Perfect Escape

by Jennifer Brown

  “So what’s with all the rocks?” Rena asked.

  Grayson swallowed. “Nothing,” he said. “I just like rocks.” All the playfulness was gone. Poof.

  “Sorry, Gray,” I said after a few more minutes, bumping his shoulder with my hand playfully. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” And even though inside my head I protested—but he’s embarrassed me so many times!—I was surprised to find that I really meant it. Probably because I knew in my heart that he never meant to embarrass me, either, and if he could have changed it, he would have.

  He shook his head. “I embarrass myself,” he said, then curled up on his side toward the window and grew quiet.

  I felt like a jerk. And like I might cry.

  I’d never felt farther from home, and Zoe never seemed farther away, and for just a moment, if I let myself, I could almost feel totally lost. Like I’d never get to where I wanted to be again.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  I left Grayson alone with his thoughts for a while as I took in the scenery of Wyoming and noticed that really every place kind of looks like every other place when you’re on the road. But eventually my curiosity got to me. I knew nothing about Wyoming.

  “So what’s in Wyoming?” I asked, trying to get conversation going again.

  “Fossils,” Grayson muttered, still pouting.

  Ugh. Fossils. Science. Not my strong suit. But I wanted to lighten the mood in the car… see if I could get us back to where we were before I brought up the rocks. See if I could get Grayson talking again.

  “Cool. Maybe we should pull over and try to find a dinosaur head or something,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be awesome to come home with a giant T. rex head as a souvenir?”

  Grayson rolled his eyes at me. “You can’t just go find a dinosaur head,” he answered. “It’s not like they’re lying on the side of the road waiting for someone to pick one up as a souvenir.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, for starters, when they dug up the ground to lay the highway, they probably would have already found it.”

  “Maybe. You don’t know.”

  He glared at me. “I do know. It’s called logic. You’re not going to find a dinosaur head out here.”

  “If I got out and found one, you’d feel like a real idiot right now,” I countered. “How do you think the first guy who found a dinosaur head found it? By getting down on the ground and looking.”

  “Good luck. And it’s called a skull, by the way. Not a head. And a T. rex skull would be way too big to take home as a souvenir.”

  “You have no imagination, Grayson.”

  “But I have logic.”

  I made a face at him, secretly delighted at how normal this conversation was. Like a billion conversations we’d had over the years. It felt comfy. It felt like he’d forgiven me for acting like a jerk earlier.

  “Jackalopes,” Rena said from the backseat.

  “Huh?”

  She laughed. “Back at the motel, we had these brochures about this place called Douglas, Wyoming. Home of the jackalope.”

  “What’s a jackalope?” I asked.

  Grayson rolled his eyes again, as if he was seriously put out about having to explain yet another simple concept to his ignorant sister. But he was also grinning. “Part jackrabbit, part antelope. A rabbit with antelope horns.”

  “Legend has it they’re vicious,” Rena said, and giggled again. “A vicious bunny.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

  “Seriously? You think you’re going to put a T. rex head in your pocket to take home, and it’s a jackalope that you find ridiculous?” Grayson countered. Then he mimicked in a falsetto voice, “Where’s your imagination?”

  We drove on for a few seconds in silence. Every so often, Rena would giggle in the backseat. Jackalopes. Granted, I hadn’t exactly planned out this trip, but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d be having a discussion about jackalopes. I kind of liked it. Jackalopes had nothing to do with calc or OCD or lost friendships. Jackalopes were just a ridiculous story. Something to talk about to pass the time.

  I didn’t mind passing a little time. It’s not like Zoe was waiting for us or anything.

  “Hey, Rena, where did you say this place was?”

  “Douglas, Wyoming,” she answered.

  “Grayson, how far is it?” I pointed to the atlas.

  He scrunched his eyebrows up at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “No way.”

  “Yes way. How far is Douglas? Lead me to the jackalope, man!” Both Rena and I cracked up.

  Slowly he picked up the atlas and studied it for a few minutes. “It’d be about two hours off the highway.”

