl. Zoe’s version of Shani or Lia. No big.

  The voice mail beeped and I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Hey, Zo,” I said. “It’s Ken. I um… I like your voice mail, yo.” I forced a laugh, but even to my own ears it sounded like I was trying too hard. How long had I been doing that? How long had I been putting so much effort into making Zoe remember me? “So my number’s the same. Give me a call, okay? I have a surprise for you. It’s important. Bye.” I hung up and stared at the phone for a minute. You’re a poet and you didn’t know it. Why did those words make me feel so rotten inside?

  Probably because this was the first time I really felt that Zoe’s life had gone on in California. That she wasn’t still pining for her best friends back in Missouri. Because for the first time, I had to admit that there was a teeny part of me that worried that she wasn’t answering me because she just didn’t want to.

  I pushed that thought away. I couldn’t go there. We were way too far in it for me to start having doubts now. I was being silly. Zoe would be there in California. And she would be happy to see us. She would.

  I started to put the phone away, then changed my mind and flipped back to Mom’s text and hit “reply,” noticing that my phone had only two bars of battery charge left.

  I’m sorry Mom. I promise to fix it.

  A car honked behind me and I jumped. A man was idling, in line for the pump. I quickly turned my phone off and stuffed it into the glove box, then started up Hunka and drove back to the motel, wondering why I’d just made that promise to my mom once again.

  Why I’d promised to continue to be perfect when I’d already proved that I was far from it.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Rena and Grayson were sitting on the curb outside the room when I pulled into the parking lot.

  “Checkout’s at eleven,” Grayson said as he opened the back door for Rena. She climbed in, pushing Bo’s seat in ahead of her. I noticed that Bo was awake but was lying there, serenely watching the sky with glassy eyes. I still thought he looked funny. Why didn’t Rena see it?

  We all have obvious things we don’t see, my brain rattled in response. You’re a poet and you didn’t know it, Kendra. But I batted that thought away.

  “So it must be after eleven,” Rena said, “because the maid came in and told us we had to get out or go pay.”

  Grayson got in on the passenger side. He mimicked in a thick foreign accent, “Dis a-no slop house. You gotta a-pay for da bed!”

  He and Rena both cracked up.

  “I think she meant flophouse.” Rena giggled. “Unless she thought we were pigs.” She oinked.

  Grayson laughed. “You never know at that place. I’d believe they let barn animals sleep in those beds.”

  Rena barked out a laugh. “Smelled like it,” she said. “The sheets on my bed were sticky.”

  Bo cried, and Rena pulled the baby carrier’s sun visor up to shade his face. Then she rattled a toy over him, and he stopped.

  “We a-no clean da sheets at dis a-slop house,” Grayson said, adopting the accent again. “You gotta a-pay if you a-wanna da clean sheets on da bed!”

  Rena joined in. “You gotta a-pay extra if you a-wanna shower!”

  Again, they both laughed uproariously, even though Rena’s fake accent was horrible. She sounded like she had a bad cold.

  But I couldn’t help it; their jokes were contagious. I chimed in. “We have a-no shower! Only sex webcam in dat shower hole!” And we all laughed, even though my accent was worse than Rena’s.

  “No a-touch da sex webcam! We pay nineteen ninety-five for it!” Rena laughed. “Biiig bucks! Cost a-more dan whole a-room!”

  “I no a-touched anything in that bathroom if I could help it,” Grayson said, wiping his eyes. “I swear I saw things moving on the toilet seat.”

  “No a-touch da tings on the towlet seat,” I said, shaking my finger at him. “Dose are complimentary breakfast!”

  “Ewww,” Rena and Grayson moaned together, and we laughed some more as we pulled back onto the highway and headed toward California.

  See, Zoe? I said in my head. I can laugh with other friends, too. I can even make Grayson laugh about germs now. I wasn’t sure if even Zoe was ever able to accomplish that.

  We drove for a long time in silence. I peeked into the rearview mirror and saw that Rena wore the same satisfied grin that Grayson had on his face. I imagined mine matched theirs, too. I pushed Mom’s text and Zoe’s voice mail message out of my mind and drove along, cracking the window and enjoying the whir of the highway under Hunka’s tires.

  I imagined Lia and Shani back at school, their butts sweating on the plastic school chairs as the classrooms get more and more stuffy as the day warms up. Feeling lucky if one of their afternoon teachers says they can go outside to read their assignments. Girls wearing shorts to school, their legs all white and goose-pimply because it’s still not quite warm enough for shorts, but they can’t wait until summer to show off their figures again.

&
nbsp; Was Bryn at school? What was happening to Chub right now? What about Darian and Tommy and the others? Had they all been expelled, as Lia and Shani had predicted?

  A part of me wanted to be there. I wanted to be gossiping at my locker with the girls and making fun of the kids who were still wearing their winter boots instead of flip-flops. I wanted to be at the honor society meeting. I wanted to be in class, as much as I hated to admit it.

  But I knew that would never happen. Not again. I was in too deep. If Chub was expelled, that spelled doom for me. The thought that I’d passed a certain point of no return scared me a little. What would my life look like when I got back? What would happen to me? Would I still graduate, still pack for college in a few months? I doubted it.

  I’d promised Mom I’d make it all better, but I knew it was too late for that.

  Sometimes I wished I had an excuse, like Grayson. Leaving school early had been no big deal for him. It was sort of expected. Nobody got mad or disappointed. But other things were expected of me. Different things. And staying in school was certainly one of them.

  “Can we turn on some music?” Rena asked, leaning forward and resting her chin on the back of the front seat.

  “We can try,” Grayson said, using an antibacterial wipe as a buffer, fiddling with the radio dial. “Let’s see if we can get anything besides static and static.”

  A few stations tuned in and out again, and then he landed on a song that made Rena suck in her breath and grab his shoulder.

  “Leave it there! ‘Lullaby’! My mom used to listen to it all the time when I was a little kid. Shawn Mullins.” She flopped back against her seat and sang along.

  I recognized the song and started singing along to the parts I knew, too, and Grayson seemed to know the whole thing. He even did the talking parts, and before long we were all singing at the top of our lungs.

  This. This felt so right. Singing and joking in fake accents and driving in the sun. No sickness here. No perfection to live up to. No hospitals and shrinks and quarries. It was like the song was speaking directly to me—Yes, Kendra, your life is shit right now. You really screwed the pooch. You’ve got about eight more levels of hell to go through, probably. But everything’s going to be okay. It really will.