Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  By the time we got into the stairwell (thirty-six ins and thirty-six outs) and down the stairs (thirty-six ups and thirty-six downs), I was beginning to think we’d be buying dinner instead of breakfast. He never did answer my question, which told me he pretty much had no idea why thirty-six. I let it drop.

  Grayson stayed out in the hallway while I went in and ordered. Three cinnamon rolls, two coffees, and a bottle of chocolate milk for Rena.

  We were heading toward the stairs when a nurse came out of the ER doors, jacket on and car keys in hand.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said, and at first I thought she was talking to someone behind us or something. But she kept coming straight at us. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Oh,” I said awkwardly, but she was heading for Grayson instead. She put a hand on his shoulder and leaned down to talk to him.

  “We were able to get a hold of your mother last night. She gave us the prescription and insurance information we needed, and as soon as the pharmacist gets the okay from insurance, you’ll be good to go. Do you know where our pharmacy is?”

  Grayson shook his head, stepping away from me and clearing his throat so softly it almost sounded like the beginning of a word. Uh.

  She pointed down the hallway, but I honestly didn’t hear anything she said. I was still trying to process what I’d just heard: We were able to get hold of your mother last night…. I gripped the bag holding our cinnamon rolls so tightly my fingernails turned pink. The hospital had called Mom.

  Which meant…

  Our parents knew where we were.

  After the nurse left, Grayson wouldn’t look me in the eye. Instead, he stared at his bare toes, white from hospital chill, poking out the bottom of his jeans. I turned on him, trying to keep my voice level.

  “You had them call Mom? What…” For a minute I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak at all. The lump in my throat had swollen, and I feared air wouldn’t get past it. That maybe I’d end up in the ER, gasping for breath, having a tube shoved down my throat. But confusion welled up in me so great my vision started to get grainy, and I clutched at that paper bag with everything I had. “What the hell, Grayson?” I hissed.

  And I started walking because that was the only command my brain could take in at the moment. Walk. Burn energy. Burn it off before you burn up. I pounded through the stairwell doorway, not even bothering to wait for my brother, but somehow knowing that he was coming behind me anyway.

  It was over.

  So close—so close!—and he’d ruined it all. Mom would be coming. She’d probably already booked a flight to Nevada. She’d probably already called the cops. I was this close to seeing Zoe again, and everything had come crashing to a halt because of my brother. Of course. As always.

  He’d been looking so good. So changed. I was a fool. He would never change. I was stupid to think he ever would.

  “I can’t believe…” I said, stomping up the stairs, my mind racing. I turned back after reaching the top of the first flight, and gazed down at him. He was stepping through the doorway again—in, out, in, out. I couldn’t deal with it. If I tried, I was going to blow up on him. I turned and walked up the second flight of stairs, leaving him to follow me.

  At the top of the second flight, I paced and waited for him. When he finally appeared at the top of the steps, he looked behind him as if he wanted to go back down and up again, but seemed to think better of it.

  I whirled on him. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you do that? What were you thinking?”

  And it was then that I saw the tears. Big ones, rolling down his face. His mouth was wet, too, and super red, like he’d been chewing on his bottom lip.

  “I need my medicine,” he said in this helpless little voice, gesturing weakly with the coffees, as if even he was disappointed with himself. “You were gone forever getting those sandwiches, and I started to worry that something had happened to you, so I started counting and… and the nurse could see that something was…” He swallowed, his throat clicking. “… wrong. So I asked her to call Mom so I could get my medicine.”

  “You’ve been fine without it,” I countered. “We were almost there. We were almost…” I trailed off when I realized how not almost-there we were, at least in terms of Grayson being cured. Or my situation being any better. The only “there” we were almost was almost there to Zoe, but I couldn’t tell him that, and I especially couldn’t tell him, or maybe even tell myself, that my faith in what Zoe could do for us was waning. I paced over to the wall and pressed my forehead into the cool brick, my mind reeling over what options were left for us.

