by Lisa Wingate
My mind went off a cliff. DeRon saw us buying the computer? “He’s just a friend.” What would happen if DeRon told the counselor or the principal those things?
“That’s not what you said to me.” DeRon’s breath was hot against my skin. “You said that if you give him some, he gonna buy you anything you want up to the Wal-Mart. Guess you made him pay good.”
“That’s not true. I never said that.” I yanked the door again, and it bounced off DeRon’s toe.
“Sho’ it is.” He laughed. “And what you think that old redneck yo’ mama lives with gonna do when the school gives yo’ mama a call about it? And, man, then the police gonna have to investigate, and you know, anytime word get out about somethin’ like that, everybody believe it. They can’t wait to believe it. Why else some old man got some sweet young thang stayin’ at his house overnight?”
“He needs my help. I take care of him.” I yanked on the door, and DeRon moved his foot so quick the door came back and hit me in the forehead hard enough that I saw stars.
“I bet you do.” Shoving the door open wider, he pushed past me and headed down the hall, weaving through the crowd. Laughing, he chest-bumped with one of his friends, like he didn’t have a worry in the world. I stood there feeling dizzy for a minute, and then I staggered off to my locker. My hands were shaking as I pulled out books and crammed them into my backpack. Some girl passed by and shoved me from behind and laughed when I fell against my locker. I barely even noticed. I was thinking about DeRon. He wouldn’t actually do it—walk into the office and tell the principal I had something going on with J. Norm. Would he?
If he did, that’d sure make DeRon look good, like he was concerned about me or something. Just doing his civic duty.
A cold feeling went down my spine, an ice cube sliding along my skin, leaving chills behind. Someone called my name across the crush of people in the hall—a teacher, the counselor, someone—and I knew there was only one reason they’d be calling me like that. They wanted me in the office.
I wondered if I could make them see that J. Norm was . . . well, not a friend exactly, but kind of like a friend. More like a grandpa. I’d never had a grandpa before, but if I did, it seemed like he’d be like J. Norm—a little grouchy, a little bossy, too full of advice, but also somebody who had time to do things, like tell you stories about the old days, or put together rockets, or turn off the TV when you came in, like he’d been waiting for you all day. A grandpa would shake his stupid finger at you, and call you things like young lady, but also laugh when you popped off at him, and he’d tell you you’re a beautiful young woman, even though you’re not. I hadn’t ever really thought about it before, but a grandpa, if I had one, would be a whole lot like J. Norm.
But no matter what I said to the principal, it’d be my word against DeRon’s, and DeRon was on the basketball team, after all. He was gonna get a scholarship and make the school look good. I was just . . . well . . . some kid who moved in from out of town. Not white, not black. Not an athlete. Not anything special. Once they’d talked to both DeRon and me, then the next thing they’d do would be try to figure out if I really did spend the night at J. Norm’s house and if we really were at Wal-Mart buying expensive stuff together. The facts were on DeRon’s side. After that, trouble would break loose—wild, and crazy, and tearing through everything.
I pretended I didn’t hear the voice calling my name over the crowd. Grabbing my stuff, I started to take off down the hall the other way. The back doors were right around the corner. If I could just make it there . . .
A hand caught my arm, and I jerked back, sucking in a breath.
“Mrs. Lavon is calling you.” It was the science teacher who had me. I looked up, and he was pointing down the hall. Mrs. Lavon, the assistant principal, waved at me over the crowd, a concerned look on her face.
“Oh.” I felt myself sinking, everything spinning around me. “But I’ve got . . . to go to work.” If I could just get to the door, just get out . . .
The science teacher chuckled. “Better hold on a minute and see what she wants. I’m sure it won’t take long.”
The hall started clearing as he turned loose of me, and I headed toward the assistant principal, moving one step at a time, thoughts tumbling through my head. Mrs. Lavon slid an arm over my shoulders, and she turned me toward the office, and I could feel a freight train rushing toward me.
“I’ve got to head for work. I’ll be late,” I said, like that would get me out of anything.
