Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 23

Dylan



When the cop hangs up the phone and tells me my dad will be coming, I’m mostly relieved. So relieved I want to cry, but I’m embarrassed enough by my stammer and actually doing this stupid-ass thing that I don’t want to add to it, so I look at the cop again, the one who’s pissed at us.

And Tiffany is pissed at me.

“Come on,” barks the cop who called the house. “You can come sit in here.” We follow him to a beige room with a table and a few chairs. He tosses some magazines down, crusty, wrinkled ones probably borrowed from the waiting area in the lobby or maybe the break room. I see a Glamour, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek.

He gives us a hard look before he leaves. “You two try to go anywhere, you can wait in a jail cell. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve got better things to do than babysit a couple kids who run away because Mommy and Daddy are meanies.”

He slams the door, and Tiffany jumps in her seat. Then she starts to cry. Again.

“Why did you have to do that!” she yells at me through her tears. “You dumbass.”

“That” is get busted shoplifting.

Tiffany had dragged me back to the mall. After risking our lives to dash across the street and risking our lives further by eating these horrible wet hot dogs rolling in this machine for who knows how long . . . she talked me back into the mall.

We couldn’t think of anywhere to go after our brief failed attempt at hitching a ride. I was trying to talk myself into it, thinking we’d be in a warm car, there are two of us, so that was safer. But it’s so snowy I don’t think anyone could see us, or they didn’t want to stop for a couple of school skippers. Plus it was a really busy road—even if someone had decided they wanted to stop, someone who didn’t look like an ax murderer, someone willing to take us south, the roads were so bad they would have caused a pileup.

When Tiffany said she wanted to go into the mall again for a while, I was so relieved I almost fell down, and I gave up on the hitching idea for good.

I’ve done a lot of stupid-ass things the last few days, but getting murdered by a psycho was one stupid-ass thing too far. Plus I feel responsible for Tiffany, who, as Mom would put it, is “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

So we were back in a different part of the mall, and I said we should look like we’re shopping so it doesn’t look so weird that we’re just walking endless loops. So we went into JCPenney, and Tiffany looked at earrings.

I saw someone watching us and got worried about getting caught, until I decided that getting caught might not be the worst thing ever.

I took a pair of earrings and slid them up my sleeve. And when Tiffany was ready to go, we walked out into the mall to the sound of blaring alarms, and that same someone—plainclothes security, it turned out—came to say, “Come with me, please.”

“No!” Tiffany wailed, and tried to run away.

I was so embarrassed.

Tiffany is calling me a dumbass again.

“I mean, why did you even take the earrings? I didn’t even want some, I was just killing time. I didn’t know I was running away with a thief.”

This is so ridiculous on so many levels, I don’t bother to answer.

She tries a new tactic.

“I thought you loved me.”

“I thought I did, too.”

It came out too fast, and too late I realize I should have softened that. She’s wailing again on the table. I come around to her side and put my hand on her arm, but she shakes me off.

“I’m s-s-sorry. Didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did. And you don’t love me because I’m fat.”

“No!”

I look up at the ceiling, trying to organize my thoughts. I don’t like a lot of talking. It’s hard when I’m nervous because I stammer, and I get embarrassed, and it gets worse. That’s why I’m better at writing, and why I like Facebook so much, or really anything on the computer. I’m really fast at typing.

In my backpack I have a notebook. I always have a notebook because I like to draw, and sometimes I write little poems when I’m bored. So I take out my notebook and start writing.

I don’t know you very well, is all. I thought we could get to know each other in messages and we’d be close that way. But real life is different. I still care about you lots, but that’s not exactly the same. Please don’t be mad. I just didn’t want you to get hurt trying to hitchhike.





I shove this across the table to her, nudging her elbow with it. She sniffs and wipes her face, and reads. At first she scowls, but then her face relaxes. She slumps back in her chair, but the waterworks have stopped.

I pull the notebook back and add this:

You know we weren’t going to get very far. We had no money, no car. If we hitched, we’d either get a creepy freak, or a good citizen who’d know we were running away and probably turn us in. It was never going to work.





I underline never for effect.

And I’m cold. Aren’t you cold?





I add a little cartoon of our shivering selves.

She reads this and smiles a little.

Then her smile fades. “My dad’s gonna kill me.”

“R-really?”

She sighs hard now, and suddenly looks older than she’s seemed this whole time. “Not literally. Guess I might as well tell you I don’t really have bars on my window.”

Yeah. No shit.

We fall into silence. She flips through Glamour. I try to work up enthusiasm for Newsweek, but I can’t focus. My mother’s hysteria on the phone keeps playing in my head, like a mosquito buzz that won’t go away. What’s waiting for me back home. But why did I expect anything different?

The fact is, I didn’t think very far ahead. My future after the bus ride was a big blank, but that blank seemed refreshing and clean. An inviting sheet of paper ready for sketching, without all the messy scribbles of my stupid school I hate and home with its tension so bad I’m surprised we’re not all twitching. When that big bus rumbled out of Grand Rapids, I felt dizzy with freedom and pushed all thoughts of home out of my head. Even my sisters. Probably because I knew if I pictured Jewel’s face, I’d never be able to leave.

The door swings open, and we both jump. A uniformed lady cop comes in carrying sandwiches and drinks. “Well, if it isn’t Romeo and Juliet. Well, star-crossed kids, you’re probably hungry.”

She plunks the sandwiches down with a couple of Cokes.

“Thank you,” I mutter, glad to get that out without stammering.

She regards us with one hand on her hip. “You know, I’ve got kids. Littler than you, but I’ve got kids. Most of us do,” she says, gesturing out the door to the rest of the police station. “What you two did to your parents, you don’t have the faintest idea what that’s like, the hell they were going through. You took years off their lives with this stunt.”

I can feel a blush creep up the back of my neck. I’m sure thinking of my sisters, now. And my dad, and Mom, because I gave her a reason to freak out, this time. I wonder if Casey was worried. Probably.

“Well, eat already. I don’t want your folks thinking we starved you. I’ll check on you later. Juliet, your dad should be here soon.”

Tiffany isn’t eating. She’s just picking at the bread.

I know the feeling. But I eat it anyway, because the officer was nice enough to bring it to us. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.