Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  Mom’s voice mails were harder to listen to. She was yelling in some of them, crying in others. Some of them were both Mom and Dad together. They’d called the police. They’d been staying up all night. They’d been watching the news. They had talked to the school. They knew about the cheating issue. They had a feeling we were holed up with a friend somewhere and they would find us. They needed to know if Grayson was okay. He needed his medicine. They were worried sick and were so mad at us, but they loved us and wanted us to come home.

  I deleted them all and pulled up my text inbox again and opened a new text.

  mom we r ok.

  I hit “send” and started to press the button to power down my phone, but stopped. There was one more text I wanted to send. I scrolled through my address book, all the way to the bottom.

  Zo, u there?

  I waited for a few minutes for a response. One came from Mom:

  Where are you? Please, honey, call us! You won’t be in trouble!

  But none from Zoe.

  Seriously, who still has the same cell phone for three years? She probably just got a new number and hadn’t had a chance to give it to me yet.

  I turned off the phone and shoved it into my front pocket, then hopped back into Hunka and buckled up. Tension was radiating off my brother. The air felt thick in the car.

  “I sent Mom a text,” I mumbled. “Told her we’re okay.”

  “So we’re not going home,” he said, staring straight ahead. Not a question. A declaration, as if he expected this information and was reluctantly reconciling it.

  I turned toward the highway. “No,” I said. “We’re going to California as planned. Go ahead and freak out as many times as you want.”

  “I’m not going to freak out,” he said. “Because there’s no way you’re going to get us all the way to California. You may not want to admit it yet, but this idea of yours is never going to work. There are too many things you haven’t thought about.”

  “Whatever. Just watch.”

  I punched the gas pedal and steered us down the exit ramp onto the highway. We were both silent, both spent and worried, the only sound the air rustling the bags of food on the front seat and the scritch of rocks moving against one another under Grayson’s feet. I was going to prove him wrong. My idea was going to work. I may not have been a genius, and I may not have thought it all through, but I’d thought enough through to pull this off. And we’d already made it this far.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  We hadn’t talked since I pulled onto the highway. Grayson appeared to be pouting over my refusal to take us home, and I was still thinking about Zoe’s unanswered text. What if it wasn’t just her cell phone number that had changed? What if she’d moved? What if we drove all the way to California and she wasn’t even there anymore?

  The thought made me feel panicky, so I tried to bat it away by opening a bottle of apple juice and taking a sip. This was going to be a longer ride than I’d originally anticipated. Maybe it already had been.

  “Isn’t that the girl from the motel?” Grayson asked, pointing out the windshield.

  Walking down the side of the highway was a blonde girl, an overstuffed diaper bag slung sideways across her body, carrying an infant seat in one hand. The muscles of her carrying arm bulged out above her elbow.

  I leaned forward and squinted. The straight blonde hair, the baby-blue sweater, the infant seat.

  “Rena,” I said. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “How would I know?” I took a quick look around. Nothing on either side of us. Fields as far forward as we could see. We were probably five miles away from the motel. She couldn’t have been just taking a quick walk to somewhere—not if she was walking this way.

  I eased Hunka onto the side of the road behind her and put it into park. She didn’t look back at us but must have known we were there, because she started walking faster, her arm going even tauter as her fingers clutched the infant seat handle.

  I rolled down the window. “Hey!” I yelled, but she kept going as if she didn’t hear me. “Hey, Rena!” At the sound of her name, she finally chanced a glance over her shoulder. “It’s Kendra!” I said, fumbling my door open.

  Her whole body relaxed with relief as she realized who was yelling at her, and she stopped, turning halfway toward me and setting Bo’s seat gingerly in the grass on the side of the road.

  “Stay here,” I told Grayson, and got out of the car. A passing RV swerved into the left lane, the driver glaring at me as if I were walking down the center of the highway. “What’re you doing?” I called, jogging toward Rena.