  We had to leave. As fast as we could. Tell Rena and Bo good-bye and go. If we weren’t too late already. That was our only option.

  “You don’t understand, Kendra. You can’t… force someone to be who you want them to be.”

  “We’re so close,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and feeling the breath of my words puff back into my face.

  “You don’t understand,” he repeated.

  “No,” I said miserably, and turned and pressed my back to the wall, then sank to the floor, letting my head flop forward between my bent knees. “You don’t understand.”

  “What?” he said exasperatedly. “What is it that I don’t understand? That your life is oh-so-hard? That you really wanted to take a road trip and who cares what anyone else needs? That… what, Kendra? That you cheated and you’re scared of not being perfect?”

  My head snapped up. “How about that I didn’t just cheat?” I cried, then rubbed my forehead with my hand, willing the headache that was starting to go away. “Okay?” I mumbled. “I didn’t just cheat.”

  He was silent for a minute, his flip-flops swishing against the concrete floor as he shifted his weight. “What do you mean?” he asked quietly.

  But I squeezed my eyes shut again, so hard I could see purple inside my eyelids, then opened them and took a deep breath, picking up the cinnamon roll bag and standing up again. “She’s probably already on her way,” I answered. I pushed through the door and into the hallway and headed toward Bo’s room.

  What did it matter anymore that he didn’t know the whole story? Why bother to tell him the rest now? Everything was going to fall apart. We were going to be forced home. He would find out everything soon enough.

  I walked into Bo’s room, where Rena was sitting in a chair, bent forward watching Bo sleep in his crib. Her face brightened when she saw us, then folded into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  I set the cinnamon rolls in her lap, then pulled the bottle of milk out of my pocket and handed it to her as well. “Ask Genius Boy,” I said. “I’ve got to use the bathroom before we hit the road.” I walked past Grayson and into the bathroom, leaving the two of them to talk.

  “You’re leaving right now?” I heard Rena say, and then I turned on the water and drowned them out.

  By the time I came back out, Grayson and Rena were both eating their cinnamon rolls, as if nothing had ever happened. I’d run cold water over my face, and I definitely felt better, but I was still so mad at my brother I wished I’d left him in the quarry that day after school. Wished I’d hopped back in Hunka and gone to see Zoe myself. I didn’t need him to get to Zoe. Why did I ever think I did? She was my best friend, too.

  She was my best friend first.

  We even had our own special handshake, Zoe and me. We’d lock thumbs and make fists like we were getting ready to arm wrestle, but instead would pull each other close and bump hips while snapping the fingers of our other hand. We came up with it when we were seven. It was our way of reminding each other we were sisters at heart, without ever saying a word. She never did the secret handshake with Grayson. Only me.

  She didn’t only love him. She loved me, too. Sometimes I thought she loved me more. But nobody in either of our families ever seemed to remember that. Nobody even seemed to care. But I cared. I remembered. I’d never forget. Because I promised her I wouldn’t.

  And Zoe had made that
promise, too.

  Rena held up the paper bag holding my cinnamon roll and shook it. “Before you go,” she said.

  “You can have it,” I said. My stomach was in knots over the thought of Mom—or the cops—being on their way, and there was no way I’d be able to keep anything down until I was over the California state line. I missed my mom, but getting to Zoe was something I needed to do, and until I’d done it, I wasn’t ready to face Mom. “C’mon, Grayson. We need to leave.”

  He swallowed and looked sincerely confused. “What about my medicine?”

  I sighed and threw up my hands. I’d had enough. “Mom is on her way. You want your medicine? You’ll have to stick around and wait for it yourself. You can go home with Mom when she gets here. I give up. I’m going to California.”

  “You can’t go by yourself,” Rena said. She stood and walked over to me. I felt sick about leaving her, especially after last night, and wasn’t sure how to say good-bye to someone I’d met only a couple days ago but who already felt like a friend.

