Drawn

  That night I slept in my clothes. I’d packed all my pajamas.

  * * * * *

  Wednesday I got called to the school counselor’s office.

  He picked up a manila envelope with my name in block letters across the front. “How are you feeling, Miss Brynn?”

  “Still sore.”

  He nodded and leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. “I’m sorry to hear that your parents are having trouble.”

  They aren’t having trouble. They’re in complete agreement about destroying our family. No trouble there at all.

  “How are you feeling about that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Mm-hmm.” He nodded. “It’s very normal to feel sad or angry.”

  I stared at him.

  “You may find yourself sleeping more, or less. Or eating more. Or less.”

  “Okay.”

  “The things you usually enjoy doing might not hold as much appeal.” He flipped through the folder. “You’re on the track team, is that right?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Band?”

  I shook my head.

  His eyebrows popped up. “Ah. I see you did the Academic Olympics this year. Congratulations on winning the state competition!”

  And I won’t be going to nationals.

  “That’s quite something to be proud of.”

  Yeah, it feels really great to know the team, and Damon, will go to Chicago without me.

  “You’ll always remember that, the way it felt to win.”

  “I really need to get back to study hall.”

  His brow furrowed and he bounced the tips of his fingers against each other. “I just want you to know that you’re not alone. If there’s ever anything you need to talk about, this is a safe place. A place where people care about you.”

  Uh-huh.

  “I’ll check in with you again soon, Julia. You can go.”

  “Juliet.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing.”

  * * * * *

  Drew woke up Thursday during study hall. “Missed you at Amica’s party. I was hoping I could make everything up to you.”

  “I heard you made it up to Bethany instead.”

  His grin stretched so wide his cheekbones pressed his eyes shut.

  “So, if she’s already on your list, do you just write her in again for that?”

  “She gets an asterisk.”

  I wanted to ask how many girls had asterisks, but I didn’t really want to know.

  I am so glad I didn’t let him kiss me.

  A prickly sense of guilt scraped at my insides, like I shouldn’t take credit for that.

  Damon. He’s the reason. If nothing else, he saved me from Drew.

  “You going to Dugan’s haunted barn? I’m working in it this year.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should come. I’ll totally freak you out.”

  “You already freak me out.”

  He grinned again. Huge.

  Every day Damon showed up beside me between all my classes. He served me more than he did when he had to be my slave. He carried my books, got me lunch, checked my bruises.

  I let him hold my hand once, and I tried, I really tried to find that bubbly feeling again. I thought about times I’d gotten it before. I closed my eyes and pictured where we were, how it all felt. I even drew us again, sometimes just for the sketch itself, so I could see it, and even though the pictures looked right, and I could actually draw him now, they lacked something. Truth, or depth. Vision, maybe? Other times I tried to do the prophecy thing, and I got the same TV-static stuff in my head. So I gave up and just didn’t let him touch me anymore. It made me sad, and I had enough to be sad about already.

  Why wouldn’t he just give up and leave me alone?

  He waited for me after the last bell, as usual. As I came down the hall, I saw him pull something off my locker door. A shred of of masking tape curled up where he’d torn it.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a game, or a gift, or whatever he had in mind. “What are you holding behind your back?”

  “Let it go, Julie.”

  “No. If it was on my locker, it’s for me.” I grabbed his arm and jerked.

  He didn’t fight me, and I should’ve known by the look on his face to trust him and let it go.

  I pulled a plastic baggie out of his hand. Tape covered most of one side of it, but something sparkled inside. I turned it over.

  “Julie, I’m sorry.”

  Nonnie’s barrette.

  I gasped.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  “She broke it!”

  Mia hadn’t just broken it, but must’ve taken a hammer to it. The jewels had come out of their settings, the bar itself was bent and the hinge twisted in a V-shape. Strands of strawberry-blond hair twisted around the fragments.

  I started to shake. How could she do this?

  As hard as I could I hurled the bag down the hall. It hit the clock face and dropped to the floor.

  I ran the other way. Damon didn’t follow me or say a word.

  * * * * *

  On Friday I got to homeroom a little earlier than normal. I rode with Mark instead of taking the bus. Only Damon and Erik were in class when I walked in.

  “Hey, we never got to go to the haunted house last weekend,” Damon said when I sat down across from him.

  I nodded and pulled my math books out of my bag.

  “Want to go tomorrow night?”

  “Tammy and I are going tonight. We could double,” Erik offered.

  Erik and Tammy?

  Damon shook his head. “Can’t. Adam’s coming home tomorrow morning, so Dad and I have to get stuff set up for him to live in the living room till his leg heals.”

  “What happened to Polly?” I asked Erik.

  “We’re not going together or anything.”

  Geez. I dug around in my bag for a pencil, but couldn’t find one.

  Damon handed me one of his. “So? Haunted house? Tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” I took the pencil and forced a smile.

  He gave me one back. A real smile, with warmth and a dimple.

  I didn’t have either one.

