It spooked me, seeing Griffin alone in the blue light of the TV. It was as if he had nothing to do except come after me. I had to get ready to run. I was on pins and needles until the bank card and PIN number arrived the next Tuesday. “Strictly a desperation move,” Harley had told me. “A one-shot before you move on, ’cause you can’t go back—it burns the ID. Never tried it myself.”
We’d been sitting in a coffee shop someplace down south. Atlanta, maybe. Wherever it was, it was raining and the waitress kept calling me “sugar.” Harley’d spooned about five sugars of his own into his mug, and a bunch of those little cream containers too. Before energy drinks got popular, I used to watch him put sugar in Coke.
“What you do, see,”—he stopped to sip—“is you open an account with the ID, get a pin card. Then, just before you’re going to split, go to a branch bank machine and key in a check deposit for whatever.”
I was eating a cream-filled donut. I remember wiping cream off my chin. “What do you deposit?”
“Nothing. That’s the beauty part. You just stick a piece of paper into one of the deposit envelopes, feed it in and punch in anything—five hundred, say. The machine will give you cash against it right away. If you time it right, it’s at least a good eight hours before they clear the machines and find out they’ve been burned. By then you’re long gone.”
I figured five hundred would get me food and a bus to Reno and leave some for a cushion. I wouldn’t work the scam until the last minute. As soon as I did, Danny wouldn’t just be a runaway—he’d be wanted for theft.
Even if I had cash covered, I still needed a way to move. I was past daydreaming about crossing the lake. No buses stopped in Port Hope. There were only two trains a day, and they were both at times when everyone would notice I was gone. That left Mr. Hunter’s car. His keys were always in that jacket draped over his chair at Open Book. He parked his blue Lumina behind the building. I’d done some driving with Harley, on backroads where no one would notice.
Now that I had the bank card, the plan was simple. Pick a day, leave a note for Shan saying I was going to be late, scoop Hunter’s keys, hit the bank and then the road. Hunter would still be handing out workbooks to stoners. Shan wouldn’t wonder about me until I was long gone. I figured I could make it the thirty miles to a commutertrain station, ditch the car and hop the train to Toronto, then take a night bus to the border.
Planning it was one thing. Doing it was another. I was tied up in knots. One minute I’d be sweating to get away, the next I’d decide to tough it out. I kept going past Griffin’s place. It didn’t help. Finally, I gave myself until Thursday. If Griffin hadn’t made a move by then, I’d be gone.
There was another reason I was tied up in knots. Every time I went past Griffin’s place, I went past Gillian’s too. I told myself I stayed in Port Hope because she was my good luck. At Open Book now, I’d pretend to read The Hobbit when I was really watching her wrists, looking for those scars. She always wore tops with extra-long sleeves, though, sometimes with bracelets underneath, and she’d nip at the ends of her sleeves with her fingers as she bent over her workbook, tugging like a puppy worrying a bone. If she’d really tried to off herself because of her old man, I didn’t know what to think.
It had been a long time since leaving someone had made me feel anything. I knew people were supposed to get all torn up about it, like Gillian had with her dad, but I was way past letting myself do that. You didn’t do that and survive the Bad Time. Sometimes I’d have a kind of empty feeling and realize I’d been thinking about Harley, but it was easy to make sure that was as far as it got. I had enough to think about in the here and now. And if I could keep out thoughts of Harley—and he’d never even done anything bad to me—I could keep out almost anything. That was the safe way.
If I could block out Harley, I could block out Gillian. Thursday came and nothing had changed. It had to be, then. I scooped socks and underwear from my dresser drawer and stuck them in my pack. I had my jacket and Danny’s ID and the bank card. I left the note for Shan.
I put in the morning at Open Book somehow. Mr. Hunter’s jacket hung on the back of his chair like always. You could see the lump of his keys in one pocket. I had a handful of rocks I’d gathered down at the river to replace them with. Gillian worked across from me all morning. I slouched behind my book, waiting. The room would empty at noon. I’d tell Gillian I’d catch up to her after I went to the bank. She’d head out, Hunter would duck down the hall to take a leak…it was a piece of cake, and I was freaking.
Gillian looked up at me. “What’s with you?”
“Nothing.”
She said, “People are coming to look at our house tonight.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “I guess. It’s weird.”
“You want to move, don’t you?” I needed her to say it.
She looked at me. She bit her upper lip and tugged her sleeves some more. She said, “My mom went on a tidying binge last night. Now I’m supposed to cut the grass after school.”
That was all it took. “You need a hand?”
She smiled. Everything in me unwound. Maybe I couldn’t block her out. Maybe I didn’t want to.
The lawn hadn’t been cut in a long time. The front yard was all sloped, and the back was even steeper— it was terraced into four sections. You did the cutting there with an old mower that had yellow ropes attached so you could lower it down. I did the cutting, and Gillian used an electric weed whipper to trim. The air was cool, but I was sweating.
There were trees at the bottom of the yard. Beyond them was the back of another property. The house there had a patio door that opened to a weathered deck with an old gas barbecue, a glass-topped table with an umbrella and two chairs with matching cushions, all faded. The first few leaves had already turned. I worked my way down, then dragged the mower across the bottom patch of lawn. I was panting when I bent to shut off the engine. Silence rushed in. I listened to it. A bird flapped and squawked. Then I heard the scrape of a patio door opening and footsteps on planking. I looked up. Griffin was standing on his deck, looking as worn as his furniture. “It’s time to talk,” he said.