  “I’m not waiting around. No way is my mom going to leave us here,” I said. “If he’s going to wait, I’m going without him.”

  “Kendra, come on, this is stupid,” Grayson said, sounding whiny and agitated.

  He was probably right, but I’d gone too far now to go back. “So be it,” I said, and leaned in to hug Rena. She smelled like icing, which made my stomach twist all the harder. “Take good care of Bo,” I said. “He’s going to be one of those good guys someday. I just know it.”

  She hesitated, pulled back to look at me, then hugged me, resting her chin on my shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “Be careful, okay?”

  I nodded, feeling stupid that my eyes were welling up. We’d only known each other for two days. It wasn’t like she was my best friend or anything. But she could’ve been. In a different situation. In a different time. Rena and I could’ve been friends. And as silly as it made me feel, I was going to miss her.

  I grabbed a pen off the side table by the bed and wrote my cell number and e-mail address on a napkin. “Let me know where you end up,” I said.

  She nodded, and I turned and walked out the door.

  “You can’t let her go by herself,” I heard her say, and my brother said something back, but I was beyond caring at that point. He’d blown it. He’d ruined the plan. He could deal with it.

  I stepped into the elevator and pushed the “close door” button with my thumb impatiently until the doors closed. He was officially off the hook. On his own. I’d call Mom as soon as I got in the car. I’d tell her he was waiting for her. He’d be fine.

  The elevator stopped and I was walking out before the doors were even all the way open, turning my shoulders sideways and brushing against the doors as they groaned slowly ajar.

  Forget him, I told myself. Let him have his way. Get to Zoe yourself. You’ll be fine, too.

  I repeated these things on a loop as I walked down the hallway, veered through the ER waiting room, and then broke into a jog as I hit the parking lot, digging in my front pocket for my car keys as I went.

  I wasn’t going to waste any more time. I was ready to call this done.

  With or without Grayson.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  My backpack had been crammed under Grayson’s seat. It took me a few minutes to dig it out, and I eventually resorted to shoveling handfuls of rocks from the floorboard to the parking lot blacktop. Screw Grayson’s stupid rocks. If he wasn’t going to go with me, I had no use for them anymore. They were just more evidence of how I’d tried to make this work for him, and how he hadn’t tried to make it work for me. I didn’t need them.

  Finally I got hold of a shoulder strap and pulled the backpack free, then dumped its contents on the passenger seat, my cell phone bouncing off the seat and onto the floorboard below. I picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Kendra?” Dad’s voice. “You’re in goddamned Nevada?”

  I closed my eyes and slid into the car, shutting the door softly behind me, as if I had to keep the other people in the parking lot from hearing me get yelled at. Dad hardly ever blew his stack. This wasn’t going to be good.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “You should be sorry. Do you have any idea how much hell you’ve put us through with this stunt? I can’t even believe you would do this! You’ve been gone for three days. We thought you were hiding out at a friend’s house somewhere, but… Nevada!”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Now what are we supposed to do? Your brother is in crisis, calling us from a hospital, for Chrissakes, needing his medication that he’s not taken for days now. Your mother is inconsolable. Her sick son calling her from a hospital across the country, and her daughter nowhere to be found!”

  “We weren’t at the hospital because of Grayson,” I said weakly. “Rena’s baby got sick.”

  There was a pause. I imagined Dad standing with his head down, one hand on his hip, like he always did when he was trying to control his temper. “Who the hell is Rena?” From the sound of his voice, it wasn’t working. He was definitely not in control of his temper.

  I sank down in the seat, knowing how this must sound to him. “Nobody. Just someone we met.”

  “So you’re picking up hitchhikers, too? For the love of Pete, Kendra, I can’t believe you of all people would do this!” You of all people. Translation: How dare you not be Little Miss Perfect?

  “I’m sorry, Dad. Is Mom there? I don’t have much battery left.”

