Full Ride

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  And I can’t. I can’t be that girl, the kind who gets to go to dances and have a boyfriend and squeals when he gives her flowers. Daddy stole all that from me when he stole everything else. And anyhow, I probably won’t even be in Deskins by next week. It won’t be safe. I don’t know how fast Mr. Trumbull will be able to get new identities for Mom and me, but I could be in a new school by then, I could be an entirely different person.

  I snuggle against Oscar anyhow. I snuggle against him and I whisper back: “Yes.”

  Now—

  Georgia

  I am an emotional wreck by the time we get to Atlanta. Or, I should say: I am still an emotional wreck; I am even more of an emotional wreck than before. I am keeping layers of secrets now. Oscar has to let go of my hand before anybody else notices and take his turn behind the steering wheel. And it’s like Oscar and I have silently agreed not to announce, “Hey! We’re going to homecoming!” That’s too delicate a secret, too fragile to hold up for everyone else’s examination. But he keeps shooting me meaningful glances that our friends would have to be blind not to see.

  Or do they notice, and they think it’s no different from the way he looked at me yesterday or the day before? I think. Has he been looking at me like this for weeks or months or years, and I never noticed?

  What does it matter if I’m going to change my name and vanish from Deskins and never see Oscar again?

  Stuart is driving again as we hit the crazy traffic of Atlanta.

  “Speed up and go around that car in front of you,” Oscar advises him from the passenger’s seat.

  “I can’t,” Stuart snarls. “My parents can tell if I speed, because of the GPS.”

  “I bet that just shows your average speed, not one burst of going seventy-five,” Oscar scoffs. “But here, if you’re so scared, I’ll disable that function. . . .”

  He starts fiddling with the GPS, and suddenly the whole screen goes black.

  “Now I don’t know where to go!” Stuart screams, instantly soaring into full-fledged panic as cars zoom around us.

  “Take the exit for I-85 north,” I tell Stuart from the backseat.

  Everyone turns and stares at me except Stuart, who seems more focused on returning his breathing rate from “hyperventilate” to “normal.”

  “You know your way around Atlanta?” Oscar asks me curiously. “Have you been here before?”

  The way he’s looking at me, I am so close to answering honestly. I am so close to telling everything.

  “I heard the GPS voice say it a minute ago,” I tell him instead. “Weren’t you listening?”

  How can I lie like that, even now? I am a terrible person. I deserve to lose my friends. I deserve to live the rest of my life in exile.

  It’s a good thing I deserve that, I think. Because that’s the only future I can have.

  Oscar restores the GPS, and we get to Emory. We park and lug our bags into a huge auditorium, then the beaming admissions officials direct us to dinner in a huge dining hall. I look around and try to decide if any of the students look like fifth-year seniors or grad students.

  Were any of them here four or five years ago when my father stole laptops? I wonder. Did he scam any of their parents or grandparents into sending him money?

  I can hardly stand to be on Emory’s campus, thinking that. But Rosa is looking around like she’s reached the promised land, and Oscar and Stuart are drooling over food choices in the serving lines: “Pizza and cheeseburgers and pasta and soft-serve ice cream and vegan choices and sushi and . . .” Stuart lists.

  “They have dining halls like this at Ohio State, too,” Jala snaps, rolling her eyes. “For students who live on campus, anyway.”

  I have no idea what I end up eating. I can’t pay attention at the info sessions afterward either.

  Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow . . .

  We’re matched with current Emory students to spend the night in a typical dorm room. I forget my host student’s name five seconds after hearing it. I’m sure she thinks I’m a total idiot because I ask nothing about college. I put my sleeping bag on the floor of her room, and then I sit down, staring at the wall.

  “Want me to show you where the best parties are?” she asks eagerly.

  “I just want to sleep,” I say.

  But of course I can’t. I lie on the floor and pretend to as unknown-name-girl and unknown-name-girl’s roommate head out to party without me; I’m still wide-awake hours later when they tiptoe back in. I hear them whispering a little too loudly about what a lousy student guest they got. Then I listen as their breathing slides into the soft steadiness of sleep.

