Run(7)

I bolt upright and Utah scurries backward, then jumps off the bed, tail wagging and ears perked up.

“Agnes.” She’s still fast asleep, her black hair fanned out over the pillow. She looks so peaceful that I almost hate to wake her. But we gotta go. Now. I grab her shoulder and give it a shake. “Agnes, get up.”

“Mmmm.”

“Come on. The alarm didn’t go off. It’s … shit, it’s after ten. Get up.”

Her eyes blink open and she stares at me. “You’re still here,” she mumbles.

I act like I didn’t hear her. “Come on. Get up. We gotta go.”

“Ugh. Okay, okay.”

I jump out of bed and pull on my shorts. Utah whines and nuzzles at my legs, wanting breakfast.

“Fine,” I mumble, grabbing my backpack off the floor and rushing to the bathroom. Hurry or not, I ain’t gonna let my dog starve.

Last night, I’d packed some of her food into a ziplock bag, but I forgot to bring a bowl. I toss a couple handfuls of the kibble onto the bathroom floor. She starts chowing down before all the pieces even hit the ground.

“Good girl.”

I hear Agnes moving around in the other room, getting her clothes on. I get my toothbrush out of my bag and try to clean myself up as fast as I can. I look like shit. But I guess that don’t matter right now.

“Bo,” Agnes says, and I can hear the shake in her voice. “Bo, come back in here.”

“What?”

I step out of the bathroom and look at her. She’s half-dressed, wearing just her jeans and a plain white bra. But she ain’t moving. She’s real still, her shirt loose in her hand.

“What?” I ask again.

She don’t say nothing. Just points to the TV, still on from last night.

“… Atwood’s parents contacted police this morning. It’s believed the teenager may have run away with another girl, Bo Dickinson. Authorities say the vehicle is a silver Chevy with the license plate …”

Mine and Agnes’s most recent school pictures stare back at us from the screen while the news anchor talks, fast and monotone, like she don’t give a damn what she’s saying.

But I give a damn. I give many damns.

My heart starts beating so fast it hurts.

Agnes turns to look at me. Then she says what we’re both thinking.

“Fuck.”





I’d hoped to go to Lexington with my parents when they drove Gracie up to college. It’d mean two and a half hours in the car—one way—but I’d never been to a city that big. We could go to a real mall and eat at a nice restaurant. But my sister put an end to all those hopes when she packed two giant suitcases and a handful of boxes full of her stuff.

“How will you fit all of this in that tiny dorm room?” Mama asked as she lifted one of the cardboard boxes into the backseat, in the spot where I’d normally sit. There was just too much stuff and not enough room for four of us. Which meant I’d be the one left behind.

“I’ll make it work.”

“Really? Because I’m not even sure we can fit everything in the car,” Daddy said, slamming the Toyota’s trunk shut.

“Well, if you’d let me drive the Chevy and follow y’all up to campus …”

“Nice try,” Daddy said. “You’re not taking the car.”

“But it’s my car,” Gracie whined.

“And yet, we’re the ones paying for the gas. You don’t need a car on campus. Not as a freshman. End of story.”

Gracie huffed and stomped her foot, but the way I saw it, she had nothing to complain about. She’d just gotten a huge scholarship to the University of Kentucky. She was getting the hell out of Mursey—something hardly anybody did. Around here, you grew up, got married, and stayed put. Going to college, especially a good state school like UK, was a big deal. Even in my family.

We weren’t poor like a lot of people in Mursey. My great-granddaddy had opened a hardware store, Atwood & Son, way back when, and it had passed down to my daddy when Grandpa died, back when I was only three. Daddy owned the place now, and the business was doing well, so we weren’t hard off. Mama stayed at home with Gracie and me, sometimes selling Mary Kay on the side. We never got to go on fancy vacations or anything, but we never wanted for anything, either.

We weren’t well off enough that Daddy could pay for tuition at a state school, though. Lucky for my sister, she was one hell of a cheerleader—good enough to get the attention of UK, which had one of the best cheer programs in the country. Her tuition was covered. Which made her the first Atwood to go to college.

And it made me the bitter, jealous sister.

Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for Gracie, but she hardly acted like it was a big deal. Like everybody got to go to college for free. Like it was normal. But it wasn’t. Not in Mursey. I was decent in school and didn’t have an athletic bone in my body—and even if I did, our high school didn’t have any sports that a blind girl could play. The chances of me getting a scholarship were pretty much zero.

The chances of me leaving Mursey were pretty much zero.

I didn’t even get to ride along to drop her off.

“We’ll be back tonight,” Mama said before kissing me on the cheek. We’d gone back in the house so she could grab her purse. “Call your grandmother if you need anything. She can walk down here in about five minutes.”