Before I Let You Go(55)
At the end of a very long, teary chat, the female officer agreed that she thought it was best for me to find Lexie. That just left the problem of how exactly to do that. All I had was Lexie’s name, and the belief that she might have found her way to a university somewhere. The officer asked if I knew anyone else in Collinsville whom we could call. I racked my brain and came up blank—until it suddenly occurred to me that I did know someone. Someone I could walk across the road to speak with, actually—the fire station was there.
Captain Edwards knew exactly where to find Lexie, because she lived in his basement for twelve months after she left Winterton. He and his wife had taken her in while she studied for the GED and then started at community college and saved some money. She was now in her second year of a four-year course at Chicago State, living in a dorm on campus, and Captain Edwards had her cell number.
A cell phone. I’d never even seen one, and when Captain Winters first passed his phone to me, I had no idea what it was. I sobbed while I tried to explain to Lexie that I couldn’t go back to the community, and once she got over the shock of the call, she was resolute.
“Ask Captain Edwards if he can bring you here,” she said firmly. “I’ll take care of you.”
It wasn’t as simple as that—there were legalities to sort out because of my age. The police officer had to call Robert and Mom, and while she never told me the details of the conversation, she told me that if I wanted to go to Lexie, I wouldn’t be forced to return to Winterton.
And so, two days after I walked away from Robert’s home, Captain Edwards delivered me to Lexie. I was fragile, confused and still scared. Every now and again I’d start shaking for no reason, as if I were in shock.
I kept expecting someone to tell me that Robert changed his mind and was coming to get me, and every time Captain Edwards’s phone rang I’d feel adrenaline surge all the way through my body. But there were no last-minute disasters, no more drama to contend with, and when I finally walked into Lexie’s room, she was sobbing. We held each other and cried until we were both exhausted from the intensity of the moment.
“It’s over, Annie. You’re with me now. It’s over.”
She had a bed already set up for me—an air mattress on the floor. She’d amassed a small collection of Nancy Drew books over the years since we parted, and they were waiting on my pillow.
“I know you’re too old for them now.” She shrugged. “But every time I saw one, I thought of you. I thought you might want to catch up.”
That night, I was too wired to sleep or even to lie still on the little bed she’d prepared for me. I tossed and turned, and every time I even tried to close my eyes, I heard the door opening or the sound of his footsteps in the hall outside. I’d startle awake and begin the agitated cycle of fidgeting in my bed again. Late in the night, I heard a sound from Lexie’s bed, and then she reached down and fumbled for my hand. I let her take it. Then the soft sound of her slightly out-of-tone singing filled the dorm room.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Do you know how loved you are?
In the morning, in the night.
I’ll love you with all my might.
I was asleep before she even made it through the verse.
I never told her about Robert—although I thought about it. I’d get all psyched up to confess what had really happened back at Winterton—but the words would stall and then die in my throat. She was so happy, positively thriving at college . . . and I was half-terrified she’d blame herself for leaving me, and half-terrified she’d blame me for letting him do it.
Unlike Lexie, I left the community without a plan, and also unlike Lexie, I immediately began to flounder. She had lived with Captain Edwards and his wife until she found her feet, all the while finishing high school and charting a course to med school. To support herself at college, she worked nights as a nursing assistant at a nursing home, she was a dorm leader on campus and she was tutoring. All of this was necessary to make ends meet without the added burden of her little sister in tow. Luckily, she managed to convince the dorm administrators to let me live with her for at least a few months while we figured out what to do.
I’d been in the community for six years. I’d never been a teenager without the structure of the church. I didn’t even know where to start. Lexie figured out the details and enrolled me at a high school, but I struggled from the very first class. I had no idea about basic science—or how to structure an essay. Even my math skills were patchy because the church school paid lip service to state requirements for the girls’ curriculum. After all, women were never allowed to work outside the home, or even to manage their own finances, so why learn algebra?
“It was hard for me, too, at first,” Lexie reassured me when I came home in tears the first day. “I’ll help you study. You’re smart, Annie. You can catch up.”
“But you at least got to do that accelerated science and math program,” I sniffed. “And I don’t have your wonder-brain. I’m not a genius like you.”
“You just need to work a little bit harder till you catch up. You can do this, Annie.”
While academics were a struggle, they were nothing compared with the battle I faced socially. I had no idea how to interact with the other students, and just dealing with the crowds at the enormous high school was enough to leave me feeling a constant sense of panic. Whenever I was out of the classroom and on the busy grounds, or even in the cafeteria or school assemblies, I felt singled out. It was as though every person in the crowd knew my secret—that I was different and broken—and at any moment, someone was going to point it out. Sometimes when I felt that panic, I’d find myself confused about where I was. Was I in the cafeteria, or in the worship hall? Was it an ordinary lunch day, or was I being brought before the congregation to confess?