Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  I hit “delete,” feeling like the rottenest daughter on earth. It never occurred to me that lying to Mom about where I was would make her think something had happened to me. It never occurred to me that she would trust me so implicitly.

  Who was I kidding? Changing a tire didn’t make me smart. How could someone supposedly so smart be so stupid? I hadn’t thought about Grayson’s meds, hadn’t thought that Mom and Dad would think I was lying dead in a ditch somewhere, hadn’t thought what the calc final could do to my life. I kicked at a rock with the toe of my shoe. Idiot.

  In the next message, her nose sounded plugged up, and worry seemed to be laced with panic in her voice. “Kendra? It’s Mom. Where are you, honey? I called Shani’s house, and her mom said you were never there last night. And I called Brock’s house to see if Grayson knew where you were, and Brock’s mom said she hasn’t seen Grayson since before he went to Oak Meadows. I’m worried sick. I’m about to call the police. Call me back immediately.”

  My hands were shaking when I hit “delete” on that one, but I never got to listen to the third one because the blonde was back.

  “Okay,” she said brightly. She’d changed into a baby-blue sweater, which made her eyes look amazing. I wrapped my arms around myself. The sun was warm, but there was still a chill in the air, and I was cold. “Bo should be good for a couple hours. Let’s go.”

  I stuffed my phone back into my purse, grabbed Mom’s credit card, wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, and opened the passenger door. I tossed my purse into the backseat and locked it in there. I missed Dad. And I felt bad for Mom. But right now I had more pressing business to take care of.

  I had to get Hunka fixed and back on the road.

  “Yes, let’s,” I said, more brightly and confidently than I felt. If faking confidence was what would get me to California, so be it.

  Besides, in a way I’d been faking a lot of things for a lot of months now. It was old hat for me.

  What would faking one more thing hurt?

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  About fifteen minutes into our journey, I decided that the country definition of “not far” and my definition of “not far” were two different things. We started walking down the shoulder of a barely-more-than-dirt road toward a yellow-and-orange road sign: A SLOW DRIVE GETS YOU HOME ALIVE! There was nothing ahead of us but more road and some hills. Definitely not “not far.”

  I still hadn’t shaken off Mom’s phone calls, so I was silent, walking along, bent over to roll the flattened tire with my hands, which wasn’t easy. Just like they did in the old days, I thought. Except in the old days it was all for fun, not to get the runaways back on the road to California.

  “What was your name again?” the blonde finally asked. “Kenzie?”

  “Kendra,” I mumbled. “It’s kind of an old-fashioned name.”

  She scrunched up her forehead. “I think it’s pretty,” she said. “I’m Rena, by the way.”

  I nodded. At least I wasn’t cold anymore. Moving that tire had me sweating. I was already breathing hard, too.

  “I hope you weren’t planning on getting married this morning, what with the flat tire and all,” she said.

  I glanced at her. “Married?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Aren’t you on your way to Vegas? That’s pretty much where everyone who stops here is headed. Everyone like you guys, anyway. We get a lot of young couples. Eloping is pretty popular. Makes cleaning the rooms kind of disgusting sometimes, though.”

  I let out a bark of laughter. “We’re not going to Vegas,” I said. “That’s my brother. He didn’t even sleep in the bed.” I laughed again, imagining anyone having to clean up after Grayson, ever. “We’re going to California. To visit an old friend.”

  Rena’s face clouded a little. “Wow,” she said. “California’s a long way. Must be a good friend.”

  “My best friend,” I said softly, then realized I’d stopped walking and, with a start, set the tire in motion again. “We haven’t seen each other in a while. I miss her.”

  It was an awkward thing to say to someone I’d just met, and Rena seemed not to know how to respond. We walked along in silence for a long time. I felt sweat trickle down my back, and then when the breeze ruffled my shirt, I shivered. Cars and trucks occasionally blasted past us, breaking the middle-of-nowhere silence. I winced and squinted against the kicked-up gravel every time one passed, but Rena didn’t seem to even notice. After a while she took over rolling the tire, and I was shocked at how much faster we walked. She didn’t struggle at all.

