Mom stares at me. I can pinpoint the exact moment when she understands. She falls back against the wall. Her face seems to dissolve—who knows if it’s because of her despair or the tears gathering in my own eyes? There is only one other time I’ve seen her so instantly gray skinned and dead eyed and desolate, and that time it was Daddy’s fault, when he was arrested.
I am back to being unable to look at her.
I spin on my heel and run away.
Now—
a terrible now
There’s nowhere to go.
I have been hiding in Deskins for three years now, and it’s never occurred to me how open all my hiding places are. I hide at the school and the library and Riggoli’s, and all those places are crawling with people. I’m out the front door of our apartment in a flash, but even as I jerk the door shut behind me, I can see kids in the school parking lot across the street. Marching band practice is ending, the sunshine glinting from a tuba here, the rim of a bass drum there. Any minute now someone I know will spot me and shout a greeting or a question—maybe Stuart asking how my Court scholarship interview went, maybe Clarice asking what I’m doing for my next AP lit essay . . .
I sprint around the side of the apartment building and run deeper into the complex.
There’s a narrow swath of trees at the back of the property—two or three spindly pines, a few oaks and maples in their last gasp of autumn glory before cold, deadly winter.
Probably all the other trees were cut down to make Whispering Pines Apartments, I think, because, oh, am I ever cynical now; oh, am I ever certain there’s nothing but deception and destruction and despair in the world.
Still, I’m grateful for what few trees there are, and I crash into their midst. My eyes are too blurred to see straight, and I slip in some mud—no, actually a tiny stream trickling through the dead leaves. Who knew this was back here?
I sniff, bringing a sickly sweet odor to my nose. I hold my breath for an instant and listen—yes, there are voices coming from a clump of trees just upstream from me.
Pot smokers’ paradise, I think. I guess a lot of people know about this place.
I think I recognize some of the voices: Tyler Marco from lit class, maybe, and isn’t that Ashley Stevens, who was so mean to me at the Court scholarship interviews?
That’s just great, Ashley, I think. You go from telling the Courts how much you deserve a scholarship to crouching in mud a half hour later smoking pot? I should turn you in!
But I know I won’t. I’m not my father. I don’t believe I can make up for my own mistakes by busting anyone else.
Also, if Ashley and Tyler are smoking pot together, then they’re not alone, like I am. And I don’t want anyone to see how I have nobody left. I’ve lost or left behind my father, my mother, my friends in Georgia, my friends here . . .
I follow the little trickle of water downstream, and I’m hoping for thicker and thicker woods, more trees to hide in. Somehow I end up in downtown Deskins instead. I creep under a bridge I’ve never noticed before on Main Street; I press my back flat against mossy, crumbling stones.
Rundown old Deskins, I think. Hiding under glitzy new Deskins.
What if everything that’s shiny and gleaming and beautiful has something nasty and disgusting and evil at its core?
Like Daddy’s wealth, like Excellerand’s success, like Stuart said—cheating is the only way to win?
That’s not exactly what Stuart said, but I’m not thinking clearly enough to dissect it.
Sometimes things start out great and then turn rotten, I think. Like how Whitney Court’s life went, like how mine used to be so happy . . .
If Daddy was a lying crook before I was even born, what was my happiness ever worth? Was there ever any truth in it?
It’s too awful to think these thoughts alone. I want somebody to talk to, Rosa or Oscar or Jala or Clarice, but they’re all such good people, and I would be the rot that contaminates them. Even Stuart . . . Stuart talks tough, but compared to the evil I’m facing—people wanting to kill me—Stuart is a Sunday school choirboy.
None of this is my fault, either, I tell myself. I’m just the innocent victim. Like how Whitney Court didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not her fault she went crazy. It just happened.
There’s something wrong with this comparison, but I can’t figure it out. Not when my back is pressed against filthy, mossy stone. Not when the bridge above me rattles every time a car drives over it, which is approximately every other second, because this is rush hour and everyone in glitzy new Deskins is going home to their safe, happy homes.
Not me, I think.
At least nobody could find me under this bridge. Not my mother, not my friends, not any Excellerand-hired assassins. I’m not like Mom—I wouldn’t sit cowering indecisively in the apartment until somebody showed up to kill me.
But Mom actually might.
This thought sears me. It makes me jump so violently, I scrape my back on the stone.
This is the difference between me and Whitney Court, I think. She’s limited, but she still seems to be trying to do the best she can with what she has. She wanted to help me. But I left my own mother behind in danger . . . danger that I made worse. . . .
I jump up and start scrambling back along the stream, back toward Whispering Pines. It’s not like I think Excellerand would already have found out what I told Mr. Court and instantly dispatched assassins who were conveniently located right outside Deskins. But I run as though I believe that.
I crash through the streambed, throwing up clumps of mud with every step. When I get the first whiff of sickly sweet pot, I veer to the right and stumble into the Whispering Pines parking lot. I zigzag around the buildings and am paranoid enough to press my back against the wall of my own apartment building before turning the last corner. I peek around toward my own door: The sidewalk out front is deserted. Mine is just one vacant, blank door in a row of many. I listen: There are no screams or dying gasps.
