Don’t Let Me Go(104)

“I don’t want to compromise.”

“Nobody ever does,” Yolanda said. She picked up another slice of pizza on her way out the door. “Call me if you need me, Grace.”

“She doesn’t need you!” Grace’s mom shouted. “She just needs me!”

Yolanda tilted her head a little, and raised one eyebrow in a funny way.

“Call me if you need me, Grace,” she said again.

“K,” Grace said.

Then Yolanda let herself out, and Grace snagged three more pieces of the pizza and locked herself in her room for the night.

? ? ?

When Grace woke in the morning, the sky was barely light. She lay still a minute on her back under the covers, watching the tiny bit of light bleed through the curtains over her bed. In her head, she replayed Monday’s dance, right up to the part where her mom grabbed her elbow and snatched her away.

Grace threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, tiptoeing barefoot to her mom’s bedroom door. She peered in, barely breathing. Her mom did not wake up.

She tiptoed over to the yellow message pad by the phone, slowly and quietly tore off one sheet, and wrote a message on it in her best block printing.

YOU NEVER TOLD ME WHAT I WAS. YOU STARTED TO TELL ME. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY?



LOVE, GRACE



She unlocked the door silently, stopping to be sure nothing stirred in her mom’s room, then vaulted upstairs, folded the note in half, and slipped it under Billy’s door.

“Hi, Billy, hi, kitty,” she whispered through the door. “I love you.”

Then she ran back home and jumped into bed before her mom could possibly have time to wake up.

? ? ?

When Grace woke the following morning, her mom was already in the kitchen making oatmeal, which was disappointing. Not the oatmeal — Grace liked oatmeal — but the not having any time to sneak away. After all, she’d only promised not to sneak away while her mom was outside smoking. She hadn’t said a word about six o’clock in the morning.

Grace padded to the kitchen table and sat down, frowning, and her mom quick stubbed out a cigarette.

“I thought you were only going to smoke outside.”

“You were sleeping, so I thought it’d be OK. I thought that was just when you were around.”

“Well, I’m around now, and it stinks in here, and I hate it.”

Grace’s mom sighed.

“Fine. Tomorrow I’ll take my morning cigarette outside.”

“Thank you.”

Grace knew her mom was trying extra hard now. Cooking three meals a day, vacuuming the rug, picking her up right on time from school. And Grace knew why, too. She was trying to do every single mom-thing right to make up for the one really important thing she still refused to do.

“I don’t want to go to school today,” Grace said. “I feel sick.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m sick to my stomach.”

Grace’s mom put a warm hand on her forehead.

“You don’t have a fever.”

“I didn’t say I did. I said I was sick to my stomach. Will you go to the store today and get me ginger ale?”

“Yeah. OK. After breakfast. I guess I could.”

“Good. I’m going back to bed.”

Grace lay in bed and listened to her mom washing the dishes from the breakfast nobody had bothered to eat. Then she heard their apartment door open.

“I’ll be back in, like, ten minutes, Grace.”

Was her mom really going to walk out the door without extracting a promise from her to stay put? And, if so, was it a trap? Would Grace stick her head out into the hall only to be ambushed by an angry mom?

Grace heard the door slam shut again, and the deadbolts turning from the outside with her mom’s keys. She held still, barely breathing, then slunk out of bed and crept to the window, where she watched her mom’s legs disappear down the block.

Grace ran to the door, threw it open, and bolted up the stairs to Billy’s door.

She almost knocked. For one breathless, excited moment, she almost knocked on his door. But then she remembered what her mom had said about getting him arrested. In which case he would die. Seriously. Even if Jesse and Rayleen figured out how to get him out a day or two later, it was Billy, and Billy would still die.

She ran her finger carefully under the bottom of his door and touched the corner of an envelope. She pressed down on it and pulled, and it slid out into the hall at her feet. She grabbed it and ran back to bed, careful to lock the same deadbolts she had unlocked when leaving.

She lay in bed, fingers trembling a little, and tore open the note.

Yes, I remember. You were the shiniest thing I’ve ever seen. That’s what I was going to say. That you were the shiniest thing I’ve ever seen.



Love, Billy



When Grace’s mom got home, Grace heard her rattling around in the kitchen, and she could even hear the fizz of the ginger ale when her mom took the cap off the bottle.

A minute later, her mom stood in the bedroom doorway, smiling sadly.

“I’m sorry if this whole thing is making you so miserable you have an upset stomach,” she said. “So…I was just thinking…maybe a little bit of a compromise is in order.”