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I don’t tell Leslie or anybody else that I am leaving. I just pack everything I can into the front trunk of my Volkswagen and the back seat. I am not running away. I’m just leaving, moving on, I am free to do that, the judge said. I’m an adult—that is what the Order of Emancipation means, that I can take care of myself and don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. I don’t want to hear Leslie or Mr. McGill or Mr. Billups telling me that I am making a mistake. I know they will think it is a mistake. I leave a note on my rose-splattered comforter as I leave the room for the last time. I’ve spent the happiest summer of my life in this room, but my feet are absolutely itching to go. Standing still feels too much like dying, and I am too young to die. I drop a letter in the mailbox for Mr. Billups, telling him that I’m not going to be back, and thanking him for everything he has done for me and my mom.
I head out to meet Warren at his brother’s house. He is finished packing when I get there, and he and his brother are sitting on the porch passing a joint between the two of them. He meets me as I cross the yard and kisses me long and hard, passing the smoke from his mouth to mine. I don’t take it in, not really, but I take his kiss, and his hand cups my rear as we make our way back to the porch.
The scent of the weed takes me back to the Friday Fires, when Mitch was with us and before everything really went to shit. There was always weed, and music, and in the memory, it feels like a happy time. I don’t remember thinking I was happy then. Maybe happy just isn’t in me. I sit on the porch, listening to Warren and Harold talking, not really hearing them, not letting it register, just feeling very nostalgic with the smoke wafting into the sky.
***
It is a little over a two-hour drive to St. Louis, but we don’t quite reach St. Louis. We pull off at the Greenville exit, and I follow him through town and past the downtown area and into a parking lot. The apartment he has found for us is above a dry cleaners, and it is just getting dusk when we pile the last load from the cars into the giant living room. He shows me through the place, moving from living room to bedroom, through bedroom to bathroom, through bathroom to kitchen. The kitchen is narrow with old appliances and a single wide sink. A window is cut into the wall, but it is so small that the only thing I can see through it are the bricks from the building across the alley. The apartment is big, but the layout is off. I don’t like that you have to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom. There are no doors on the bedroom, not even between it and the bathroom. The only door is between the kitchen and the bathroom, and I guess that is a small blessing, but blessing enough.
I’m here with Warren, and nothing else matters. We are together. There is a mattress in the bedroom, laid out on the floor, the sheets rumpled from his last night spent here. He tackles me, lifting me off the floor, and we fall on the mattress, which thumps against the wall. I laugh, but he is intense and serious. “Is it okay?” I nod because I can’t speak. My stomach is churning with what I have done. I am living with a man. I hadn’t really thought about the reality of moving away with him—it had just been about getting away, about not having to figure it out on my own.
We make love, and I let his touch and his kisses take away my worries. I fold into him when he is done, and he draws the sheets up over us and he sleeps, his hand cupping my breast. I stare across the floor and into the corner, where a small pile of dust has accumulated. Dusk falls, the light from the living room windows—the only real windows in the apartment—dims, and tears spill out of the corner of my eyes. Leaking over the bridge of my nose and down onto the pillow and for some reason I can’t stop thinking about Dylan. Dylan with his clean life. How disappointed he would be to see me in my dirty little life.
Sobs rack my body, hitching in my chest until Warren turns away from me, snoring into his pillow. I get up from the mattress and pass, naked, through the curtain that serves as the bathroom door. I am relieved there are towels, and even more relieved when the water pressure comes on strong. The blackness inside of me is like a wave, washing from one edge of my brain to the other, and I scrub myself in the shower until the water begins to run cold. I love Warren. I am in love with Warren. I tell myself over and over again that this is good. We are in love. This is what you are supposed to do. I can’t understand why I feel so nervous and tense. Everything is good. Great, in fact, but all I want is a sharp object to release the pressure in my soul.
I wrap myself in a towel and walk on tiptoes through the bedroom, where Warren has shifted, his arms flung out wide, the sheets thrown off, his flaccid penis draped over his thigh. I catch this vision before I turn off the light in the bathroom and the rooms are dropped into darkness. The living room is lit only by the dim glow of a streetlight down the road to the right. I rummage through my bags until I find a t-shirt and sweats for sleep. I am tired, but so raw that I don’t know if I will sleep. I discover that this is the best room in the apartment, and the best part is the deacon’s bench that lines the windows. I sit in front of one of the tall windows, my knees drawn up, staring out into the traffic, intermittently moving past.
I wish Warren would wake up and come to find me, so I wouldn’t feel so alone. He doesn’t. I sit until the moon rises into the frame of the window and slowly begins to sink toward dawn. I am cold and my butt is numb from sitting on the hard wood of the bench for so long. Back in the bedroom I lower myself onto the mattress, trying not to wake him, trying to stay to the side. He feels me, and in his sleep he reaches out, drawing me into the fold of his warmth. I pull the sheet over me and let his warm breath rush along my neck. I am okay. I am okay. I am okay. Somewhere during the dark before dawn, my eyes grow heavy enough to close, and my heart beat syncs to his, slowing and pacing with the blood moving through the veins of his arms, which are under my cheek, over my ribs, curving to tuck under my hip. Enclosed, encapsulated by his pulsing blood, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, and in that cocoon, finally, there is sleep.
My dreams are filled with images from a life left behind, of Dylan and his parents, of Mitch, of Leslie, of Tommy and Jay, of my mother. I hadn’t told anyone goodbye. I just ran away. I wake with my mother’s voice echoing in my head. “You running away? Trust me, that doesn’t turn out good.”
I sit up suddenly, yanking the sheets off of both of us, as realization hits me. My mother had run away once. How did I not know? How could I not have known?
Her words echo in my head. “Trust me, that doesn’t turn out good.”