her.
But let’s face it. This was just as much about myself.
I wish I could say I was excited, seeing my life split so suddenly and dramatically away from my expectation of it. But the thing was, it was seven in the morning, I’d been up for twenty-four hours straight. Allof this was suddenly starting to feel real, and I was finding it hard to breathe.
Through all the last-minute preparations, I hadn’t had time to think. I’d just been reacting, moving on pure momentum, pushed by my fury at Sydney, and then by fear and then by Star. Lying in bed with Star in the early morning, most of me had expected that I’d wake up to find Molly had been nothing more than a hallucination. That I’d just head off to my mural, then back home for dinner, cereal or meat with bottled sauce fried on the Foreman grill, my only adventure coming from the book I would read after the dishes were done.
I had only two hundred dollars in my wallet, all the ATM had let me take, and there was no way I could disappear for long on two hundred bucks. But I couldn’t risk going to another ATM or stopping at a bank once I was on the road, because if anyone identified my composite, they’d be able to trace my location. So on my way out of town I stopped at Six of Swords and left a note, printed in all caps, folded and taped to the door.
SYDNEY,
YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS AND WHY I’M WRITING. I NEED YOU TO CALL ME ASAP.
Not much of a note, it didn’t convey just how desperate and immediate the situation was, so at the last second I added:
BECAUSE I’M LEAVING WITH HER, AND I’M GOING TO NEED MONEY TO KEEP HER SAFE. I’M GOING TO DISAPPEAR.
Which of course I regretted an hour into the drive, when it was already too late to go back. I was pretty sure now that something awful had happened to Sydney. And even if she was okay, someone else was bound to see the note first, and what would happen when they did?For sure they’d give it to the cops, who’d know it was related to Molly’s disappearance. The police would take fingerprints off the paper, and then what?
I’d been fingerprinted once, at a Cops & Kids picnic my school had hosted when I was eleven or twelve. They’d set up a fingerprinting station where a woman in uniform had rolled the fingers of my right hand across a pad, then let me see them on a computer screen. Did that mean my prints were on file? Was the Cops & Kids program just a cheap ruse to get preemptive records on all potential future criminals?
I knew I had to at least get out of the state. I had no idea where I’d end up, except that I needed to get as far away as it was possible for my ’97 Tercel to get. Idaho, I thought, or Kansas, one of those places you always forgot about when listing states, places I knew nothing about except fourth-grade geography, shapes and capitals and major crops.
I wanted to floor the accelerator, drive five hundred miles an hour and disregard any red lights. But of course all I needed was to get pulled over by a cop, who’d take one look at my frantic, sleep-deprived face and snap on the cuffs. So I kept myself at five miles above the limit, driving from suburb down through gawking farmland. Mile after mile of it, buried in sameness, talk radio on to keep me awake and Molly asleep, stopping to brood over each fork, which way, which way? If I’d been Star and believed in intuition it might’ve been different. As it was, every decision felt wrong.
WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA . West Virginia seemed to look exactly as wilted as eastern Virginia had, the ragged grass the same faded green, motor homes evenly spaced in tired rows like gravestones, yards with sagging laundry lines and white-painted tires planted with hopeful but stunted pansies. But I’d crossed the state line, which was progress. Progress, but terrifying and suddenly exhausting. I turned up the radio, drove faster, the wind stinging my driver’s-side eye.
Mid-afternoon I passed through a small town, its houses run-down,with
But let’s face it. This was just as much about myself.
I wish I could say I was excited, seeing my life split so suddenly and dramatically away from my expectation of it. But the thing was, it was seven in the morning, I’d been up for twenty-four hours straight. Allof this was suddenly starting to feel real, and I was finding it hard to breathe.
Through all the last-minute preparations, I hadn’t had time to think. I’d just been reacting, moving on pure momentum, pushed by my fury at Sydney, and then by fear and then by Star. Lying in bed with Star in the early morning, most of me had expected that I’d wake up to find Molly had been nothing more than a hallucination. That I’d just head off to my mural, then back home for dinner, cereal or meat with bottled sauce fried on the Foreman grill, my only adventure coming from the book I would read after the dishes were done.
I had only two hundred dollars in my wallet, all the ATM had let me take, and there was no way I could disappear for long on two hundred bucks. But I couldn’t risk going to another ATM or stopping at a bank once I was on the road, because if anyone identified my composite, they’d be able to trace my location. So on my way out of town I stopped at Six of Swords and left a note, printed in all caps, folded and taped to the door.
SYDNEY,
YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS AND WHY I’M WRITING. I NEED YOU TO CALL ME ASAP.
Not much of a note, it didn’t convey just how desperate and immediate the situation was, so at the last second I added:
BECAUSE I’M LEAVING WITH HER, AND I’M GOING TO NEED MONEY TO KEEP HER SAFE. I’M GOING TO DISAPPEAR.
Which of course I regretted an hour into the drive, when it was already too late to go back. I was pretty sure now that something awful had happened to Sydney. And even if she was okay, someone else was bound to see the note first, and what would happen when they did?For sure they’d give it to the cops, who’d know it was related to Molly’s disappearance. The police would take fingerprints off the paper, and then what?
I’d been fingerprinted once, at a Cops & Kids picnic my school had hosted when I was eleven or twelve. They’d set up a fingerprinting station where a woman in uniform had rolled the fingers of my right hand across a pad, then let me see them on a computer screen. Did that mean my prints were on file? Was the Cops & Kids program just a cheap ruse to get preemptive records on all potential future criminals?
I knew I had to at least get out of the state. I had no idea where I’d end up, except that I needed to get as far away as it was possible for my ’97 Tercel to get. Idaho, I thought, or Kansas, one of those places you always forgot about when listing states, places I knew nothing about except fourth-grade geography, shapes and capitals and major crops.
I wanted to floor the accelerator, drive five hundred miles an hour and disregard any red lights. But of course all I needed was to get pulled over by a cop, who’d take one look at my frantic, sleep-deprived face and snap on the cuffs. So I kept myself at five miles above the limit, driving from suburb down through gawking farmland. Mile after mile of it, buried in sameness, talk radio on to keep me awake and Molly asleep, stopping to brood over each fork, which way, which way? If I’d been Star and believed in intuition it might’ve been different. As it was, every decision felt wrong.
WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA . West Virginia seemed to look exactly as wilted as eastern Virginia had, the ragged grass the same faded green, motor homes evenly spaced in tired rows like gravestones, yards with sagging laundry lines and white-painted tires planted with hopeful but stunted pansies. But I’d crossed the state line, which was progress. Progress, but terrifying and suddenly exhausting. I turned up the radio, drove faster, the wind stinging my driver’s-side eye.
Mid-afternoon I passed through a small town, its houses run-down,with
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