  I wish Mom could be here to do this with me tomorrow, I think. That would be okay, if we could do this together. I wish I could call her or text her right now to tell her how scared I am.

  But it’s three a.m. by now, and of course Mom doesn’t have a cell phone. And I can’t call our home phone, because Mom is still staying away. Tonight she’s at another nurse’s house—it wouldn’t be right to call and wake up the woman who took Mom in even though Mom’s excuse was that Whispering Pines Apartments had to fumigate for bedbugs.

  I guess we actually both found good friends in Deskins, I think.

  This makes me want to cry again, but I don’t let myself. I just lie there, staring into darkness. And then, though this seems like the longest night in history, somehow it gets to be morning, and I’m padding down the hall to the strangeness of a communal bathroom.

  I meet my Deskins friends for breakfast back at the dining hall, and they chatter about how nice their host students were and what they did and how excited they are about sitting in on classes this morning. They’ve all pored over the list of possible classes, and I wait until everyone else has revealed a choice before I tell mine.

  “I’m going to Religion and Contemporary Experience,” I say, picking the class least likely to attract anyone else. “It gets out the latest, so I’ll just meet you all back here for lunch.”

  I’m hoping that gives me enough time for what I actually plan to do.

  But Oscar chimes in, “Oh, that sounds better than Computer Science Fundamentals! I’ll go with you!”

  Panic floods over me.

  “No, no, no offense but . . . if you’re there, I won’t be able to concentrate,” I say. “It’ll feel like it’s still high school and—”

  “And back off, lover boy,” Stuart says, snickering.

  I look back and forth between the two of them. I’m pretty sure Oscar must have told Stuart I said yes to homecoming, and now Stuart is making fun of him for it, and—

  And why can’t I do this without hurting Oscar’s feelings? I wonder.

  “Just for today,” I say quickly. “At Vanderbilt tomorrow, I’ll go to every session with you, I’ll, I’ll . . .”

  “It does make sense to get an idea of what college is like by yourself,” Jala says, nodding sagely. “It can feel kind of lonely.”

  And now I feel bad for Jala, too. But all I can do is back away from my friends and pretend I urgently need to find Smith Hall.

  In reality, as soon as I’m out of sight, I rush toward the bus stop at Clifton Road and Gambrell Drive.

  Atlanta does not have the best public transportation. If I took Stuart’s SUV, or if I could afford a cab, I could get to Mr. Trumbull’s office off Peachtree Road in fifteen minutes. But the combination of bus and metro and walking will take me more than an hour. Mom and I were paranoid enough to map it all out on a computer at Deskins Public Library, not on my laptop. The route looked daunting enough then, when I had Mom beside me.

  It feels unbearable now that I’m alone. I look around, and it seems like any of my fellow bus passengers might be spies for Excellerand. That man in a suit, scratching his ear—is that a signal? That woman with the little girl beside her—is she trying to trick me into thinking a spy wouldn’t have a kid with her?

  Now you’re totally losing it, I tell myself. Stop it. Nobody knew you’d be on
this bus. Except Mom.

  I edge Mrs. Collins’s iPhone out of my pocket and summon up the number Mom gave me to contact her at her friend’s house. I don’t call it, because what would I say, here on the bus where anyone could hear? But it makes me feel better just to have the number in front of me.

  I finally get to Mr. Trumbull’s office building, and it’s as huge and overwhelming as I remember. It’s all metal and glass, probably some architect’s vision of the cruel heartlessness of justice.

  This is a stupid plan, I think as I step into the elevator and it lurches up. Why couldn’t Mom and I have come up with something better?

  I know why: Because there isn’t anything better, not for either of us. Daddy’s crimes and his bargain with the government and Excellerand’s evil ruthlessness shoved us into a tiny, tiny box, and this is the only way out.