  * * * * *

  A strange car sat in our driveway, parked right in front of mom’s. I stepped off the bus with Pam, who didn’t say a thing. She touched my arm, then crossed the road behind the bus. The realtor’s sign swung back and forth in the wind.

  I walked into the living room. This couple with a toddler between them looked at the flower painting I’d given Mom and Dad on my birthday. It hung on the wall beside the mirror. Mom stood next to the guy.

  “Here’s the artist now. She’s always drawing something,” Mom said.

  I kicked off my shoes and headed straight for the stairs.

  “Juliet, come and meet the Williams family.”

  Seriously? She wants me to make nice with the people she’s offering my life to?

  “I’ve got homework.”

  “It’s Friday.” She scowled behind their backs and snapped her finger toward the floor.

  Fine.

  I hung my bag on the railing and stepped back into the living room. I reached out my hand and shook each of theirs with gushing hospitality. “So nice to meet you. I hope you’ll be very happy here.”

  They looked at each other. Totally awkward.

  Good.

  “This is a beautiful painting,” the woman said.

  “You’re very talented,” her husband added.

  The toddler hung from their hands and bounced back and forth. His feet kicked the wall on each upswing. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “That thing?” I snorted. “That goes with the house. I’m sure no one here wants it. If you’ll excuse me, I really need to get started on a project.”

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and tried to seem bouncy as I made my way up the stairs. When I got
to my room I closed the door and locked it. If they hadn’t seen my room yet, they weren’t going to.

  My bag hit the wall and I screamed into my pillow. I wanted to draw them all hanging from nooses as their horses galloped into the distance. Even the rotten little kid. But I already knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. Their faces vanished from my memory even as I thought about it.

  The cork squares still hung on the wall in my otherwise boxed-up room. I took down the drawings and stacked them on my empty desk. Damon’s rubber-band corsage topped the pile. I promised I’d keep that, and so I would.

  Then I reached up to the corner of the first cork square and pulled. It folded over, cracked and tore a jagged patch of paint off the wall. I tossed it all on the floor and dug my fingers under the rest of the square. It came off in chunks and took paint and drywall with it.

  The next few peeled off the same way.

  Outside the strangers’ car drove away. Mom came up the stairs.

  I ripped down the next square of cork. It broke into pieces and crumbled. One of my fingernails tore and started to bleed, and this rage flew out of me at the pain and the cork and the wall and the whole stupid, stinking room. I screamed, kicked at the squares, scraped a piece off with my heel, and beat my fists against the ones that remained.

  Mom knocked. “Juliet? Open the door.”

  Oh, no. I’m finishing this.

  I got a pencil out of my bag, Damon’s pencil, and dug around behind more of the cork squares. Long, thin pieces stripped off and made jagged little gutters in the drywall.

  The doorknob rattled, then she went away. A minute later a key turned in the lock.

  I pulled off tiny fragments of cork and jabbed the pencil into the wall, just because I felt like it.

  The door opened.

  The last bits of mounting tape tore off and I dropped them on the floor along with everything else. Then I turned around.

  My mother’s hands wrapped over her cheeks and temples. Her eyes looked like hot, swollen golf balls. “What are you doing?”

  I leaned back against the mutilated wall. My heart raced and my chest heaved, but I tried to look cool. “Finishing up.”

  “You little brat,” she whispered. “You selfish little brat!”

  I swallowed a rock that swelled up in the middle of my throat.

  “Do you know how much work it’s going to take to fix that?”

  Do not cry. Do not let her see one tear.

  “What is wrong with you?” she screamed.

  Seriously? What’s my problem?

  The simmering rage inside erupted like a nuclear bomb and this sound like nothing I’d ever heard before came out of me. It hit my ears from everywhere, and I couldn’t believe it had started inside my body. It went on half of forever, and when it finally stopped everything about me, inside and out, lay bare and raw, peeled and bleeding and naked.

  I charged at her and pointed my finger. “You! You are my problem!” I yelled. “I hate you! I hate Dad! I hate everything in this stupid, crappy, godforsaken house!”

  “Get out!” She shrieked. “Get out right now!”

  “I will!”

  I picked up my bag and got my coat off the bed. She took a half step aside so we didn’t touch as I went through the door. Downstairs I put on my shoes, went out through the garage and got on my bike.

  * * * * *

  It hurt my legs to pedal. It hurt my shoulders to lean forward. It hurt my head when the blood pumped harder. But I did it. I went forward, and kept going, out the driveway, down the street, to Garrett Road, and then onto Thirty-Six. Sweat streaked down my back and sides, and the crusty scabs on my knees rubbed against the insides of my jeans like pumice over acid burns.

  It seemed like hours before the back of the Holiday Theaters appeared over the hill. I got off the bike and walked then, because my head throbbed until I thought I might black out.

  I locked my bike in the rack at the side of the theater and crossed the parking lot toward the main street. On the other side three buses turned, one after another, into the bus depot. A train waited on the tracks at the far side of the building.

