Run (5 page)

“You said they wouldn’t call the cops!”

“I didn’t think they would— Bo, slow down.”

“We gotta get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah, but getting pulled over won’t do us any good.”

She’s right. I take a deep breath and ease up on the gas. Utah whimpers in the backseat. She’s probably curled up in a ball, scared half to death by my frantic driving. I’m a real piece of shit.

I make a sharp turn, and the Chevy swerves onto a bumpy back road. We gotta get off the highway.

“I should’ve known,” Agnes says, her voice about to break. “I told them not to call the police in my note, but I should’ve known they wouldn’t—”

“It don’t matter,” I say. “All that matters is that we get as far away from Mursey as we can. Before someone sees us. Goddamn it. We were on the news. We’re so fucked.”

“Maybe … Maybe not a lot of people watch the Sunday news? I mean, a lot of people are still in church.”

“Yeah, in Mursey. But that’s a tristate news channel. There were more than enough people watching to catch us.”

The car bounces and jitters along the gravelly road. My teeth clack against each other. My mind is spinning. We gotta do something. More than just get out of Mursey—we gotta make sure we ain’t recognized.

“We gotta ditch the car.”

“What?” Agnes squeaks.

“They said the license plate number on the news,” I tell her. “We gotta ditch the car.”

“How will we get anywhere?”

“We’ll get a new car.”

“Where?” she asks. “How?”

I don’t answer. I ain’t sure yet.

Then I see a house up ahead. A little gray house with a metal fence and a yellow Lab in the yard. Out front, an old man is sitting on his porch, drinking something out of a mason jar. Tea, maybe. Or beer, even though it’s early. A clock never stopped none of my family from drinking.

But it’s the car in his driveway that catches my eye. An old piece of junk, really. It’s gray and boxy and the doors are dented all to hell.

I slow the Chevy down.

“What are you doing?” Agnes asks.

I roll down the window. “Excuse me, sir?”

The man don’t notice us at first. He just keeps drinking and tapping his foot on the concrete steps of his porch. Maybe he’s blind, like Agnes. Or deaf. Or maybe he’s just ignoring me.

I shove my palm into the steering wheel and the horn blares. Next to me, Agnes jumps and covers her ears with her hands.

The man looks up this time.

“Sir,” I holler out the window. “Sorry to bother you.”

Oh Lord, I hope he ain’t seen us on TV.

“Yes? Can I help you with something, darlin’?”

“You sure can.” I try to sound sweet, the way Agnes does, but it don’t taste right in my mouth. It sounds like I’m being sarcastic or mean or mocking.

The old man gets to his feet. He adjusts his ball cap before walking—real slow—down the steps and toward the road.

“Bo,” Agnes says in my ear. “What are you doing?”

“What is it you need, sweetheart?” The old man leans forward, resting his weight against the fence. Behind him, the yellow dog is running from one side of the yard to the other. Back and forth. Over and over.

I keep my sweet smile on and gesture toward the old piece of shit in his driveway.

“I’d like to buy that car from you,” I say. “Right now. If it runs.”

“Bo,” Agnes says through gritted teeth. “What the hell?”

I ignore her and keep my eyes on the old man. “What do you say? Let me take the piece of junk off your hands.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. That car ain’t for sale,” he says.

“Come on. I’d be doing you a favor.”

“That’s one of the first Plymouth Reliant Ks ever made. It’s an antique.”

“It’s a garbage can on wheels,” I argue.

“I told you. It ain’t for sale.”

“Not even for …” I do some quick math in my head. “Not even for eight hundred dollars?”

Next to me, Agnes gasps. I swallow hard, but I don’t look at her.

The old man changes his tune real quick. “Eight hundred?” he asks. He knows as well as I do the car ain’t worth half that. “Hmm. Well, I don’t know if I can part with it for less than—”

“I’m not gonna haggle with you, sir.” I ain’t even trying to be sweet no more. It wasn’t doing me no good anyhow. “Eight hundred and no questions. Take it or leave it.”

