Don't Fail Me Now(31)

“There’s no but,” I say, my voice rising. “You don’t know, and you can’t know, and I can’t listen to how hard your cushy life is right now, okay?”

Tim goes quiet for a minute. Not even a tap.

“You know, you invited us,” he finally says. I shoot him an angry side-eye. “Okay, her,” he corrects himself. “But so far you’ve acted like you hate us.”

I seethe silently at the road. “I don’t hate you,” I say, unconvincingly.

“Well, you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about something.”

“Just drop it, okay?” I look over at Tim, who’s staring ahead, squinting with worry or hurt, I’m not sure which. I know I need to stop taking out my anger on him when it’s really for Buck. And Mom. And Karen. And everyone else who made it so I’m sitting in the dying old car of a dying old man (okay, not old old, but midthirties, which is kind of old) with the half sister I never wanted and the non-brother I can’t seem to shake. But there’s just too much of it, and it keeps spilling out. I decide the best thing is just to not talk at all for a while.

? ? ?

Tim Google-maps a Kinko’s just off the highway in Cumberland, and I pull into a strip mall that looks almost exactly like the one we left from this morning. It’s funny—and sad—how so much effort must have gone into making every place in the country look basically the same, all of those architects and builders just slapping up the same crap from Tampa to Tacoma. I guess all this boxy plastic and glass and cement is supposed to feel comforting. But I wonder if anyone ever tried to tell them that familiar isn’t always comforting. Sometimes it’s what you’re running from.

While Tim goes in to print his fake absence note, I send a quick text to Yvonne, who’s the only person I care about disappointing.

Have to take the rest of the week off, I type. So sorry, family drama. I hit send before I remember to thank her for the money and then overcompensate in a second text with all caps and smiley faces. Part of me hopes she’ll let this truancy slide, but there’s also a shameful sliver of hope that I’ve filled my last burrito. If whatever Buck has for me is as valuable as he thinks it is, maybe it could float me for a while as I figure things out.

“Where are we?” Leah suddenly cries shrilly from the backseat. “Where’s Tim?” She sits up looking absolutely horrified, like she’s woken to discover she’s in the middle of a carjacking. This wakes Cass and Denny up, too. Cass takes one look at Leah and hops out of the car, and then Denny shoves her, yelling, “You’re sitting on Max!” As her lower lips starts quivering, I almost start to feel bad for Leah. Almost.

“Relax, I didn’t throw him out of the moving car,” I say. “He’s in the Kinko’s faxing a form to your school.”

“Oh.” Leah looks down at her lap and taps on her own iPhone, which I didn’t notice has been clenched in her hand this whole time, possibly to keep it from falling into Denny’s eager, sticky grasp. “I guess I should text my mom.”

“Don’t tell her where you are yet,” I say, frowning down at the dashboard and feeling more and more like a criminal. “Just . . . say you’re staying over at a friend’s house. Will she buy that?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“I’m hungry,” Denny announces, and I reach down into the plastic bag to get him a package of crackers.

“Well, you have to make her buy it.” I shoot Leah a serious look in the rearview mirror.

Leah sighs heavily, annoyed. “She’s gonna know I’m gone eventually. I can’t stay over for a week.”

“I know,” I snap. I’m angrier at myself than at her—how could I not have thought about this before? Tim and Leah aren’t like us. They can’t just skip town without anyone asking questions. It’s not a relief to anyone when they disappear. I take a deep breath and try to change my tone. “I just need time to come up with something else.”

“You could say we’re on a spaceship!” Denny offers, neon orange crumbs dropping onto the floor of the car.

“Thanks, buddy, but I don’t think that’s very believable.”

“A red spaceship,” he says, as if that changes everything.

“Fine, I’ll just tell her I’m going to my friend Hannah’s,” Leah grumbles and carefully opens the door Cass just bolted from, stepping her long, porcelain legs over the seat cushions to keep skin-to-garbage contact at a minimum.

“Can we leave her here?” Denny asks once the door slams shut, licking peanut butter from a deconstructed cracker sandwich. “Max doesn’t like her.” I smile in spite of myself. I’ve noticed “Max” likes to say things Denny thinks are too mean to pin on himself.

“Tell Max for once I agree with him,” I say, turning around to grab a cracker. “But we can’t leave her. She’s . . .” I chew the cracker into a few sharp pieces and force them down my throat. “She’s family,” I finish, nearly choking on both the food and the words.

Denny considers this, his little brow furrowing. I wonder how all these pieces connect in his brain and whether they make any sense to him yet. “Aunt Sam’s family, and she sucks,” he says.

“You’ve got a point,” I laugh.