Run(5)

Agnes can’t see none of it. She might be able to make everything out a little better if one of the lamps—the one on the desk—wasn’t broken. I try to see the place through her eyes. Just a bed and a TV, with all the dirty details smoothed over.

“We should sleep,” she says. “My parents will be up at seven thirty to get ready for church. I wanna be long gone before they come looking for me.”

“Or the police do.”

“They won’t call the police. I left a note. They’ll know it was me who took the car. They’ll know it’s not stolen. But they will come looking.”

I set the alarm for seven. Just three short hours away. Somehow, the thought of waking up that soon makes me feel even more tired than I already am.

“I need to use the bathroom first.” She starts heading toward the bathroom, her arms outstretched, looking for the wall.

I don’t help her. I know she can do it herself. But I do give her some advice. “Hey, Agnes? Don’t sit on the toilet, okay?”

“What?”

“Squat when you pee. Don’t sit down.”

The look on her face makes me wonder if she’s ever had to squat over a toilet in her life. Probably not.

But she don’t argue.

While she’s in the bathroom, I pull back the blanket. The sheets look all right, even though I’m sure nobody’s washed them in days. Or weeks. I don’t bother opening my backpack. I just slip off my cutoffs and climb into bed, wearing my T-shirt as pajamas. Utah jumps on the bed and walks in a circle until she’s made herself comfortable—right on top of my feet.

I grab the remote from the nightstand and switch on the TV. Most of the channels are just white fuzz, but eventually I find an infomercial on. Some old model advertising antiaging face cream. That’s as good as it gets this late at night. It’s better than sleeping in the quiet.

Agnes comes out a second later. “I squatted,” she says, like she’s proud of herself.

“Good job.”

The queen-size bed is pushed up against the wall, so she’s gotta climb over me to get to her side. “You’re gonna let the dog sleep in the bed?”

“Yeah. Why? She sleeps in my bed every night at home.”

“I don’t know … Won’t she get the blankets dirty?”

“No dirtier than they already are.”

I don’t think she knows what to say to that.

“Bo,” she says after a minute. “What are we doing?”

For a second, I’m scared, thinking she’s changed her mind, thinking she might not wanna do this no more. Part of me wants that—wants to take her home, wants to keep her out of my mess—but another part of me, a bigger part, can’t do this without her. I need her.

“I mean, what’s our plan? Where are we going in the morning?”

I hold back a sigh of relief. Swallow it down a throat that’s suddenly way too dry.

“Well … I thought … Maybe we could find my dad.”

“Your dad? How come?”

I sit up and switch off the lamp, so now neither of us can see. “Money,” I say. “He owes a shit ton of child support. Maybe I can get him to give me some money.”

“I guess that’s not a bad idea. We’ll need money if we’re gonna make this work … This sure isn’t how I imagined us getting out of Mursey.”

“Me neither.”

“We’ll come up with a plan, though. Maybe … Maybe after we find your dad, we can try and get an apartment or something? Some place we can stay for a while. Until we turn eighteen, I guess. We’ll have to figure out jobs and …” She yawns. “I don’t know. But once we’re eighteen, we can go anywhere. We won’t have anything to worry about. Right? Just you and me.”

Even in the pitch-black, I can’t face her. “Yeah … Right.”

“Do you know where your dad is?”

“No. But I’ll find him,” I say. “I got to.”





I’ll never forget the day Miss Bixley, the guidance counselor, walked Bo Dickinson into my English class.

“Mrs. Hartman,” she said, tapping on the open door. I knew it was her before she opened her mouth. Miss Bixley had the biggest hair I’d ever seen. It almost touched the top of the doorframe. Even I couldn’t miss it. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a new student for you.”

“Oh?”

“Bo Dickinson,” Miss Bixley explained, ushering Bo into the room. “I’ve decided to switch her into your class. I think this will be a better fit for her.”

By “this” she meant the advanced class. Our school wasn’t real big. Every high schooler in the county was bused into Mursey, and we still had less than four hundred students. But we did have some honors and remedial classes. Maybe it was wrong of me, but I’d assumed Bo Dickinson would be in the latter. I’d just never thought of her as being advanced at anything school related.

And I clearly wasn’t the only one. There was a sudden rush of whispers. They started quiet and got louder and louder, like a swarm of bees closing in.

“What?” Christy growled into my ear. “There’s got to be a mistake.”

Finally, Mrs. Hartman cleared her throat and everybody went silent again.