“All right. Sold.”

“Thought so.”

“Bo,” Agnes says again, this time louder. “What are you doing? What are you thinking?”

“I’m getting us a new car.”

“But—”

“Trust me.”

Lucky for me, she does.

Not that she should.

I park the Chevy in the old man’s driveway, next to the battered car. He tells us his name is Earl before heading inside to get the keys. Me and Agnes grab our stuff from the backseat while Utah and the yellow dog paw at each other through the fence.

“Are we just leaving my sister’s car here?” she asks.

“It won’t take them long to find it,” I say.

The front door opens, and Earl comes back out of his house, keys jangling at his side.

“Wait here,” I tell Agnes. She nods and leans against the shitty car, arms folded over her chest.

“Y’all must be in a hurry,” Earl says while I unzip my backpack and hunt for the cash I’ve hidden inside. “You gotta be teenagers. Why do you need another car so bad?”

“I said no questions.” I pull out the wad of cash I’d tucked into an inside pocket. Carefully, I count out eight hundred dollars. That’s most of it. Way more than I wanted to spend this early. “Here,” I say, shoving the money into Earl’s hands and taking the keys from him.

“Pleasure doing business,” he says, fingering the wrinkled bills.

“There’s another thing.”

Earl raises an eyebrow. “I ain’t got nothing else to sell you, girl.”

“That car—the one we’re leaving—it’s stolen. If you wanna call the police and let them know it’s here, that’s fine. But, please, don’t tell them nothing about us.”

“Police? What are y’all getting me into?” Earl demands. “I ain’t gonna lie for two strange kids.”

“I’ll give you another fifty bucks.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Fine.”

“I never saw you. Far as I know, that car was just dropped off here when I woke up this morning.”

I hand him a few more bills, then tuck the rest of the cash back into the backpack.

“Y’all take care now,” Earl hollers as I walk back toward Agnes.

I unlock the Reliant K and load Utah into the back while Agnes climbs into the front seat.

“Just gotta do one more thing,” I tell Agnes. She shrugs.

I walk back to the Chevy and slide into the front seat. The keys are still in the ignition. I leave them there and, instead, pop open the console. There are a bunch of fast-food napkins inside, but I manage to find a red ink pen, too.

On a Wendy’s napkin, I scribble a note to Agnes’s parents. They’ll find it when they come get the car.

Mr. and Mrs. Atwood—I know you hate me, but I had to. I’m sorry. Bo

“Still feels strange not having Gracie at the table,” Mama said, scooping mashed potatoes onto my dinner plate. “I’m so used to cooking for four, we always have so many leftovers now.”

“Nothing to complain about,” Daddy said around a mouthful of pork chop.

Gracie had been gone for about two weeks, and the house did seem awful quiet lately. Mama called her every night and made her talk to Daddy and me, but Gracie always tried to rush off the phone pretty fast. She had to study or hang out with her new friends or go to cheerleading practice. She had a million things to do and a million places to go.

Me? I hadn’t left the house since the day I’d wandered around the woods, except to go to school. Christy was always busy with Andrew, and no one else ever invited me anywhere.

“How’s school going, Agnes?” Mama asked, finally sitting down next to Daddy.

I shrugged.

“Use your words,” Daddy teased.

“It’s fine. English is the only subject I’m any good at, and all we’ve been doing is reading poetry, which usually doesn’t make much sense to me. So that’s been hard.”

“What about math?”

“It’s geometry,” I said. “Blind girls and shapes? Not the best combination.”

It was meant as a joke, but my parents took it very seriously.

“Are your teachers making accommodations for you?” Daddy asked.

“Should we call the guidance counselor? Or the principal?” Mama asked. “If you need more help—”

“No, no. I’m okay,” I said. “I was mostly kidding. The shapes are hard, but my teacher’s great. I’ve gotten okay at doing proofs.”

“If you do have any issues, though, you’ll tell us,” Mama said. “We can always have them take another look at your IEP.”

