Perfect Escape (12 page)

“Wow,” I said, because that’s the only thing I could think of to say. Had I known Rena a little better, I may have told her how wrong that was. That a man his age getting a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant was disgusting and a crime. That a good marriage isn’t one where you have to stay out of your husband’s hair in order to stay out of trouble. Had it been Shani, I would have said all of those things. Had it been Zoe, I would have packed her things for her and dragged her out of there. I’d have tied her in the backseat and stolen her if I had to. But I didn’t know Rena. It was none of my business. So we just kept walking.

“Is that my girl out there?” a voice called, and Rena laughed. A guy in gray coveralls was standing out in the gravel lot in front of the open bay door, twisting a blue rag in his hands. He wore a greasy baseball cap, little brown curls snaking out from under it. From where we stood, his smile was very wide, and very bright.

“That’s him,” she said, then called out, “The one and only!” She took off running down the hill. When she reached him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He kept his hands at his sides, looking like a stunned little boy receiving his first hug from a girl. When she unwrapped herself, I
could see, even from a distance, pink on her face. Not like she was embarrassed; more like she was finally alive.

Slowly, I made my way down the hill and across the parking lot, shoving the tire along in little bursts, every so often losing my grip on it and having to step off the road and retrieve it from the grass and gravel on the side.

When I finally caught up with them, Rena and Buddy were giggling and slapping at each other. Rena looked even younger than she had before. And she was right—Buddy was hot.

“Hey,” he said when I hit the lot. He jogged over to me and took the tire, picking it up against his chest as if it were no heavier than an envelope. “Need a fix, huh?”

I nodded, out of breath.

“Well, come on inside and get a Coke. I got an oil change ahead of you, and then we’ll get this squared away.”

“C’mon,” Rena said, joining us. “I know where he keeps the keys to the Coke machine.” She gave him a wicked grin.

“Aw, c’mon now, Rena,” Buddy said, his tone exasperated, but the dimples blooming on the corners of his mouth giving him away. “You’re not s’posed to tell anyone ’bout that.”

She giggled. “You shouldn’ta told me, then,” she said, and stuck out her tongue. Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the grimy little shack off the garage.

I couldn’t help liking Rena. I knew I didn’t know her at all, and she could’ve been a terrible person, but at the
moment, her hand was warm and felt like friendship, and I really, really needed that.

“I have to tell you about this one time that Archie came down here with me,” she whispered, “and Buddy locked him in the bathroom. It was so funny.”

I smiled at her.

“I’m dying for a Coke,” I answered, and let her pull me into the building.

For the next hour, we drank sodas and chatted, giggling whenever Buddy came into the room, all shy and flirty, and for that one hour everything was relaxed and happy. Rena didn’t know me. And she didn’t know Grayson, either, which meant I could be whoever I wanted to be. Not perfect. Not the girl who goes down into the quarry to fetch her brother. Not the girl who can’t have fun, or the girl running away from her problems. In some ways, it felt like no matter how long our time at Buddy’s lasted, it would end too soon. Like I’d never get enough of just being me.

And, as awful as it sounds… for that one hour, I didn’t even think about Grayson. I didn’t worry about what he was doing back at Rena’s motel.

I didn’t even stop to think that he might wake up alone and start worrying about me.

Something told me that Buddy wasn’t exactly hurrying on that oil change. He kept coming in and out, every time wiping something off on that blue towel, a distant, happy look in his eyes. He had it bad for Rena, even if she was “a married old hag.”

It seemed that the two of them had a thousand stories to tell. Funny ones, sad ones, ones that seemed kind of private to me, and I found myself sort of missing Shani and Lia. It occurred to me that I never gave them enough credit. They were good friends, even if they weren’t Zoe. They cared about me.

After Zoe had left and my brother began the great downward spiral that landed him in hospital after hospital and treatment program after treatment program, I really felt as though I had nobody. Zoe gone to California; Grayson just gone. I latched on to Shani and Lia a few months
later, and it all felt so easy. We didn’t talk about anything depressing or serious. There was no fighting or crying or counting going on. We hung out at the mall and ate a lot of French fries together and did normal, non-dramatic things.