  Finally, at the top of a hill, she stopped abruptly. The wind had picked up, and our hair whipped around our heads. I could see the “town” splayed out below us—a few houses, a couple lots full of farm equipment, a restaurant, or maybe two.

  “Are you a runaway?” she asked, so point-blank that my mouth dropped open, but nothing came out. She looked deep into my eyes for a long time, ignoring the strands of hair that were sticking to her eyelashes and lips. I didn’t answer. Just stood there, shivering, my blood feeling as if it’d been replaced by icicles. After a while, she looked out over the town and then back to me. Her face was grim. “I’m not gonna bust you,” she said quietly. “Just… you act like one.” My mind was reeling with all the possibilities of what could happen if I admitted to being a runaway on my first day out. She must have taken my silence as an answer because she eventually started walking again.

  The sun ducked behind the clouds, and that, combined with our brisk pace and Rena’s question, made the whole world feel cold and gray. It was one of the things I hated about spring—it could never decide if it wanted to be warm or cold. I reached over and started rolling the tire again, if for no other reason than to see if the work would rid me of my goose bumps.

  “It’s down there,” she said at last, pointing at a falling-down garage about fifty yards away. The lightness had sneaked back into her voice again. “Mechanic’s name is Buddy. I used to be down here all the time, back when me and Archie had a car. It was a real piece of crap. But I kinda liked coming down here. Buddy’s a hick, but he’s cute. Got a dimple right here.” She touched her chin with her finger, leaving a black smudge there. On me, it would have looked like I needed a bath. On Rena, it looked cute. “Buddy tried to kiss me once,” she said. “If Archie found out, he’d kill him.” She giggled. “But I didn’t mind so much.” She sighed heavily. “Ahhh, I’m just a married old hag now, I guess.”

  I was stunned. “I thought Archie was your dad,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Old enough to be. We got married last June. Two months after I turned seventeen, and three months after I got pregnant with Bo.”

  “Your parents let you get married when you were seventeen?”

  She shook her head. “I left home when I was fifteen. They don’t even know about Archie. Or Bo.”

  The tire slipped out of my hand and rolled a few feet away, then toppled into the grass beside the road. Pushing the new tire up this hill was going to suck. I jogged for it.

  “That’s kind of sad,” I said, bending over to pick it up. “Don’t you miss them?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes I miss my mom, but Archie takes good care of me and Bo. He can be kind of mean sometimes. And he wasn’t too happy about Bo in the beginning, but as long as I stay out of his hair, he doesn’t give us too much trouble.”

  “Wow,” I said, because that’s the only thing I could think of to say. Had I known Rena a little better, I may have told her how wrong that was. That a man his age getting a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant was disgusting and a crime. That a good marriage isn’t one where you have to stay out of your husband’s hair in order to stay out of trouble. Had it been Shani, I would have said all of those things. Had it been Zoe, I would have packed her things for her and dragged her out of there. I’d have tied her in the backseat and stolen her if I had to. But I didn’t know Rena. It was none of my business. So we just kept walking.

  “Is t
hat my girl out there?” a voice called, and Rena laughed. A guy in gray coveralls was standing out in the gravel lot in front of the open bay door, twisting a blue rag in his hands. He wore a greasy baseball cap, little brown curls snaking out from under it. From where we stood, his smile was very wide, and very bright.

  “That’s him,” she said, then called out, “The one and only!” She took off running down the hill. When she reached him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He kept his hands at his sides, looking like a stunned little boy receiving his first hug from a girl. When she unwrapped herself, I could see, even from a distance, pink on her face. Not like she was embarrassed; more like she was finally alive.

  Slowly, I made my way down the hill and across the parking lot, shoving the tire along in little bursts, every so often losing my grip on it and having to step off the road and retrieve it from the grass and gravel on the side.

  When I finally caught up with them, Rena and Buddy were giggling and slapping at each other. Rena looked even younger than she had before. And she was right—Buddy was hot.

