Run(34)

“We barely know Bo, sweetheart,” Daddy said. “We don’t know yet how much we can trust her with you.”

I frowned. Trust her with me. I knew what that meant. He didn’t know how well he could trust her to take care of me. To babysit me. Was that how he saw my friendship with Christy, too? Had she just been my responsible babysitter?

“You know her better than you knew a lot of Gracie’s friends,” I pointed out, trying to keep my voice calm. “And she was allowed to go out with them after school. You didn’t always know where she was, but—”

“That’s different,” Mama said.

“How?”

I knew the answer. I’d have to be a fool not to. But I wanted to hear it from them.

They didn’t respond, though. Instead, Mama ignored me. “You haven’t been acting like yourself,” she said. “And your father and I think—”

“How?!” And this time, I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. That same anger that had filled me the other day in church was back, but without the hint of meanness. And for the first time in my life, I was back talking my parents. “How am I different from Gracie? How?!”

I didn’t have to see their faces real well to know they were both shell-shocked. Gracie was the one who yelled, not me. Never me.

Until today, at least.

And they didn’t even know about the beer.

Daddy was the one to recover. And this time, he was the one to do something he’d never done before. In a voice quiet as a snake’s hiss he said, “You’re grounded. For a month. You go to school. You come home. And that’s it.”

“Daddy—”

“That’s. It.”

And no matter how mad I was, I knew better than to question him anymore.



“How much longer you grounded for?” Bo asked.

“Eight days.”

In the three weeks since my parents had locked me up, the season had fully changed. It was early October, and the wind was getting cold.

I’d been worried, at first, that my new friendship with Bo would blow away, fall like one of the leaves on our maple trees, while I was trapped in my house. But she’d surprised me. Bo had been at school every day. And even though she never said so, I liked to believe it was because she wanted to see me. We ate lunch together, walked together in the hallways, and even managed to get seats next to each other in English. Which was great, since Bo understood poetry so much better than I did.

There were lots of rumors going around about me. Some people thought I must’ve gone crazy. Others called me a slut. Not because of anything I’d done. Just because when it came to the Dickinsons, all their friends were guilty by association. But Bo seemed more bothered by what people were saying about me than I was. For me, none of it mattered as long as I got to spend every free minute of the school day with her.

And then, when I got home, I only had to wait an hour or so before Bo would call me. My parents hadn’t made any rules about the phone, so I’d sit at the kitchen counter, doing homework, and waiting for the ring.

Sometimes we’d talk about a million things, and sometimes we’d just sit with the phones pressed to our ears, not saying much as we did our homework together.

“Fuck,” Bo said. “I feel like you’ve been grounded forever.”

“Me too.”

“Colt was asking about you the other day.”

I sat up straighter. “He was?” I glanced toward the sink, where Mama was washing dishes. Then I lowered my voice. “What … what did he say?”

“Nothing much. Just asked where you were. Told me to say hi.”

“Oh. Well … That’s nice. Tell him hello for me, too.”

“In eight days, you can tell him yourself,” she said. “Also, Colt and me were talking, and I think the three of us oughta take a road trip down to Tennessee. What do you think? We could go to Nashville. Just take off for a few weeks. What do you think?”

I thought she was crazy. My folks grounded me for going down the street without proper permission. They’d never let me leave the state. Not with Bo Dickinson or anyone else. But I didn’t want to say that to her. Didn’t want her to get bored of me when I was so close to being released.

So I just said, “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Agnes.” Mama had turned around from her spot at the sink and was looking my way now. “Only fifteen more minutes on the phone. Then I want your help making dinner.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I didn’t think Mama was real happy about me talking to Bo every day. She never came out and told me not to, but I could tell she was still mad at Bo for taking me down to the river. Every time I got off the phone, she’d make a point of asking why I didn’t call Christy more often.

When she’d left the kitchen, I pressed the phone back to my ear, just in time to hear Bo say, “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

I smiled. “All right. I … really, really hate cooking.”

Bo laughed.

“Mama always wants me to help her. And I do, but I hate it. And not because I can’t see real well so it’s hard. I hate it because you spend all this time making something and half the time eating it. It drives me crazy.” I sighed. “Just another reason nobody’s gonna want to marry me, and I’ll be stuck in my parents’ house forever.”