Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (23 page)

When I finally looked up, three faces gaped at me. I paced like a cat: a warning—don't come too close.

“Is she done?” Boston asked in a stage whisper.

“I think she needs more stuff to smash,” York answered.

Andi rooted around in her messenger bag and emerged with something that shined bright white in the sunlight.

She held it out, cupping it in her palm the same way she'd done back at Pete's Pawn.

The snow globe.

She lifted one corner of her mouth in a tentative smile. “Go crazy.”

AFTER

MAMA LOOKS DOWN at the handcuffs with shame all over her face. But with Mama, shame sometimes looks an awful lot like self-pity, and I'm tired of seeing it. I wave her off when she tries to explain.

She already made her excuses, and I haven't decided yet if I believe her. If she's lying, I can't bear it, and if she's telling the truth, then my temper tantrum looks foolish.

I remind her that visiting hours are short and my story is long. It's difficult to get Mama to focus on anyone other than herself, but she makes an effort to stay still and listen. I appreciate it.

“I told you not to thank me yet,” I say. “For the violin.”

“You must have been in a lot of pain.”

She's making excuses for me, as always, but she's not wrong.

“I was in a lot of
trouble
,” I say. “I needed you, and when I heard you . . .”

“I know.”

My voice cracks. “I was so mad at you.”

“I know.”

The chain of the handcuffs scrapes the table as Mama stretches her hands toward me and I pull mine away.

“But I am sorry about the violin,” I say.

“Oh, Sam.”

Mama is crying now. Whimpering, really. It's pathetic, and I feel sick to think that about my own mother, but even the other inmates and their families are looking away uncomfortably. The visitation room is very crowded today, and I wish she would keep it together. It's not good to show weakness behind bars. She's the one who told me that, after all.

“I just hate being here again.” Mama sniffles and looks around at all the gray. “This place . . .”

“
You
hate being here?”

“I know, honey, I know. I'm sorry.” She flaps her hands to settle me down, as if I'm the one making a scene here. “Of course you hate it, too. Of course you do.” She cries fresh tears.

I know in this moment that I'm stronger than Mama. And not because I don't cry, but because after everything life has thrown at us—or, more accurately, after everything Mama has thrown at our lives—I'm not so breakable. Mama is glass that shatters too easily. I am stone that doesn't crack easily enough.

We're both screwed up that way, but sometimes—like right now—I'm glad to be me, if only because it reminds me that I'm not her.

 

30

IT'S MY FAULT.

The words kept repeating in my head.
My fault, my fault, my fault.

I said it inwardly with every weary step. We'd been walking for an hour and had covered almost no ground, the soft soil working our calves until they screamed for relief, forcing us to move at a crawl.

After I'd destroyed my cell phone, Andi had held up her own and dealt the deathblow. “Battery's dead.”

“How can it be dead?” Boston had cried.

“Because I never turned it off ! And because some idiot made me keep it on for the last hour, searching for a signal.”

“Only because some
other
idiot threw mine out a window!”

“Okay, so it's settled,” York had said. “You're both idiots.”

I had said nothing but
My fault, my fault, my fault.

And so we walked.

The boys wanted to head to the place they called Pit Stop, but by the time we saw signs for Pitson the traffic on the freeway was heavy, and we all agreed our “friends” might be there waiting for us. There was a small argument about whether it was worth it to get inside a building with a phone and call 9-1-1, but then we would have to wait who-knows-how-long for sheriff's deputies out here in the boonies. It was too risky, someone had argued, and whoever it was had won the fight.

I hardly paid attention. I was too busy thinking about Mama, wondering if she was in a bar right this minute—or, worse, in some drug dealer's filthy living room, buying God-knows-what to kill her worries. Little did she know I was carrying all the drugs she could ever want on my back. I was Mama's compass for sobriety, her true north, and when I hadn't come home last night, she'd lost her way.

My fault.

