Perfect Escape (27 page)

But I squeezed my eyes shut again, so hard I could see purple inside my eyelids, then opened them and took a deep breath, picking up the cinnamon roll bag and standing up again. “She’s probably already on her way,” I answered. I pushed through the door and into the hallway and headed toward Bo’s room.

What did it matter anymore that he didn’t know the whole story? Why bother to tell him the rest now? Everything was going to fall apart. We were going to be forced home. He would find out everything soon enough.

I walked into Bo’s room, where Rena was sitting in a chair, bent forward watching Bo sleep in his crib. Her face brightened when she saw us, then folded into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

I set the cinnamon rolls in her lap, then pulled the bottle of milk out of my pocket and handed it to her as well. “Ask
Genius Boy,” I said. “I’ve got to use the bathroom before we hit the road.” I walked past Grayson and into the bathroom, leaving the two of them to talk.

“You’re leaving right now?” I heard Rena say, and then I turned on the water and drowned them out.

By the time I came back out, Grayson and Rena were both eating their cinnamon rolls, as if nothing had ever happened. I’d run cold water over my face, and I definitely felt better, but I was still so mad at my brother I wished I’d left him in the quarry that day after school. Wished I’d hopped back in Hunka and gone to see Zoe myself. I didn’t need him to get to Zoe. Why did I ever think I did? She was my best friend, too.

She was my best friend
first
.

We even had our own special handshake, Zoe and me. We’d lock thumbs and make fists like we were getting ready to arm wrestle, but instead would pull each other close and bump hips while snapping the fingers of our other hand. We came up with it when we were seven. It was our way of reminding each other we were sisters at heart, without ever saying a word. She never did the secret handshake with Grayson. Only me.

She didn’t only love him. She loved me, too. Sometimes I thought she loved me more. But nobody in either of our families ever seemed to remember that. Nobody even seemed to care. But I cared. I remembered. I’d never forget. Because I promised her I wouldn’t.

And Zoe had made that promise, too.

Rena held up the paper bag holding my cinnamon roll and shook it. “Before you go,” she said.

“You can have it,” I said. My stomach was in knots over the thought of Mom—or the cops—being on their way, and there was no way I’d be able to keep anything down until I was over the California state line. I missed my mom, but getting to Zoe was something I needed to do, and until I’d done it, I wasn’t ready to face Mom. “C’mon, Grayson. We need to leave.”

He swallowed and looked sincerely confused. “What about my medicine?”

I sighed and threw up my hands. I’d had enough. “Mom is on her way. You want your medicine? You’ll have to stick around and wait for it yourself. You can go home with Mom when she gets here. I give up. I’m going to California.”

“You can’t go by yourself,” Rena said. She stood and walked over to me. I felt sick about leaving her, especially after last night, and wasn’t sure how to say good-bye to someone I’d met only a couple days ago but who already felt like a friend.

“I’m not waiting around. No way is my mom going to leave us here,” I said. “If he’s going to wait, I’m going without him.”

“Kendra, come on, this is stupid,” Grayson said, sounding whiny and agitated.

He was probably right, but I’d gone too far now to go back. “So be it,” I said, and leaned in to hug Rena. She smelled like icing, which made my stomach twist all the
harder. “Take good care of Bo,” I said. “He’s going to be one of those good guys someday. I just know it.”

She hesitated, pulled back to look at me, then hugged me, resting her chin on my shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “Be careful, okay?”

I nodded, feeling stupid that my eyes were welling up. We’d only known each other for two days. It wasn’t like she was my best friend or anything. But she could’ve been. In a different situation. In a different time. Rena and I could’ve been friends. And as silly as it made me feel, I was going to miss her.

I grabbed a pen off the side table by the bed and wrote my cell number and e-mail address on a napkin. “Let me know where you end up,” I said.

She nodded, and I turned and walked out the door.

“You can’t let her go by herself,” I heard her say, and my brother said something back, but I was beyond caring at that point. He’d blown it. He’d ruined the plan. He could deal with it.

I stepped into the elevator and pushed the “close door” button with my thumb impatiently until the doors closed. He was officially off the hook. On his own. I’d call Mom as soon as I got in the car. I’d tell her he was waiting for her. He’d be fine.

The elevator stopped and I was walking out before the doors were even all the way open, turning my shoulders sideways and brushing against the doors as they groaned slowly ajar.

Forget him
, I told myself.
Let him have his way. Get to Zoe yourself. You’ll be fine, too.

I repeated these things on a loop as I walked down the hallway, veered through the ER waiting room, and then broke into a jog as I hit the parking lot, digging in my front pocket for my car keys as I went.

I wasn’t going to waste any more time. I was ready to call this done.

With or without Grayson.

My backpack had been crammed under Grayson’s seat. It took me a few minutes to dig it out, and I eventually resorted to shoveling handfuls of rocks from the floorboard to the parking lot blacktop. Screw Grayson’s stupid rocks. If he wasn’t going to go with me, I had no use for them anymore. They were just more evidence of how I’d tried to make this work for him, and how he hadn’t tried to make it work for me. I didn’t need them.

Finally I got hold of a shoulder strap and pulled the backpack free, then dumped its contents on the passenger seat, my cell phone bouncing off the seat and onto the floorboard below. I picked up the phone and dialed.