  “That’s no time!”

  “Kendra, think about it. Two hours off the highway to get there. And then two hours back. Just to see an animal that doesn’t exist.”

  “We have time. Now, tell me where to get off, or I’ll start taking random highways.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “Fine. Whatever.” But he didn’t sound as if he hated the idea that much, really. Jackalopes kinda seemed like something that would be right up my brother’s alley.

  The afternoon wore on as we drove up the highway toward Douglas. Grayson told us more about jackalopes, proving that, being Genius Boy and all, he knew everything about everything. After a while, his jackalope lecture led to a discussion about unicorns and leprechauns, all of us losing ourselves in legends and myths and stupid stories that nobody in their right mind should ever believe but that have somehow morphed into “true stories” that everyone believes.

  Next thing I knew, Rena was pointing over the seat. “Jackalope!”

  We gazed up at a hillside, upon which a giant cutout of a jackalope sat, and we all laughed. It looked so ridiculous. Awesomely ridiculous.

  “So in the brochure we had, it said something about the world’s largest jackalope statue being in the town square, I think.”

  “Let’s find it!” I said.

  We drove into town, pointing out the images of jackalopes everywhere, on benches and storefronts. We even saw WATCH OUT FOR THE JACKALOPE signs. It was all so hokey and touristy. I loved it.

  “There it is,” Grayson said, and sure enough we were coming up on a huge statue of a rabbit with horns. Two other cars were parked nearby, a man taking a photo of two little kids standing in front of the statue.

  It was something I’d always wanted and never had—a hokey touristy photo in front of a hokey tourist trap.

  I pulled to a stop and grabbed my phone. “Come on, Grayson. I’m getting up on that jackalope.”

  “What?” he was saying, surprise making his voice squeaky, but Rena and I had already hopped out of Hunka and were gazing at the statue.

  Rena kept giggling. “I never actually thought I’d come see this thing,” she said, shaking her head.

  The family had finished taking their photos and were slowly getting back in their car.

  “Take a picture of me,” I said, handing her my phone and heading for the statue.

  She took the phone and I scrambled up the pedestal that the statue sat on and proceeded to climb up its back. It was a lot more vertical than it looked, and there was nothing really to grab on to, and I kept sliding back down, one close scrape with tumbling to the ground after another.

  “Kendra, get down!” Grayson was yelling from his position by the car. “Someone’s going to see you.”

  “So?” I grunted, hoisting myself up again. “I’ll play innocent.”

  Finally, I got some purchase and was able to clumsily wrap myself around the rabbit’s back. “Hurry! Take it!” I yelled, and Rena did, while I mugged for the camera like I didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Got a good one!” she called back, and I started to get down, but had a better idea.

  “Grayson! Come up here with me!”

  He shook his head, his arms wrapped tightly across the front of him. “Not happening.”r />
  “Come on! Look! Nothing happened to me!”

  “Yet!” he called back.

  “I like it up here. I’m going to stay here until you come up. I think I could probably sleep here.” Total lie. I was slipping, and my muscles were trembling and wanting to give.

  After a few seconds of thought, he reluctantly started walking toward the statue, looking severely ticked off. “There’s a sign right here that says you can’t climb the jackalope.”

  “No, it says you shouldn’t climb the jackalope. Clearly, I can. I already did.”

  “That’s not what the sign means.” He sighed. “Fine. I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this.”

  It took Grayson far fewer tries to get up on the rabbit’s back, and most of the times he slid back down were because he thought he saw a bug or bird poop or was too put out by the embarrassment of it all.

  “Smile,” I said as soon as he got up behind me, and Rena took a photo and gave us a thumbs-up.

  “Good one!” she yelled.

  “Now can we get down?” Grayson grumbled.

  “You did it!” I cooed in a kindergarten teacher voice. “Yay, Grayson!” But when I reached back to tousle his hair, he ducked, and both of us slid backward off the rabbit and into a heap at the bottom of the base.