  The wind was whisking her hair across her face. She looked beautiful standing there with the green of the newly budding field behind her, the spring sun glossing the top of her hair. Like she belonged in a soap commercial rather than on the side of a Kansas highway. She stuck her foot under one end of Bo’s seat and used it to rock the carrier on the gravel.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, slowing as I reached her.

  She turned her face to the wind, letting her hair blow back over her shoulder. Her foot moved up and down, but she just stared off across the plains.

  I touched her elbow. “Hey. You okay?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said, or at least it looked like her lips formed the word “no,” but a semi whined past us and I couldn’t hear her.

  “C’mon,” I said, tugging on her elbow. “I’ll give you a ride.” I bent and picked up Bo’s carrier. She grabbed for the handle and pulled it out of my grasp, hooking both arms through the handles and pulling his carrier close to her chest. “Whoa, I wasn’t going to do anything,” I said, holding my arms up. This Rena was like a totally different girl from the one who’d rolled my tire down the hill to Buddy’s a few hours ago. What had happened?

  The wind whipped Bo’s blanket away and Rena scrambled for it, catching it with one hand, then wadding it up and pushing it back over him. Underneath, he was wearing only a diaper, and his skin looked cold and mottled. He began to fuss, his eyes squinched shut.

  “It’s too cold out here for him,” I said. “You should get in the car.”

  She looked back over the fields a moment longer, then nodded and walked with me, our shoes crunching against the gravel.

  Grayson had pulled my backpack to the front seat to make room in the back. He looked worried as Rena climbed in and I passed Bo to her. His fingers were rubbing the stones, double-time, while he watched Rena strap Bo in. I shook my head tersely at him as if to tell him this was not a good time for that.

  I climbed in and turned the heat on full blast, aiming the vents straight back. Bo’s fussing was already starting to die down.

  We were on the road for several minutes before I said anything.

  “Where are you going?” I glanced in the rearview mirror. Rena shrugged.

  “I couldn’t take it anymore, I guess. Archie.”

  “What happened?” I realized that Rena was still basically a stranger to me, and I felt kind of like an intruder asking her, but she was in my car, and… well, listening to her talk about Archie took my mind off my own troubles a little bit. Plus, we’d heard the fight. There was basically no way not to.

  She shook her head. “I worry that he’s gonna hurt Bo someday.” She made a soft snorting noise. “The whole reason I married the fat old thing was because he went and got me pregnant, and he’s always saying how he doesn’t believe the baby is his.”

  We drove a little farther. I could see Grayson slipping me quick glances every now and then, and I knew exactly what was on his mind: We had picked up a hitchhiker. Really, a total stranger. This went against everything Grayson could possibly believe in. Hell, it went against everything I was ever taught. Yet he wasn’t saying anything. Wasn’t freaking out. Wasn’t even making that throat noise, though I could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to. Mom and Dad would be horrified to know we’d picked up a stranger, but in
a way, I was sort of proud of my brother for going along with it.

  “So where are you going?” I asked again.

  “I don’t know,” she said, rattling a toy over Bo’s carrier. “Away.”

  “Want me to take you to Buddy’s?”

  Rena smiled, faintly, and looked out the back window, as if she expected to still see Buddy’s shop behind us. We were far enough away now to see nothing but fields, though. “It’s best if I just go,” she said. “Just me and Bo.” Again, she rattled the toy. “Don’t really care where. Anywhere that’s not here.”

  We all sat there in silence, the familiar creaks and pops that Hunka always made on the highway the only sound, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  Grayson stared out his window, his lips moving as we passed a long field filled with cows.

  Rena had pulled her legs up onto the seat beside her and curled up into a ball, laying her head across Bo and stroking the top of his head with her fingers. She stared at him as if he held all the answers in the world. And she cried, softly, the only real sound her sniffles.

  I sat stiff behind the wheel, paying close attention to the RV that had passed us earlier, which I’d caught up with, making sure it didn’t make any more sudden swerves. But in my mind I was thinking about what it must be like to be really running away, like Rena.

