Perfect Escape

  I walked around Hunka and opened the driver’s door. The stuff from my backpack was strewn all over the floorboard. I didn’t say anything, just stuffed it back inside the backpack and flung it onto the backseat.

  I heard a rattle and looked back to see that the backpack had fallen on one of Bo’s toys, forgotten by Rena in her haste to get him into the hospital last night. I started to reach for it but decided to leave it there, sort of as a memento. Proof that they existed.

  “Rena talked you into it, huh?” I said as nonchalantly as I could while I got myself situated and Hunka roared into life.

  Uh-uh-uh. “No. I decided. I’m supposed to protect you. It’s what Mom and Dad would want.”

  His words reminded me of when we were little kids and Stu Landry had been hassling me on the bus. Calling me Chicken Ankles and pulling my hair, stealing pencils out of my book bag and throwing them at kids in the front of the bus. I must have been in kindergarten, and by then Grayson was so filled with anxiety, he basically scrunched down in a seat at the front of the bus every day and prayed that nobody would bother him. It was right about that time that he started making the uh-uh-uh noise. I remember because Stu Landry liked to tease him about it.

  But one day Stu stole the little sparkly pink teddy bear I’d brought for Share Day. And he wouldn’t give it back. Tucked it down the back of his pants and sat down on it with a smug smile on his face. And it stayed there, no matter how many times I asked for it.

  I came home crying, my teddy gone, and ran straight to Mom.

  “And what were you doing when this was going on?” she asked Grayson, who stood in the kitchen doorway, bug-eyed, listening to the story.

  “I wasn’t sitting back there,” he said, and his voice sounded so plaintive, so weak, I knew, even then, that he was embarrassed that he had to sit at the front of the bus with the shy kids while his baby sister and Zoe were sitting in the back, braving Stu and his gang.

  Mom made a skeptical noise, and then later, at the dinner table, Dad chimed in. But rather than console me about my bear being gone, Dad turned on Grayson. “You’re her big brother. You’re supposed to protect her from stuff like that.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Then you make sure you know from now on.”

  Subject closed.

  The next day, Grayson followed me to the back of the bus, making that new uh-uh-uh sound and twitching beside me. When Stu got on, Grayson stood up.

  “Give my sister’s bear back,” he said, staring down at Stu, even though Stu was older than Grayson, and bigger, and Grayson would’ve been scared to be staring down a preschooler.

  “Shut up,” Stu answered.

  “You took it yesterday. You owe her a new bear.”

  “Shut up, idiot,” Stu said, so Grayson stepped closer.

  “Give it back!” he said, and then his tic took over. Uh-uh.

  And Stu looked at his friend Geoffrey, and the two of them cracked up and started mimicking my brother. “Uh-uh-uh! Uh! Uh-uh! Graytard!” they shouted, and the bus jerked into motion, and the bus driver told Grayson to sit down, so he did, and he was crying.

  “I tried,” he said.

  But I was too embarrassed of him to thank him.

  Zoe had reached over and grabbed my hand, gripping it tightly, but had leaned forward and said, “They’re jerks anyway,” and I nodded, but I realized it was Grayson she was talking to, refusing to be embarrassed by him, even if I was.

  Sitting in Hunka, it occurred to me that nobody was telling him to do it this time. He was protecting me on his own. Even if he was scared.

  “C’mon,” I said, opening the car door. “Let’s go get your medicine first.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Before you go anywhere.”

  I stopped.

  “You need to tell me everything. What did you mean when you said you didn’t just cheat?”

  “Gray, let’s go, okay? It’s nothing. Really. Come on. Before Mom decides to come out here.” And I started to inch out the door again, but Grayson put his hand on my arm.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m not going with you. Take your pick.”

  I glanced at his other hand, which had wrapped around the door handle and slowly started to pull. He was amazingly steady when he was threatening me.

  I sighed and closed the door again. “Okay, okay.” I swallowed, trying to figure out where to start. “I bought the test from Chub Hartley,” I said, then reconsidered. “Tests, actually. More than one.”

