Maddie said, “You mean we wouldn’t tell our fathers?”
“That’s right,” I said. I sat in front of her and took both her hands in mine. “Maddie, sweetie, we’re running away.”
“I need to ask my father first.”
“Maddie, running away means you don’t tell your father anything.”
“But he won’t be happy with me.”
“Maddie,” I said. “Maddie, this is important and you can’t tell Mr. Bronson.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll stop us and then . . .” I wanted to say and then you’ll never be the same. She’d changed so much in a month, who knew what would happen in a couple more months? Our mother wouldn’t be able to take care of us just because she was getting better. She still needed to have her plastic surgeries.
“We need to do it tonight,” Marilyn said.
“We could leave at any time,” I said. “Depending on when the fathers go to sleep. Jiro is always in bed by ten and up at five.”
“Mack is in bed by midnight and up at six.”
“My dad is usually in bed by eleven and up at six,” Lakey said.
Maddie was frowning deeply. I repeated, “You can trust us.”
“Mr. Bronson is in bed by ten and up at five,” she finally said reluctantly.
“So we should leave around two in the morning,” Marilyn said. “Let’s go to bed right now so at least we can get some rest.”
“I don’t go to bed until eight thirty,” Maddie said. “My father says it’s a good idea to go to sleep at the exact same time every night, or you’ll get off schedule.”
Marilyn looked at her. “Okay, let’s get in bed in our clothes, and you don’t have to go to sleep. You can just lie there. We’ll set the alarm for two in the morning.” She turned to me. “Shelby, you’re in charge of getting us there. Do you remember the highways?”
“No, and all the maps are in Mom’s room!” I said. Mr. Bronson was sleeping in there.
“Okay, we’ll buy a map on the road. And Lakey is in charge of hotels and money, and Maddie can watch the gas gauge. Just like always. Whenever we spend any money, you should write it down, Lakey. Did anyone bring their money?”
“I did,” I said.
“Me too,” Lakey and Marilyn said.
“I don’t know where he put my money,” Maddie said. “Anyway, I’m too young to handle money.”
“Says who?” I asked.
“My father told me so,” she said, a little defensively.
I was afraid she was going to snitch on us, but she didn’t move. It was kind of like we were kidnapping her, but it was for her own good.
Later I lay in bed thinking. I think thinking was my favorite thing in the world. At least, I think so. I hoped that a little bit of the real Maddie was still alive. Otherwise, she might turn us in. Another thing I thought about was my mother. I was certain that she was wrong and that there were some universes where beauty wasn’t important. But if she didn’t believe it, she would be depressed. She would cry more. Seeing your mother cry seemed all wrong. We girls could cry, but not our mother. She had always been strong, even tough, beneath her looks. Then the next thing I knew, I was dreaming about my goat when a voice came from the sky: “Shelby, get up. Shelby.” I jolted awake. The light was on. Lakey was leaning over me, her face filled with urgency. “This is it,” she said. She pinched my arm excitedly. “This is it!”
chapter sixteen
THE LAST TIME I’D LOOKED at the clock, it was nearly midnight. Now it was close to three a.m. My heart started pounding. This was it.
We sneaked out the back door and hurried downstairs. We hesitated at the alley. None of us had ever been through there at night. It was Lakey who finally said, “Come on. We’ve been down this alley millions of times.”
The alley was still, and every shadow seemed as if it could hold a mass murderer. We stole through it, keeping close to the brick wall of our building. I was both scared and thrilled. When we got to the street, Marilyn looked around. “To tell the truth, I don’t know where his car is,” she said quietly. “He must have moved it when he went out for cigarettes.”
“Well, we’ve got to look for it, then,” I said. “It can’t be that far away.” We walked to the block to our right but didn’t see it. Then we circled around until we were to the left of our building. We saw a man walking down the street, and Marilyn whispered, “Hide!”
We rushed into a foyer and pressed against a wall so the man wouldn’t see us. What if he was a murderer? This was only the fourth time in my life I’d been out this late. I couldn’t remember ever being this scared. My throat got so dry, I could hardly swallow. I wanted to be back home, where I was safe. Then I thought about how we should attack the man if he wanted to kill us: Marilyn and I should jump on him, and Lakey and Maddie could kick him. Then we’d have to run, but where would we go? Then I thought I was being paranoid.
We waited, and waited, and waited, my mind in an argument with itself: Should I be scared or not? Finally, Marilyn peeked out. “Run!” she cried. We all ran after her. I ran as fast as I could until I realized I was leaving Maddie behind. Then I waited for her and took her hand. If the man wanted to hurt any of us, I wanted it to be me, not Maddie.
“There’s Mack’s car!” Marilyn screamed.
She fumbled with the keys while I watched the man down the way walking in a perfectly normal fashion. Then he went into a building.
I let myself relax as we slipped into the car and locked the doors, but then as Marilyn started trying to get out of the parking space, I felt nervous all over again. The space seemed big enough, but Marilyn had to go back and forth, back and forth, to get out. I was sure one of the neighbors would hear and call the police.