“It’s all right.” Her fingers patted my shoulder the way you would if you were trying to comfort a baby, which was weird, considering that Mrs. Lavon and me had never said a word to each other the whole time I’d been at this school. “Let’s step into my office for a minute.” By then, we were already walking past the secretary’s desk, so there wasn’t much choice. I glanced over and saw DeRon sitting in the counselor’s office, his back turned toward me. Everything went in slow motion after that. Mrs. Lavon took me into her office, asked me if I wanted to sit down. I said I didn’t. I told her again that I needed to go. She put her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and I thought, Here it comes—something like, “Now, Epiphany, I don’t want you to be afraid. You’re not in trouble, but I want you to tell me the truth about this man Norman. . . .”
Instead, she said, “Epiphany, there’s been an accident.”
The first thing I thought about was J. Norm. He’d taken the car for a drive without me, and something terrible had happened, and it’d be my fault because I got him started by finding the stuff about his family and driving him to the nursing home yesterday. “A . . . a what?”
“An accident. Your . . .” It seemed like she was searching for a word, and then she finally settled for, “. . . stepfather’s truck.”
My . . . who? I thought, and then I realized she meant Russ. Russ had an accident? Mama and Russ were in Oklahoma together.
“Everyone’s going to be all right.” She answered my question before I could ask it. “But it was a rollover and the truck caught on fire, and both your mother and your stepfather are in an Oklahoma City hospital overnight for observation.” Leaning across her desk, she grabbed a sticky note and handed it to me. “They called here and asked that we let you know what had happened.”
“Oh . . .” I stammered, looking at the sticky note. My mother’s name, Russ’s, a hospital, and a phone number were all written in Mrs. Lavon’s careful, loopy handwriting. “Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was busy trying to figure out what this meant, or what I should do about it. Meantime, in the office next door, DeRon was probably blabbing his brains out. Any minute now, the counselor would come and haul me in there. “But they’re all right . . . Mama and Russ?”
“Yes. The injuries weren’t serious.”
“Well . . . when will they be back?” A plan was forming in my mind, taking shape the way clay sculptures do in art class, ideas pinching here and there like fingers.
“I’m not sure. It sounds like it might be early next week before they can get the insurance taken care of and arrange for transportation home.” Mrs. Lavon’s phone buzzed, and she looked sideways at it. “Your mother said you had relatives next door to your house who could look after you.”
Relatives. That was Mama code for, Don’t tell these people anything. Like I would be stupid enough to tell Mrs. Lavon that I was home by myself all the time, and a few more days wouldn’t make any difference. The truth was that Mama wouldn’t have been getting in touch with me at school if she’d had any other way to tell me what was going on. Guess she didn’t think to call J. Norm’s, or maybe she didn’t have the number with her. “Oh, sure. We’ve got all kinds of relatives. No problem. Can I go now, Mrs. Lavon?” The phone on her desk buzzed again, and I thought, What if that’s the counselor calling over here? Did she see me go by a minute ago? Does she know I’m in Mrs. Lavon’s office? I needed to get out now. Mrs. Lavon had her mind on the phone, so it wasn’t too hard. I told her good-bye,
stuck her note in my pocket, and walked out.
Through the glass, I saw DeRon, now in the principal’s office with the counselor. I passed on by in a hurry, and as far as I could tell, they didn’t see me. Three minutes later I was out the back door, heading across the parking lot as fast as I could. Slipping around behind the gym, I went through the alley where all the lunch trash stayed tangled in the fence. A man was out there cutting weeds, and farther down the fence, a homeless guy was checking out a Dumpster, but they hardly seemed to notice me. A siren sounded somewhere off in the distance, and I wanted to run, but I made myself walk. The police car wasn’t after me. Shoot, the school probably didn’t even know I took off so quick. If DeRon had them looking for me, they’d probably check around the campus first.
I ran the rest of the distance to J. Norm’s. The way I figured it, depending on what story DeRon was feeding the principal and the counselor, and whether they believed it, the police or somebody could show up at J. Norm’s house sooner or later. The plan in my mind was solid now, clear as if somebody’d written it on paper. All I had to do was convince J. Norm.
There wasn’t any time to waste.
