We crossed over into bland, boring Ohio on a one-lane, out-of-the-way bridge. I kept sneaking glances at Mom with her newly mud-colored hair. She’d also hacked a lot of it off. Considering she’d styled it using nail scissors in a gas-station bathroom, she didn’t look as bad as you might expect. But she didn’t look like herself. She just looked . . . wrong.
It felt wrong to be in Ohio, too. Back in fifth grade when we had to memorize the states and know how to find them on a map, Ohio was one of those states I always forgot.
But now I would be living there. That was where Mom had found a job.
It was late in the day when we arrived in Deskins, Ohio. It looked like it’d been built about five minutes before we got there. Everything in the downtown looked new, and many of the housing developments we passed were still just half-finished. In the dim light of dusk, it looked like the new houses were marching across the fields, taking over.
Nobody has any history here, I thought, and smiled.
“There’s the hospital,” Mom said, pointing at a shining glass building set far back from the street.
I squinted out the window. The concrete sidewalks around the hospital didn’t look dry yet; trees with their roots in burlap lay on the bare ground nearby, just a promise of eventual landscaping. The side of the hospital was still framed by scaffolding.
“Is it even open yet?” I asked.
“Last week,” Mom said. “But they’re doing a gradual start-up, so it will be a while before they’re at full capacity. That’s why they’re still hiring nurses.”
“Your job’s a sure thing, though, isn’t it?” I asked, suddenly anxious. “It’s not like they’ll suddenly decide you need another interview, only in person this time, or that you need to take some test, or—”
“Becca,” Mom said, and her voice was steely now. “All I have to do is fill out paperwork. I have good experience. They were eager to hire me.”
Mom had worked as a nurse until a few years earlier. Then she and Daddy had decided she didn’t need to work anymore, because his company was making so much money.
Of course, now we knew where all that extra cash really had come from.
The full meaning of Mom’s explanation sank in.
“Wait, Mom—your experience—you had to tell them where you worked before?” I asked. “So they know where you’re from? And—”
“Relax, Becca, they don’t know anything,” Mom said, waving my concerns away.
I grabbed her arm, my anxiety escalating.
“How can you be so sure? How—”
Mom pulled up to a stoplight. It had just turned red, so she had plenty of time to turn her head and look me right in the eye. But she didn’t. She kept staring straight ahead.
“Mr. Trumbull helped with that, too,” Mom said. “He said there are ways to deal with this, that women use when they’re trying to escape abusive relationships, and—”
“Abusive?” I shrieked. “Mom, Daddy never beat you! Or me! Anyway, it’s not like he could hurt us now even if he wanted to. He’s going to be in prison for the next . . .”
Ten years. That was all I needed to say to finish the sentence, but it was all too new and fresh, like a wound that hadn’t scabbed over yet. I couldn’t force the words out.
I wish I had. I wish I had said “ten years” in such a cold, clinical voice that Mom decided to treat me like an adult. Maybe she would have told me everything right then.
Instead, Mom reached over and patted me on the shoulder. She finally turned and looked me in the eye, but her expression was guarded. This time she was wearing a mask of concern and pity. When she spoke, she sounded like she was speaking to a toddler.
“Becca, we’re safe here. I promise,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about anything.”
Maybe that tone had worked on me when I was young, happy and secure and certain that, no matter what, Mommy and Daddy and everybody else would always love me. But I was fourteen and my whole world had just fallen apart, and I wasn’t certain of anything anymore.
How could I not worry? How could I ever feel safe again?
• • •
The new student orientation at Deskins High School was the next afternoon. We were lucky school started later in Ohio than in Georgia. Still, Mom and I barely had time to unload everything into our tiny new apartment, return the U-Haul trailer, and squeeze in quick showers before it was time to go.
“Mom, hurry up!” I yelled, banging on the bathroom door.
The door was flimsier than our doors back home. My third knock was too much for the latch, and the door swung wide open.
