Run (26 page)

Until Caleb talked to me one day.

I practice what I want to say to him, though I know by now he won’t come. The words are scrambled like when my family made the switch and tossed all the potential boy and girl names in a plastic mixing bowl. I can still feel my fingertips pulling out the names that had been culled from all kinds of sources—magazines, newspapers, or a name we’d heard on the radio. How I prayed I wouldn’t get it when Mom put in the name Stevie. I so didn’t want that singer’s name.

There’s security in randomness.

The words that I put into the bowl of what I want to tell Caleb include goodbye, thanks, love, tears, fraud, forgiveness, and hope. I don’t know the exact order, but as the time sweeps past the hour I’m more and more sure that I won’t get to say them.

It is still dark and I start walking from the parking lot toward the street. It’s slickened and shiny from rain. Spots of motor oil rise up and create opalescent paisley shapes on the surface of the blacktop.

My stepfather is dead.

Mom’s drugged in a hotel room.

My biological father is dead.

My brother is with an aunt he doesn’t know.

And, fittingly, I guess I’m alone.

And as I begin to feel sorry for myself—and with good reason, I think—I hear it. My heart rises inside my ribcage. I turn to look at the noise that I know can only be one thing. Caleb Hunter’s white VW bug, the one that his mother had decorated with a daisy sticker that despite his best efforts left a residual adhesive that collected dust and dirt, making the daisy reappear. He hated that sticker. But he loved his mom.

He pulls alongside me and I stand there like a statue.

“What are you waiting for?” Caleb says, rolling down the window. He looks at me with those dark brown eyes and he flashes that smile that does what it always did. Disarms me. Leaves me wanting to be close to him. To hold him and let him know that outside of my family, he is the only one that I have ever loved.

“Rylee, or whatever the fuck your name is, get in!”

My feet start moving over the wet sidewalk. I grab the car door handle and slide into the passenger seat. In the backseat, I notice a backpack.

“What did you do to your hair?” he asks. “You look like shit.”

Caleb never lied to me.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Welcome.”

He presses the gas pedal and the car moves onto the empty street toward Mount Rainier, a presence that dominates the landscape to such a degree that we northwesterners call it the Mountain. As if there could be no other.

Like the boy next to me. I know that as long as I live, there will be no other.

We drive mostly in silence to a park along the edge of the Green River and watch the sunrise through the foggy windshield. I tell him almost everything. I hold very little back. Not because I don’t trust him, but because there’s so much to say. While I face the blush colors behind the Mountain, he looks straight at me, unblinking.

“You’re not a sociopath, are you?” he asks a little teasingly, trying to make the air in the VW a little bit lighter. “I mean, if you are, no offense.”

I know by my broken heart that I am not. I’m something between normal and unfeeling. Unfeeling when I need to be. Normal when I let my guard down.

When I’m with him.

“No,” I say, “I don’t think so.”

I make a note to myself that it probably would be a good idea to look up more about the clinical definition of antisocial personality.

Just in case.

He tells me everything he knows—and it’s a lot. Apparently there is a law enforcement manhunt across Washington for me and Mom. I know the news cycle will change when Monique Delmont gets the package, but not the hunt for me. That will continue. He tells me that Gemma is going to be on national TV to talk about our friendship and has been buzzing about it at school for two days.

“Not Caradee?” I ask.

“No. Only Gemma. She supposedly was your BFF.”

I don’t mind and I say so.“Good for her. She always wanted to be on TV.”

The sun is up now and we get out and walk along the river’s edge. The gravel crunches under my feet and it reminds me of the quarry, but I don’t bring it up. I’ve told him everything, but in broad brushstrokes. The phrase “gory details” comes to mind and I fully understand the meaning of it. I spare him most of the gory details.

His hand brushes mine as we sit on a bench and I die just a little inside.

He talks about his mother’s death, his father’s big insurance payoff and how his father’s assistant from work moved in a few months after. Her name is Carmen and when he says it, he always hyphenates it with the word Bitch.

“I can’t stand Carmen-Bitch,” he says, a theme to which I’m familiar. “She’s moved all my mom’s stuff to the garage and, get this, told me that the reason she did it was because it was too painful for Dad. Like I don’t matter and like he cared about Mom.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I could probably do something about it, but not now.

He looks into my eyes.

“The world is an ugly place,” he says. “You make it better.”

If it were any other guy, I’d want to slap him for such a cheap line. But I know that there is such goodness inside Caleb Hunter that he truly means it.

“We belong together,” he says, Taylor Swifting me, but I don’t care.

I feel it too.

Since it seems as though he’s never going to do it, I lean in and find Caleb’s lips with my own. I’m Sweet Sixteen. I’m alive. And for the first time, I know what it feels like to choose a path of your own. The kiss is soft, sweet. It’s watermelon in the summer. It’s a field-picked strawberry in May. I want more, but I pull away. Now. There. This isn’t the time or place.

I know for sure what has always been there from the first moment that we met.

Caleb and I do belong together.

Chapter Twenty-five

Cash: None.

Food: Whatever we need.

Shelter: VW bug (which I now call Daisy).

Weapons: None.

Plan: Vengeance.

AFTER THE KISS, CALEB LISTENS to my plan and I drift off to sleep as we drive east on Interstate 90 over the Cascades toward Spokane. We stop in Ellensburg and Caleb withdraws $400 from his father’s bank account, the maximum allowed by his bank’s ATM per day. He’s a smart boy, but I could teach him a few things.