Marilyn was getting flustered. “I know you can do it, Mare,” I told her.
“I have trouble judging the right side,” Marilyn said. Her voice was high and childlike. “Also the back.” For a moment I thought she was going to cry. Then she took a big breath, backed up again, and pulled out slowly. I couldn’t watch. The car seemed like it was as big as a house. I had no idea how people could judge the back side.
“Yay, Marilyn,” Lakey said from the backseat.
“Great job, Marilyn,” I said from the passenger side.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Marilyn said with a grin. And off we went. The street was barren, just like it was on the way to the hospital that night in the taxi. Then a car approached from the opposite direction. I was so shocked when I saw it was a police car that I almost threw up. But it just slowly drove by.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe right and cracked open my window to feel the lukewarm air. It was actually a beautiful night to run away. Marilyn pulled to the side of the road and stopped the car.
“What is it?” I said.
She breathed deeply several times. “I thought that police car was coming for us.”
“Me too,” the three of us said all at the same time.
Marilyn rested her head on the steering wheel. “Running away is a little stressful,” she said.
“I’ll say,” I said. “I didn’t expect it to be like this.” I wondered whether my mother had felt stressed when she ran away from Pierre and Mr. Bronson with us.
But Lakey was beaming. “I think it’s fun,” she said, hanging over the front seat. She pulled Marilyn’s head over and kissed her cheek.
Marilyn and I both turned to Maddie. She actually looked better than Marilyn. I ruffled her hair and said, “Put on your seat belt.”
“You too, Lakey,” Marilyn said.
“It’s already on.”
Marilyn seemed more confident after that, until we came to the expressway.
“Wish me luck!” she said, leaning forward over the steering wheel.
The expressway was surprisingly busy. A couple of people honked at her, and one screamed out, “Pedal to the metal!”
Marilyn got so upset, she had to pull onto the shoulder and take more deep bre
aths.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“I just need to breathe for a minute.”
“Those were just stupid, mean people. I didn’t notice anything wrong that you did.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said.
“Then why did they honk?”
“Some people have nothing better to do. They’re just rude and they can’t help acting rude. It’s like a tic. Remember that man we saw once who kept twitching his face?”
Marilyn nodded but remained on the side of the road. Then she said, “The fathers are all going to be worried.”
“They’ll know we’re okay. They’ll know we’re all together.”
“I left a note,” Maddie squeaked.
“You what! When did you do that?” I demanded.
“I woke up and did it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said we were running away.”
“That’s okay,” Marilyn said. “They’ll figure it out for themselves even without a note. Did you say where we were going, sweetie?”
“No.”
“Good. You did good.” Marilyn looked worriedly over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t think there’d be so much traffic at this hour.” She took several big breaths. “I’ve never driven this far before, and never on the expressway. It seems like all the cars are following me.”
“Marilyn, if you can’t do it, then we have to go back,” I said. Then I thought I should have kept my mouth shut instead of guilt-tripping her. It was only that I really, really wanted us to get away tonight.
Marilyn kept taking big breaths. Then she lifted her head high. “Okay, I’m going to do it,” she said, enunciating carefully. “I just needed to recover for a second.” Our mother had taught us to always say “to,” so we almost never said “gonna” but rather “going to.” We also tried to say “yes” instead of “yeah.” We’d actually had speech lessons for a couple of months. What was I doing thinking about speech lessons while we were running away? Marilyn set her jaw, a lot like the way I’d seen our mother do when she felt determined about something.
Our mother had taught us so well that we thought about her rules even when she wasn’t here. Even her eventual death by old age was planned with vanity. She said she wanted to be cremated as soon as possible so nobody could see her dead. “Just throw me in the ocean,” she’d told us.
Marilyn was concentrating so hard on driving, I didn’t think it was a good idea for any of us to talk. Anyway, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I mean, I knew we should have been planning whatever it was you were supposed to plan when you ran away, but all I could think about was the present moment. Marilyn hunched forward clutching the steering wheel. Lakey and Maddie were sitting quietly. I turned around and saw that they were actually sleeping. Maddie’s head fell forward. Lakey was sleeping with her head against the window. I noticed a hole in the back window and wondered if it could actually be a bullet hole. After all, it was Mack’s car.
“What are the girls doing?” Marilyn said.
“Sleeping.”
“Sometimes I wish I were young again,” Marilyn said.
“You’re not exactly old.” I looked at her.
“I know. I just mean it would be nice to sleep in back while somebody else drove.”
“I’ll stay up for as long as you can drive.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said.
But I must have broken my promise because the next thing I knew, it was getting light and Marilyn was drinking coffee. She must have stopped for coffee while I dozed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant to stay awake. Are you tired?”
“I’m okay.” She shrugged.
“Were you lonely without anyone awake?”
“I’m always lonely.”
I studied her face. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s that I always have to be in charge.”
