Some Kind of Animal
Page 34
“I have all your clothes and things,” Aggie says to me, eyeing my bare legs, the gash on my shin. She’s holding back a little, I think, trying to play it cool. “I’ll have to move the suitcases into the back. It’ll be a little crowded up front with the four of us but we can squeeze in.”
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“I’m not going back,” Aggie says, shaking her head. “I can drop Savannah off with her cousin in the city. And then we can go anywhere. Somewhere new.”
She smiles at me. A small smile, tight, that doesn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes are full of tears again and she looks, I think, afraid.
I can’t run, not with my leg all messed up. But Lee still could. I look over at her. She meets my eye. We aren’t psychic. We are so different, the two of us. But in this moment, I’m pretty sure we’re both thinking the same thing. She glances toward the trees. Glances back at me. At my leg.
She turns and walks toward the truck. Back straight, resolute, though her hands are shaking, I see. Branches in a storm. She walks toward the cab. Stops. Savannah and Aggie are watching her too.
Lee changes course abruptly, goes to the bed of the truck instead. Lifts one bare foot onto the runner rails. Hauls herself up using her good arm. Tumbles over the side. Easy as climbing a tree.
She sits up, pink sequins sparkling, and reaches her good arm over the side of the truck. Holds a hand out to me.
* * *
—
We sit side by side in the dark. The road racing by beneath us so fast. With the wind in our hair it’s almost like running.
My legs are stretched out in front of me. I dug out some clean jeans and socks and pulled them on before we got going. The suitcases and plastic tubs that hold everything Aggie and I own bump and rattle around us. The plastic Walmart bags Savannah rescued flutter loudly.
Our hands are clasped. We’re both scared. Not of the same things.
I don’t know what will happen next. If Lee will be able to adjust. If what we did will catch up to us. But first a motel, a bath, a bed. Maybe Lee can sleep on the floor, under the bed. Or in the bathtub. We can bring in handfuls of dead leaves, make a nest for her.
One good thing is that Aggie needs to stay under the radar for her own sake as well as ours. I still belong to Margaret by law. So Aggie is kidnapping me, technically.
My sister belongs to nobody.
Savannah knocks on the glass of the cab to get my attention. She mimes taking a bite of something and a chill goes through me. I think of Clayton. My sister’s teeth, tearing flesh. But then I see, up ahead, the neon yellow arches glowing against the night sky.
Savannah motions for Lee and me to lie down flat so nobody will see us. I smile at her. She smiles back.
Lee and I lie down flat. The truck slows, turns. My mouth waters as I listen to Aggie order over the tinny speaker. My sister squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. In the glow of the drive-through lights I can see that her eyes are shut.
Aggie pulls around, gets the food, parks. Her door opens and then she’s peering over the truck bed.
“You sure you two are all right back there?” she asks as she hands me a heavy paper bag, two large cups.
“Yes,” I say.
She glances over at my sister, who still has her eyes shut. Aggie shakes her head a little, disbelieving. Aggie, who is not my mother or my father. Who doesn’t own me, but who loves me, which is all that truly counts.
“Thanks,” I tell her.
She smiles at me, relieved, returns to the cab, starts the truck, pulls back onto the road.
The cups are chocolate milkshakes. It’s too cold for them, really, but the sweetness feels like a blessing anyway, a pardon. We get going, speeding through the night.
Lee tears into the bag with gusto when I hand it over. She’s skeptical of the burgers, but she gnaws gleefully on the chicken nuggets. Regards one, confused, finding no bone. Adjusts quickly, shoves the rest of them in her mouth, wipes the grease on her skirts.
“That dress looks nice,” I shout over the rush of the wind.
“Yes!” she shouts back. I hand her the second milkshake. She slurps its, scowls at the brain freeze.
I bite into my burger. I was so much hungrier than I’d realized. How long has it been since I last ate? I was foolish, to think we could make it alone. It’s stronger, maybe, to ask for help. It must have taken a lot of courage for my sister to make that call.
I pick up a fry, drop it, hit with sudden guilt, remembering the fries that Savannah saved for me. The man who is dead.
And then I think about Brandon, think about Mama. How can I have any hope, when my life was built on sorrow from the very beginning? And my sister, here in her new pink dress, glittering and wild and so afraid of the world. How will she ever survive?
“This is going to be hard,” I say, leaning in close to Lee, huddling so she can hear me.
She nods, biting tentatively into a burger, chewing. “I’m sorry,” I hear.
“What?” I ask. I think I must not have heard her right. No way my sister just apologized. That might be even stranger than the phone. Stranger than her trusting Savannah, trusting Aggie.
Maybe there is hope, if people can change. Lee made that call. And Aggie was able to leave Lester, to leave Margaret, to leave her past behind.
Maybe I can change, too.
Lee turns, speaking right into my ear.
“Mama was wrong,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, overwhelmed.
“Please,” Lee says, leaning back to stare at me with an intense look, serious and focused, ruined only slightly by the smear of sauce on her check, “don’t float away.”
My heart twists. I see my sister, five years old, sitting on the deer platform next to Mama who took too much, who floated away, too high and far to follow. As sad as it is, I wish I could have been there. Wish I could have helped them both.
“I’ll only ever run,” I say, and squeeze Lee’s hand.
The trees whip past, the wind snatches at our hair. Lee turns her face into the onrushing air and opens her mouth wide and howls. A joyous wild sound. I join her.
We are lambs who refuse to learn, I think. We will wander until the end of our days, not afraid of wolves.
But together. Always together. Me and her, the two of us. Like it was meant to be from the beginning. Like it was, once, fifteen years ago, at the very start.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Axel, for the biscuits and brainstorming, and Toni, best former roommate. Thanks to my friends and classmates from SIU, especially Meg, Jen, and K. Thanks to my teachers, especially Pinckney for advising, Dave because Governor’s School for the Arts saved my life (tell the state of Pennsylvania to re-fund it), and Mrs. Schultz, my third-grade teacher, because she was cool.
Huge thanks and a can of Diet Coke for my agent, Jim McCarthy. You make the business side of writing feel easy! Major thanks also to editor Krista Marino, who whipped this book into its final shape.
Thanks to the whole team over at Delacorte, including but not limited to Beverly Horowitz, Barbara Marcus, Judith Haut, Alison Impey, Jen Heuer, Colleen Fellingham, Kelly McGauley, Elizabeth Ward, Kate Keating, and Felicia Frazier.
Thanks to Mother and Father for, like, all the food and stuff. Thanks to Gamma Ray, even though she can’t read.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria Romasco-Moore is the author of Ghostographs, a collection of short stories paired with vintage photographs. She is an instructor at Columbus College of Art and Design. Some Kind of Animal is her first novel. To learn more about Maria and her novel, go to mariaromascomoore.com or follow @MarRomasco on Twitter.
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