Julia's Daughters

I can’t believe she’s going to follow me into the bathroom. Does she think she’s going into the stall with me too?

I go into the last stall, pull down my jeans, and sit. I pee and wipe, but I don’t get up. I listen to the two of them in the other stalls. I roll the ball between my fingers because I don’t want to bounce it on a public bathroom floor. That would be gross.

I can’t believe she’s really going through with this driving-to-Maine thing. Unbelievable.

I have to get out of here. I have to get away. I just don’t know how, now that I don’t have my phone.

I hear one toilet flush and Izzy’s footsteps, then Mom flushes and walks out of the other stall. Water comes on. Izzy says something about the blue soap in the dispenser; she thinks it smells like blueberries. Mom laughs and says she thinks it does too.

I listen to the water running in the sinks and their voices. Izzy’s trying to decide if she’s getting a blue Icee or a red one. She’s acting like she’s on summer vacation. She’s such a doofus. And it’s so cute. I wish soap in a public bathroom that smells like blueberries could make me as happy as she sounds.

The rumble of the blow dryer echoes off the tile walls and I drop my head to my hands. Mom and Izzy are still talking.

I can’t do this. I have to get away from these two, but I don’t know where I can go or how I can get there. I need Todd. He’ll come get me. I just have to figure out a way to call him.

A phone, a phone! My kingdom for a phone!

I did a project in the fall in English class about literary quotes still used today and how we change them. Richard III said that in a play written by Shakespeare, only he needed a horse, not a phone.

Izzy doesn’t have a phone; Mom says she’s not old enough to have one yet. Izzy does have an iPod touch that I might be able to text from, but I’m not sure if she brought it and even if she did, how do I get it?

I hear the bathroom door open and Izzy goes out. I can tell by the sound of the footfall that it’s her. She slaps her feet as she walks, like her feet are too big for her body.

“Haley?” Mom calls.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

She doesn’t answer right away.

I make a loud sound so she knows how annoyed I am. “It’s not like there’s a back door in here. I’ll be out in a sec.”

She hesitates again. “Okay. I’ll be in the store.” She opens the door, then calls back, “Do you need anything from your bag?”

I guess she means a tampon. I wish I did need one. I’m starting to get a little worried. “Nope. I’ll be out in a minute.”

The door closes behind her and I listen, just to make sure she really left the bathroom and isn’t trying to fake me out. When I’m sure she’s gone, I flush and pull up my jeans. Just as I’m walking to the sink, a woman a little older than Mom comes in.

“See you soon,” she says into her cell. She makes eye contact with me and smiles. I smile back. A big Caitlin smile. I have no idea why I do it. I’m not usually smiley with strangers.

Caitlin was the friendly one of the two of us. No surprise there. No one could resist her gorgeous blond hair and green eyes. I’m sure she was destined to be Homecoming Queen, Prom Queen, and Queen of the freakin’ May.

In the mirror, I watch the woman go into the bathroom stall behind me. My gaze shifts to my reflection. I look like total crap. My skin is blotchy, my eyebrows need plucking, and I didn’t even bother with eyeliner this morning. My eyes look little and squinty.

I squirt blue soap from the dispenser into my hand. I can’t resist. I lift it to my nose and sniff.

And as shitty as my life is, it makes me smile because it does sort of smell like blueberries. I rub my hands together, soaping them up.

I eye the closed door of the stall behind me and it occurs to me that I don’t have a cell phone but she has a cell phone. So how do I get it? If she sets it on the sink while she washes her hands, do I just take it and run? Then what? Run where? I don’t know where we are. I’m not even sure what exit we got off on. And what if she calls the police? I’m pretty sure Todd can’t pick me up from jail.

I don’t want to keep her phone. I just want to borrow it for a minute.

She flushes behind me and I keep soaping up my hands. As she comes up to the sink beside me, she smiles at me again. I wonder if I remind her of someone else she knows because I don’t look like the kind of girl you smile at in a public restroom, even without my eyeliner. Maybe I remind her of someone she likes. I smile back, my Caitlin smile, and wish for the one-millionth time that Caitlin were here with me. She’d know how to charm the phone off this woman. Caitlin was my little sister, but she was better at this kind of thing. Basically, she was better at life. She knew what to say to people, how to say it.

“Hi.” I try not to sound like the crazy girl who cuts herself.

“Hi.” The woman is soaping her hands with the blueberry soap.

I kind of half-laugh; it sounds so fakey. “Smells like blueberries.”

“Blueberries?” She looks at me, confused.

“The soap.” I point at the dispenser and start rinsing my hands.

She sniffs her hands and laughs. “It does, a little bit.”

I nibble on the inside of my lip as I move to the hand dryer looking at her, then my wet hands, then at her again. She’s some kind of Native American, but I’m not good with tribes. “Could I ask you a huge favor?”