Mom was standing on the throw rug before the sink, having just stepped out of the shower. She was completely naked.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I cried, yanking on the door handle to pull it shut again, even as Mom grabbed a towel. “I didn’t mean to do that!”
“Becca, just wait! I’ll be out in a minute!” Mom called.
I leaned against the wall—also flimsy—and grimaced. Somehow it didn’t seem so horrifying that I’d seen her naked body, as that I’d seen her naked face. Freed (she thought) of the need to keep up appearances for me, she’d been leaning toward the mirror. And in the one unguarded moment before she saw me watching, I could have sworn that she’d been whispering to herself: “I can’t do this. I can’t . . .”
Mom came out of the bathroom, fully clothed in a classy dress with a light-blue sweater. I was wearing my favorite Abercrombie & Fitch shirt and my favorite jeans—I figured Abercrombie & Fitch and jeans were a safe bet anywhere. It hadn’t really been worth it to sell our clothes, the way we’d sold our furniture, so at least we could both still look good. Even her hair looked okay.
I decided I’d probably been wrong about what Mom was saying to the mirror.
“The school’s right across the street, so how long do you really think it will take to get there?” she teased.
If she wasn’t going to say anything about what she’d been whispering in the bathroom, I wasn’t going to either.
I dodged stacks of boxes and bounded toward the front door. Mom was still rifling through papers in her purse, so I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking out. We were in the last unit of the Whispering Pines apartment building, then there was the wide street called Chargers Way (Was the school mascot maybe the Chargers?), then there was an immense green yard, and then, at the top of a hill, Deskins High School loomed above us. The building was red brick and imposing, with a three-story portion in the center and two-story wings jutting out on either side.
Everything will be fine there, I told myself. I don’t know anybody and nobody knows me and that’s good. I’ll make a good first impression. I always make a good first impression. As long as it’s just me people are judging.
“Okay,” Mom said, catching up to me. “Let’s go.”
I glanced toward a paper sticking out of her purse. STUDENT INFORMATION FORM, it said at the top.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Mom said. “Paperwork. If they ask you to fill out any other forms, just let me take care of it. I don’t think they will. They made a big deal on the website about how that was the parents’ responsibility, and—”
She stopped talking because I reached over and yanked the paper away from her.
The form looked a lot like the ones I’d handed in every August in elementary and early middle school, back home in Georgia. After that, the school had gone to having everything online, but I guess Deskins High School still liked old-fashioned paper. After the basic information about me, Mom had filled in her own name as “Teresa Jones,” as if she went by her middle name. That was weird, though I could understand why she’d done it. But then . . .
On the line labeled “Father’s name,” she’d written “N/A.”
“N-A?” I said, puzzled.
“Not . . . ,” Mom began. She gulped and finished in a faint voice: “Not applicable.”
“Not applicable?” I repeated. “Like . . . like I don’t even have a father? Like he doesn’t exist? Like I never had one?”
“Becca,” Mom said. “You don’t want anyone to know who your father is. Or where he is. Right? What do you want me to put on that line? And on the ‘Father’s Address’ line right below?”
I gaped at her. I wanted to turn around and run away, not to have to deal with any of this.
No, wait. We already did that.
This was what we’d run to. This was our fresh new start where nobody knew us, and if I turned and ran or did anything else strange, I’d ruin everything. Especially since I could already see kids arriving at the high school across the street. And they could already see me.
“I don’t know,” I muttered.
“Look,” Mom said. “Lots of kids don’t have fathers. The school will be sensitive about it. They won’t ask questions.”
I gritted my teeth. I wanted to yell at Mom, “I thought you said we weren’t going to lie!” But, really, this wasn’t a lie. The school wanted both my parents’ names, so they’d know who to call if I started throwing up in biology class or broke my arm in gym class or some such thing. And Dad would never be available for any of that.
He really didn’t matter.
Do I believe that? Do I want to believe that?
I didn’t want to think about it. Not now, not when I needed to be plastering a calm, easygoing look on my face, not when I needed to act the same way I always did back home that made people like me, and made me have friends without even trying.
