Run (2 page)

Not this voice, though. It hadn’t imprinted itself on my brain. Not yet.

Christy and I both turned, and I could see someone standing at the bottom of the church steps. For once, my vision was enough. The bright late-August sun glinted off a mane of thick, wavy hair. It was gold and red. A halo with a hint of hellfire.

Bo Dickinson.

My stomach clenched, and my fist tightened around my cane. Part of me expected her to lunge at us. For our hair to be pulled. Or our eyes clawed out. I’d never been in a fight before, and Christy hadn’t, either—as far as I knew—but I was sure Bo Dickinson had. And my guess was, she was the type to fight mean and dirty.

If Christy was scared, I couldn’t tell. She put on her Sunday school voice and said, “Good morning, Bo. You joining us for church today?”

Bo didn’t say anything. For a second, she just stood there. I didn’t know, but I guessed she was probably staring me and Christy down. My heart had lodged itself in my throat, and I wasn’t too sure if I’d ever breathe normally again.

But then, to my surprise, the burning halo began to move away, down the sidewalk.

“Maybe next week?” Christy hollered after her. “Jesus loves you, Bo.” Then, under her breath, she murmured, “Whore. Probably on a walk of shame home right now. No other reason to be out this early on a Sunday unless you’re church-bound.”

“Christy, Agnes,” Brother Thomas called from the top of the steps. “It’s almost nine, girls. Y’all come on inside and head to your class.”

“Coming, sir,” Christy said. “You ready, Agnes?”

I stared down the street, my eyes following the back of Bo’s head until she was too far away and the golden-red colors blurred with the rest of the hazy world around me.

“Agnes!” Christy tugged on my free hand. “Come on.”

“Oh, sorry.” I turned around and followed her into the church, my cane tapping the corner of each step. “Can you believe that?” I whispered as we made our way across the sanctuary and toward the hallway that led to the classrooms.

“What?”

“Bo,” I said. “That she just walked away.”

“Of course she did,” Christy said. “What was she gonna do, beat us up right in front of Brother Thomas? Besides, even Bo would never hit a blind girl.”

My sister hadn’t gone to church with us that day. Actually, she hadn’t been to church with us in a while. Not since she turned eighteen and declared that Mama and Daddy couldn’t make her go anymore. They’d tried. And Grandma had called and given her a talking-to. But Gracie didn’t budge.

Most of the time, she’d sleep in on Sunday morning and was gone when the rest of us got home. I was never sure where she went all day. There was hardly anything to do in Mursey on Sundays, and most of her friends had to be in church. The whole town was in church. Except the Dickinsons, but I doubted Gracie was hanging out with them.

Mama and Daddy didn’t question her much, though. Not lately. She was less than a week from leaving for college in Lexington, and she was spending as much of that time out of the house as she could.

She still hadn’t gotten home by the time I went to bed that night, but my parents had left the porch light on for her.

“She’s an adult now,” Mama said. “She can stay out a little late if she wants.”

It was just past one in the morning when I got up to use the bathroom. I had to hold my alarm clock up to my face to read the red numbers. I climbed out of bed and crept through the house in the dark, sliding my hand along the walls. I didn’t need my cane or any lights on. We’d lived in this house since I was born, and I knew it as well as I knew the sound of my mother’s voice. I could probably have left for years, not step foot in this house for decades, only to come back and still be able to find my way around in the dark without a second thought.

Not that that was real likely. Best I could figure, I’d probably grow old in this house.

The bathroom was right at the top of the stairs. I looked down and saw that the lamp in the living room was still on, which meant Gracie wasn’t back yet. She always turned it off on her way up to bed. With the light on, I could make out some of the living room furniture—the back of Daddy’s recliner, the coffee table, one side of the tan couch. It was still blurry, and if it had been anyone else’s house, I wouldn’t have been able to tell what a bit of it was. But it was my living room; it hadn’t changed in years, so my memory filled in some of the gaps my eyes couldn’t.

I opened the bathroom door, not bothering to turn on the light. There was no point unless I was checking my reflection, and I sure didn’t want to do that. Even I could see how messy my hair got after a few hours of sleep.

I’d just finished washing my hands and shut off the faucet when I heard the front door open downstairs. I poked my head out of the bathroom and watched as shadows crossed the living room.

“Come on,” my sister’s voice whispered.

“What about your parents?”

I didn’t know that voice, but it belonged to a boy.

“They’re heavy sleepers,” Gracie told him. “And we’ll sneak you out before they get up in the morning.”

“You sure?”

“You don’t want to?”

“No. Believe me, I do.”

The shadows weren’t crisp enough for me to make out what they were doing, but I knew what it sounded like when people kissed. Not from personal experience—just TV and some awkward encounters in the hallways at school—but that’s what my sister and this boy were doing at the bottom of the stairs.

I felt my cheeks heat up.

After a second, the kissing sounds stopped. Gracie giggled. “Let’s go upstairs,” she whispered.

I backed up and hid behind the bathroom door. I heard the lamp switch off, and a second later two sets of footsteps hurried up the stairs and past me, down the hall. There were a few more seconds of giggling before Gracie’s door shut with a soft latching sound.

I leaned against the wall for a minute, then pressed my fingers to my lips, wondering what it was like to be kissed, wondering if I’d ever find out. I’d been jealous of my sister a thousand times over the years—she was the one with perfect vision, the more popular one, the more confident one. But it was more than that.