And when I got sick of spending my weekends visiting my brother in the hospital, I could go to Shani’s house, no questions asked. And I’d vent about my brother for a few minutes, and then we’d do something stupid to take my mind off it, and eventually it was almost like he didn’t even exist.

I felt a twinge of guilt over having ignored their text messages, and resolved that I would call as soon as we got on the road. Try to catch Shani in between school and dance practice. Tell her I was okay and that, yeah, it was true.
I did what they’re all saying I did. I’m a horrible person. But you don’t hate me, right?
Somehow I knew Shani would forgive me anyway, which made me miss her all the more. And made me feel all the more guilty for holding out on her just because she wasn’t Zoe. I’d never given her the chance to be.

I was so lost in my memories, I barely even noticed that Buddy and Rena had stood up and were standing outside the garage, talking, my tire reinflated and propped up against Rena’s leg. I hurried out to join them, my stomach growling.

Buddy wouldn’t let me pay for the tire. Said he was doing it as a favor for “his girl.” She kissed him on the cheek and we were walking again, heading back to the motel.

“You and Buddy are really cute together,” I told her.

She blushed. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “I think so.” We walked a few paces. “So how’d you end up with Archie, anyway?” I asked, as we worked together to push the fixed tire up a hill.

“Just happened, I guess,” she said. Our feet scuffed against the pebbles on the road, and the sounds of rocks clicking against one another made me think of Grayson. I wondered if he was awake yet. “I was sort of homeless when I came through here. My boyfriend Sal took off one day. Gone. And his roommate Jonah kicked me out. Real easy, you know? Like I never existed. He was all, ‘Rena, you’re hot and all, but I ain’t gonna pay for your ass,’ which didn’t surprise me because Jonah spent most of his paychecks on meth, anyway.” She stopped, stood up straight, placed her hands on the small of her back, and stretched backward, looking off into space, like she was seeing Jonah’s face out there somewhere. Or maybe Sal’s. After a while she shrugged and bent forward, and we started rolling again.

“What a jerk.”

“I know. I really loved Sal, you know? So I was, like, crushed. And I didn’t have anywhere to go. I wasn’t going back to my mom and stepdad’s. No way. So one night I ended up at the motel and… I don’t know… Archie let me stay there for free. It was really nice of him. He was a lot nicer then. Or at least I thought he was. He talked to me a lot back then.”

“So it was like love at first sight?”

Rena laughed. “Uh, no. Archie isn’t much to look at. It was more like love at first missed period.” She giggled again, but I kept my head down and kept pushing the tire. “So what about you?” she asked, and I nearly tripped.

Of course this would come up. Of course she would ask me why I was running away. And since she’d shared her story with me, of course she’d expect me to share mine with her. I was so stupid for asking.

“What about me, what?” I asked, practically choking from trying to keep my voice light.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

My legs actually tingled with relief. “No,” I said. “I did. Tommy. He was great for a while, but he turned out to be a real jerk. One of those football hero kinds of guys that like to pick on pretty much everyone else. Total stereotype.”
Also
, I didn’t add,
the kind of guy who blackmails his girlfriend.
“I dumped him a few months ago and kind of swore off guys for a while.”

“Smart girl,” she said.

Smart. I thought about the mess I’d left behind at school. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’ve done some pretty dumb things.”

“Haven’t we all?” she answered. She hesitated, then continued. “So, your brother. Is he, like, messed up or something?”

How many times in my life had I been asked that?
What’s wrong with your brother? What’s the deal with
your brother? What happened to your brother?
And every time I was asked, I always thought of my mom holding down the dampened sides of my hair, looking at me earnestly in the mirror.

“He’s got some difficulties,” I answered. “He’s a good guy. This trip is really going to help him. But don’t say anything to him about us going to see our friend in California. That part’s a surprise.” Then, desperate to change the subject, I said, “You know, you and Buddy would make a cute couple.”

She smiled wide and glanced at me. “You think?”

“Definitely. He’s adorable. And he likes you a lot. You should go for it.”