But I do hear a car engine in the parking lot, speeding out toward the street. I turn my head and peek out farther. I catch a glimpse of gray metal in the dying sunlight.
It’s my mother’s car, driving away.
Now—
and things can get worse
Is she running away and leaving me behind? I wonder. Or going out to search for me?
I flip back and forth between these two possibilities a dozen times in an instant. My feet make their own decision: I dash after the car.
“Mom!” I scream. “Mom! I’m sorry!”
Even if I could run well, I’d be no match for a speeding car. I run and run and run, and still the car disappears into the distance.
I guess for once Mom isn’t glancing at her rearview mirror. She isn’t looking behind her.
Or she is, and doesn’t care.
Those thoughts—and the possibility of assassins—make it impossible for me to go back to our apartment to wait for her to come back (if she’s coming back). Somehow I can’t even bear to go see if she’s packed up and taken her things from the apartment.
I keep running. There’s nowhere to go, but I keep running anyway.
Is this how Daddy felt all those years ago? I wonder. He fought with his family, he ran away, he just wanted to be somebody else? With a different life?
I pace my thoughts to the pounding of my feet against the sidewalk. And for a moment I can imagine doing this myself: disappearing, going somewhere new, taking on a new identity . . .
It wouldn’t be that different from what I’ve done in Deskins, except that I would be completely alone this time.
Like Daddy was.
But it’d be harder for me than it was for Daddy twenty-five, thirty years ago, I think. Back then everything wasn’t online, they didn’t have safeguards to keep people from using fake identities to get jobs . . . look how much trouble Mom and I have had, even with the attorney helping us, even keeping our own names.
And everybody knows what happens to teena
ge girls who run away. Everybody knows what is left for them when they can’t support themselves legally.
I haven’t been paying attention, but somehow I’ve ended up in another part of Deskins I didn’t know existed: a dark alley. A door opens and raucous laughter spills out—it’s some ratty bar with a bunch of motorcycles parked out front.
So here’s the kind of irony my English teachers would love, I think. I’m running away from assassins I think want to kill me specifically because of who I am. And so I’ve run to a place where I might get killed just randomly, because I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’m being melodramatic. The same sociology teacher who told us about free lunch percentages at Deskins High also talked about how the murder rate in Deskins is practically nil, just one homicide every fifteen or twenty years.
“You live in one of the safest places on earth,” he told us.
Crime in Deskins is pretty much limited to stupid high school kids smoking pot behind Whispering Pines, and probably people doing the same kind of white-collar offenses that Daddy did, except not so audaciously as to get caught, and not very often. It’s people thinking that lying and cheating and taking a little more money than they deserve isn’t actually crime—there’s not really a victim when you’re just shifting a column of numbers from one place to another.
Except I was a victim of Daddy’s crime, I think. Me and Mom and all those other people. Daddy didn’t take anybody’s life; he just ruined people’s lives and tortured them by leaving them to go on and on in pain. Leaving Mom and me to go on and on in pain. . . .
Would it be better to be dead?
My feet evidently don’t think so, because I veer away from this dark, dangerous alley.
I turn corners blindly, because it is dark everywhere now, not just in old alleyways. I am hungry and thirsty and cold, and the only reason I’m not crying anymore is because it seems as useless as everything else.
Then I turn a corner and there’s light ahead of me, crazy-colored light: purple and green and blue and orange and red. . . .
It’s stained glass.
I blink and realize I know exactly where I am: I’m standing outside the church Mom goes to, the one I’ve resolutely refused to enter for the past three years.
And there’s Mom’s car in the parking lot, not ten feet away from me.
I remember: It’s Tuesday night. And on most Tuesday nights, if Mom doesn’t have to work, she goes to this church program where they have a soup supper and a service for all their members.
I’m torn between relief, because she wasn’t running away from me, after all, and disgust: How could she not be searching for me? Isn’t she worried? Doesn’t she care? How could she just sit in church, wasting time, when we should be planning what to do to keep the news I told Mr. Court from traveling all the way to Excellerand?
But is what I’ve done any better? I wonder.
A soft drone of voices comes from inside the church, and I recognize it as some kind of responsive reading. Then that ends. It’s replaced by organ chords, the start of a song I also recognize.
It’s “Amazing Grace.”
I haven’t stepped foot in any sort of religious service in three years, but I remember what grace is. It’s being saved—and forgiven for everything, even when you don’t deserve it. Especially when you don’t deserve it.
And I want grace. I want to be forgiven for messing up and telling Mr. Court our secret, for running away from Mom, for yelling at her, for hating Daddy so much, for turning away from him when he wished me happy birthday that day in the courtroom all those years ago. And for never, ever, ever writing back to him over the past three years.
But if I get grace and forgiveness, does that mean Daddy gets it too? Daddy, with all the horrible things he did? The horrible things that could even lead to someone killing Mom and me?