This was the first time I realized what a burden we must be to Marilyn. We three younger sisters all felt that Marilyn was the responsible one. Though I was officially responsible for Maddie, in the end everything really came down to Marilyn. She was even more responsible for us than our mother, and she was only sixteen. Like the time Maddie fell on a can in the driveway and needed stitches, it was Marilyn who had to call a taxi and figure out what doctor to take her to.
“Give me the rest of your coffee and I promise I’ll stay awake.”
She handed me her cup, and I noticed there was another cup between her legs. I took a drink.
“Blech,” I said. “Blech. Why do people drink this?” But I took another sip. And after a few more gulps I felt like I could jump to the moon. When I finished the cup, I said, “Let’s stop. I need a walk. Say, what do you think the fathers are doing right now? Isn’t it funny that they’re all together and we’re not even there? Do you think they’re up yet? Here’s a field—I have to use the restroom, what about you?”
Marilyn glanced at me. “How badly do you have to go?”
“On a scale of one to ten, I guess it’s a six-point-five. Hey, this coffee is great. I mean, it tastes terrible, but I’m wide awake. I think I could walk to Larry’s cabin. Maybe I could even run.” I tipped the cup to get the last few drops. I felt like I wanted to lick the cup. “Can you believe people used to cross the country with horses? Those poor horses. I wonder what my goat is doing. I hope he’s still there when I get back.”
Marilyn glanced at me curiously. “I think you’ve had enough coffee.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re getting too hyper.”
“Me? Hyper? Have you thought about what we should eat? When are we going to stop for breakfast? If it’s not too long from now, I can wait to use the restroom.”
“When the girls get up, we’ll think about a restaurant. Nothing fancy. We just want to feed ourselves without spending too much of our stash.”
“Okay, I can wait. Marilyn, do you really, really feel lonely? I mean, all the boys at your school like you, and your girlfriends always want you to hang around with them. How can you feel lonely?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s kind of like the way Mom feels lonely.”
Someone honked, and when he drove by, he cried out, “Get her off the road!” I looked at the speedometer; we were going forty.
“Jerk,” I said. “What do you mean Mom feels lonely?”
“She never told me. I just think it’s true. Like, she doesn’t have any friends.”
“But you have friends.”
“I know, but I don’t know if they’re true friends. We just hang around. You and the girls are my closest friends.”
“I know what you mean.”
“But you have your friend Nancy.”
That was true. Nancy was my best friend at school. If there was a party, we always went together, and we always sat and talked together at lunch. “Yes, she’s a real friend,” I said. I had never thought about it before. I had one close friend at school, and Marilyn had half the class clamoring for her company. So it was strange to think of her as lonely and me as not.
“Mom is lonely too.”
“No, she’s not!” I said. “She goes out almost every night.”
“But she doesn’t have any friends, she just has boyfriends.”
That was too much for me. “You’re wrong. She could have all the friends she wanted if she wasn’t so busy.”
Marilyn shrugged and didn’t say more. I watched my leg as I twitched it up and down. Boy, coffee was powerful stuff. I felt like Supergirl. We were really doing this. We were running away. I opened my window all the way, which I usually did when I was in a car. The warm, early-morning air pounded my face. I thought about my mother and the scars she would have on her face. It was an important place to have scars. If I’d broken my nose when the shopping cart crashed on me, I would feel self-conscious about my nose.
I wished I could fly. But what I was doing didn’t seem that different from what I figured f
lying would be like, the air whipping my face, the ground speeding by. We were still in Illinois. Almost a year ago exactly we’d been on this very same stretch of highway with our mother.
As rush hour kicked into gear, more traffic appeared, and Marilyn slowed down even more. I closed my window and leaned back against my seat. I didn’t think my mother was lonely at all. She was too busy for that. And even when she wasn’t out with some guy, she was thinking about him. So she was busy whether she was going out or not.
Marilyn remained glued to the steering wheel, leaning forward tensely, as we went about thirty miles per hour. I wanted to complain that at this rate we’d spend a month on the road, unless we got pulled over by the highway patrol first. But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make her more nervous.
Lakey said, “Where are we?”
I turned back to look at her. “You’re awake,” I said.
“I just woke up. Are we there yet?”
“We’re just about to cross over into Iowa,” I said. “Say, I wonder how my goat is doing. I got really attached to him. He follows me around, but Jiro doesn’t want him in the house. He’s smarter than you might think a goat would be. He has a stuffed animal that he takes everywhere, like a teddy bear. Do you think he’s doing okay without me?”
I saw Marilyn and Lakey lock eyes in the rearview mirror. “She drank some coffee,” Marilyn said. So I tried to shut up, but it was hard. I started shaking my leg again instead. I took out some of Jiro’s gum and started chewing it like a T. rex chewing a liver.
“Gum anyone?” I said.
“No thanks,” they both said.
“Jiro makes really cool gum. He makes it so the taste lasts longer. You know how gum loses its taste so fast? I tried timing it once, and it’s true that when you chew his gum, the taste really does last longer. One of his customers says he deserves to be as rich as the Wrigleys. I can’t stop talking,” I said.
In one hour I chewed all five packs of gum I’d brought. At one point I had seven pieces in my mouth at once.