  “You bought tests.”

  I nodded. “He’s Mr. Floodsay’s senior T.A. And he’s in my study hall, and one day we were talking and I was telling him about how I wasn’t getting calc, and he offered to sell me a test ahead of time so I could get all the answers and memorize them. For ten bucks. So I bought it. And… and every test after that. Including the semester final in December.”

  “That’s it? That’s what’s so bad? You paid ten bucks for some tests, and we’re running away because of it?”

  I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “I wish,” I said. “But no. After the final, Chub started to get afraid he was going to get caught. So he tried to quit doing it. But I was so far in by then, I couldn’t quit or I’d fail. So I talked him into keeping our deal, but he would only agree if I paid fifty instead of ten. Which I didn’t have. So I had to borrow.”

  Grayson nodded, then bent to pick up one of the remaining rocks. He rubbed it thoughtfully. “So now other people know.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I borrowed from Bryn Mallom, because she sat behind me and I could see her test scores when Mr. Floodsay handed them back, so I knew she was totally failing, too, and I figured I could get her in on the deal. So I borrowed twenty from her, photocopied the test, and gave it to her to keep her quiet.”

  “But she didn’t stay quiet.”

  I shook my head, remembering the day that Tommy and I broke up. I’d walked into calc and he was sitting at my desk, and two of his idiot buddies were standing around looking smug.

  “What’s going on?” I’d asked, and Tommy had narrowed his eyes at me and answered, “Someone’s been naughty,” and then he’d demanded that I make copies of the tests for him and his friends or they would tell Mr. Floodsay and I’d be busted. I’d told him no way and we were done if he was okay with blackmailing me like that, and we’d fought for the whole rest of the week and it had gotten seriously ugly, so eventually I gave in and cut him in on the deal.

  “But Tommy still told Chub,” I told Grayson.

  “And Chub was pissed, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah. Totally. So with year-end finals coming up, he told me the only way he’d give it to me was if I paid three hundred dollars for it.”

  Grayson let out a low whistle and gazed down at the rock in his hand.

  I felt a tear roll down my cheek, and started to swipe at it but decided to let it roll. I was so ashamed. Saying it all out loud only made it worse.

  “So did you go to Bryn again?”

  I shook my head, directing my gaze out the window away from Grayson.

  “Where, then?”

  “Mom and Dad’s Italy money. Mom’s been socking it away in that metal box in the back of her closet. I took it out of there.”

  Grayson’s eyes bored into me. “You stole from Mom and Dad?”

  “Yes,” I cried, “but I planned to pay it all back!”

  And then I launched into what was probably my dumbest plan ever. How I’d realized that if I didn’t photocopy the final, a lot of people were going to fail. And how they all knew that. And how, at this point, they couldn’t tell on me or they’d be busting themselves, too, so they were in the shit as thick as I was, and the only one sitting pretty and safe was Chub. Or so I’d thought.

  “So I sold the photocopies,” I said matter-of-factly. “For twenty bucks. And there were more people doing it now, and people in other class periods wanted in, so I ended up actually making money on the deal. And I was going to put Mom an
d Dad’s money back and graduate and nobody would ever know, but… someone must have said something, I don’t know.”

  “The money you’ve been using this whole time is…?”

  I nodded again. “Yeah. I never replaced it. And now we’ve spent almost all of it, and it doesn’t matter anyway because Mom and Dad know and I’ve probably been expelled for orchestrating this huge cheating ring, and my whole future is ruined, which is why…” I trailed off. I’d gone this far. He needed to know the rest. He needed to know everything. Now was the time. I didn’t want to, but I had to say it. I had to tell him. I turned to him, licked my lips, and started over again. “Which is why I’m taking us to see Zoe.”

  At this point, I turned and faced my brother, whose face went totally white.

  But before he could say anything, I whipped my door open and headed into the hospital to get his medicine.

