The Escape Diaries (4 page)

“But he didn’t—
you
know—”

“Only because you
were lucky. The next girl that monster picks won’t be so lucky. It’s our
duty
to report him.”

“If a storm
victim died because I was bothering the police with my piddly problem, I couldn’t
live with myself.”

“It is not a
piddly problem! Listen to me, Dorothy—you need to contact your parents,
too. If something happened to my daughter, I’d want to know. And don’t worry,
because I am going to stay by your side every step of the way.”

We were both
quiet for a minute, Betty focusing on driving as traffic grew heavier while I
frantically tried to come up with a way to ditch this do-gooding stick-tight.
We were at the outskirts of the city now. Mini-marts, McDonald’s, Targets,
Jiffy-Lubes. Anywhere, USA, hideous as a minefield, but I drank in the neon
signs and concrete boxes as though I was on a tour of Tuscany. All I’d seen for
the past four years was the inside of a prison, and I was starved for the
sights of the outside world. But unless I stopped Betty’s hell-drive to the cop
shop, I’d be seeing that prison again a lot sooner than I wanted.

Get your game
on, Maguire! Think.

“My dad is going
to go ballistic when he hears about this,” I ventured. “He’s really overprotective.”

“Well, of course.
What father wouldn’t be?”

Time for the
Maguire spin doctors to go into overdrive.

“My pa is, like,
ultra
protective,” I said, deciding that
Pa
sounded more NRA than
Dad.
“When
Pa hears about this, he’s going to break out his assault rifle, hunt down that
guy, and drill him full of holes.”

My pants should
have burst into flames over that whopper. I winged a silent apology to my real-life
dad, Michael Maguire, who hates guns and is so softhearted he won’t even swat
spiders.

“Oh, dear,” Betty
said.

I threw a little
vibrato into my voice. “Pa is going to kill that man and then Pa will get sent
to prison. And it’ll all be my fault.”

“Well . . .” The
confidence was leaking out of Betty’s voice. “Maybe . . . just keep it between
you and your mom for now.”

We were out of
the strip mall zone now, and I could see that Fond du Lac was a pretty little
city. Neat houses, wide lawns, tree-lined streets—although half the trees
now appeared to be
in
the streets.

Trees.
Tornado.

“Wow—look
at those trees,” I said. “The storm did a lot of damage.”

“Terrible.”

“Do you think the
storm hit your house?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t
think so. My husband would have called me.”

“Sure, probably.”

I let a couple of
beats pass. “Unless he couldn’t get to the phone for some reason.”

“Bert’s got a
pacemaker,” Betty said, her voice tightening. “Sometimes it goes wonky when
there’s lightning.”

“That must be
scary.”
  

“But I’m sure
he’s all right.” She didn’t sound very convinced. Betty was a lot like my mom.
Give her a tiny seed of worry and she could grow it into a towering beanstalk
of anxiety.

She stopped at an
intersection, and I edged toward the door, preparing to jump out. “Maybe I
will
drop you at your dorm after all, Dorothy,” Betty suddenly said. “If you’re
sure there’s someone there to help you—”

“My housemother.”
I took my sweaty hand off the handle and let out my breath, hoping Betty didn’t
realize that housemothers had disappeared around the same time as curfews,
panty raids, and bell-bottom jeans.

Betty zigged and
zagged around streets blocked by fallen trees, and at last we arrived in a
campus-looking area of sprawling brick buildings.

           
“Which
dorm is it?” Betty asked.

I randomly
pointed toward a four-story building up ahead. “That one.”

“Raymond Hall?
Isn’t that a boys’ dorm?”

           
“It’s
. . . coeducational.”

Betty pulled over
in front of the building. I opened the door and got out.

           
“I’ll
walk you there.” Betty turned off the ignition and started to open her door.

“No! I’m okay.
Really. You need to go check Bert and his pacemaker.”

“I feel so gosh
darn guilty, leaving you—oh for goodness’ sake! Look at you, Dorothy—you’re
bottomless!” Scrabbling through her purse, Betty came up with a cellphone and
thrust it at me. “Call your housemother right this instant and have her bring
you some jeans. You can’t go running around like that!”