An IEP was an individual education plan. My parents and teachers and members of the school board met every year to make adjustments to it. That’s where they figured out what equipment and accommodations I needed, and what the school could afford to get me.

“Can you pass the green beans?” I asked Daddy, hoping to get off the subject.

Whenever my school and accommodations came up, my parents usually got angry. They always insisted the school should do more for me. “If they can spend all that money on the football team, they can get you the materials you need,” Mama would say. Maybe she was right, but the truth was, I was doing fine with what I had. New tape recorders and giant glass magnifiers would just make me feel even more awkward at school.

Luckily, Daddy had other things to talk about. “My mother stopped by,” he told Mama. “She wanted me to remind you that you agreed to take her to her doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh shoot,” she said. “I forgot. That means I won’t be able to pick up Agnes from school.”

“I can’t, either,” Daddy said. “Rodney’s got the day off, and I can’t leave the store.”

“What do we do?”

“I can take the bus,” I offered.

“Mmm … I don’t want you walking all that way,” Mama said.

“It’s not that far.” The school bus didn’t come down most of the side roads of Mursey. Instead, it dropped a bunch of kids off at the church, which was just around the block—or straight back through the woods, but I wasn’t trying that again. All right, so it was a big block and part of the way didn’t have any sidewalks, but it still wasn’t too bad. “We walk there every Sunday. I know the way.”

“I don’t know,” Mama said.

“Can’t Christy drive you?” Daddy asked. “She’s got a car now, right? I thought I saw her nearly run over Mr. Jordan in the gas station parking lot a few days ago.”

“She’s not that bad of a driver,” I said. And then, on second thought, added, “Well, she’s getting better.”

Daddy laughed.

“That’s a good idea, though,” Mama said. “Christy can drive you home, then y’all can hang out here for a while. She can even stay for dinner if she wants.”

“And as long as she doesn’t run anybody over,” Daddy said, “we don’t have to worry about how you’ll be getting home.”

“I don’t see what there is to worry about,” I said. “It ain’t that far.”

“Grammar,” Mama warned.

“It’s not that far,” I amended. “I’ve had mobility training. I know how to cross a damn street.”

“And language,” she scolded.

“Someone with your mouth doesn’t deserve to walk home alone,” Daddy joked.

“And now that that’s settled,” Mama said, even though I wasn’t sure it was, “who wants dessert?”

When she left the table to get the pie Grandma had dropped off, I looked at Daddy. For a second, I thought of asking him why me taking the bus was such a problem. I didn’t mind riding home with Christy, but walking home didn’t seem like it ought to be a big deal.

But I couldn’t say anything. Gracie was the arguer. Not me.

So Mama came back and put pie on our plates, and we talked about the hardware store and the grocery list and the high school football team …

And the subject was completely forgotten.

At least until the next day, when I had to ask Christy for a ride.

“Sorry, Agnes. I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I’m going over to Andrew’s house.” Christy picked a soggy french fry off my tray, thinking I wouldn’t see. I always did, but for some reason, I never called her out on it. “His parents are coming home late, and”—she leaned across the table so that I could hear her whisper—“I think today’s the day. I think we’re going to … you know.”

“To … what?”

“You know … sleep together.” She sank back into her chair.

“Oh … wow.” I shoved a fry in my mouth and took a while to chew, just to give myself a minute to think. Finally, I swallowed. “I thought y’all were waiting for marriage?”

“Don’t be all judgy,” she said, annoyed.

“I’m not. I’m just surprised. You were so set on it before.”

“It’s not like I’m turning into Bo Dickinson or anything. It’s just … I mean, Andrew and me, we’re practically married as it is. He’s getting me a ring for Christmas. He already told me. He’d do it sooner, but our parents … Anyway, we’ll probably get married summer after graduation. Might as well get some practice in first.”

I nodded, even though, deep down, the idea of Christy marrying Andrew, the only guy she’d ever dated, right after high school made me sort of uneasy for the both of them. And I wasn’t really sure why.