Run(62)

But I didn’t answer. Not then. Not the half dozen other times she and Daddy tried throughout the evening. I stayed quiet, shutting them out for shutting me in. Until, finally, it was past eleven.

“We’re going to bed, honey,” she said. “We’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

I didn’t answer.

“We love you, Agnes.” Daddy said. “Just remember that, all right? We love you.”





I wander the streets for a while, watching as people leave their houses and climb into their trucks. It’s Wednesday morning, and for most people, the world’s still spinning. Even if mine’s falling apart.

I make a right turn. Then a left. I ain’t sure where I’m going. Ain’t sure what I’ll do next. Until I end up in front of a run-down motel with a crooked sign on the front door. COAL COUNTRY INN it reads. It’s the kinda place that ain’t gonna care how old I am.

I give the hundred dollars to the man at the desk. He gives me some change and the key to room 5A.

It’s small and dirty and gray. The carpet smells and the curtains got holes in them. I sit on the bed, hugging my bag to my chest. I ain’t sure how long I sit there, just staring at the wall, listening to some people argue in the next room. But I sit and stare until my eyes feel dry and cracked.

When I take the bottle of bourbon out of my bag, it don’t feel near as wrong as it should. I stare at the label for a long time. It’s the same brand Daddy used to drink back in Mursey, before he left us. It’s the same brand Uncle Jeff would get drunk on when me and Colt were younger. I’ve even seen Colt with a bottle just like this before. It’s practically a Dickinson family tradition. Some kinda rite of passage. I put it off so long.

I’ve never taken a drink in my life. Not one. Because I didn’t want to be like them. Because, other than Colt, every Dickinson I know has taken drinking too far. I wasn’t gonna let that happen to me. I was gonna be better.

But when I take a swig, I know.

There ain’t no way to fight destiny.

And this bottle, this gross motel, this lonely feeling—this is my destiny.

The first drink burns. The second’s not so bad. And by the fourth or fifth, I don’t feel a thing.

I turn on the black-and-white TV, watch an episode of M*A*S*H, and drink. I drink long. Drink fast. Drink it all. Until I pass out on top of the unwashed blankets.

I wake up with my stomach on fire.

At first I think I’m dying. I’m sweating and I’m panting and I gotta run to the toilet. My vision is fuzzy, edges faded like an old photo, and my brain ain’t moving right. When I trip over the empty bottle and have to crawl my way to the bathroom, I can’t keep my head straight. Can’t focus on what’s going on. Why am I on the floor? Why am I dying?

I barely make it to the toilet bowl before I’m puking so hard it makes my whole body shake. And it just keeps on. And it hurts. And all I wanna do is sleep. And I’m clinging to the toilet for dear life, knowing if I don’t, I’ll fall onto the tiles and never be able to get back up.

This is my punishment. This is what I get for everything I done. I’m just like the rest of them. Just a lying, stealing drunk like my daddy and his daddy before him. I lied to Agnes, chased away one of the only people who’s ever loved me back. And all I got for it was a hundred-dollar bill and a bottle of bourbon. Sounds about right for a Dickinson.

And then I’m crying. Sobbing between retching. I heard once the human body is made of 70 percent water. But with all the crying and the puking and the sweating, I think there can’t be none left in me.

When I think I can leave the toilet, I try to stand, but it ain’t no use. My body’s weak and empty, and all I can do is crawl. Drag myself back to the bedroom, to the phone by the nightstand.

Even with my head swimming and my vision full of black spots, I can still dial her number.

When she don’t answer right away, I start to panic. Because I think I’m gonna die here. In this motel room. Alone.

And when she does answer, I start crying harder. Because I’m an awful person and I did awful things and I’m being punished and she ain’t got no reason to answer the phone for me.

“Hello?” she says again. “Is anyone there?”

“Agnes …” My throat burns and the words crack like snapping twigs. I gasp between sobs as I clutch the phone to my wet face. “Agnes, I need you.”





“Agnes?”

Bo’s voice on the other end of the line almost made my heart stop beating. I’d never heard it sound so fragile.

But then, she’d never called me at two in the morning, either.

I was downstairs, my face still swollen from crying, when the phone had started to ring. I’d snuck out of my room, knowing my parents had long since gone to bed. No matter how angry I was, I still needed to eat, and I knew Mama would have saved the leftovers from dinner. I hadn’t even opened up the fridge yet, though, when I heard the phone.

In all my life, I couldn’t remember anyone ever calling our house in the middle of the night. For some reason, my mind immediately snapped to the horror movies Gracie made me watch when we were kids. Mama and Daddy hated horror movies, but when Gracie babysat me, she always wanted to watch them, even though she knew they scared me. Even thinking of them just then, of the creepy calls girls always got in those movies, with heavy breathing and weird voices threatening them—well, it made me shiver and look over my shoulder.