“It’s not a big
deal,” I assured her. “It’s sorority pledge week. Last year the pledges had to
walk around in their bras. This year they have to go around pantless.”

Betty bit her
lips. “I just don’t know what higher education is coming to these days!”

I started walking
backward, thanking her about a million times, blowing her kisses, promising to
call the police, call my parents, get the sweatshirt back to her, to never
again talk to a guy I didn’t know, buy a chastity belt, and save myself for my
wedding night. Before Betty had another guilt attack and tried to drag me back
to her car, I whipped around and trotted toward the dorm entrance, hoping this
really was a dorm and not a science lab or a heating plant.

It was a dorm.
Its door was locked, but there were lights on inside. I pounded on the door.
Come
on, damn it!

Out in the car,
Betty was watching, making sure I got inside safely. What a sweet, kind,
trusting person! I, on the other hand, had Satan’s hoofprint emblazoned on my skull.
When Betty found out how she’d been hoodwinked, she was going to hate me.

Oh well, take a
number and get in line.

The door opened
and a sleepy-looking young guy with a scraggly beard, probably the Residence
Assistant, scowled at me. “It’s like, past visiting hours.”

I brushed past
him. Through the glass door I caught a glimpse of Betty, slowly driving away.
She’d probably call Bert. He’d tell her the news about the escaped convict. By
the time Betty was halfway home she’d start putting
A
and
B
together
and realize they spelled
bullshit.
In ten minutes, the Marian campus
would be swarming with cops.

Not a second to
lose. Acting as though I came here all the time, I chose a direction at random,
and headed down a hallway.

           
“Uhh,”
said Scraggle Beard, scratching his crotch. “That’s like off-limits?”

           
What
plausible reason did I have to be here? “Forgot my purse in my boyfriend’s
room,” I called back over my shoulder. My cheap, wet Taycheedah sneakers
squoodged as I walked, leaving wet footprints on the tile.
Squoodge,
squoodge, squoodge.
I could feel the guy watching me. Live in close
quarters with six hundred people long enough and you learn to recognize the
centipede crawl of eyes on your back—or in my case, on my naked legs. I
turned a corner and walked faster, beelining for the exit sign at the end of
the hall. A dorm room door was propped open. Inside, a college kid sat up in
bed, munching popcorn and watching a local news station.

           
My
own face appeared on the screen. It was one of our wedding photos, taken at the
club where we’d had our reception. Kip is in a tux, looking like Prince
Charming, and I’m in a long silk dress, veil blowing in the breeze, looking
like Princess Didn’t-Sleep-a-Wink-the-Night-Before. We’re holding hands, but
Kip is pulling in one direction and I’m pulling in the other, so we look as
though we’re trying to escape from each other. And there’s Kip’s mother in the
background, taking aim at my back with a twenty-gauge shotgun.

Just kidding.
Vanessa would never have shot me with all those witnesses around.

“
. . .
earlier
this evening,”
the reporter was saying.
“Maguire is believed to be
hiding in a wooded area south of the prison. Anyone having knowledge of her
whereabouts is asked to call the following number
. . .
”

           
I
didn’t wait to check out the number. I found the exit and fled into the rainy
night.

Escape tip #4:

Don’t stop to grab the octo-dog.

The snarl of
chain saws jolted me awake. A caterpillar was crawling on my neck, roots were
gouging into my back, and clots of dirt were sifting into my hair.

I was wearing a
skateboarder hoodie and men’s extra-large red plaid boxer shorts. It was like
that sophomore spring break in San Juan when I’d woken up on the beach with
cornrowed hair and a missing purse. But my current situation was worse. I was
penniless, starving, and so thirsty I was forced to lick raindrops off leaves.

Cellblock 23
is starting to look pretty good now, huh?
sneered the little voice in the
back of my head, the commonsense voice that always sounds a lot like Mrs. Borg,
my high-school Home Economics teacher.

           
Skulking
away from the campus last night, I’d walked for hours, keeping to side streets.
Ordinarily a female ambling around at two in the morning wearing only a
sweatshirt would have attracted attention, but everyone was too busy boarding
up their broken windows or calling their insurance agents to pay any attention
to me. I’d found the men’s boxers in a storm sewer grating, probably blown off
a clothesline. They were mud-streaked, clammy, and came down to my knees.
Pulling them on felt like stepping into a bucket of worms, but I forced myself
to do it, hoping they’d help camouflage my prison-pale legs.