  “You okay?” Rena asked, rushing to us, but I was laughing too hard to answer, and Grayson was too busy being angry.

  Finally, we untangled ourselves and headed back to Hunka, where Bo was still sleeping in his carrier.

  We drove around a little bit more, teasing one another about spotting jackalopes in the bushes on the side of the road or peeking out from behind houses, but as the sun began to slide over the horizon, it became clear that we needed to get back on track.

  “Can I stop at that gift shop first, though?” I asked, and nobody argued, so I did.

  Inside was a jackalope lover’s dream. They even had a stuffed, mounted jackalope head.

  “Gross, can you imagine waking up to that every morning?” I breathed.

  “I’ve woken up to worse. I’ve woken up to Archie’s head,” Rena joked. We snickered. “Hey, you should buy it. Attach it to the front of the car,” she said, her eyes going big. “You know, kind of like a road trip mascot. Proudly leading us to sunny California.”

  I grinned. A road trip mascot. Grayson would hate the idea. But there was something about Rena’s excitement over little things like this that was contagious. “Good idea,” I said. “Let’s do it!”

  “We don’t have any money, remember?” Grayson interjected, just as I expected him to.

  “We have a little,” I countered.

  “Not for jackalope heads. Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky and find a T. jackalope head on the side of the highway, though.”

  “Har-har-har.”

  In the end, Rena and I settled on a small plush jackalope, which I tied to Hunka’s grille with my student ID lanyard.

  I brushed my hands together and stepped back. We all stared at the poor little thing, antlers trembling in the breeze. “There,” I said. “It’s Jack. Our mascot.”

  “I like it,” Rena said. “It’s cute.”

  “I think so, too,” I said. I turned to Grayson. “Do jackalopes like to eat bugs?”

  Grayson grunted and headed back toward Hunka, but his grunt sounded like a suppressed laugh to me.

  I got into Hunka and pulled out my cell phone. There it was, the photo of my brother and me on top of the jackalope statue. He wasn’t smiling. But he was there.

  We pulled onto the highway and headed back in the direction we’d come from, all of us lost in our own thoughts.

  In some ways, it was as though I’d lived a whole lifetime in one day. As though, up until today, I’d been living a pretend life. One where I said and did all the things that everyone wanted to hear so I could be the child who stood out for the right reasons. It was as though I’d spent all of my time molding myself into what everyone else wanted me to be—or maybe even what I wanted myself to be, which was to say entirely unlike my brother—that I never considered being a regular, flawed person, just like everybody else. The kind of person who wanted to do the right things and live a good life, but honestly sometimes fell short. Like everyone else. Not perfect, just… normal.

  I kind of wondered if Grayson felt the same way today. He’d been obsessing less, that was for sure. He’d joked a little. He seemed so much more… there. Even if neither of us knew exactly where “there” was at the moment. Maybe my plan would work. Maybe the cure for OCD is to give someone no other choice than to cut it out. Probably, with my luck, it was really dangerous or something and I was messing him up for, like, the rest of his life.

  But in some ways, he seemed more like the Grayson that Zoe knew. The uncrushed and unshattered Grayson.

  Bringing them back together was the right thing to do. She could fix him. She would fix him.

  We drove in that easy silence for hours, into the night.

  “I’ve gotta eat,” I finally said. “And I’ve gotta stop driving.”

  “Pizza,” Rena said. “Pizza sounds really good.”

  “And bed,” I added, yawning.

  “No motels,” Grayson said.

  “Don’t start.”

  “Can’t we sleep in the car?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’d be comfy. Aren’t you worried my E. coli will surface in the middle of the night, and when I shit my pants the germs will explode all over your side of the seat?”

  “Don’t say ‘shit’ with a baby in the car,” he mimicked.

  “He’s heard worse,” Rena reminded us.

  I sighed. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’ll pull off at whatever the next town is. We’ll hopefully find some pizza, and then we’ll decide where to sleep.”