Before Daddy was arrested, anyway.
“Fine,” I snarled at Mom. I wasn’t calm yet, but I told myself I was getting the last of the anxiety out of my system. I shoved the form back into her purse.
“Becca,” Mom said pleadingly, reaching for my arm. But I’d already stepped past her, rushing forward again.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said.
We didn’t talk the rest of the way to the school, which gave me time to look over the kids streaming through the wide front doors of Deskins High School. I saw several Abercrombie & Fitch shirts and a few girls with the same kind of jeans I was wearing, so that was okay. One thing that was different from back home was that a lot of the kids with darker skin didn’t look African American—some of them were Indian, I guessed, others, maybe Arabic. And there was a sprinkling of Chinese-or Japanese- or Korean-looking kids too. If I’d stayed in Georgia and gone to Belpre High School, pretty much everyone would have just been black or white. Or a mix of the two.
What’s going on? Are people from all over the world running away and ending up in Deskins, Ohio? I wondered.
The thought made me smile. If there were a lot of different people here—and different types of people—then nothing would seem strange about me.
But how would I know how to fit in?
I stayed close to Mom as we stepped through the doors and moved toward a table where three women sat before laptops.
“My daughter’s enrolling as a new student. She’s a freshman. Becca Jones,” Mom said to the woman in the middle, behind the J–N sign.
The woman kept her gaze on the computer screen. I could see her starting to type, “J-O-N-E—”
“I didn’t fill out anything online. Everything’s right here,” Mom said, pulling the student information form out of her purse. She dug deeper in her purse and added a few other papers. “Here’s her transfer information too.”
The woman frowned, as if annoyed at having to deal with paper. I was annoyed too—why hadn’t Mom filled out everything online ahead of time? She was no computer expert like Daddy, but this was basic.
The woman pulled the papers closer and stared flipping through them.
“Okay, but we need all her records from her old school,” she said.
“Her homeschooling equivalency scores are there,” Mom said. “That should take care of everything.”
Probably I was the only one who heard the tiny tremor in Mom’s voice. The woman was still looking down at the papers, so I’m sure she didn’t see me whip my head toward Mom. I barely managed to keep from crying out, What? Homeschooling? What are you talking about?
I’d never been homeschooled. I’d gone to Apple Valley Elementary School and McCormick Middle School. And back at Belpre High School, back in Georgia, there was a thick file on me, with school pictures from kindergarten on and all my standardized test scores and my report cards and everything else the school system thought was important enough to keep. I knew it was there, because when we’d gone for eighth-grade visitation day, one of the guidance counselors had made a big deal about how your permanent record followed you, and how the records were sent to the high school right after school ended in May, and so all of us should keep our noses clean in eighth grade if we didn’t want to start high school with a bad image right away.
I hadn’t done anything to mess up my eighth-grade record. But did schools write down things like, “Becca’s father was arrested/Becca’s father was deemed a flight risk so he had to go to prison even before the trial/Becca’s father was convicted and sentenced and will be in prison so long she’ll have time to graduate from high school and college and maybe even grad school, too, before he gets out”? If they did, I didn’t want my permanent record following me. If they did, Mom was doing the right thing.
But if all my previous years of school were replaced by made-up numbers on a thin sheet of paper, then who was I?
Mom’s eyes were begging me not to make a scene. She leaned in close and whispered, so softly only I could hear, “I’m sorry. I was going to tell you but . . . the time never seemed right. I thought I could handle it while you were signing up for classes, and we could talk about it later.”
I opened my mouth, though I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to thank her or yell. Mom leaned toward me a second time.
“I didn’t say you were homeschooled, just that we’re using those scores to get you in,” she whispered directly into my ear. “And they match your real scores, so it’s accurate. They’ll put you in the right classes.”