  At least I had somewhere to go. At least I had Zoe out there somewhere. At least I had a home to go back to when I’d gotten everything all sorted out.

  Rena had nothing. Just away. What did you do when all you had was away?

  Suddenly I was taken back to that last summer, when Zoe and Grayson ran away together.

  I remembered sitting on the stairs, watching as Mr. Monett stood shaking in our entryway, Mom and Dad trying to talk him down.

  “Rob, you know they couldn’t have gotten far. Not with no money and with Grayson’s…” Everyone knew what Dad was going to say, but Dad trailed off because he knew that Grayson’s difficulties was a very sore subject between the Monetts and Mom.

  “I think you and Rachel are overreacting,” Mom added icily, standing in the dining room doorway with her arms across her chest. But I could see, even from my vantage point on the stairs, that Mom was worried, too. If things hadn’t been so changed between them, Mom would’ve been over at the Monetts’ house with Mrs. Monett, making phone calls and wondering aloud if it was time yet to call the police.

  “My daughter is fourteen years old, Jonathan, and if that nutcase gets her preg—”

  I knew this wasn’t going to be good, Mr. Monett calling Grayson a nutcase. I held my hand over my mouth, watching bug-eyed as Dad took two steps closer to Mr. Monett. “I think you’d better go home and help your wife,” Dad said. And then when Mr. Monett hesitated, Dad took another step closer. “Now!” he boomed, and Mom and I both jumped. “Before you have to crawl home,” he added.

  It was an endless cycle, and I never could understand why they couldn’t see that. The more they pushed Grayson away, the more Zoe clung to him. The more she clung to him, the more Mr. Monett treated my brother like garbage. The more he treated Grayson that way, the worse Grayson’s anxieties got. The worse Grayson’s anxieties got, the more my parents jumped to his defense. And around and around it went. It would hardly take a rocket scientist to see how to end the cycle. Just leave Grayson and Zoe alone. But nobody got it.

  Mr. Monett inched around Dad and left the house. Half an hour later, a police officer came to our door. The Monetts had decided that nightfall meant it was a good time to get the police involved, apparently. I hoped Zoe and Grayson knew what they were doing.

  When Mom started crying and telling the officer that Grayson needed his medication, I slunk upstairs and shut my bedroom door. Brock and I knew exactly where they were. They were in Brock’s dad’s brand-new shed—a giant outbuilding with electricity and one end empty and swept clean, perfect for two sleeping bags and the backpack filled with groceries that I’d given them on their way out. A real lovers’ nest.

  It made me feel weird inside, hiding their secret, but I’d promised Zoe I would tell no one. Even though I knew that their plan to hide out until our parents accepted their relationship was totally unrealistic. Even though I knew our parents wouldn’t just “eventually give up.” Even though I knew that there was no way a fourteen-year-old virgin and a seventeen-year-old germaphobe were going to have the wherewithal to forage for food and pee in the woods for longer than a day. Even though I knew that by the weekend, probably, Brock’s dad would open the shed and find them there, doing God knew what, and would totally turn them in. None of those things mattered. A promise to your best friend was a promise you couldn’t break, no matter how ridiculous it was.

  Problem was, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep lying to Mom if she was crying. I hated when Mom cried. I felt sorry for her, even though I knew Grayson was fine as long as he had Zoe with him, and that his OCD was never worse than it was when he was with Mom.

  They lasted three nights. By the third night, Mom was inconsolable. I couldn’t leave my room, the guilt was eating me up so bad. And I knew that by then, after all that time, if I told Mom and Dad that I’d known all along, they’d be livid. Not at Grayson; they’d be mad at me. Story of my life. Grayson making it difficult. Grayson making everyone miserable. Grayson putting me in the position of either pretending to be Miss Perfect and Innocent while holding on to a huge lie, or having to rat out my two best friends and prove myself to have been a liar for the past three days. There was never any gray area for me. All black or all white. Nothing in between.