I was panting on the doorstep, out of breath when he opened the door. For the first second, he looked at me like he didn’t know who in the world I was, and then he checked his watch. “You’re early today,” he said, like I couldn’t come in unless it was time. Then he stepped back so I could get into the house.
I heard the sirens off in the distance again as I slid past J. Norm. “Let me in, okay.” The words came out in a breath, and I dropped my backpack in the entryway, then leaned against the wall. For a sec, I just closed my eyes, the day running through my head like YouTube videos gone wild. The school bus, hiding in the bathroom at lunch, DeRon grabbing me, the counselor’s office, Mama’s accident, Mrs. Lavon giving me her concerned look. It was perfect, like she’d practiced it. She’d really be concerned once she heard DeRon’s story. I’d be lucky if I didn’t end up with social services on my doorstep before Mama even made it home, and when she did, I’d be in trouble for giving her grief. She and Russ might decide to go ahead and kick me out after all.
But if I wasn’t there when social services knocked on the door, they’d all just figure the relatives had taken me to Oklahoma to be with my mama in the hospital. By the time I got back, this whole thing about J. Norm would’ve died down, DeRon would be off suspension, and the people in the school office would be on to the next problem. Maybe I could even get Mama to help out and tell them J. Norm was as harmless as a growly old dog with no teeth.
If I came back at all. I was still working that part out in my mind. Maybe it was time for me to go ahead and leave for good, head for Florida and keep doing research about my daddy’s family on the way. Could be that’d be the best plan. I hadn’t ever seen the ocean, for one thing, and if there was somebody somewhere in Florida who’d cared enough to dress me up and take pictures once upon a time, I wanted to know it. While J. Norm and me were on our trip, I could do some more searching for names and addresses and stuff. Once I had that, all I needed was money. Like the nine hundred dollars J. Norm had plunked down for the computer. I could tell him I needed money to get up to Oklahoma to see Mama in the hospital. Maybe he’d give it to me. . . .
The idea was hard to picture, like the mystery packets Mrs. Lora used to put in my school lunches, the food wrapped in aluminum foil so that you could see the shape but only guess what was inside. What would it be like to lie to the only person who ever looked forward to seeing you? How would I feel if I took his money and then ran off?
I wasn’t sure I could lie to J. Norm that way. Right now I didn’t have to, though. “We’ve gotta go,” I said. “J. Norm, we’ve gotta go now.”
He frowned, his chin pulling back into his neck so that he looked like a bullfrog about to croak. “Go where?”
“To Groveland.”
Shaking his head, he hooked his thumbs in his belt and pulled his pants higher on his old-man belly. “This isn’t a good day for jokes, Epiphany. Deborah’s been after me with her lawyer again.”
A new worry tunneled under my skin, burrowing in like a tick. If J. Norm’s daughter heard about this stuff from the school, if she found out I’d stayed here overnight, and we’d been to Wal-Mart in the car, she’d use it against him. The trouble at school would seem like small potatoes then. “J. Norm,” I said, looking him flat in the eye, “I’m not joking. We have to go. Now.”
Chapter 17
J. Norman Alvord
Perhaps Deborah was correct, after all, in her assessment of my diminished mental capacity, or perhaps it was merely a momentary inability to resist Epiphany’s pleading, but in short order, we were hitting the open road. In the back, we had a bag of random snack food, the computer, and my hastily packed overnight bag, as well as Epiphany’s backpack and two grocery-store sacks bearing whatever belongings she’d gathered during a rushed stop at her mother’s house. While Epiphany had threaded her way through scattered motorcycle parts on the porch and disappeared into the run-down structure, I’d sat outside, keeping watch. A few moments later, she’d skidded out the door, turned the lock, rushed back to the driver’s seat, and we were off. No turning back now.
The mad scramble and our escape were exhilarating, like a somewhat silly dream from which I was bound to awaken any moment. A man my age didn’t do things like this in real life, surely. But as we left Blue Sky Hill behind and accelerated onto the highway ramp, I felt a burst of freedom, a rush of adrenaline like nothing I’d experienced since Surveyor rocketed into the stratosphere on Memorial Day 1966, headed for the moon.