“I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see,” the people in the church sing.
And I know I am still lost and I can’t see anything clearly, but I stand there listening, because I’ve got nowhere else to run to. I can remember singing this song myself when I was a little girl in a beautiful frilly dress, sitting in church knowing I was pretty and good, and my life was pretty and good, and God and everybody else loved me. Once something bad has happened to you and you’ve done bad things yourself, how do you ever get that feeling back?
The song ends, and now the people in the church start reciting something together again. I catch the words “who art in heaven . . .” so it must be the Lord’s Prayer.
I slump against the side of the church, my scraped, sore back cooled by a metal doorframe. I don’t know what I should do next, but at least I’ve got some time before I have to decide. Nobody will come out of the church until the Lord’s Prayer is over, until the rest of the service is over.
Just as I think that, the door behind me swings open, knocking me out of the way. The person in the doorway grabs me before I fall, and I see who it is.
It’s Mom.
Now—
and it’s better
She gasps, but doesn’t say anything. She just throws her arms around my shoulders and hugs me tight. And I hold on to her just as hard. We both clutch each other and sob into each other’s shoulders. And there are so many things we need to talk about that I can’t sort them out. I just say the first thing that pops into my mind.
“Why were you walking out in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer?” I ask. “You would have killed me if I’d done that when I was a little kid.”
Mom is still holding on to me, but she pulls back enough that she’s staring me straight in the eye. Is there laughter mixed in with her sobs? A glint of humor in her eyes, along with the tears?
No, I decide. It’s all tears.
“I haven’t been able to get through the whole Lord’s Prayer since your father was arrested,” she says.
I stare back at her. Even with all her fear, I’d thought my mom was so smug and holy and self-righteous. But she can’t even pray right anymore? She’s that much like me?
“But . . . you go to church,” I say numbly. “All the time.”
“I’m trying,” Mom says. “I’m trying to get things right, to trust God again. . . . Usually I just sit there in silence during the Lord’s Prayer. But tonight I was having more trouble than usual. There’s one line I can never bring myself to say.”
I study her face, tinted by the red and blue and purple light from the stained glass. It looks like a bruise. I know exactly which line she means.
“ ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ ” I quote. “ ‘As we forgive those who trespass against us.’ You haven’t forgiven Daddy either!”
Why does this make me happy?
Mom nods, her face a study in shame.
“Sometimes that’s the reason,” she says. “Sometimes it’s more like . . . I don’t want to be forgiven. Because I can’t forgive myself.”
“Yourself?” I squint at her. “Why?”
She shifts to having only one arm around my shoulder, and we start walking together toward the car.
“I’m a grown-up,” she says. “A mother. I should have understood what was going on. I should have stopped him. I never should have let him ruin our lives . . . especially not your life.”
These are things I’ve thought, but I didn’t know she felt that way too. Her voice practically throbs with guilt. It hurts to listen.
“No, Mom, it’s not your fault,” I say, and for once I feel the truth of this; for once I don’t blame her at all. I snort disgustedly. “You could say it’s more my fault. Remember what Daddy said? ‘How else would someone like me ever be able to send his own kid to college?’ He told everyone he was stealing that money for me!”
Mom stops so abruptly in the middle of the parking lot that her arm around my shoulder jerks me up short. She turns to face me directly. We are standing under a light pole, so the two of us are bathed in light.
“Becca, you don’t ac
tually believe that, do you?” she asks.
I don’t answer. Mom lets go of me to clutch her head in her hands.
“I thought I was protecting you, not telling you everything,” she murmurs. “But I was hurting you worse.”
“Wait—is there something else you didn’t want me to know because then I might think my father was a scumbag?” I ask.
How could there be anything else? How could my father’s crimes be such a bottomless pit?
Mom pushes her hands back into her hair. It’s a despairing gesture, and there’s nothing but anguish on her face.
“If your father had really been stealing any of that money for you for college,” she says, “he would have put it in some designated fund—a five twenty-nine, a Coverdell . . . I thought he was doing that with his legal earnings. I thought he had. I was so happy when the attorney told me one of the things the government wouldn’t seize—one of the things we were allowed to keep along with the house and the car—was college savings. Except . . . there weren’t any. He hadn’t saved anything for you.”
I wait for the anger to surge over me again—anger at Daddy for yet another lie, yet another failing, anger at Mom for yet another secret. And anger because this is just one more reminder that I don’t have the slightest idea how I’m going to pay for college, if I ever get to go. This is another door slammed in my face.
But somehow, this time, the anger doesn’t come. I don’t know if I found some tiny crumb of forgiveness as I stood under the glow of the stained glass, listening to “Amazing Grace.” Or maybe I’m just tired of being angry all the time.
“If it helps, I know your father thought none of this would be a problem,” Mom says. “He thought he could go on making—stealing—money hand over fist, so he wouldn’t have any trouble paying for your college or anything else. I don’t think he ever expected to get caught.”
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