  “Hey,” he said when I hit the lot. He jogged over to me and took the tire, picking it up against his chest as if it were no heavier than an envelope. “Need a fix, huh?”

  I nodded, out of breath.

  “Well, come on inside and get a Coke. I got an oil change ahead of you, and then we’ll get this squared away.”

  “C’mon,” Rena said, joining us. “I know where he keeps the keys to the Coke machine.” She gave him a wicked grin.

  “Aw, c’mon now, Rena,” Buddy said, his tone exasperated, but the dimples blooming on the corners of his mouth giving him away. “You’re not s’posed to tell anyone ’bout that.”

  She giggled. “You shouldn’ta told me, then,” she said, and stuck out her tongue. Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the grimy little shack off the garage.

  I couldn’t help liking Rena. I knew I didn’t know her at all, and she could’ve been a terrible person, but at the moment, her hand was warm and felt like friendship, and I really, really needed that.

  “I have to tell you about this one time that Archie came down here with me,” she whispered, “and Buddy locked him in the bathroom. It was so funny.”

  I smiled at her.

  “I’m dying for a Coke,” I answered, and let her pull me into the building.

  For the next hour, we drank sodas and chatted, giggling whenever Buddy came into the room, all shy and flirty, and for that one hour everything was relaxed and happy. Rena didn’t know me. And she didn’t know Grayson, either, which meant I could be whoever I wanted to be. Not perfect. Not the girl who goes down into the quarry to fetch her brother. Not the girl who can’t have fun, or the girl running away from her problems. In some ways, it felt like no matter how long our time at Buddy’s lasted, it would end too soon. Like I’d never get enough of just being me.

  And, as awful as it sounds… for that one hour, I didn’t even think about Grayson. I didn’t worry about what he was doing back at Rena’s motel.

  I didn’t even stop to think that he might wake up alone and start worrying about me.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Something told me that Buddy wasn’t exactly hurrying on that oil change. He kept coming in and out, every time wiping something off on that blue towel, a distant, happy look in his eyes. He had it bad for Rena, even if she was “a married old hag.”

  It seemed that the two of them had a thousand stories to tell. Funny ones, sad ones, ones that seemed kind of private to me, and I found myself sort of missing Shani and Lia. It occurred to me that I never gave them enough credit. They were good friends, even if they weren’t Zoe. They cared about me.

  After Zoe had left and my brother began the great downward spiral that landed him in hospital after hospital and treatment program after treatment program, I really felt as though I had nobody. Zoe gone to California; Grayson just gone. I latched on to Shani and Lia a few months later, and it all felt so easy. We didn’t talk about anything depressing or serious. There was no fighting or crying or counting going on. We hung out at the mall and ate a lot of French fries together and did normal, non-dramatic things.

  And when I got sick of spending my weekends visiting my brother in the hospital, I could go to Shani’s house, no questions asked. And I’d vent about my brother for a few minutes, and then we’d do something stupid to take my mind off it, and eventually it was almost like he didn’t even exist.

  I felt a twinge of guilt over having ignored their text messages, and resolved that I would call as soon as we got on the road. Try to catch Shani in between school and dance practice. Tell her I was okay and that, yeah, it was true. I did what they’re all saying I did. I’m a horrible person. But you don’t hate me, right? Somehow I knew Shani would forgive me anyway, which made me miss her all the more. And made me feel all the more guilty for holding out on her just because she wasn’t Zoe. I’d never given her the chance to be.

  I was so lost in my memories, I barely even noticed that Buddy and Rena had stood up and were standing outside the garage, talking, my tire reinflated and propped up against Rena’s leg. I hurried out to join them, my stomach growling.

  Buddy wouldn’t let me pay for the tire. Said he was doing it as a favor for “his girl.” She kissed him on the cheek and we were walking again, heading back to the motel.

  “You and Buddy are really cute together,” I told her.

  She blushed. “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “I think so.” We walked a few paces. “So how’d you end up with Archie, anyway?” I asked, as we worked together to push the fixed tire up a hill.