Whether it was the compulsion to discover the secrets of my past, or the misbegotten sense of finally taking back control of my own life, I felt at first like rolling down the windows and bursting into song. “My Way,” or something of the like, seemed appropriate.
Oddly enough, it was the closing in of rush-hour traffic that derailed my euphoria, scrambling the impulses in my mind like one of the Russian trawlers hacking our radio signals, attempting to send a perfectly good launch and all the hopes attached to it plunging into the sea. I felt the chill of the water, cold, unavoidable, abrupt. I couldn’t abscond with someone’s child, a minor, without permission. A teenage girl, no less. If this boy, this DeRon, were to continue with these ridiculous accusations of his, this trip would only add fuel to the fire, proof that I was up to something inappropriate with a young girl. Leaving at this time of day, we’d have no choice but to stay overnight. Overnight in a strange town, the two of us.
The idea was appalling. Appallingly improper.
“It’s time to go back,” I said, after considering the words for a moment. Even so, they tasted bitter, a disappointment. “We cannot just leave on a trip without permission, especially with your mother and . . . what’s-his-name in the hospital.” While I’d packed my bag, Epiphany had called the hospital and spoken with her mother’s boyfriend or husband, Ross or Russ, something like that. Epiphany’s mother was sleeping off a dose of pain medication, her companion being in somewhat better shape. Epiphany had told him nothing of our trip, of course, but she had managed to ascertain that it would be early next week before arrangements could be made for the wrecked vehicle and trailer. They hoped to return home on Tuesday. Nonetheless, this trip was a foolish idea, and the only responsible thing would be to end it before it went any further.
“I knew you’d say that.” Epiphany’s voice was infused with frustration and disappointment. “I knew you’d try to chicken out.”
I was insulted at first, but then I pointed out to myself that she was only a child. It was easy to forget that fact, as she was intelligent and resourceful. She was, however, a sixteen-year-old girl. I should have reminded myself of that fact at the outset. To her, this was a grand adventure. She could not possibly anticipate all the potential repercussions. “I am not chickening out. I’m being practical.” Practicality was my strong suit, after all. Had I not spent my l
ife considering projects analytically, developing contingency plans, calculating everything that could go wrong? Careful forethought was the difference between success and failure, in terms of engineering. A lack of forethought could produce disaster.
“Turn the car around.” I scouted for an off-ramp as we limped along in traffic. “Take this next exit and make a U-turn under the highway.”
Epiphany’s neck stiffened, her head angling away from me. That posture I knew well by now. The next words from her mouth would not be, Yes, sir. “Huh-uh.”
“Epiphany, now, you listen here.” This would be war, of course. The girl was nothing if not stubborn.
“No. We’re going. We’re already gone.” In truth, we weren’t. We were stuck in traffic less than twenty miles from home. The highway was moving well in the opposite direction. We could be back at my house in less than half an hour.
The thought was heavy, confining, a rubber raincoat on a sunny day. “Turn around, I said.”
“No.”
“This is my car.” I smacked a palm against the dash, but she only gripped the steering wheel more tightly, her reaction minimal.
“Well, then, you’re getting kidnapped.” Her chin bobbed back and forth, lending punctuation to the words, defying my challenge. “If we get caught later, that’s what I’ll tell everybody. It was my idea. I made you do it.”
“Nobody would believe it.” I considered reaching for the steering wheel, but in the middle of rush-hour traffic, with an inexperienced driver, it seemed a bad idea. A fine sheen of sweat had broken over her skin as semitrucks squeezed close on either side of us, walling us in. Her gaze held fast to the window, her eyes twitching from one lane to another, as if at any moment she expected us to be obliterated. She was frightened half out of her mind, yet she wouldn’t give in.
In truth, I shouldn’t have been stirring her up. I might stir the two of us right into an accident, and then our problems would go from bad to worse. I imagined the police coming to the scene, discovering me with a young girl to whom I was not related, with computer equipment and suitcases in the back. They’d think I was some sort of deviant, a child pornographer like the ones reported about on television. “Epiphany,” I said more gently, “this is madness. It’s insanity.”