  It happened exactly like I thought it would. Brock’s dad went out to mow the lawn and found his son’s friend and a girl sleeping in the corner of his shed, curled up together in one sleeping bag.

  Both were fully clothed, and both swore that nothing had happened between them. Both were totally shocked to be found. Zoe swore to me, on the bond of our friendship, that she was still a virgin. That Grayson had never even asked her to have sex. I believed her, but her parents didn’t.

  “I swear to God if my daughter is pregnant, I will tear him to shreds with my bare hands,” Mr. Monett bellowed at Dad from across the driveway when everyone got home from the police station. I watched from the front porch—as always, there but not really there. All the attention on my brother. I may as well have not even existed.

  “If you’d left them alone, maybe they wouldn’t be so desperate,” Mom had bellowed back. “You’re a goddamned fool! Both of you are!”

  They continued screaming insults at one another, Mrs. Mooney from across the street kneeling in her flower bed, watching the scene with curiosity. I watched Zoe and Grayson, who clambered out of the cars, both of them looking sheepish and sad. Zoe’s hair hung down in her face. Grayson’s fingers were crooked into the counting pose. Their shoulders were hunched, as if to ward off their parents’ insults.

  I caught Zoe’s eye and tried to smile, tried to convey everything I was thinking through that smile. It would be okay. We would get through this. I hadn’t told her secret. We were still best friends. She simply wiped her sleeve across her eyes and disappeared into her house.

  The next day there was a FOR SALE sign in their front yard.

  Zoe had wanted to go away with Grayson. Instead, she was just going… away.

  Sort of like Rena.

  Would Rena disappear off the face of the earth for someone, too?

  Would we?

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  By the time we pulled into Denver, Bo was getting pretty restless. Grayson still hadn’t said a word, but he kept glancing over the back of the seat every time Bo cried. Once, when Rena lifted Bo out of his seat, shushing him and bouncing him up and down, Grayson peered at her nervously, but he still said nothing.

  “I think he needs to eat,” she said, finally. I looked in the rearview mirror. She had Bo propped up on her knee, facing forward. Her finger was tucked into his mouth and he sucked at it angr
ily, every so often pausing to let out a little cry of frustration. “I can’t let him face me or he goes crazy,” she said with an embarrassed shrug.

  “Oh,” Grayson said, turning around to face front, his ears turning bright red.

  “I need to pee anyway,” I said, pulling into a Walmart parking lot.

  I parked Hunka just as Bo’s cries started to crescendo. Rena was turning him to her while lifting up one half of her shirt at the same time. I tried not to look, and then felt stupid for being embarrassed. It was a boob, for goodness’ sake. Not like I didn’t see two of them every day when I looked in the mirror. Still. What Rena did felt private and made her seem so much older, even though I knew she really wasn’t.

  “You need anything?” I asked as I leaned over and unzipped my backpack. I pulled out the entire roll of bills and stuffed it into my front pocket. Grayson, who had been watching me, got a shocked expression on his face.

  “I don’t have any money,” Rena said.

  “It’s okay, what do you need?”

  “Well, for some reason, I always crave milk when I’m nursing. If they have any chocolate milk…? You know, like a small bottle.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, holding myself back from asking how many diapers were in that bag. I had a little bit of money, sure. Money that I’d never meant to spend and would most definitely have to account for later. But even I knew I didn’t have enough to get me and Grayson to California and take care of a baby.

  So how did Rena expect to do it with no money at all?

  And why did I care? Bo wasn’t my baby. It was up to Rena to take care of him. She just seemed kinda clueless about it.

  I got out of the car and stretched, one arm above my head. The day had warmed up a little, and there was something so clear and bright about Denver’s air. I felt good. So good I could almost ignore Grayson, who was glaring at me over the top of the car.

  “Come on,” I said, heading around the car and toward the store entrance. “Don’t let me forget the milk.”