Run(11)

“I’m getting us a new car.”

“But—”

“Trust me.”

Lucky for me, she does.

Not that she should.

I park the Chevy in the old man’s driveway, next to the battered car. He tells us his name is Earl before heading inside to get the keys. Me and Agnes grab our stuff from the backseat while Utah and the yellow dog paw at each other through the fence.

“Are we just leaving my sister’s car here?” she asks.

“It won’t take them long to find it,” I say.

The front door opens, and Earl comes back out of his house, keys jangling at his side.

“Wait here,” I tell Agnes. She nods and leans against the shitty car, arms folded over her chest.

“Y’all must be in a hurry,” Earl says while I unzip my backpack and hunt for the cash I’ve hidden inside. “You gotta be teenagers. Why do you need another car so bad?”

“I said no questions.” I pull out the wad of cash I’d tucked into an inside pocket. Carefully, I count out eight hundred dollars. That’s most of it. Way more than I wanted to spend this early. “Here,” I say, shoving the money into Earl’s hands and taking the keys from him.

“Pleasure doing business,” he says, fingering the wrinkled bills.

“There’s another thing.”

Earl raises an eyebrow. “I ain’t got nothing else to sell you, girl.”

“That car—the one we’re leaving—it’s stolen. If you wanna call the police and let them know it’s here, that’s fine. But, please, don’t tell them nothing about us.”

“Police? What are y’all getting me into?” Earl demands. “I ain’t gonna lie for two strange kids.”

“I’ll give you another fifty bucks.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Fine.”

“I never saw you. Far as I know, that car was just dropped off here when I woke up this morning.”

I hand him a few more bills, then tuck the rest of the cash back into the backpack.

“Y’all take care now,” Earl hollers as I walk back toward Agnes.

I unlock the Reliant K and load Utah into the back while Agnes climbs into the front seat.

“Just gotta do one more thing,” I tell Agnes. She shrugs.

I walk back to the Chevy and slide into the front seat. The keys are still in the ignition. I leave them there and, instead, pop open the console. There are a bunch of fast-food napkins inside, but I manage to find a red ink pen, too.

On a Wendy’s napkin, I scribble a note to Agnes’s parents. They’ll find it when they come get the car.

Mr. and Mrs. Atwood—I know you hate me, but I had to. I’m sorry. Bo





“Still feels strange not having Gracie at the table,” Mama said, scooping mashed potatoes onto my dinner plate. “I’m so used to cooking for four, we always have so many leftovers now.”

“Nothing to complain about,” Daddy said around a mouthful of pork chop.

Gracie had been gone for about two weeks, and the house did seem awful quiet lately. Mama called her every night and made her talk to Daddy and me, but Gracie always tried to rush off the phone pretty fast. She had to study or hang out with her new friends or go to cheerleading practice. She had a million things to do and a million places to go.

Me? I hadn’t left the house since the day I’d wandered around the woods, except to go to school. Christy was always busy with Andrew, and no one else ever invited me anywhere.

“How’s school going, Agnes?” Mama asked, finally sitting down next to Daddy.

I shrugged.

“Use your words,” Daddy teased.

“It’s fine. English is the only subject I’m any good at, and all we’ve been doing is reading poetry, which usually doesn’t make much sense to me. So that’s been hard.”

“What about math?”

“It’s geometry,” I said. “Blind girls and shapes? Not the best combination.”

It was meant as a joke, but my parents took it very seriously.

“Are your teachers making accommodations for you?” Daddy asked.

“Should we call the guidance counselor? Or the principal?” Mama asked. “If you need more help—”

“No, no. I’m okay,” I said. “I was mostly kidding. The shapes are hard, but my teacher’s great. I’ve gotten okay at doing proofs.”

“If you do have any issues, though, you’ll tell us,” Mama said. “We can always have them take another look at your IEP.”

An IEP was an individual education plan. My parents and teachers and members of the school board met every year to make adjustments to it. That’s where they figured out what equipment and accommodations I needed, and what the school could afford to get me.

“Can you pass the green beans?” I asked Daddy, hoping to get off the subject.

Whenever my school and accommodations came up, my parents usually got angry. They always insisted the school should do more for me. “If they can spend all that money on the football team, they can get you the materials you need,” Mama would say. Maybe she was right, but the truth was, I was doing fine with what I had. New tape recorders and giant glass magnifiers would just make me feel even more awkward at school.