She looks at me, her hands under the water.

“I did something really dumb,” I say in my “everyone likes me and trusts me because I’m Caitlin” voice. “I locked my keys in my car and my cell phone is there. I was wondering . . . Could I use your phone to text my dad?”

“Sure, sweetie.” She moves toward me. “You don’t want to call him?”

I smile again and shake my head. I don’t want to call Todd because I’m not sure what I would say to get him to understand that my mom has kidnapped me and that I need him to come after me because I can’t just say that. This lady might tell Mom. A text to Todd is a better bet. “I better not.” A half smile, half grimace. “He’s in a meeting. A lawyer.” I have no idea where that came from. “If I text him, he can just come for me when his meeting is over. I don’t want to interrupt and ask him to come get me.”

“Of course you can use my phone.” She fishes it out of an outer pocket of her yellow handbag with two wet fingers. “But can I give you a ride somewhere?”

I shake my head, texting as fast as I can. I remember Todd’s number, which is kind of weird because in the world of cell phones, who knows numbers anymore? You just start to type the recipient’s name and the number comes up. But, like my mom, I have a good memory for numbers.

It’s me, I text. DO NOT call this number.

Whose this he texts back.

I shake my head. He’s such an idiot. It’s Haley. I don’t have my phone, so I borrowed someone else’s. I can’t talk. I need you to come get me. My mom made me get in the car with her. She’s making me go to Maine.

I glance up. The woman is done drying her hands and now she’s just standing there waiting.

“Sorry,” I say. Another quick smile as I hit send and start texting again. I need you to come get me. Not sure where, yet. Start driving toward Utah. Take I15.

Drube 2 utah?

I close my eyes. Maybe this is a bad idea. Todd may not be smart enough to find Alaska. Or Utah.

Gotta go. Text you as soon as I can. Don’t text to this phone again.

I send and look up and smile as I go into “edit” and delete the texts. “Thanks. I’m sure he’ll be here soon. His meeting’s almost over.” Another smile.

“You sure you want to wait here? You don’t want to sit in my car with me?”

I hand her back her phone. I hook my thumbs in my jeans’ pockets. “No thanks. I’m just going to get an Icee and then, you know”—I lift my chin in the direction of the store—“wait for him.” Then I open the door for her. “Thanks again. Have a good day.”

“You too.” She gives a little wave and walks out into the store.

I follow her, but take my time. The minute I step out of the little hall where the bathrooms are, I spot Mom and Izzy at the frozen drink machine. Mom’s been waiting for me. Watching for me. I walk to the closest rack of food and reach for a bag. I check them out like I’m seriously considering getting reduced calorie Chex Mix. If Mom comes over and starts talking to me before the lady who loaned me the phone leaves, I’m not sure what I should do. What if Mom asks her if I was bothering her or something? Mom’s acting so . . . not like herself that I can’t honestly guess what she will or won’t do. An hour ago I would have said Mom would never have gone back for Izzy. But there’s Izzy standing there with her big-ass Icee.

Luckily, the woman with the phone picks up a bottle of water from a cooler near the register and pays for it and a pack of gum. She does turn and wave to me as she goes out the door. I wave back and follow up with the smile.

A second later, Mom is beside me. She has an enormous frozen Coke in her hand and a bag of pretzels. Izzy’s hovering behind her.

“Who was that?” Mom asks.

I shake my head, putting the snack bag back on the rack. “Just somebody I was talking to in the bathroom.” I move around the end of the aisle to get away from Mom and look at a rack of nuts.

Mom stands there for a minute and I worry that she might be suspicious. Caitlin always said Mom had a nose for when we were up to something. “You want something to eat? Something to drink?”

I almost say no, but then I realize that if Todd is going to come for me, the smartest thing for me to do right now is to play along with Mom’s insane road-trip thing. I didn’t tell Todd, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to have to drive all the way to wherever we’re staying tonight to get me. I don’t want Mom getting suspicious. Maybe if I play along, she’ll let me go out for ice or something and I can get away. “These.” I hold up a bag of pistachios.

“I like pistachios.” Izzy sucks on her straw. Her Icee is blue, which is a little gross since she just washed her hands with blue soap.

Mom reaches around me and gets another bag of the nuts. “Drink?” she asks me.

“I’ll get a Coke.”

She holds my gaze for just a second longer than I’m comfortable with and for some reason, a part of me, the tiniest part of me, feels guilty for telling Todd to come get me. Mom really is trying. Even if she’s completely wrong about this road trip, and she is, she gets points for trying.

She nods. “Meet me at the register.”

She walks away and Izzy just stands there, looking at me, sucking loudly on her straw. She’s still wearing her school uniform and it’s all wrinkly and she didn’t brush her hair this morning. Caitlin used to brush it for her sometimes.

I walk away, kind of wishing I had a brush.