The woman, ignoring us, was typing in my information. I was still standing there openmouthed. Behind me a loudspeaker crackled to life, and a man’s voice called out, “All new freshmen and sophomores, please report to room one-oh-six, by the guidance office. Juniors and seniors, go to room one-oh-two. Parents, please report to the cafeteria.”
I took a step back from Mom. Mom started to ask the woman at the computer, “Um, where—”
“Mom, it’s okay. We can just follow everyone else,” I interrupted.
I didn’t wait for her answer. I just turned and walked away. I saw where Room 106 was, but I purposely walked past it. I went to a drinking fountain outside Room 112 and bent over and pretended to drink while I pulled myself together.
Mom’s just watching out for you, I told myself, leaning my head against the wall. She’s just making 100 percent sure nobody knows we’re related to Daddy. So I can just be myself here. Isn’t that what I wanted? Isn’t that why we moved?
I straightened up and went back to Room 106. I made my stride casual and carefree; I smiled at the few kids coming from the other way. But I was the last one to step into the room. Only two seats were left: one beside a girl with red hair; the other beside a girl wearing a head scarf. I guessed she was Muslim.
Oh, I want a head scarf to hide behind! I thought. One of those full-body thingies would be even better—a burkah? Why didn’t Mom and I wear those in court?
I reminded myself nobody knew I’d spent so much of the summer in court. Nobody knew Daddy was in prison. And Mom had made sure nobody in Deskins ever would.
I eased into the seat beside the redhead.
“Hi,” I said, trying to sound just as cheerful and likable as the Becca Jones I’d been before Daddy was arrested.
Redhead turned reluctantly toward me. I realized I’d interrupted her flirting with the guy on the other side of her. He was a muscular hottie—either he was some big athlete or he worked out all the time or he was on steroids. Or maybe all three.
Redhead saw me checking out Muscle Boy. She started to narrow her eyes like I was competition. I made my eyes all wide and innocent and raised my eyebrows a little, hoping she’d get the message, No, no, I can tell you saw him first. He’s all yours. Good for you! I can play wingman—wing-woman—to help out. What do you want me to do?
This was the kind of thing that worked back in middle school in Georgia. I hoped the rules for getting people to like you wouldn’t be that different in high school in Ohio.
Redhead’s expression relaxed.
“Hi, I’m Shannon,” she said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder as if trying to attract the entire room’s attention: Are you watching this? See how everyone wants to talk to me? She elbowed Muscle Boy. “This is Brent.”
I lifted my eyebrows a little higher and thought at Shannon, See? I gave you an excuse to touch his arm!
“I’m Becca,” I said.
“I moved here from Marysville, and Brent’s transferring from Grove City so he can play football—did you hear about those schools canceling sports?” Shannon asked, loud enough to be heard two rows away. She was definitely trying to turn every kid in the room into her audience.
I concentrated on looking as horrified as she wanted me to and congratulated myself for figuring out Brent was an athlete.
But I should have braced for Shannon’s next question.
“Where are you from, Becca?” she asked.
I stared at her.
“I—” I began, and stopped.
Stupid! Didn’t you know if you talked to people, they’d ask that? Why didn’t you have an answer ready? Just make up something! Er, no, what if you name someplace that Shannon knows all about and she starts asking tons of questions and then she can tell you’re lying? Just say, “The South.” No—then she’ll say, “Where in the South?” and you’re right back in it. What if she knows all about Daddy, what if she remembers he was from Georgia, what if just saying “Georgia,” makes her know who I am, no matter how hard Mom worked to hide it. . . .
It was starting to look really weird that I hadn’t said anything after “I.” I could tell by Shannon’s expression that she was on the verge of switching her opinion of me from “friend potential” to “definite social liability.” And she’d been so loud—was every kid in the room waiting for my answer? Just to buy myself time, I started fake-coughing. I made the coughs sound deep and resonant and troubling, and I gestured at my throat and then out toward the hall.
“Got—to—drink—” I sputtered between coughs. And then I bolted from the room.
I hoped I was judging Shannon correctly, and she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d leave her seat beside a hot, muscular football player just because some other girl she didn’t even know was practically choking to death.