           
Finally
I’d stumbled across this little playground park strewn with giant willow trees,
the earth heaved up where the tornado had ripped them out by the roots. I’d
burrowed into the shallow cave beneath one of the trees, feeling every inch the
hunted animal, knowing I was boxing myself into a trap, but too exhausted to go
on walking.

 
         
Back
when my life was still normal, there were nights when I couldn’t drop off to
sleep. My bed was comfortable, the sheets were cool, the room was quiet, but
Mr. Sandman refused to sprinkle his sands and I’d kick the covers all night.
Next day at the faculty meeting, sitting bolt upright in an uncomfortable chair
and surrounded by school administrators, I would fall into a sound slumber.
Last night, wet, cold, hunched against tree roots and pinching myself to stay
awake, I’d instantly dropped into a beatific sleep.

Now it was full
daylight and time to get moving. Peering out of my root cave, I saw guys in
hardhats swarming around the fallen trees, lopping off branches. A couple of
workmen were striding purposefully toward my tree, revving up their saws. I
scrabbled out of my cave, patting the tree in sympathy for its impending cruel
fate. Hidden from view by the massed branches, I scuttled out of the park,
emerging onto a street called Apple Blossom Lane.

           
 
Now what? What would Doctor Richard
Kimble do? Having survived the train-bus crash, he’d ditched his ankle
shackles, stolen a razor, and shaved off his beard. That’s what I needed to do,
I decided—change my appearance. The
Gravity Sucks
logo on my
sweatshirt stood out in neon green and the satin boxers shone with a fiery
glow. I might as well have sported a flashing sign on my rear:
Come and get
me, coppers!

           
I
stepped up my pace, hurrying past large suburban ranch houses with large decks.
Large yards with large dogs. Large SUVs and large motorboats parked in large
driveways. It was hard to believe that I’d once lived in a neighborhood like
this, back when I’d been married to Kip Vonnerjohn, the philandering prick.

           
A
bright orange sign in front of a colonial split-level stopped me in my tracks.

           
Garage
Sale 10–3 today

           
Come
hell, high water, or tornadoes, garage sales go on as scheduled in Wisconsin.
The split-level’s garage door was rolled up and the sale merchandise spilled
out onto the driveway. Toys, bikes, abandoned knitting projects, romance
novels, popcorn poppers, salad shooters, tater twisters, home woodworking
projects, and rack upon rack of clothes. Everything looked fabulous to my
fashion-starved eyes, even the polyester pants and the gypsy skirts that were
so hot for about a microsecond and now seemed as dated as disco suits.

           
It
wasn’t ten o’clock yet, but the buzzer-beaters were already scavenging for
bargains. The women running the sale sat on lawn chairs behind a card table,
drinking coffee and scarfing down blueberry muffins, still steamy warm from the
oven, slathered with butter.

           
My
stomach was making little oinking noises. The muffin fumes wrapped themselves
around me, sucking me into their gravitational field. I wanted to rip the
muffins out of the women’s butter-smeared hands and stuff them in my mouth, but
I figured that might possibly attract attention. Slinking to the rear of the
garage, I began pawing through the junk, hoping no one would notice my
mosquito-bitten legs, bramble-scratched arms, and hair that looked as though
it’d been styled with a wood chipper.

The garage sale
women were watching a portable TV tuned to the local news. A female reporter
wearing a fabulous low-cut top (I’d wear that) and too much makeup was doing a
standup report with the walls of the prison as a backdrop.

           
“
.
.
. believed to have escaped during the tornado that touched down in the
Taycheedah area last night,”
she gabbled.
“A passing motorist picked her
up and dropped her off at Marian College, but a search of the college grounds
revealed no trace of the fugitive. Maguire, who was convicted of murdering her
husband, is believed to be unarmed, but should be approached with caution. A
massive manhunt is under way. Anyone sighting the fugitive is asked to contact
law enforcement officials.”