  Grayson nodded wearily. I had a feeling he was too exhausted to argue. He had slept crouching in a chair the night before, after all. And had followed that by spending all day being pummeled by his fears. That had to be tiring.

  We found a pizza place—Mama Mio’s—right down the street from a ratty-looking motel. Mama Mio’s looked as if it had enjoyed its heyday in 1986 and didn’t want to jinx success by changing with the times. There were high school football jerseys hanging from the walls, the accompanying team photos showing boys with feathered hair and cheerleaders with giant ’dos and jean jackets. A dusty old pinball machine squatted in one corner, alongside a jukebox filled with songs by a-ha! and Murray Head and Scandal.

  We ordered two large pizzas to go and took turns in the unisex bathroom while we waited for them. Even Grayson used the restroom; either he was too worn down to argue or, I hoped, he’d realized that using a public restroom wasn’t the end of the world.

  We took the pizzas back to the motel, where, fortunately, the grungy-looking clerk didn’t care if any of us was over eighteen. I used cash to pay for the room, realizing that the wad of bills in my pocket was getting smaller and smaller, but afraid that Mom and Dad would be online, tracking the credit card, and would know that we were somewhere in the middle of Wyoming. The last thing I needed was a door-pounding wake-up call by the county sheriff in the morning.

  The room wasn’t anywhere near as clean as Rena’s motel had been. The bedspreads had rips in them, and there were ashes on the nightstand. There was a hole in the wall where the shower head should have been, and the toilet looked like it hadn’t been scrubbed since Mama Mio’s was busting out MC Hammer on the jukebox to a full big-haired ’80s crowd.

  Rena and Grayson complained aloud about the room, pointing out to each other the layer of dust on the TV and the obviously used bar of soap, complete with a few of the previous occupant’s hairs, on the side of the bathroom sink, but I was too hungry and too exhausted to care. Truth was, I probably would’ve slept in the car if Grayson had pushed for it. But I was glad to have somewhere to stretch out. I knew we had a long day of driving ahead of us in the morning, and my back was already sore from sitting behind the wheel for so long. And
I was tired and grumpy. But I had Jack the Road Trip Mascot strapped to the front of Hunka, and a scrape on my elbow from falling off a jackalope, so all in all I was pretty content.

  I dropped the pizza boxes on the bed and went directly to the bathroom to run cold water over my face.

  Rena and I weren’t able to get Grayson anywhere near the beds, but with the help of about fifty antibacterial wipes, we finally persuaded him to sit in the vinyl chair by the window and eat a few pieces of pizza.

  I flipped through the snowy channels until I found a grainy cartoon station, and we watched that while we ate.

  “Your baby doesn’t ever cry,” Grayson said after a while. “He sleeps too much.”

  Rena’s forehead creased as she bent to look into Bo’s carrier. “Not normally,” she said. “I should probably wake him up, huh? He’s probably just worn out from all the commotion today.” She pulled the blanket off Bo and shook the carrier, making soft clicking noises with her tongue. After a few seconds, I could see Bo’s little hands and legs start to move around, followed by a squawk.

  All at once I was stuffed and so exhausted all I could think about was stretching out and going to sleep. I got up and moved the pizza boxes to the table and crawled up the mattress, landing facedown on a pillow, the floaty and buzzy feeling of sleep pressing in on me. I could hear Grayson’s and Rena’s voices as I drifted off, but they sounded far away and tinny, as if I were standing at the end of a long tunnel, listening in.

  “He’s probably hungry…”

  “… hope so. You don’t mind…”

  “Uh-uh-uh… it’s okay… I’ll just go…”

  “You don’t have to move…”

  “He’s really cute… worry about germs…”

  “… not really… why do you…?”

  “I guess I was just made that way. Uh-uh-uh…”

  “… we all have our issues, I think…”

  My arms and legs felt so heavy I couldn’t have flipped over had the place been on fire.

  And then I was out, feeling warm and happy and like this was any other night, not like I was about to see my best friend tomorrow for the first time in three years and beg her to help me.