Once he’d driven away, I ran out into the road and found Sarx wandering and bumping into the fence posts with bubbling lips, nose, and eyes, crying and whining. He must have gotten the bigger chemical dose. I led him back to the front steps and did my best to flush his and Tesla’s faces with the hose. I brought them into the house, and I was able to see in the light how burned their poor eyes and noses were. I locked up then went into the bathroom.
My face was lopsided. I touched the cheek Randy had slapped, and it hurt. It would be bruised.
I would never forget this. That had been my first kiss. It was something I’d daydreamed about since I was twelve or so. I always imagined it would be in the moonlight, underneath a willow tree, maybe with music in the background. I looked at the picture of my mom, her smiling, happy face, and imagined her first kiss had been wonderful, magical. I could never do it over again. It was done.
I knelt in front of the toilet, stuck my finger down my throat and puked then spit several times. I brushed my teeth and rinsed my face.
Then I let myself cry.
As I inspected the photo of my mom again, I felt stronger. I imagined finding more pictures of her. Finding out what her name was. Finding out why my dad had done what he did. The answers to these questions must lie in the city we left when I was three: Detroit. After I got the box, the laptop, and the envelope, that’s where I was going, and anyone who wanted to stop me would have to do more than slap me around. They’d have to kill me.
Chapter 10
Monday
THE SWELLING IN my face had gone down, but my left cheek was bruised and still hurt. Worse was how my brain felt foggy and disjointed, which made me nervous. I needed to be sharp, and I couldn’t wait another day.
I checked out back. Everything was set for the dogs. Now it was time to make the call. If just one domino in the sequence fell too early, the whole plan was ruined. I closed my eyes and prayed everything would work.
The iPhone’s keypad sang out notes as I pressed the numbers to the supermarket in Saw Pole. “I need some groceries delivered,” I said when a lady answered. “How soon could you get them to me?”
“How far are you?”
“Fifteen miles on County Road 167.”
“Within the hour,” she said. “Dekker just got back from lunch. Dekker?” She shouted the name away from the phone receiver.
“Dekker Sachs?” I said, aghast. It was the boy who’d brought the washing machine out to the dump my last day of work, the boy who’d tried to help me at the bank.
“You know any other Dekkers? ’Cause I sure don’t.”
“Do you have any other drivers available?”
The lady laughed. “Honey, he’s our only driver. Where do you think you are, New York City?”
This was a monkey wrench I hadn’t accounted for. I didn’t want the driver to be someone I knew. But it was too late to back out now. I read the lady my list of canned goods. She repeated it back to me and said Dekker would be here soon. Then I erased the records of the calls I’d made, turned off the phone and smashed it with a hammer. I buried what was left in the yard.
I waited out front, keeping an eye out for the red Dodge pickup. Randy might decide to come by early, so I kept running inside to check the oven clock. It was 11:28 when I looked out the door and saw a cloud of dirt--road dust moving toward me. The vehicle that had caused the cloud pulled up to the house. It was Dekker’s yellow pickup truck. The dogs attacked the truck, of course, and Dekker looked concerned behind the dusty windshield.
“Off,” I yelled and signaled. They reluctantly backed away and sat, snarling and growling.
I scratched both their ears, feeling sentimental. Then I lifted the two bags out of the bed of the truck. Dekker rolled his window down an inch. “Can I carry those in for you, Petty?”
“No,” I said. “I got it. But can you hold on a sec? I got something I want to ask you.”
I took the canned goods inside, put them on the kitchen counter, and took one last look around. Then I went outside and locked the door.
The dogs were still sitting and growling, and Dekker’s window was still cracked open.
“I wondered if you could take me into Saw Pole. I have an errand I need to run, and I can’t drive.”
He stared at me. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Sure. Get in.”
“Just a minute.” I turned away and squatted down to scratch the dogs’ ears. I hugged them both. “Thanks for taking such good care of me,” I whispered to them. “Sorry about the pepper spray.”
They sat, panting and smiling at me as I got in the pickup truck. I was hit by the smell of cigarette smoke, and Dekker waved his hand through the air as if to make it disappear.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Wasn’t planning on having a passenger. I’ll roll down my window.”
A scrunched pack of Camels sat on the console along with a lighter. I watched out the back window as we drove away, and I felt that sting behind my eyes.
“Those are some intense dogs,” Dekker said.
I’d never been alone in a car with a boy my age. Dekker was so tall, the tips of his hair brushed the ceiling of the little truck, and he had big brown eyes. He had long fingers too and a large, pointy Adam’s apple.
He pulled out onto the county road and drove west toward Niobe. “How’ve you been? How you holding up?”
“Okay,” I said, my face to the window.