Run(57)

“I mean … What are we gonna do? We can’t just stick around here doing nothing for two months.”

“Well, I usually work the tobacco fields at the Scotts’ farm to make a little money during the summer.”

I sighed. “That sounds nice.”

“Not really. It’s hot and exhausting, and you come back covered in tobacco gum.”

“But it’s something,” I said. “Something to do. Mama and Daddy would never let me work tobacco. They’d tell me it’d be too hard with my vision and all. And maybe they’d be right. But I’ve spent every summer of my life stuck in the house, never leaving this yard.”

“I kinda like this yard,” Bo said, still turning pages.

“I wanna do something different,” I said. “Something exciting.”

“There will probably be a few parties.”

Last year, that would have been all the excitement I needed. A couple parties, the promise of a few hours without my parents’ eyes on me, that would have been enough. But now, it hardly did anything for me. Parties were over too fast, too similar to one another. And, at the end of the night, we were still stuck in Mursey.

“We ought to go out of town,” I said. “Take a trip.”

Bo quit flipping the pages. “You serious?”

“Maybe.”

“When I suggested that, we ended up fighting. You said I was crazy for even thinking—”

“I know, I know. But I been thinking about it, and maybe if we do it right, my parents will let me go.” I sat up so I could look at her better. “I mean, they’re letting me walk home from the bus stop with you, so that’s progress, right? And the way I see it, my parents just wanna know where I am all the time. So if we plan it out right, give them all the details before we even hit the road … Maybe it would work?”

“You really think so?”

“Maybe … And we wouldn’t be going far. I was thinking we could just go visit Colt for the weekend or something.”

Bo snorted. “I see how it is. You just wanna go f*ck my cousin again.”

“Shh!” I swatted at her. “Keep your voice down.”

“Your mama’s inside. She ain’t gonna hear me.”

“There might be a window open. And if she got wind of what happened with Colt, she’d never let me out of the house … or she’d hunt him down and make him marry me.”

The second option didn’t sound so bad, really. I’d never wanted to get married right out of high school, but if it meant moving in with Colt, getting out of here, I might’ve been on board.

And Bo could come, too. She could move into the guest room. Or sleep on the couch. I wasn’t real sure how big Colt’s place was. But we’d make it work. Maybe Bo could get a job singing somewhere in the city. There was a school for the blind there—maybe I could teach braille. Colt and me would be together, and Bo could find a boy of her own. Or maybe a girl. I could see her with a pretty brunette—a poet. Bo’d be great with a poet. The four of us would eat dinner together every night, then we’d sit out on the back deck counting fireflies and talking about the towns we’d escaped from …

“Maybe we could do that.” And for a second, I thought she was commenting on my fantasy. But then she added, “We could go see Colt. Bet he’d like that, actually. And not just because you’d be f*cking him.”

“Hush,” I said, blushing.

She laughed. “All right. But really, what brought this on? You didn’t even wanna talk to your parents about it when I had the idea.”

“I’ve just been thinking, and you and Colt were right.” And so was Christy. I hadn’t told Bo about talking to her that day in January, and I hadn’t talked to her since. But the things she’d said had stuck with me. “Complaining about their rules won’t change them. So, maybe if I just talk to them, reason with them, it’ll make a difference. And, I mean, they let Gracie go to Florida with her friends for a whole week when she was seventeen,” I said. “And Louisville’s only a couple hours from here. Not near as far.”

“Your sister wasn’t in Florida with a pair of Dickinsons, though,” Bo said.

“Stop it,” I told her. “Mama and Daddy have really come around on you, you know. They like you, Bo. They don’t care that you’re a Dickinson.”

“Well, they’re about the only ones.” She started flipping the pages of her book again. “But all right. Let’s do it. Let’s go see Colt.”

“Yes!” I threw my fist in the air, the way Daddy did when UK won a ball game. Then I fell back into the grass, stretching my arms over my head. “We gotta work out all the details. Starting with how we’re getting there. Maybe Gracie will let us borrow her car?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Bo said. “Later, though. I ain’t done reading yet. This poem’s by Lord Byron. He’s one of my favorites.”

I nodded and closed my eyes, sinking back into that pleasant place between waking and sleeping, more content and happy this time. Even as Bo’s slow, sad words lingered in the sweltering air.

“ ‘Thy vows are all broken, and light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, and share in its shame.’ ”