  Next stop: Zoe.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It seemed as if we were hardly on the road at all before we came up on Citrus Heights. My heart started beating faster, and my palms were slick on the steering wheel. I couldn’t wait to see Zoe. If Hunka had crapped out on me right then and there, I would’ve been able to sprint to Zoe’s house, I was so full of adrenaline.

  I pulled into a gas station and showed the attendant Zoe’s address. He got out a map so old it was ripping along the folds, and traced directions with a gnawed and crusty-with-oil-and-grit fingernail. I wrote what he was saying across the back of my arm, grabbed two packs of doughnuts—the chocolaty kind that sticks to your teeth—and hurried back out to Hunka, where Grayson was up to 1,567. A bad number. Not only odd, but with three consecutive numbers in a row. Omen city. I wouldn’t dare interrupt him now.

  Grayson’s reaction to the news that we were going to Zoe’s wasn’t at all what I’d expected. I’d expected him to yell at me, start pulling on the steering wheel again, order me to turn around, berate me for lying. Instead, he’d simply sat in the passenger seat, the glove box door open and lying on his knees, and begun counting while I picked up his prescription in the hospital pharmacy. His eyes looked far away and sad, as though he was remembering things he’d rather not remember, and I felt bad for him, so I went ahead and let him count.

  Was that what Mom would have done for him? Probably.

  Did it really matter at this point? Not really.

  It turned out that Zoe didn’t live far from the gas station where I’d stopped. After a few minutes I was pointing Hunka down a tree-lined side street, my whole body buzzing with anticipation. Days on the road. Riddles and jokes and river water and cow skulls. Meltdowns and sick babies and pizza in nasty motels. Daydreams and memories and fear. All of it had been leading up to this. This moment.

  I watched the house numbers slide by, slowing to let a couple of baggy-pantsed boys move their homemade skate ramp out of the middle of the street and stand, leaning against their upright boards and glaring at us. And then we were there: 555 Clark Street. I pulled to the curb and turned off the car.

  I peered out Grayson’s window. I could see his reflection as he stared at the house as well.

  There was a swing on the front porch. There were the numbers, brass and shiny. There were little statues and tidy bushes keeping sentry on each end of the front porch steps.

  And there.

  Right by the front door.

  Was a hand-painted flower pot. The one Zoe made in third-grade art class. The one that had always sat by their front door.

  “We found it,” I breathed. I nudged Grayson, who had stopped counting but didn’t seem to have anything to say. “We found it!” I repeated, louder, and then laughed. “We found Zoe’s house!”

  And for the first time since I ran face-first into his chest in my kitchen doorway back home, I forgot all about my brother. I darted out of Hunka and bounded up the front porch steps, not even caring if he was following.

  It took a long time for someone to open the door. So long, in fact, I started to worry that nobody was home. I was prepared to sit in the porch swing and wait for her to come home, but what if they were out of town or something? It was possible. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t e-mailed or called me back.

  But there was a skinny rectangular window next to the door, and the curtain stretched down the length of it moved slightly to the side, and I could hear murmuring going on inside. My heart leaped. They were home!

  So why was it still taking so long for them to answer? Why wasn’t Zoe bounding out the front door just as I’d bounded up the steps?

  I heard a shuffle behind me and turned to see my brother standing on the sidewalk. He’d kept his door open but had ventured a few steps away from it, his hands crammed in his jeans pockets, his flushed face turned to the door curiously.

  Finally, the door creaked open, and I couldn’t help myself—I did a little hop on my toes, clasping my hands together in front of me.

  “Zoe!” I cried, but it wasn’t Zoe who opened the door. It was her mom, looking rankled and as if she’d been interrupted while doing something important.

  She pushed the screen door open a few inches. “Kendra,” she said. A statement, not a question or an exclamation. Just as matter-of-fact as if she were reporting who was at her door. She didn’t look at all surprised to see me, which was weird. But I tried to hold on to hope. Maybe it meant that all had been forgiven.

  I smiled. “Hi, Mrs. Monett. Long time, huh?”

  She craned her neck through the opening and peered at Grayson, then frowned. “So Jonathan was right. You two were headed here. All the way from Missouri.”

