Run(60)

But when I look back at him, he’s holding his hand out. Handing me something.

Money.

“Just … in case you need it,” he says, giving me the hundred-dollar bill.

I look down at it, wadded up in my hand. A crumpled piece of paper that’s supposed to make this better. To make him feel better about kicking his kid out the door.

“Don’t … don’t tell Vera, though,” he says. “She don’t know about this or the Christmas money I sent you growing up. She wouldn’t like it too well.”

I look at him. At that nervous shake of his hand as he scratches his head again. At the red in his cheeks. Agnes said I was a coward, and it seems like I get it honest. Because Wayne Dickinson is the biggest coward I ever met.

As I step out on the front porch, with the flimsy hundred dollars in my pocket, I suddenly think of all the poets we read. Of the writers behind those words I’d read aloud to Agnes and quiet to myself so many times. People who could turn pain into art.

I always wished I could do that. And especially right now.

I wish I could turn to my dad and say … something. Something beautiful and biting. Something that’ll rock him. Make him feel this awful hurt I feel.

I wish I was a poet.

But I ain’t never been real good with words. Ain’t never been able to turn my own pain into nothing but tears and trouble.

And when I look back at him, with the door already closing on me, the only words I can manage sure as hell ain’t poetry.

“Fuck you.”





Colt’s mama agreed to let Bo and me take her car—but only if we paid her a hundred dollars.

“Might only be by marriage, but she is a Dickinson,” Bo said after she told me the news. “People in my family don’t give nothing for free.”

Between my leftover birthday money and her tobacco money, we’d be able to pay for the car, though. Nothing was gonna get in the way of our trip.

Nothing. Except maybe my parents.

I decided to talk to them about the trip on Saturday night. It was one of those rare dinners where Bo didn’t join us. She’d called to say she was tired after working in the fields. That was all right. I thought it might be easier to get my parents’ permission on my own.

“Gracie says cheerleading tryouts end on Friday,” Mama was saying as she handed me a bowl of spaghetti. “She says we can come pick her up in the afternoon.”

“Oh no. I’m gonna have to stay at the store that day,” Daddy said.

“That’s all right. Agnes can come with me.”

I looked up from my dinner. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Mama said. “It’ll be fun. You, me, and your sister can do a little shopping. Maybe get dinner.”

“And load all of Gracie’s junk into the car again,” Daddy said. “That’ll be really fun.”

“Oh, stop. It won’t be that bad.”

“That sounds great,” I said. And then, seeing my chance, I added, “Speaking of going somewhere … I wanna talk to y’all about something.”

“What is it, sweetheart?” Daddy asked.

“Well, it’s summer now, and without school, Bo and I have been talking about what we wanna do. And … we were thinking … about maybe going on a road trip.”

“A road trip.” The way Mama repeated it, with a low, flat voice, I knew we weren’t off to a good start.

“Not a long one,” I said. “Just over Fourth of July weekend. We wanna go see her cousin, Colt. He lives just outside Louisville. Just a couple hours from here.”

“We know where Louisville is,” Mama said.

“Well, he’s got a job and an apartment there, and we wanna go see him. And a few other places, too. We already made up a schedule, so you’d always know where I am and—”

“I don’t think so, honey,” Mama said. “You want some garlic bread?”

“Wait— Why not?”

“It’s just not a good idea. Your daddy and I wouldn’t be comfortable with it.”

“Is this because of Bo?” I asked. “Because she’s a Dickinson? You don’t want me going somewhere with her?”

“Of course not,” Daddy said. “You know we like Bo. It’s not about her.”

“Then what?”

He sighed. Like this was already making him tired. “Agnes.”

“But you let Gracie go to Florida when she was seventeen,” I argued. “And that’s a lot farther than Louisville.”

“Yes, but Gracie’s friend’s parents were with them,” Daddy said. “There were adults there.”

“Colt’s an adult.”

“He’s also a teenage boy,” Daddy said. “A teenage boy we don’t know at all.”

“Gracie rode home for Christmas with boys you didn’t know, though.”

“Gracie’s nineteen now,” Mama said. “She can make those decisions for herself.”

“Are you gonna let me make decisions when I’m nineteen?”

I didn’t mean to raise my voice. Didn’t mean to slam my fist down on the table so hard that our plates rattled. I’d been doing so good at keeping calm. At keeping my voice soft and careful. But just like that, my self-control snapped.