My first lesson will be at the Idaho Department of Motor Vehicles in Post Falls, Idaho. When we arrive at the DMV office there I ask him to pull into the back of the nondescript building where I get out of the car.

I walk toward the dumpster like I’m about to greet an old friend. In a way, I am. Mom and I survived one particularly lean spring on food we liberated from a dumpster. She would hoist me to the edge and I’d drop in like I was a paratrooper behind enemy lines.

Despite the grossness sometimes found there, I kind of loved doing it. It was a treasure hunt of necessity.

“We have money,” Caleb calls out after me. “We don’t need to do any dumpster diving.”

“For what I need, we do,” I say while he looks on, embarrassed that anyone will see me as I lift the lid of the big green receptacle and climb inside.

It takes me only a few moments to find what I need.

I emerge with a handful of driver’s licenses. All had been rejected because the driver in question didn’t like his or her photo. When I return to the car, I fan them out like a Las Vegas card dealer.

Caleb can hardly believe his eyes.

Yes, I have a lot to teach him.

“I’ll use this one,” I say, looking at a young woman with her eyes semi closed.

“You don’t look anything like her,” he says.

I close my eyes partially and hunch my shoulders a little.

“How’s this?” I ask.

He laughs. We both do. The release feels good. Not as good as the kiss. But like a breeze, some of what I’d been holding inside passes through me. Gone.

Caleb looks at the license and makes a face. “Am I supposed to call you, what? Juanita now? Is that how this works?”

“No.” I shake my head. “But that’s a good question. I’ll get back to you on that.”

I sort through the rejects quickly. While most of the licenses belong to women who loathed their photos, there are a couple of men and teen boy rejects that might work, even though they aren’t nearly as handsome as Caleb Hunter.

But then, in my eyes, no one is.

“Take these,” I say. “They’ll come in handy someday.”

He drives the car around the building and parks next to the spot where a trio of teens are waiting to take their exams. One is a girl. She’s a redhead with pale white skin and freckles that remind me of Hayden’s shoulders when he’s been out in the sun. She looks nervous and I want to tell her that driving is not so hard. I’ve never had a real lesson and I do all right. I can’t parallel park, I bet, but who really needs to ever do that in Idaho?

“Watch and learn,” I say as he turns off the ignition.

Caleb follows me into the DMV. There is a line of people with bored-to-tears expressions all over their faces but I stomp my way to the front the second a patron steps away from the counter. I have two choices just then—a female or a male agent. Mom taught me to always go with the man if crying is a necessity.

This guy is in his forties, with gray-at-the-temple hair and wire-framed glasses that suggest neither hipster nor loser. He had a crisp blue shirt and is as neat as can be. The woman is wearing a sweatshirt with a horse on it.

He’s a good choice, I think.

“I’m going to be in so much trouble,” I say, tears already in place by the time I make it to his station.

He thinks I’m number 321, the color flashing on the screen for the next available DMV agent. Some big guy with a beard is, but seeing my tears, he backs off.

“How can I help you?” the DMV agent asks.

“I was in here earlier and some jerk put a big dent in my mom’s car. Her brand new Nissan Juke! I’m going to get blamed for it. I tried to get his insurance information, but he wouldn’t stop.”

“I’m sorry about that, miss,” he says.

I wrap my arms around myself like I’m trying to contain my concern when, in fact, I’m just warming up.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, managing a terrified look in my teary eyes. At least, that’s what I’m going for. Terrified sometimes looks crazy. I dial it down a little. “My mom’s got a mega temper.” I let the tears flow down and a woman in a leopard top and black jeans approaches.

“Help her,” she insists, taking off her sunglasses to ensure that her look is a searing one. “Can’t you do something?”

“Please sit down,” the agent tells her, looking at the slip of paper in the lady’s hand. “342 won’t be called for awhile.”

“Government employee,” she sneers. “Don’t give a crap about the people.”

“Hell yeah,” says the big bearded guy, with lug-bolt-on-sidewalk voice.

The woman turns to me and pats me gently on my shoulder. “I am a witness. I saw what he did. We should call the news.”

I wouldn’t have picked that leopard top if my life depended on it, but I like her. A lot.

After consoling me and making the DMV agent feel about two inches tall, she takes her seat along with the others, now all riveted by what’s going on at the counter.

He looks at me, then the crowd. He’s befuddled.

“What can I do about it?” he finally asks.

I don’t wipe my tears. The more evidence of my distress, the better.

“I have his license number,” I say. “Maybe that’ll help?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t look it up. That’s against policy.”

I cry some more, this time a whole lot louder.

“My mom’s going to kill me. It’s not my fault.”

The woman is back, and with her, the bearded guy. They are now a team. That’s nice.

“Help her,” she says with a glare of disdain in her eyes, aimed like a rifle at the clerk. “Do something right for a change. Just because you hate your job doesn’t mean you have to hate the world.”

“What this lady here just said,” the bearded guy snaps.

The DMV man looks around. I see sweat blooming from under his arms. As disgusting as that is, it looks like a pretty good sign to me. Plus the fact that I’m pretty sure the beard guy drives a Harley.

“Let me see your ID?” he asks, as though he needs to follow some rule when breaking another one.

I slide the license from the dumpster over to him.

He looks at it, then at me. My heart beats a little faster. There’s always a slight risk in this part but I know that he won’t help me if he thinks I’m from out of state—and if that’s the case, why am I at the DMV in the first place? I’m there, of course, because it isn’t the police station, and outside of that, I figure only the DMV would have access to the confidential information that I need.

“Juanita,” he finally says, “you can’t say you got this information from me. I could lose my job.”