Mom orchestrates the world’s messiest K-turn, creating a cloud of dust and gravel. We rattle out on the path toward the main road.
“Here.” She tosses me Marco’s phone. “He gave me this in case we need it. The passcode is zero-seven-one-one.”
My face stretches into a melancholy smile. “Your birthday.”
I can tell from her voice that Mom’s face is doing the same.
“Where were you guys going, anyway?” she asks.
“Home,” I say. “Police station, I guess. We thought you had already turned yourself in.”
“I was ready to. I am ready to. I think.”
She pauses in thought for a moment.
“All day I’ve been thinking about Monica,” she says. “How we’ve always felt so connected to her, you know? Because we know what it’s like to deal with the same bullshit she did. The lies, the shame, the bullying…”
“Right.” I nod. “Um. How does this help us with our current predicament?”
“So that’s the thing,” Mom says. “I asked myself, ‘What would Monica do in this situation?’”
“She wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place,” I say. “Burning down the White House wasn’t an option. I assume they have a little more security than a garage door keypad.”
“Well, yeah.” Mom’s voice eeks into a soft morbid laugh. “But still. Remember in the documentary when she talked about how those Secret Service bitches bombarded her at the mall? She went to the hotel room with them. She eventually confessed.”
“To falling in love with a married man,” I clarify. “Other than that, she didn’t really do anything wrong.”
“But we did,” Mom finishes. “We let the bullshit drag us down.” Her voice tapers as she stumbles upon a new realization about the woman we’ve spent our lives worshipping. “Monica didn’t let the bullshit drag her down. But we did.”
We spend the next few minutes stewing in loaded silence until Mom turns onto the main road from the rocky path. The car finally stops rattling and starts gliding. It feels like an opportunity to redirect.
“What if we just keep driving north?” I ask. “What if we go somewhere no one would ever think to find us? Somewhere far away.”
“How long could we make that last, though?” Mom asks. “And where is this magical place? Where are we gonna sleep? How are we gonna sleep?”
We stop at a red light and I notice a Stewart’s gas station on the corner. We’re around actual civilization again. Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it. There’s a sign that the highway is only ten miles away.
I swipe into Marco’s phone to see if it’s regained a signal yet.
Power? Not so much.
“Shit,” I say. “Marco’s phone is dying —”
My voice is cut off by the whirling sound of a siren behind us.
A big white sedan appears in our rearview mirror.
Its roof lights up in a twitchy blaze of red and blue.