I didn’t want to do anything but crawl onto my couch and sleep. I didn’t think I even had enough energy to get out of the dress.
But Cora would be home with whatever man in a few hours, and I didn’t have time for self-pity.
I took a shower first, and while I was in there, I mapped out a plan in my head.
I think the shower was what reinvigorated me. Or maybe it was just having any sort of plan at all, sketchy as mine was.
I dumped the schoolbooks out of my backpack and replaced them with The Color Purple, toiletries, and the yellow dress. Then I got Cora’s plastic suitcase out of the closet and put in some more stuff. Clothes mostly and some of the money. I placed the rest of the bills from the jar at various places on my body, just like I’d seen a hooker do once in a movie, so that if she got robbed the thieves wouldn’t get all her money. Seemed like a good strategy to me.
I looked around to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything, and my eyes landed on the scrapbook, which was still sitting on the couch. I had flipped through it before I had left for Farrell Manor, savoring the fantasy one last time before it became a reality.
But three hours ago seemed like a lifetime ago.
I didn’t take the scrapbook or my Molly Ringwald VHS movies with me when I left. In fact, those were the things I made sure to leave behind.
PART II
In Between Then and Now
EIGHT
When I think back on the night of the Farrell Manor Incident, I feel a lot of things: shame, anger . . . but I also feel pride. Because at least I knew when to go.
As I walked west on the road out of town, I imagined all the kids at that party, standing on the steps of the school, waiting for me on Monday morning. I could see them laughing and talking about how funny it was: my dress and my makeup and my hair. I hear the less popular kids hanging on their every word as they recount me falling into the puddle. Maybe Perry even does an impression of me falling, his arms flailing and his eyes wide like mine.
But then the second period bell rings, and people who normally have class with me start to realize I’m not there. And that’s sort of strange, because further discussion reveals the fact that I had never missed a day of school in my life. By lunchtime, the laughing has turned to confusion. Then people would start to figure that I’ve skipped school because I’m so embarrassed, which would be understandable.
I imagined that it would probably take weeks—maybe even a month—for them to realize I wasn’t coming back.
That’s what I thought about while I walked to the closest truck stop. I think it took me three hours to get there, but that was just a guesstimate. I didn’t have a watch, and I hadn’t checked the time before I closed Cora’s door behind me. But my feet hurt so bad by the time I arrived, I figured three hours sounded just about right.
I felt scared, but my heart lay silent in my chest. I wasn’t going back. It was decided. And there was nothing that life could do or throw at me to make me change my mind about that.
So I went into the diner attached to the truck stop’s gas station and gave the waitress two dollars of my money for a cup of coffee and a side of hash browns, pointing them out on the picture menu. Then I waited for someone to give my first words to.
I knew that it would be a woman.
Women were mean, and women said nasty things to you, and sometimes women even hit. Nine times out of ten, women who did this were women you knew—women who had some kind of context in your life. But in my experience, women were never mean to complete strangers. They didn’t rape, mug, or slit the throats of people they did not know—especially if that person was another woman. So I knew that if I was going to get to where I was going, which was simply away from where I was for forever, it would be a woman that drove me.