  “Just happened, I guess,” she said. Our feet scuffed against the pebbles on the road, and the sounds of rocks clicking against one another made me think of Grayson. I wondered if he was awake yet. “I was sort of homeless when I came through here. My boyfriend Sal took off one day. Gone. And his roommate Jonah kicked me out. Real easy, you know? Like I never existed. He was all, ‘Rena, you’re hot and all, but I ain’t gonna pay for your ass,’ which didn’t surprise me because Jonah spent most of his paychecks on meth, anyway.” She stopped, stood up straight, placed her hands on the small of her back, and stretched backward, looking off into space, like she was seeing Jonah’s face out there somewhere. Or maybe Sal’s. After a while she shrugged and bent forward, and we started rolling again.

  “What a jerk.”

  “I know. I really loved Sal, you know? So I was, like, crushed. And I didn’t have anywhere to go. I wasn’t going back to my mom and stepdad’s. No way. So one night I ended up at the motel and… I don’t know… Archie let me stay there for free. It was really nice of him. He was a lot nicer then. Or at least I thought he was. He talked to me a lot back then.”

  “So it was like love at first sight?”

  Rena laughed. “Uh, no. Archie isn’t much to look at. It was more like love at first missed period.” She giggled again, but I kept my head down and kept pushing the tire. “So what about you?” she asked, and I nearly tripped.

  Of course this would come up. Of course she would ask me why I was running away. And since she’d shared her story with me, of course she’d expect me to share mine with her. I was so stupid for asking.

  “What about me, what?” I asked, practically choking from trying to keep my voice light.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  My legs actually tingled with relief. “No,” I said. “I did. Tommy. He was great for a while, but he turned out to be a real jerk. One of those football hero kinds of guys that like to pick on pretty much everyone else. Total stereotype.” Also, I didn’t add, the kind of guy who blackmails his girlfriend. “I dumped him a few months ago and kind of swore off guys for a while.”

  “Smart girl,” she said.

  Smart. I thought about the mess I’d left behind at school. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’ve done some pretty dumb things.”

  “Haven’t we all?” she
answered. She hesitated, then continued. “So, your brother. Is he, like, messed up or something?”

  How many times in my life had I been asked that? What’s wrong with your brother? What’s the deal with your brother? What happened to your brother? And every time I was asked, I always thought of my mom holding down the dampened sides of my hair, looking at me earnestly in the mirror.

  “He’s got some difficulties,” I answered. “He’s a good guy. This trip is really going to help him. But don’t say anything to him about us going to see our friend in California. That part’s a surprise.” Then, desperate to change the subject, I said, “You know, you and Buddy would make a cute couple.”

  She smiled wide and glanced at me. “You think?”

  “Definitely. He’s adorable. And he likes you a lot. You should go for it.”

  Her face clouded up. “Nah. Not here. Archie would never give us any peace. You have no idea what Archie… It doesn’t matter. It’s nice to daydream about it, though.”

  We crested the hill and stopped, both of us panting. Our hair lay limp with sweat and we had road dust on our backs, so only wisps of it took flight when the wind gusted. I sat on the tire. Rena crouched, pulling her finger in circles in the dust.

  “I’ll bet California will be amazing,” she said.

  I looked out toward the horizon, as though I could see California from there if I just looked hard enough.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I would love to go to California,” she said. “Maybe Archie’ll take me and Bo someday.” She traced a heart shape with her finger, then scooched her foot forward and obliterated it. “Hey, maybe I’ll look you up when we get there, huh?”

  “Yeah. Okay,” I said, pushing away the obvious thought, which was that I had no earthly idea where we’d be by the time she got to California. That was the part I still had to figure out. That was the part I needed Zoe for.

  She drew a sun, childlike, with rays poking out of it at all angles, then stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans again. Somehow the jeans managed to still look clean, despite all the grime she’d wiped on them throughout the day. It was as if Rena couldn’t not look shiny.