Daddy’s here? I think. In Atlanta? Same as me? Where I could see him if I just took another short bus ride?
I can’t take my eyes off those words: “Atlanta, Georgia.” It’s as if I think that looking away even for an instant will cause the letters to rearrange and change into “Herlong, California.”
The elevator dings and I jump—I’m back on the ground floor. I stumble out of the elevator through a lobby full of adults in suits, where a teenage girl in jeans stands out and looks odd. I hadn’t thought about that going up to Mr. Trumbull’s office. If Excellerand has cameras trained on this lobby, they’d notice me right away. And if I stop to read a letter with a return address that even a fairly low-res camera could read as being from “Roger Jones” . . . what then?
I press the letter from Daddy against my chest, the blank side of the envelope facing out. I put my head down and barrel toward the door.
The sidewalks out front are empty, but that just makes me feel more exposed. I walk a block, then two. The envelope is practically burning against my hand, but it doesn’t seem safe to glance at it again in such an open space let alone actually read the letter.
There, I think. There.
Beside a low brick wall around a Starbucks patio, I see a cluster of bushes. I wait until I’m sure no one is looking, and then I slide down between the wall and the bushes. Branches snag my hair and the bricks scrape my arm, but I’m out of sight.
I squat down in the mud, brace myself against the wall, and dare to look at the envelope again.
It still says “Atlanta.”
I flip the envelope over and slide a trembling finger under the flap. I pull out a thin sheet.
It’s more of Daddy’s handwriting. Nothing in this letter is typed.
I file that under “Interesting, but who knows what it means?” I blink a few times because my eyes seem determined to go blurry on me. And then I read:
My dear, dear Susan and Becca,
I know you probably get sick of hearing me say how much I miss you, but it’s still true. I know you are busy, and I know I deserve you still being mad at me, but your letters seem to come slower and slower. Becca, I enjoyed reading the two essays you sent from your schoolwork—the one about the girl who went to your school 15 years ago, and the one about Moby Dick—but what I really want to hear about is your life.
What? I never sent Daddy any of my essays! Would Mom have actually . . .
I remember Mom’s reaction when I told her about my Court scholarship application—she never read that essay. There’s no reason she would have snooped on my computer and sent my schoolwork to Daddy.
Then who did? How could Daddy have seen those essays?
I shiver but force myself to go back to reading Daddy’s letter. He talks about how I got a lot more out of Moby Dick than he ever did in high school, and about how the food at the penitentiary is getting monotonous after three years of the same thing week after week, the same scorched grits, the same overcooked okra . . .
Wait a minute—three years of grits and okra? That means he’s been in Atlanta for three years, doesn’t it? Why would grits and okra be on the menu in California?
I finish the letter and immediately start reading it again. But what I’m looking for isn’t there—there’s no paragraph I accidentally skipped over the first time explaining, “This is why I’m in Georgia when you thought I was in California” or “This is why I thought you’ve been sending me your school essays, when you really haven’t.” I also don’t find the answers I want the most: “And this is how you can go to college without tipping off Excellerand—and without having to cut off and abandon all your Deskins friends. . . .”
But if Daddy actually told me what to do, would I trust his advice? I wonder.
I put my head back against the brick wall and ease Mrs. Collins’s phone out of my pocket. I dial the home number for Mom’s friend.
It only rings once before Mom’s voice rushes at me: “Becca, I’m so glad you called! I was just telling Denise that it’s killing me, not knowing how you’re doing!”
This is code. I know Mom is trying to tell me, Denise is sitting right here with me, so if you’re going to tell me something I need to hear privately, let me know so I can work it out.
I don’t want Mom to hear about Daddy’s letter or my time with Mr. Trumbull while she’s sitting beside someone who can’t know the truth about us.
But I’m also having trouble figuring out what I would feel safe telling Mom by phone, in any location, when even my school essays were sent places I never expected. Have hordes of spies been watching us all along? Could there be listening devices on the brick wall behind me? In the bushes around me? What’s really going on?
“Um, I’m okay,” I say, even though it’s a lie. “I just met with the, um, college advisor. It didn’t go very well, but I’m looking into other possibilities. Don’t worry.”
Mom is not stupid. She can probably tell from my trembling voice just how badly everything went with Mr. Trumbull, just how baffled and scared and helpless I feel.
“Can I do anything to help?” she asks, and I can hear the strain in her voice—and the need to sound like a normal mom with normal worries for the sake of her friend beside her.
I’m back in the South, and sometimes old habits come back in a familiar place.
“Pray for me,” I tell Mom, without the slightest trace of irony. “I’ve got to go.”
I hang up.
The “I’ve got to go” was a lie, because I don’t actually know what to do next. Do I really think I’m protecting Mom by not telling her everything? Or am I just protecting myself from having to relive it all?
A bus rattles past on the street outside my hiding place, and I think longingly of just going back to Emory and joining my Deskins friends for lunch and pretending that none of this ever happened. I think I could almost do it. I could go back to Deskins and live out my senior year and throw caution to the wind and apply for college in spite of the Excellerand threat. It almost seems inevitable that Excellerand is going to get Mom and me in the end—we might as well enjoy ourselves before that happens.
Mom would never go along with that plan, I think.
Or the two of us could go into hiding without Mr. Trumbull’s help. We’d be refugees on the lam, maybe living in abandoned houses, eating in soup kitchens, moving to the next place whenever we get the slightest hint of danger . . . We’d fall further and further out of the scope of normal life, further and further from any chance of finding out what’s really going on. . . .
No, I think. No.
It’s bad enough that I was so ignorant the past three years.
I look down at the envelope from Daddy’s letter. I stare at the words “Atlanta, Georgia” like I’m going to develop x-ray vision and see straight through to what that actually means.
What does anything about this messed-up day mean?
Maybe I could study that in college, I think sarcastically. Not that I’m ever going to get to go to college now.
Tears sting at my eyes over everything I’ll miss. Maybe I was listening to more of the presentations last night than I thought. I remember the Emory admissions people saying that college isn’t just about going to frat parties or getting to brag about what a great college you got into or getting a better job than you could have straight out of high school. What college is mostly for, they said, is seeking knowledge, and finding out things you’ve always wanted to know. Or things you never dreamed anyone could know.
“There’s more than one way to get knowledge,” I mutter under my breath.
I pull out Mrs. Collins’s iPhone. I type a few words into a search engine, click through screenfuls of information, and study the phone number I eventually find.
Am I brave enough for this? I wonder. Is this really what I want?
I am. It is.
I tap the phone number and bring the iPhone to my ear. As soon as someone answers, I ask, “Can I visit one of your inmates today?”