Out in the hall I found I couldn’t stop coughing, so I really did walk back to the water fountain I’d stopped at before. I gulped in the lukewarm water, which tasted like it’d been sitting in a rusty pipe all summer. The water made me cough more. I stood there, hunched over the fountain, coughing and gulping and thinking, You can’t even pretend you’re the same Becca Jones you used to be. You can’t be popular here. You have to make it so nobody notices you, nobody wants to ask you questions, nobody cares who you are . . .
I felt a hand on my back and heard a voice say, “Are you all right?”
I whirled around. It wasn’t Shannon behind me. It was the girl in the head scarf.
We stared at each other for a moment, and then she said, “I think I scared the coughing away.”
She had a faint accent, but I couldn’t place it, and I wasn’t about to ask where she was from. But it would be weird if I didn’t say anything, so I agreed. “You cured me! Thanks, um—”
“Jala,” she said, vaguely pointing at herself, as if she thought I might need that to understand.
“Becca,” I said, making the same gesture.
She didn’t seem to know what to say after that. I was stricken by a fear that she would settle on the same question Shannon had chosen—“Where are you from?”—and I didn’t have a safe answer yet.
Head off a question with another question, I told myself, and so I blurted out the first one that came to my mind: “Does it help? The head scarf, I mean?”
Something in her expression closed down, and I remembered she was a new kid too. She probably didn’t know anybody at Deskins High School, either.
“It’s called a hijab,” she said flatly. For a minute I thought that was all she was going to say, but then she went on, “Do you mean, does it make people stare more than they would otherwise? Does it make them say mean things, and act like they think I can’t hear them through the cloth?”
I was suddenly frantic at how completely she’d misunderstood.
“No, I mean, does it help you remember who you are—who you’re supposed to be, what you believe—even though you’re in a strange place, among strangers?” I asked.
She tilted her head, considering this seriously.
“It should,” she conceded. “The fact that it doesn’t—that’s probably my fault. I shouldn’t worry so much about everyone staring. But at my old school back in Michigan, there were a lot more Muslims. I’m not used to being the only one in a classroom.”
Jala was just from Michigan? Her accent was just Michigan-ish—Michiganian? Michigander? I guess it sounded exotic to me because I was used to the way people talked in the South.
Jala didn’t seem angry at me anymore, but I wasn’t going to let talking about her old school lead to questions about my old school. I saw that she had a piece of paper in her hand labeled “Class Schedule Requests.”
“What are you signing up for?” I asked.
Jala handed me her paper. I could tell she was a freshman like me because she’d listed Phys Ed I. Other than that, all her classes started with the words “honors” or “advanced.”
If Daddy hadn’t been arrested and convicted and sent to prison, and Mom and I hadn’t run away, I would have moved naturally from McCormick Middle School to Belpre High School without so much as a hiccup in my life. I would have hung out with people like Shannon, not like Jala, and not just because there probably wasn’t a single Muslim at Belpre High. I would have chosen my friends based on who was popular and good-looking, and whether they could make me seem popular and look good too. I would have picked my classes based on what I could glide through with the least effort, so I had time for hours of texting and exchanging gossip on Facebook and planning parties and hanging out.
But I couldn’t be around people who lived for gossip anymore, because, if I wasn’t careful, the gossip at Deskins High School would be about me. I needed to be around people who were quiet and trustworthy and kind—and maybe studying too hard to care about gossip or nosy questions. And if the Jalas of Deskins High School were all in the advanced and honors classes, then those were the classes I would take too.
I handed Jala’s class schedule request sheet back to her.
“That’s almost exactly what I’m signing up for,” I said. “Except for that one.”
I pointed to the last course title she’d filled in: Honors Computer Programming I.
“You don’t like computers?” Jala asked.
“No, not at all,” I said, shaking my head for emphasis. “I hate everything about them. I’m horrible with computers.”
And that was the first lie I told at Deskins High School.