  I get off the elevator and walk down the hall to the receptionist’s desk. The elderly receptionist I remember from three years ago has evidently been replaced—this one doesn’t seem any older than me. She has long dark hair like I do, and she looks as uncomfortable in her stiff blue blazer as I would feel.

  Is this the kind of job I’d have to take if I don’t get to go to college? I wonder.

  I don’t know much about it, but being a receptionist in a law firm would probably require some training beyond high school, and that would mean financial aid, too.

  I’m ranked fourth in my class, but being a receptionist is beyond me if I can’t change my identity, I think.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist asks. She may be young, but she’s already mastered the snooty law-office tone that seems to say beneath the words, My time is worth so much more than yours—how dare you bother me!

  Maybe they teach that in receptionist-training classes.

  I clear my throat.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Trumbull,” I tell her. “I don’t have an appointment, but I know Mr. Trumbull will want to talk to me.”

  This is the wording Mom and I agreed on. She thought that, given how difficult Mr. Trumbull has been lately, I should show up unannounced and take him by surprise. But we did call on Wednesday to make sure he’d be in the office today.

  We called from a pay phone in Deskins, just to be safe. Do you know how hard it is to find a working pay phone nowadays?

  The receptionist looks unimpressed. She looks like someone who has just discovered crumbs on an otherwise perfect white tablecloth—like she’s annoyed that she will have to exert the effort to brush me away.

  “I’m . . . ,” I try again. It’s strange. I’ve said my name dozens of times over the past three years, always savoring the protective anonymity of “Jones.” But here in this office I have to throw all that away. Even though I now know everything I’m risking, I have to identify myself fully. “I’m Becca Jones. Roger Jones’s daughter.”

  My heart pounds, but no alarms go off. No horde of camera-toting TV crews appear out of nowhere to scream at me, “How did you feel when your father was arrested? Did you know where all the money was coming from? Did your mom?” No Excellerand assassins swing in through the windows, guns blazing.

  The only thing that happens is that the receptionist’s eyes widen, and she gasps, “Ohhh . . .” Then she stares at me, as though I’ve suddenly become fascinating. Or horrifying.

  She may be new here, but of course she knows who Daddy is.

  You’re back in Atlanta, I remind myself. Everybody remembers here. What did you expect?

  At least the receptionist doesn’t start peppering me with questions. But she stares long enough to make me feel I have to stare back, with a little defiance: Yeah, that Roger Jones. Want to make something of it?

  What if I’d acted like that three years ago, when everybody stared at me all the time?

  I couldn’t, back then, I think. I’m barely managing to hold the stare now. At least the receptionist looks away first. She gives a little jump, as if remembering she’s supposed to act professional.

  “I’ll see if Mr. Trumbull is available,” she says. She trots off to Mr. Trumbull’s office on heels that seem too high for her. She reminds me of a little girl playing dress up. I think she was probably supposed to stay at her desk and just buzz Mr. Trumbull, but what do I know? It’s hard enough figuring out what I’m supposed to do, let alone anyone else. I feel weak and dizzy just from three seconds of staring down the underage receptionist—how am I going to deal with Mr. Trumbull?

  I step over to a display of framed magazine articles on the wall, because reading might calm me down. Big mistake: Most of the articles seem to be about how brilliantly Mr. Trumbull handled Daddy’s case—“the biggest case any defense attorney could hope for,” as Atlanta magazine put it. Apparently it was actually a miracle that Daddy didn’t get more than ten years in prison; apparently Daddy was pretty much the poster child for how defendants aren’t supposed to behave. The articles all have titles like, “What to Do When Your Client Becomes a Loose Cannon” and “Loose Lips: When a Client Sabotages His Own Case.”

  Who has ever used the term “loose lips” since World War II? I think disgustedly, because it’s easier to hate the headline writer than to think about what Daddy really said and did.

  Still, I can’t help myself: I keep reading. I’m surprised the articles focus more on Daddy’s impersonal crimes—the computer hacking, the money laundering, the Ponzi scheme—instead of the ones where he scared parents and grandparents into giving him money because they thought their children or grandchildren were in trouble. Those were the crimes I thought were the worst.