  I nodded. I should have known Dad would think of calling Zoe once he figured out we were in Nevada. He probably had the white pages pulled up on his laptop the minute the hospital phoned. “I wanted to see Zoe. Is she home?”

  And when Mrs. Monett turned her frown on me, my heart started to sink. This was the same woman who’d let me borrow her swimsuit and given me chocolate chip cookies and picked me up from school when Mom was running late. This was the woman who was so happy when I was born she requested my bassinet be placed next to Zoe’s in the nursery. The woman who kissed me on the forehead and told me good night at sleepovers.

  This woman loved me.

  She did.

  Once.

  I knew it.

  But this woman who once loved me was now looking at me like I was some sort of criminal and was barely cracking her door open to talk to me. Frowning at me as if I were soiling her porch. And I knew just as sure as I once knew she loved me… that she wasn’t going to let me see Zoe.

  My best friend.

  After all these years. Even though I’d done nothing. No forgiveness. No gentleness. No pity or mercy. None.

  It wasn’t me. It was my brother. Why could nobody see that I was not an extension of my brother?

  The thought made me panic, and I reached out and clasped the edge of the door, as if I could turn this around if I just kept that door from closing.

  She shook her head and glared down at my fingers, as if she thought I was going to hit her. “You shouldn’t have come here. If my husband finds him here…” She trailed off, gazing out at Grayson once more. “We left our home because of…” But she couldn’t seem to wrap her lips around the right words and instead clamped them tight and breathed heavily through her nose.

  I took my chance, wishing I could just tear open my chest and let her see how my heart would break—for the second time—if she did this to us. Wanted to open up my brain and show her the memories I had of her being wonderful to me, and how those memories competed with the ones in which she was so horrible to Grayson. How they seemed to come from two separate lives, and how I wanted to pick up where the wonderful life left off and try again. “Please, Mrs. Monett. Please. We came all the way out here. I need to talk to Zoe.”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t want him on my property. I don’t want him anywhere around my daughter. And neither does she. She’s moved on, a
nd you two need to do the same. You should not have come here. Not with him. She does not need some mentally imbalanced stalker following her across the country. And the fact that you brought him here lets me know that you’re as imbalanced as he is.”

  “Please,” I begged, desperate. “He’ll stay in the car.” I was so fraught I barely had time to register the guilt I felt at pushing Grayson aside like that. I just felt that if I could get them to listen to me, I could talk them into letting him in, too. Could tell them all the amazing things he’d done over the past three days, and how he was here because he wanted to protect me, and get them to see that it didn’t matter anymore what was wrong with him as long as you loved him and were willing to see what was right, and that it had taken me seven states to figure that out, but I had learned it, and if I could, surely they could, too.

  She started to pull the door closed, out of my grasp. “You need to leave,” she said firmly. “Zoe doesn’t want to see you.” And she shut the door.

  Just like that.

  At first I simply stood there, uncertain what to do next. Was she telling the truth? Was that really what Zoe wanted? Never in my plans had I considered what I would do if Zoe didn’t want to see me. I had been so sure this would work.

  I could hear Grayson behind me—uh-uh-uh—and when I finally turned, I could see the defeat in his face, as if he wanted nothing more than to dissipate into nothingness. Like he wanted to dissolve into the ground or… or become a rock and be kicked into a gutter somewhere.

  Slowly, slowly, I walked down the porch steps, my mind reeling. What would we do now? What was left to do?

  I passed Grayson on the sidewalk and headed around to my side of the car, and it wasn’t until I started to pull it open that I noticed his gaze had been drawn upward. I followed it and there she was. Zoe. Standing behind a window above the porch, looking down on us, the curtains splayed out over her shoulders, her face drawn down in a mixture of curiosity and regret.

  My breath caught, and all I could think was, Her hair is so thick and curly and her eyes are as beautiful as before and her skin so cocoa, and she looks like I always imagined she’d look—gorgeous and sleek and exotic and her cheekbones are higher and her face slimmer, but she’s Zoe standing up there. My best friend is standing right up there.