Run(61)

“Agnes.” Mama’s voice was full of warning.

“I’m serious!” I shouted.

I didn’t want to be shouting, honestly. But now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I could feel this going downhill. Could feel the walls closing in and the hope I’d clung to starting to fade. Maybe I was doomed to suffocate here, but I wasn’t gonna go gentle.

So here I was, raging. Just like Dylan Thomas said.

“Because I have a hard time believing that when I’m nineteen, you’ll let me make the same choices Gracie does. I’m seventeen, and you won’t even let me walk home from the bus stop—right around the goddamn corner—unless Bo is with me. And even then, one of y’all is waiting for us at the door.”

“Watch your mouth, young lady,” Mama said. “You’re acting real ugly right now. We have rules for you because we want to keep you safe.”

“I can keep myself safe! I’ve been blind my whole life, not for five minutes. I know better than you what I can and can’t do!”

“Where in the world is this coming from?” Mama asked.

“Everywhere!” I screamed. “Everything is an ordeal with y’all. I can’t walk out the door without answering twenty questions. I can barely get down the road, let alone leave this stupid town! And say what you want, but you treated Gracie different. And I’m sick of it! Sick of being trapped in this f*cking house!”

“Enough!”

When Daddy’s hand slammed down on the table, it was a lot louder than mine. Loud enough that I flinched and scooted back in my seat.

I was shaking. My hands and my knees and even my bottom lip. I almost never yelled at my parents before. And I’d definitely never cussed at them. Part of me felt triumphant, glad I’d raised my voice, glad I finally had one. The other part of me just felt scared.

“This conversation is over.” Daddy’s voice was soft now. Dangerous. “You’re not going on a road trip with Bo. That’s final.”

For a second, everything was quiet. No one moved. No one spoke. And the silence hurt more than the yelling.

Finally, Mama let out a breath. “Okay. Well … Agnes, do you want some garlic bread?”

“I’m not hungry.” I pushed my chair back from the table, and the legs scraped the wood floor.

“Agnes …” Mama’s voice sounded sad. And exhausted.

I turned in the kitchen doorway and looked back at the table. I couldn’t see much. Just blurry figures where I knew my parents were seated. “Tell me something,” I said. “If I asked to go to Florida, like Gracie did, and there were gonna be adults there—would you let me go?”

They didn’t answer.

Which was answer enough.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”



I had a thousand memories of Gracie slamming her bedroom door. A thousand fights ending with a thud that shook the house and Gracie locking herself in her room for hours.

I learned from the best.

“Agnes!” Mama yelled from downstairs. “If you break that door, I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I screamed, loud enough so she could hear me. “Ground me? I’m already stuck here, so what does it matter?” I kicked the door, just to piss her off, but instead of hurting the wood, I hurt my foot.

I limped over to my bed, tears of pain and anger streaming down my face. I hated them. I hated Mursey. I hated this house and this little girl’s bedroom I’d been trapped in for seventeen years. I grabbed a stuffed rabbit—Hopsy—off the shelf above my headboard and hurled it at the closet. It didn’t make a sound, though. Just fell quietly to the carpet.

Frustrated, I started looking for something breakable.

“Agnes,” Daddy said, tapping on my door. “Can I come in?”

“No!”

I heard the knob twist, but the door didn’t budge. “Agnes Atwood,” he said, voice firmer. “Unlock the door.”

“Why? You wanna keep me locked up anyway. You got your wish. I’m not going nowhere.”

“Anywhere,” he corrected. “Oh good Lord. I’ve been married to your mother too long. Come on, honey. Open up.”

“Fuck off.”

“Agnes!” he said, voice low. “Don’t you speak to me that way. What in the world has gotten into you? This isn’t you.”

But he was wrong. This was me. I just wasn’t the daughter he’d known a few months ago. The daughter who’d never thought she’d get out of Mursey. The daughter whose biggest adventure was a walk in the woods behind her own house. That had all changed. Bo had given me a taste of real freedom. She’d helped me see how much I wanted it. She made me see how capable I was of surviving outside of this bubble, even when no one else thought I could.

And I’d been dumb enough to believe it was possible. To believe I could escape, even for a short time.

Daddy was wrong. This was me. It was just an angry, heartbroken me he’d never seen before.

There was nothing to smash in my room. Except maybe the TV, but that was too big, too hard to pick up. I curled in a ball on my bed, buried my face in my arms, and cried so hard that the back of my throat ached.

“Agnes …” Now it was Mama outside the door. “Honey?”