Her face clouded up. “Nah. Not here. Archie would never give us any peace. You have no idea what Archie… It doesn’t matter. It’s nice to daydream about it, though.”

We crested the hill and stopped, both of us panting. Our hair lay limp with sweat and we had road dust on our backs, so only wisps of it took flight when the wind gusted. I sat on the tire. Rena crouched, pulling her finger in circles in the dust.

“I’ll bet California will be amazing,” she said.

I looked out toward the horizon, as though I could see California from there if I just looked hard enough.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I would love to go to California,” she said. “Maybe Archie’ll take me and Bo someday.” She traced a heart
shape with her finger, then scooched her foot forward and obliterated it. “Hey, maybe I’ll look you up when we get there, huh?”

“Yeah. Okay,” I said, pushing away the obvious thought, which was that I had no earthly idea where we’d be by the time she got to California. That was the part I still had to figure out. That was the part I needed Zoe for.

She drew a sun, childlike, with rays poking out of it at all angles, then stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans again. Somehow the jeans managed to still look clean, despite all the grime she’d wiped on them throughout the day. It was as if Rena couldn’t not look shiny.

I stood up and took a deep breath. “Ready?” I said.

“Yep!” she said. “I gotta get back before Bo wakes up. That boy does nothing but eat.”

We started down the hill toward the motel, which was sprawled out below, talking about babies and Buddy and the beach and pretty much anything else we could think of.

And, even more important,
not
talking about school and rocks and the Hayward Fault and OCD.

When we got back to the motel, Rena ducked right inside the office while I rolled the tire to our room and leaned it against Hunka. I decided Grayson could help me put it back on. He would balk, of course. It would be “too dirty” or “too dangerous,” and if I were Mom, I’d give in and do it myself. Which was exactly why I was going to make him help me. It would help him get better, just like I’d told Rena this trip would do. Just like I’d been telling myself.

But when I opened the door, Grayson wasn’t there.

“Gray?” I called, glancing around, trying to let my eyes adjust to the dark room. I checked in the bathroom. No Grayson. I checked in the closet. No Grayson. “Grayson?” I called again, like he could be hiding under the bed or in the night table drawer with the Bible or something.

I practically flew out of the room, my heart racing. Where on earth could he have gone? It wasn’t as if he could
have driven anywhere. Maybe he called a taxi and was headed back home right at this moment. Did they have taxis in this town? Doubtful. Plus, Grayson couldn’t handle germs when he was anxious. There’s no way he’d sit in the back of a taxi for however many hours it would take to get home.

I raced to Hunka and peered in the back window. No Grayson.

It didn’t make sense. He had to be around here somewhere.

Oh, God. If something happened to him, Mom and Dad would never forgive me. Forget my stupid school troubles. I’d kidnapped my brother and lost him. That was way worse than failing any stupid calc class.

I practically sprinted down the sidewalk to the office, my sneaker accidentally connecting with the cow skull and sending it skittering in two pieces across the mud patch that was meant to be lawn. My throat felt tight and I was totally panicked.

Just as I was about to pull open the door, Rena stepped out of it.

“Bo’s still asl—Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“Is my brother in there?” I asked, gesturing at the office door behind her.

“Your brother? Uh-uh. Why?”

“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to press down the panic creeping up my throat.

She looked startled. “Yeah. Positive,” she said. “Archie’s
asleep in the recliner and Bo’s still napping. Your brother’s missing?”

I nodded miserably. “Omigod,” I whispered. I put my hands on my hips and paced up and down the sidewalk.

“Maybe he got hungry and went to look for something to eat,” she said, which seemed entirely possible, since it was the first thing I’d wanted to do after waking up, too.

“Maybe,” I said. “But he doesn’t have any money. And besides, Grayson never leaves the house. Not unless it’s to go to the hospital or to the qu—” I stopped in my tracks. “Do you have any big rock beds around here?”

Rena’s face crinkled curiously. “Rock beds?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Rock beds. Like, landscaping. Or a… I don’t know… a pile of rocks. Or a place that sells rocks or something. Just… any place where there are lots of rocks?”