Gracie stayed out late. Gracie had boyfriends. Gracie went to parties and was going to college.

Gracie was getting out of Mursey.

And I was gonna be stuck here forever.

We don’t drive too far, just across the county line and a few miles down the highway. I mean to go farther, but the adrenaline’s fading fast, and the late hour is catching up with me. There ain’t no way I’m driving this tired. Not with Agnes in the car.

I pull into the parking lot of the first hotel I see. A giant, glowing sign tells us it’s Sleepy’s Spot. It’s awful big, two stories, and seems as decent a place as any to catch a few hours of shut-eye.

“Where are we?” Agnes asks. She don’t sound a bit tired.

“Hotel,” I say. “Come on.”

“Shouldn’t we keep going? We can’t be far from home yet.”

“I’m too tired to keep driving,” I tell her. “Your parents won’t know you’re gone until morning, and nobody’s gonna be hunting for me this late. If they are, they won’t be looking outside Mursey yet. We got a few hours.”

Agnes clearly ain’t so sure about this, but she don’t argue. I get out of the car and unload Utah, who stretches and yawns before hopping out of the backseat.

“Grab our backpacks,” I tell Agnes. “Don’t bother with your cane. I’ll guide you in.”

She tosses her white cane, folded up into a bundle of sticks, onto the floorboard. Me and Utah walk around the car and wait until Agnes’s got one backpack slung over her shoulders and the other hanging from her right hand. I stare at the purple bag for a second, the one she brought with her.

“You didn’t bring your phone, did you?”

“Of course not. Just clothes and money—like you said.”

“All right. Just making sure.”

She holds out her left arm, and I step forward, letting her grip just above my elbow, the way she’d taught me.

We don’t say a word as we head across the parking lot, toward the automatic sliding doors of the hotel.

“Good evening,” says the man behind the desk, even though it’s several hours past evening, if you ask me. “How can I help y’all?”

“We need a room,” I say.

His eyes fall on Utah, and he stumbles backward, even though there’s a tall counter between us. Like he’s scared my dog, who’s wagging her tail so hard she could clear a coffee table, might maul him. I oughta not be so hard on him, though. German shepherds do have real sharp teeth. And he don’t know Utah would never use them.

He clears his throat. “Ah. Well, do you have a reservation?”

“No.”

“I see … How old are you two?”

“Seventeen. Why?”

“I’m sorry, girls.” But he don’t look too sorry to me. “We can’t let you rent a room from us.”

“Why the hell not?” I demand.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Well, for one thing, we don’t allow pets. But even if we did, all our guests are required to be at least twenty-one.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m afraid I’m not,” he says, and he sounds awful annoyed. Probably ain’t used to being cussed at by teenagers in the middle of the night. “And you’ll find that’s the case with most hotels in Kentucky. Now, if you have somewhere else to keep the dog and a parent or guardian who can—”

Me and Agnes are out the door before he can even finish that sentence.

“What do we do now?” Agnes asks when we’re back in the car. “We can’t rent a hotel room—I think the twenty-one thing might actually be the law.”

“Then we’ll find a place that’ll break the law.” I know there must be places that’ll rent to just about anybody. Too many girls get pregnant on prom night, and I know they ain’t doing it at their parents’ house. There’s gotta be somewhere that’ll let teenagers in.

We ain’t driven five minutes when I see a place. Big red lights above the door read
MOT L
—the
E
is burned out. The place looks run-down and dirty, even on the outside. The sorta place I’m sure a lot of drug deals have gone down in—many of them probably involving people in my family. If any place is gonna let two teenage girls rent a room, it’s this one.

Beggars can’t be choosers. Ain’t that what they say? And me and Agnes aren’t exactly on vacation. A shitty motel won’t be the worst thing that’s happened to us.

Well, not to me.

“Does this seem like a good place to try?” Agnes asks.

I’m glad she can’t see the graffitied brick walls or the trash-covered parking lot.

“
Good
ain’t the word,” I say. “But this is where we’re staying. Come on.”

Like I suspect, the man at the front desk don’t give a damn about our age. Just as long as we pay in cash. Agnes takes some money out of her backpack, and we get a key to a room at the far end of the parking lot. He don’t even ask about the dog. But when I unlock the door, I can see why. Utah can’t make this place any worse than it already is.

The carpet ain’t been vacuumed in years, and there are some mysterious stains on the wall I don’t even wanna know about.

Agnes can’t see none of it. She might be able to make everything out a little better if one of the lamps—the one on the desk—wasn’t broken. I try to see the place through her eyes. Just a bed and a TV, with all the dirty details smoothed over.

“We should sleep,” she says. “My parents will be up at seven thirty to get ready for church. I wanna be long gone before they come looking for me.”

“Or the police do.”

“They won’t call the police. I left a note. They’ll know it was me who took the car. They’ll know it’s not stolen. But they
will
come looking.”

I set the alarm for seven. Just three short hours away. Somehow, the thought of waking up that soon makes me feel even more tired than I already am.

“I need to use the bathroom first.” She starts heading toward the bathroom, her arms outstretched, looking for the wall.

I don’t help her. I know she can do it herself. But I do give her some advice. “Hey, Agnes? Don’t sit on the toilet, okay?”

“What?”

“Squat when you pee. Don’t sit down.”

The look on her face makes me wonder if she’s ever had to squat over a toilet in her life. Probably not.