When I was done, the manager, a large round woman with a hint of a dark mustache over her lip, told me to sit tight for a minute and she’d interview me after the lunch rush. The guy behind the counter handed me a paper container of salty fries and I took it with thanks and about ten packs of ketchup. After I inhaled the free snack, I looked up to see the mustached lady and the guy behind the counter sort of whispering and staring over at me. I wiped my face with a napkin and scuttled to the bathroom, thinking that I must look pretty terrible. But on my way to the ladies’, I saw through the big windows at the side of the place as a cop car pulled up not too discreetly right outside. I turned around to see mustache lady, her eyes as big as burger buns, watching while the cops came to the door. I guess ole “Missy” finally managed to report her license stolen—and everything I’d been up to in her name for the past couple of weeks had caught up with me.
I didn’t wait around to find out. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, sliding out the tiny window over the toilet before the cops could get back outside and around the building. I booked it down an alley and into an open screen door that led into the kitchen of another neighboring restaurant. But that was the end of my life as Melissa Carter. And I couldn’t be Liberty Helms anymore. I wasn’t really sure who to be, or what I was going to do.
When the sun went down, I used the last twenty dollars I had in my jeans. I bought a cup of coffee and two doughnuts and a cheap touristy sweatshirt with a hood in a size extra large that would have to double as a blanket. I curled back into the same bench at the same bus stop when it got dark, with no idea of what to do the next day. Going back to Ma’s wasn’t really an option. Besides, I didn’t have the scratch for a bus ticket. Maybe I could call Sheila and see if she might come down to pick me up. I thought about Ms. Lay, my old math teacher. Even if there was a way to find her, I doubted she would remember me. Her most promising student, now sleeping, nameless, at a bus stop.
They woke me up with a flashlight in the face, and I didn’t lie when I answered that I didn’t know who I was or where I was—that was the truth. For a moment anyway. Then it all clicked into place. Was I Liberty? Or was I Missy? No. I had no name. I had nowhere to stay. No one cared about me, or ever really had. I had about fifteen cents left in my pocket. I was no one now.
“How old are you?” the lady cop asked. “You look like a minor. You a runaway?”
“My name is . . . my name is Sarah,” I said, before I even knew what I was doing. The image of the girl’s happy family swam before my eyes. Her blond family, the huge reward, the handsome boyfriend. A family that loved her. People who missed her. Who wanted her back. “And I have a sister named Nico.”
CHAPTER 27
BY THE TIME WE got back to the house, it was late afternoon. As we rode our bikes down the streets, the sun cut through the leaves and trees in a flashing mosaic on the sidewalk. Somehow the heat had broken, the cool breeze lifting our hair.
I felt drugged, as if someone had slipped something into my soda. But really all Sarah had done was listen. She hadn’t asked why—why I didn’t call for help. Why I didn’t tell the truth. Why I put the bike in the rack and rode home like it had never happened. Maybe she didn’t ask because she knew that I didn’t have the answers. Instead, she had listened to my truth and she hadn’t questioned me. She still loved me, she was still on my side. Just like a real sister.
I watched her ride in front of me, on Mom’s bike, her blond hair blowing in the breeze. I tried not to think about what her life had been like before she came to us. Where she had been all those years, the things that had happened to her. Why she wanted, needed a family so badly. She was with us now, and I wanted her to stay.
When we pulled our bikes into the driveway, Mom came out and stood on the front steps, a deep line between her eyebrows. “Detective Donally left a message—he said he came by earlier.”
Sarah smiled, coming up the stairs. “Oh yeah, almost forgot, he came by just as we were going out. He didn’t say why though, right, Nico?” She turned to me, her face open and warm, as if she had nothing to hide.
“I thought he was just checking in,” I said, going around Mom and into the house.
“Let’s jump in the pool,” Sarah suggested. “It’s still hot out.”
Mom came in behind us, closing the door. “He’s coming by tonight, after dinner.”
“Who, the detective?” Sarah asked. She opened the fridge and took out an orange juice. “Nico, you want?” she asked, shaking the bottle.
I shook my head. “I’m going to go put on my suit.” I went upstairs and sat on my bed for a minute, taking deep breaths. So he was coming back, just like Sarah said he would. But it would be okay. Just like Sarah said. I mechanically tied on my bikini and went into the bathroom, looking at my face in the mirror. Our hike had put color into my cheeks, my hair was blown by the wind of the bike ride into a summer-tousled look that suited me. I looked good. My eyes weren’t red.