28

Then

I sat in the idling car at the end of Peter’s street. I hadn’t planned on coming here when I turned the key in the ignition. But then a reporter had shown up—one who knew my name. My real name. I stared at the blank page I’d torn from the back of the library copy of the 1972 Kennedy High School yearbook. I hadn’t known what to say to my mother in a letter. Now I didn’t know what to say to Peter.

No, it wasn’t that. I knew what I wanted to say. That he’d betrayed me. That exposing me to the press was unforgivable. That I had warned him if he told anyone it would be over between us. That he could take back his mom’s stupid books and go on believing whatever he wanted about her. I didn’t want them anyway.

That he had crushed me.

But when you wrote something, it was forever. Sharp words spoken in anger might dull over time as memory twisted and things of the past faded and blurred. A letter never softened, never changed. It was always there to remind you, to keep the wound ragged and raw. Which was what I wanted.

Right?

The garage door opened. I ducked low in my seat as Jack Flynt slowly backed out and turned down the street. His taillights disappeared around a corner. I sat up straight and scribbled out my note. I inched the car up to the house and found the button to pop the trunk. As quickly as possible, I piled the tattered boxes and pillowcases and the Rubbermaid container on the porch. On top I placed the yearbooks we had taken from the school library, along with the note, tucked partway into the one from 1972.

My hand hovered at the doorbell, finger extended. Then it dropped. Better not to chance him actually opening the door before I could get away. I got back into the car and drove off in fits and starts.

I didn’t know where to go except away from town. I filled the tank at a gas station, then loaded the counter with snack foods and drinks. When I handed the clerk a hundred-dollar bill he pointed wordlessly at a sign that said “No 50’s or 100’s.”

“But I already pumped the gas, and when you add all this stuff up, you’re not going to have to give me much change.”

“Where you going, miss?”

I tried to look taller. “Excuse me?”

“Where are you running off to?”

“Nowhere. I’m stocking up for my grandmother. She loves Hostess Cupcakes.”

“Where’d you get that money?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I got it from her. Now are you going to sell me this stuff or not?”

The man sighed but took the money. I left the store with two plastic grocery bags full of junk food for me, crackers and nuts for The Professor, and a full tank of gas. I wanted to start off right then, but I hadn’t slept all night. I drove toward the Saginaw Bay, to an empty roadside park, and covered The Professor’s travel cage with my coat. Then I slipped into unconsciousness.

When I woke, the sun was hanging in the western sky. Beside me on the passenger seat, the doll’s face glowed red in the evening light. Her dusty little patent leather shoes rested on The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. The one book I had wanted to keep. The one book to which I had no rightful claim. I had never paid for it.

I should have left that one on Peter’s porch too. I couldn’t start fresh with that book hanging around my neck like an albatross. Even if I didn’t know what my ultimate destination was, I knew I had to do one more thing before I left Sussex for good.

But I’d have to wait for the cover of darkness.

The police cruiser didn’t have its flashers on, but I could tell someone was in the trailer when I was still far down the road because all the lights were on inside. I fumbled for the switch to turn off the headlights and slowed to a crawl as I pulled into the cemetery lot. Peter’s reporter was nowhere to be seen.

I slipped out of the car and wove through the gravestones by memory until I came to Emily Flynt’s, then knelt in the dead grass that had been so recently blanketed in snow. I placed The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in front of the headstone where I had found it seven months before and stood up feeling a little lighter.

The trailer door opened, and I ducked back down behind the stone. The house was now dark and the cops were shutting their car doors. I prayed that the sound would not set off a round of squawking that might alert them to the car that was shrouded in darkness in the gravel lot. But The Professor stayed silent as they drove off into the night.

The missing bird didn’t necessarily mean anything. A parrot left to his own devices could escape, after all. But the missing car must have been noticed, must have attested to the fact that the girl who had been living there had run off. Probably the reporter had tipped them off.

Maybe they wouldn’t be back. Or maybe they would track me, trace every step I had made. Maybe they’d question the cheerless gas station attendant. Maybe there would be cops on every highway leading out of town.

I needed to get out while the getting was good.

I drove in no particular direction but away. Away from the dead house, away from the graves, away from Peter. If the police had issued an alert for a runaway or a missing person or a car thief, I couldn’t stop anywhere near here to figure out which way I was going. And it didn’t matter anyway. I had no plan.

Stopping at intersections, turning, correcting the car’s natural drift toward the ditches that lurked invisible along the side of the dark road—all terrifying at first—got easier as I went along. I was afraid to go any faster than about thirty miles per hour, which felt like hurtling down the steep first hill of a roller coaster.

When the sky began to purple in the east so that I could tell what direction I was going, I stopped and pulled a map from Grandma’s glove box. I traced thick yellow lines of highway to where they ended near the enormous blue blobs of the Great Lakes I had just seen. I was surrounded by water. South seemed the only way out.

But for some reason, my eyes kept drifting north, to that big lake—deep, cold, ruthless. I thought of the cliffs and the dunes and the trails. And I thought of the little visitor station we had passed.

Perfect.