  “No. She’s not. She’s actually at Dr. St. James’s office, trying to figure out what to do. The police have already informed us that at seventeen and twenty you’re not considered runaways, so we’re kind of at a loss here. What do we do? Do we fly to Nevada? Come get you? Wait for you to come home and pray that nothing horrible happens to you? Send someone else after you and wait here at the same time? What? You tell us.” His voice squeaked at the end, like it’d been strained.

  So Mom was at Grayson’s therapist’s office. Ordinarily, I’d think this was good news. Dr. St. James was constantly telling Mom to back off and stop enabling Grayson’s OCD. He’d probably be trying to persuade her to let us be. I’d normally be breathing a sigh of relief that we could keep going and maybe Mom would listen to Dr. St. James. But no. Grayson was freaking out instead. I needed to let them know that Grayson was waiting for her here. That she’d need to come get him.

  “So are you coming home or what?” Dad asked again, the squeak gone and the nothing-but-pissed sound back.

  I cleared my throat. “I still have something I need to do. But—”

  A knock on the window startled me and I bolted up straight. Grayson was standing outside the car, holding the cinnamon roll bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He motioned for me to open the door.

  “Hang on, Dad,” I said, and opened it.

  “Get out of my seat,” Grayson said matter-of-factly. “I can’t drive, remember?”

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, covering the mouthpiece of my cell phone with my thumb.

  “Going with you,” he said, as if this was totally expected. But he didn’t look happy about it. In fact, he looked about as happy as Dad sounded.

  We regarded each other solemnly for a few beats, until he began to look impatient and waved the bag and cup in the air again.

  I slid out of Hunka and tried to hide my smile. He was coming with me. Without his medicine. He was looking past himself and doing something for me. As he got in, unceremoniously shoving all of the things I’d dumped out of my backpack onto the driver’s-side floor, I held the phone to my ear again.

  “Dad?”

  “But what?”

  I took a deep breath, gazing up at the bank of windows on the second floor of the hospital. Rena would be behind one of those windows, cradling her baby, maybe watching Grayson go to the car and go with me, just as she’d told him to do. I probably owed her more than I even knew.

  B
ut Grayson is staying. He needs Mom to come get him, I was going to tell Dad.

  But Grayson wasn’t staying. He was fussing with the cup holder and my coffee, waiting for me to get us going back on the road.

  “But we’ll be back soon, okay? Just wait for us. We’ll be fine. We have each other,” I said. And, I realized, this was the truth. We really did have each other… in our own weird way.

  “This is unacceptable,” Dad roared, that squeak coming back again. “You need to consider what your actions are doing to others, Kendra. You need to consider your brother.” How many times had I heard some version of that sentence? You need to think about Grayson. You need to consider your brother.

  When have I ever not? I wanted to say. When has it ever been okay for me to just act without first considering my brother? But at the moment the thought had no real conviction, not with my brother sitting in the passenger seat of Hunka, still holding my cinnamon roll in his lap, ready to follow me to wherever I needed to go, whether he thought he could do it or not. With or without his medicine. Trusting me.

  Dad was right. I hadn’t been thinking about Grayson.

  I knew what had changed between my brother and me over the past three years. It wasn’t that he’d left me. It wasn’t that he’d gotten too sick. It was that I’d left him. That his illness had suddenly mattered too much. And now I missed those times when it was just the two of us, laughing over something stupid, making fun of each other’s quirks. I ached to have our relationship back. And there was no reason why we couldn’t get it back. I didn’t need to cure Grayson; I needed to cure us. And that I knew I could do. It was not too late.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you guys. But this is something I need to do. I love you. Tell Mom I love her, too. Gotta go.”

  And before he could get another shot at trying to talk me home, I ended the call. My battery light was flashing now, and I knew that pretty soon dodging their calls and texts wouldn’t matter anymore. My phone would be dead, and it would officially be just me and Grayson out here alone. I didn’t even bother to turn it off before shoving it into my pocket this time.