She reached over to smooth down the cowlick that refused to be tamed. “That’s because they’re just a bunch of rednecks who don’t appreciate intellect.”
He gave her that look again and she wondered how long it would be until he just quit listening to her. “Will I have to be homeschooled in South Carolina, too?”
Loralee concentrated on combing her fingers through his thick, dark hair so that she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “Probably not. But it’s not so bad, is it? Just you and me at the kitchen table?”
She kissed the top of his head, pretending that he wasn’t rolling his eyes again. “We need to go, sweetie.”
He twisted away, his eyes hopeful. “Maybe I can change my name, since we’ll be in a new place.”
When he was born, all she’d wanted to do was give him a name as far away as possible from the trailer park where she’d been born. His daddy was a pilot, and the boy shouldn’t be stuck with a name like Bubba for the rest of his life. She’d read the name Owen in a People magazine a passenger had left behind on a flight, and had torn out the page and stuck it into her Journal of Truths for future reference. She’d wanted a name that sounded sophisticated and couldn’t be shortened or ruined by adding an -ie at the end. She’d just had no idea that choosing a name that began with the letter O would be considered abuse in some circles. Like fourth grade. Or that Owen’s myopia would require him to wear glasses that boys in his class said made him look like an owl. It didn’t help that he was so much smarter than most of the other kids and that he’d compensated by deliberately failing tests and not turning in homework. When he’d come home with the name Owen the owl painted on his backpack, she and Robert had decided she would homeschool.
“Maybe,” she said, a part of her reluctant to let go of her original dream. “Or maybe kids in South Carolina appreciate intelligence and won’t care that your name starts with the same letter that the word owl does.”
His sigh shook his narrow shoulders, his gaze focused on the LEGO plane. “I’m going to leave this here.” He leaned into the crawl space and carefully placed the toy on the floor, tucked against the wall to the left of the opening.
“You don’t have to, Owen. I promise to drive carefully so that it doesn’t get broken.”
He looked at her again with magnified eyes. “It belongs to the old Owen. I’m not going to be him anymore when we get to South Carolina.”
Tears pricked the back of her eyes. He was wise, but she knew he was sensitive about that word and its connection to owls. Instead, she nodded and reached past him to close the little access door for the last time.
She hugged him, feeling his small bones beneath her hands, noticing how his jeans were too short because he was growing too fast for her. She hadn’t bought new ones because she didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that he was getting older. Loralee kissed the top of his head, promising herself that they would stop at a mall before they reached South Carolina. It was important to Loralee that Owen’s sister didn’t think his mother wasn’t taking good care of him.
“It’s all going to be fine,” she said. She made a mental note to add one more thing to her Journal of Truths. Sometimes it’s necessary to tell a lie when the truth will break a heart.
They walked out of the house together, neither one of them turning around, as if they both knew that some good-byes were forever. After making sure that Owen was buckled securely into the backseat, Loralee put the SUV in drive and made one more note to add yet another newfound truth to her journal.
Sometimes bravery can be just another face of desperation.
chapter 2
MERRITT
The auto-ignition temperature of any material—including paper—is a function of its composition, volume, density, and shape, as well as of how long it’s exposed to high temperature. I remembered Cal telling me that once as the reason he hated the title of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: because it was misleading. I repeated the words to myself one more time before opening my eyes.
I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up sitting on the leather sofa in Mr. Williams’s office, or when Ms. Difloe had entered with a tall glass of water, its sides weeping with sweat. And then I remembered my impromptu confession and how I’d started gasping for breath.