“Kendra?” Dad’s voice. “You’re in goddamned Nevada?”

I closed my eyes and slid into the car, shutting the door softly behind me, as if I had to keep the other people in the
parking lot from hearing me get yelled at. Dad hardly ever blew his stack. This wasn’t going to be good.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“You should be sorry. Do you have any idea how much hell you’ve put us through with this stunt? I can’t even believe you would do this! You’ve been gone for three days. We thought you were hiding out at a friend’s house somewhere, but… Nevada!”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Now what are we supposed to do? Your brother is in crisis, calling us from a hospital, for Chrissakes, needing his medication that he’s not taken for days now. Your mother is inconsolable. Her sick son calling her from a hospital across the country, and her daughter nowhere to be found!”

“We weren’t at the hospital because of Grayson,” I said weakly. “Rena’s baby got sick.”

There was a pause. I imagined Dad standing with his head down, one hand on his hip, like he always did when he was trying to control his temper. “Who the hell is Rena?” From the sound of his voice, it wasn’t working. He was definitely not in control of his temper.

I sank down in the seat, knowing how this must sound to him. “Nobody. Just someone we met.”

“So you’re picking up hitchhikers, too? For the love of Pete, Kendra, I can’t believe you of all people would do this!”
You of all people
. Translation: How dare you not be Little Miss Perfect?

“I’m sorry, Dad. Is Mom there? I don’t have much battery left.”

“No. She’s not. She’s actually at Dr. St. James’s office, trying to figure out what to do. The police have already informed us that at seventeen and twenty you’re not considered runaways, so we’re kind of at a loss here. What do we do? Do we fly to Nevada? Come get you? Wait for you to come home and pray that nothing horrible happens to you? Send someone else after you and wait here at the same time? What? You tell us.” His voice squeaked at the end, like it’d been strained.

So Mom was at Grayson’s therapist’s office. Ordinarily, I’d think this was good news. Dr. St. James was constantly telling Mom to back off and stop enabling Grayson’s OCD. He’d probably be trying to persuade her to let us be. I’d normally be breathing a sigh of relief that we could keep going and maybe Mom would listen to Dr. St. James. But no. Grayson was freaking out instead. I needed to let them know that Grayson was waiting for her here. That she’d need to come get him.

“So are you coming home or what?” Dad asked again, the squeak gone and the nothing-but-pissed sound back.

I cleared my throat. “I still have something I need to do. But—”

A knock on the window startled me and I bolted up straight. Grayson was standing outside the car, holding the cinnamon roll bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He motioned for me to open the door.

“Hang on, Dad,” I said, and opened it.

“Get out of my seat,” Grayson said matter-of-factly. “I can’t drive, remember?”

“What are you doing?” I hissed, covering the mouthpiece of my cell phone with my thumb.

“Going with you,” he said, as if this was totally expected. But he didn’t look happy about it. In fact, he looked about as happy as Dad sounded.

We regarded each other solemnly for a few beats, until he began to look impatient and waved the bag and cup in the air again.

I slid out of Hunka and tried to hide my smile. He was coming with me. Without his medicine. He was looking past himself and doing something for me. As he got in, unceremoniously shoving all of the things I’d dumped out of my backpack onto the driver’s-side floor, I held the phone to my ear again.

“Dad?”

“But what?”

I took a deep breath, gazing up at the bank of windows on the second floor of the hospital. Rena would be behind one of those windows, cradling her baby, maybe watching Grayson go to the car and go with me, just as she’d told him to do. I probably owed her more than I even knew.

But Grayson is staying. He needs Mom to come get him
, I was going to tell Dad.

But Grayson wasn’t staying. He was fussing with the cup holder and my coffee, waiting for me to get us going back on the road.

“But we’ll be back soon, okay? Just wait for us. We’ll be fine. We have each other,” I said. And, I realized, this was the truth. We really did have each other… in our own weird way.

“This is unacceptable,” Dad roared, that squeak coming back again. “You need to consider what your actions are doing to others, Kendra. You need to consider your brother.” How many times had I heard some version of that sentence?
You need to think about Grayson. You need to consider your brother.

When have I ever not?
I wanted to say.
When has it ever been okay for me to just act without first considering my brother?
But at the moment the thought had no real conviction, not with my brother sitting in the passenger seat of Hunka, still holding my cinnamon roll in his lap, ready to follow me to wherever I needed to go, whether he thought he could do it or not. With or without his medicine. Trusting me.

Dad was right. I hadn’t been thinking about Grayson.

I knew what had changed between my brother and me over the past three years. It wasn’t that he’d left me. It wasn’t that he’d gotten too sick. It was that I’d left him. That his illness had suddenly mattered too much. And now I missed those times when it was just the two of us, laughing over something stupid, making fun of each other’s quirks. I ached to have our relationship back. And there was no reason why we couldn’t get it back. I didn’t need to cure Grayson; I needed to cure
us
. And that I knew I could do. It was not too late.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you guys. But this is something I need to do. I love you. Tell Mom I love her, too. Gotta go.”

And before he could get another shot at trying to talk me home, I ended the call. My battery light was flashing now, and I knew that pretty soon dodging their calls and texts wouldn’t matter anymore. My phone would be dead, and it would officially be just me and Grayson out here alone. I didn’t even bother to turn it off before shoving it into my pocket this time.

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.