  I stopped in the restroom first. My head pulsed as I sat on the toilet and peed. My breath came hard and deep, and I stayed there till I could stand up again. I lathered my hands with liquid pink soap, rinsed them with icy cold water, and splashed my face. I dug a ponytail band and a couple of bobby pins out of my bag, wet my hair, and slicked it back into a tight bun.

  Did I look old enough?

  The beehive-haired lady at the counter barely gave me a glance as she punched at her register. She took the bills I slid through the slot in the window and dropped my change back through. But before she handed me the fat, glossy train ticket, she pushed her glasses down her nose and squinted.

  “I’m eighteen,” I said, in a quivery voice that didn’t even convince me.

  She smirked. “Only have to be fifteen to travel alone.”

  “Okay. I’m actually sixteen.”

  She leaned forward with one elbow on the counter and peered at me through the holes in the window. “You running away?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m going to visit my aunt. Just for the weekend.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “They dropped me off.”

  She tapped her fingertips against her cheek and looked at the ticket. “That’s a long way from here.”

  “My aunt’s picking me up at the station.”

  “What’s her name?”

  My knees started to shake. “Kitty. Aunt Kitty. Brandon.”

  She looked skeptical, but handed me the ticket. “That’s your train there,” she nodded toward the one that waited on the track. “Tell your folks not to cut it so close next time.”

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and hurried onto the train with as much confidence as I could fake. Only a handful of people sat in the car, so I found a window seat a couple of rows from the back and hugged my bag against my chest.

  What would Kitty say when I called her from the station? Would her parents make me go back? What if they weren’t even home?

  After the conductor came through, punched my ticket and hung it above my seat, I nestled down and laid my head back. Hours stretched out ahead of me. I could sleep. Close my eyes and just sleep. Not know anything or feel anything. Let the train carry me far away.

  “Get out! Get out of this house!”

  Don’t worry, Sheri. I’m gone.

  Long gone.

  CHAPTER 38

  Clacketa-shh. Clacketa-shh. Clacketa-shh.

  The moments between asleep and awake made being bearable, because for that brief blink of time I didn’t remember anything. Nothing existed but me, and I had warmth and place and peace for just right then, for that breath.

  I’m riding on a train. Leaving on a train. Going to see Kitty.

  My mouth hung open, dry and sticky, and I swallowed. The orange sun fell toward the edge of the world outside the window.

  I didn’t bring a toothbrush. Or any other clothes.

  We must’ve stopped a few times since I fell asleep, because lots more people filled the car now. A woman in a kelly green suit sat across the aisle from me.

  “Hi again,” she called.

  Long locks of curly red hair spilled over her shoulders. Catherine? From the hospital?

  “How are you doing?”

  Crud. She knows exactly how old I am.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She shrugged and looked around the train. “Taking a trip.”

  “My parents bought the ticket for me. I’m visiting my aunt.”

  With one narrowed eye and a cocked head, she grimaced. “Is that so?”

  Crud of all crud.

  I shifted and tucked one foot under my other knee. “I’m going to see a friend.”

  “Okay.”

  “And no, my parents don’t know, because they threw me out.” The stupid tears start
ed again.

  “Oh.”

  Snot started to drip out of one nostril and I sniffed it back in.

  Catherine reached into the green messenger bag at her feet and handed me a tissue.

  I wiped my cheek and dried my eyes.

  “You look good,” she said. “Better than last weekend.”

  She seemed a lot younger than she did in the hospital. Maybe because of the nicer clothes and the way she had her hair.

  Her eyes refocused, out the window. “Just look at that sky.”

  The sun torched the tree line on the horizon and cast long, black shadows over the earth. Bronze streaks outlined the eggplant-colored clouds and washed the dusky sky with orange, red and gold.

  “God certainly can paint, can’t he?” she sighed.

  I looked over at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “God paints?” I snorted.

  “Of course he does. Where do you think you learned?”

  Me?

  “Your father told me you’re very talented.”

  “Right. He says talent and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee.”

  “That’s not true at all.” She shook her head. ‘I don’t know where you can get a cup of coffee for fifty cents anymore.”

  That was kind of funny, and I smiled.

  “And how’s your boyfriend? Damon, right?”

  My smile dropped.

  “Trouble there, too?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Kind of. I don’t know.”

  “If I may say so, I think that one’s a keeper.” She scratched the tip of her nose. “Of course, if you’re running away…”

  “Who says I’m running away?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Maybe I am. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “Say what?”

  “That things don’t matter.”

  I shrugged.

  She smiled. “See. You say it without even saying it.”

  Why did she have to get on this train, in this car, and sit across from me?

  She reached into her bag, pulled out a cloth-bound notebook and opened it on her lap. I rested my head on the back of the seat and watched the sun sink behind the horizon as the stars opened their eyes across the iris-purple sky.

  Almost the color of Damon’s eyes, I thought.

  No, I thought. Forget about Damon. You’ll never see him again.

  * * * * *

  As night spread over the earth this creeping, cold fear spread through me. A hollow sense of terrible, total aloneness and panic, like I shouldn’t be where I was. Like I’d sprinted out to the middle of a tightrope, only to realize no one ever put up the safety net.