“I need to stop,” Boston panted. He shrugged off his backpack and dropped to the ground next to it.

We all collapsed in response, lying down right in the dirt.

“How long is it going to take us to walk all the way home?” Andi asked.

“Years,” York said.

Boston sat up and rested his forearms on his knees. “Sixteen hours. Give or take.”

“Give or take what?” Andi asked.

“An hour. But that's only if we keep up our pace.”

“Our snail's pace,” York complained.

“How do you know it's sixteen hours?” I said. My throat was dry, and it came out as a croak.

“Hey, look, it speaks!” Andi scooted over to me. “Thought maybe you were going the way of those monks or whatever, who take a vow of silence.”

“It can't be sixteen hours,” I groaned.

Boston scratched his head. “Well, it's an hour to the cabin in good traffic, at a driving speed of sixty-five miles per hour, so at a walking speed of—”

“Spare me your calculations,” I said. “I meant
we
can't go sixteen hours. We'll die of dehydration.”

Not to mention lack of sleep.

“Obviously,” Boston said, looking wounded. “We'll find a phone or a bus stop before then.”

“A bus stop on the highway?” York said. “I know every inch of this road, and there's no bus stop. There's no
nothing
. We should have gone into Pitson, like I said.”

“There are houses,” Boston countered. “Farms and stuff. We'll knock on a door, use the phone, and wait for the police.” He stood and kicked his backpack-load of heroin. “I'm sick of running, anyway.”

Me, too.

“Uh, guys?” York said.

“Forget running,” Andi said. “I'm sick of
walking
.”

“Guys?”

“I can't walk one more step,” I agreed.

Boston stretched. “Well, if we want to stop running, we
have
to start walking.”

“GUYS!”

York was on his feet, shielding his eyes against the sun and looking up the highway from the direction we'd come. He dropped his hand to reveal pure panic on his face, then he turned to us and shouted a single word.

“RUN!”

I didn't ask questions. The last time York told us to run it had saved our lives, for all I knew, so I stood and stumbled blindly after him. Andi and Boston were faster, and I panicked when I realized I was bringing up the rear. I had no idea what we were running from, but I didn't slow down to look. Mama and I watched a lot of horror movies, and the person in back of the pack always bit it. Monster bait, Mama called them. And then she would tell me,
If you're ever in trouble, you only have to be faster than the slowest person.
Parenting, by Melissa Cherie.

Just when I thought my legs were going to fall off from pumping so hard, York dove behind a low stack of round hay bales. I landed on my stomach, dry-heaving. Everyone was prone on the ground except York, who crawled up enough to peek over the top of the hay. Thank God for harvest season, or this field would have provided no cover.

But cover from what?

I crept up next to York and saw a pickup with huge wheels stopped on the side of the road, just yards from where we'd been resting.

“That looks like the truck that was at the cabin,” York said.

“Did they see us?” Boston whimpered in panic.

“Did they see us running and flailing around like idiots?” Andi huffed, still out of breath. “No, I'm sure they didn't notice a thing.”

“Are we sure it's them?” I asked.

Andi joined our peekaboo position and pulled her binocular glasses from her messenger bag. “Super Zooms say affirmative,” she said.

“This isn't a joke!” Boston snapped.

“You're the joke,” Andi said, passing him the Super Zooms. “But take a look. They're leaving.”

Boston slid the funny glasses onto his face, but I didn't need binoculars to see the truck begin to roll forward. I heard gravel under the wheels as the pickup pulled back onto the highway, then it pulled an abrupt U-turn and zoomed back up the road the way it had come.

“Where are they going?” I asked. “Why would they leave?”

“Maybe they don't want to murder us in broad daylight,” Boston said.

“Or they decided we're not worth the trouble,” Andi offered.

I watched the truck's bumper disappear into the tunnel of trees where the woods swallowed the road. I hoped Andi was right.

York stood up the second the truck was out of sight. “Okay, let's go.”