  But it’s all about the money, I think. The bigger the money, the bigger the crime.

  It’s coming back to me, everything Mr. Trumbull told us three years ago about the law. Money is easier to measure than pain and suffering, so that’s what the justice system looks at.

  I hear the receptionist’s heels click-clacking toward me, and I quickly move away from the wall. I go back to standing by her desk.

  “He will be able to see you,” she says. “Briefly. But it will be a few more minutes. Have a seat.”

  She sounds like she’s had to practice saying things like that in front of a mirror. She points toward a leather couch that also seems new. I sit down and sink into it. I struggle back up into a standing position. I don’t want Mr. Trumbull’s first view of me to be as I flounder around just trying to escape his couch.

  Receptionist girl watches me while pretending not to.

  “Nervous energy,” I tell her. “Can’t sit still.”

  I’m pretty sure this makes me sound like a drug addict or something, but I don’t know how to fix that. Not when my head is going all spinny on me again. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a drug addict. Or crazy.

  I pull out Mrs. Collins’s iPhone. Isn’t that a normal thing to do, waiting? But I’ve lost my skill at goofing around on a cell phone. I could text my friends something like “Wow, Relig and Contemp Exp is great! How’s ur class?” But I can’t stomach yet another lie right now. Instead, I pretend to be absorbed in flipping through apps. I accidentally turn on the recording function, then scramble to turn it off.

  This is going to be hard enough, without knowing every word I say is recorded, and then I have to make sure it’s erased completely from the phone, I think.

  I glance up, and Mr. Trumbull is turning the corner. I stuff the phone back into my jeans pocket.

  “Becca!” he says. “Good to see you! Well, haven’t you grown up!”

  The way he’s looking at me makes me almost wish I hadn’t developed breasts and hips. It also makes me think there’s something kind of wrong about him having such a young receptionist. Like he didn’t hire her for her job qualifications.

  “Nice to see you again,” I say automatically, shaking his outstretched hand.

  “Tria, hold my calls,” Mr. Trumbull tells the receptionist.

  “Oh, yes, sir!” the receptionist says immediately. The way she sounds, she might as well snap her arm
into a salute.

  Mr. Trumbull puts his hand on my back, steering me toward his office. This is something else I remember about Mr. Trumbull: how he always took control. I remember feeling relieved by that three years ago, when my daddy had turned into a criminal stranger, and my mother seemed thoroughly lost.

  But today I kind of want to step away, to tell Mr. Trumbull, “I know where your office is.”

  I let him guide me anyway.

  We go into his office and he shuts the door. He indicates a chair for me to sit on. Then he settles in behind his massive mahogany desk. He looks the same as he did three years ago: a rich man in a rich man’s suit, his glossy brown hair improbably thick for a man in his fifties. He could play a defense attorney on TV—he kind of already did, as a star of my father’s trial.

  But somehow his demeanor has changed. He no longer has that defense-attorney air of confidence that seems to say, Of course my client’s innocent. Of course I could convince any jury that any defendant’s innocent. It’s like a mask slipped, revealing the pool of anxiety below.

  I correct my own impression: It’s not that Mr. Trumbull lost that confident aura over the past three years. He still had it out in the lobby, in front of the receptionist. The angst didn’t come out until he was alone with me.

  He leans urgently toward me.

  “Where’s your mother?” he asks. “Why are you here?”

  I hesitate. Could his office be bugged? I try to guess from Mr. Trumbull’s expression, but it’s hard to tell. The lines around his eyes telegraph extreme worry, but is that because he’s concerned about Mom? Or because he thinks I’m in danger, just sitting in his office? Wouldn’t he give some signal if it wasn’t safe for me to speak?

  I opt for caution, regardless.

  “Mom’s still back home,” I say, and I am oh so careful not to say, “in Ohio” or “in Deskins.” “She’s fine. We just thought it would be . . . safer if I came without her.”

  The worry lines around his eyes turn into disapproving trenches.