“Go where?” Boston stood too and threw his arms out.

“I don't know,” York said. “But we can't sit here with our heads in the hay like a bunch of dumb ostriches who think that if you can't see your enemy, your enemy can't see you.”

“That's not why ostriches bury their heads,” Boston said. “They dig for pebbles to help with their digestion, and—”

“Wow, dude, we
so
don't care right now,” Andi said.

“Let's just start moving.” York nudged Boston. “You said there'd be a farm with a phone. Here's the farm. Let's find the phone.”

I got to my feet and spun in a circle. I saw nothing but black soil and butter-colored hay for miles in every direction. More than likely, we were sitting in the middle of a corporate farm, which meant hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of corn or soybeans, and zero farmhouses.

York snatched the Super Zooms from Boston's face and put them on his own. “There are buildings back there.” He pointed deep into the fields, away from the road.

Anything away from the road sounded good to me. I started walking in the direction York had indicated, but a cry from Boston stopped me.

“My backpack!” he said, his hands scrabbling at his back. “I left it by the road!”

I reached for my own pack, still firmly in place. No wonder I had been running so slowly.

York still had his, too, and he hiked it higher on his shoulders. “It's fine. Just go get it and come right—”

“No,” Andi said vehemently. “I told you guys to leave that shit alone from the beginning. Leave it now.”

Boston protested, “But it's evidence—”

“It's not worth it!” she shouted. “We have enough evidence right here.” She pointed at the bags York and I were carrying.

“She's right,” I said. I knew we were mostly innocent, but it
felt
more true if we weren't all hauling heroin on our backs. Less is more seemed to apply here. I looked at Boston. “They might be waiting for us just up the road. If they come after you, your dead body might be the evidence.”

“Don't be so dramatic,” York said. “They're not going to kill us.”

“Not alongside a busy highway, anyway,” I muttered. “But I'd rather not take my chances, thanks.”

“But they didn't even shoot at us back at the cabin,” York pointed out.

“Well, then they're practically good Samaritans!” I cried.

“I just meant—”

“Look,” I cut him off. “Let's go see what those buildings are back there—see if one has a phone. You can keep an eye on the bag with the mad-scientist glasses.”

“Super Zooms,” Andi corrected.

York peeked through the glasses to confirm that he could see the pack in the distance, then propped them on his head and reluctantly agreed. “One of those buildings had better be a house.”

No such luck.

It was a three-mile hike at least to the cluster of buildings, but the Super Zooms told us a mile in that there was no reason to keep walking.

“Tractor storage,” York said, passing the glasses around the group so we could see for ourselves. Long, low garages, wide-open on one side, housed lines of green-and-yellow John Deere
machines. Next to them, a barn-sized warehouse was also open—and completely empty.

The only other building within view was a tall metal cylinder off to our left—a grain silo.

“Great,” Boston said. “Now—”

“Don't say ‘now what,'” York warned. “The next person to ask that gets clocked in the face.”

“I'll tell you
now what
,” Andi said deliberately. “Now, we rest.”

“Right here?” Boston asked.

“No.” Andi pointed at the silo. “In there.”

The inside of the metal tube was hot, the air choked with the dust of old hay. It took a few sneezes for my nose to adjust, but then I gratefully parked my butt on the dirt floor and leaned against the curved wall.

No more walking, no more looking. Let someone come find us instead. Hell, let the crooked cops come find us.

I was past caring.

My eyelids slipped closed, but popped open again when Andi snapped a finger in my face.

“Rest!” she ordered. “But don't sleep.”

York dropped to the ground in defiance and rested his head in my lap. “Can I use you as a pillow?” he asked.

I was past caring about that, too.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Not whatever,” Andi said. “No sleep—sleep—sleeee—” Her words were choked off by her own deep yawn.

Boston was already curled into a ball on the other side of the silo, and Andi looked around at us, defeat on her face.