Dixie cradled the bag in her arms like it was a baby. “He’s probably—”
“Fine,” I said, stopping her before she could voice another excuse for him. “Call and ask him what’s in the bag. You think he’s that great? Ask. Ask him if everything today—buying us groceries, cooking dinner—was all so he could stash this here without us noticing.” She held the bag against her chest. Her phone was on the floor by the bed. I picked it up. “Or I can call him and ask.”
Dixie slowly lowered the bag and slid to the floor with it in her lap. She looked at it a few seconds, then passed it to me. “You open it. I don’t want him getting mad at me.”
Maybe it was her being younger that made her care so much what he thought. Fourteen—even almost fifteen—is pretty far from seventeen when it comes down to it. Or maybe it was that she had better memories of him than I did, a different picture of him, since he’d always paid her more attention. Unlike me, she still had something left to lose.
I can remember the sound the zipper made. It snagged a couple of times; then I got the bag open in three short bursts and peered inside.
“What is it?” Dixie asked.
I reached my hand in to widen the opening, to see how much was in there.
Then I stared at Dixie and dumped the contents of the backpack onto our floor.
Her mouth fell open. She got up onto her knees and bent over it.
“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”
10.
EVERYONE PLAYS the runaway game when they’re little. Maybe they run away in the house, like we did, only pretending to be gone. Or if they’re in an okay neighborhood, they might run away down the street, to a park or a neighbor’s house. But it’s a game you grow out of. Most kids, when they get older, realize they have things pretty good, that their parents love them and that not getting dessert every night or having to share their toys isn’t the end of the world.
Besides, those who really do want to leave, who need to, have to figure things out. Like how they’ll survive. They need a plan, they need help.
Or they need money.
“How much do you think this is?” Dixie asked as she stared at the cash on our bedroom floor.
Stacks and stacks of it. It wasn’t all neat and organized and new looking, like on TV. Some of it was bundled, some of it loose and crumpled. There were ones, and there were twenties. There were fives, lots of fives. Literally at our feet.
I picked up a bundle and flipped through it. “These are all fifties.” I put that one down and picked up another. “Tens.”
Having it all spread out on the floor made me nervous; with our luck, I could imagine Mom miraculously coming out of her drug stupor and walking in on us, or Dad turning up with an apartment key that he’d somehow gotten. I started to put it all back into the bag.
“Wait,” Dixie said, grasping at the money. “I want to count it.”
I sat back on my heels. I made my thoughts slow down, I made myself breathe like Mr. Bergstrom taught me. What were the facts? What was reality? A pile of money. That Dad had hidden in our room. Another reality was Dixie, and that she still felt loyal to him and could pick up her phone any second and call to tell him we’d found the money. But she also still felt loyal to Mom and might tell her.
And another reality, one that I pushed to the side for later, was what a person—a person like me—could do with that money.
My goal, my only goal right then, was to keep Dixie from telling either of our parents what we’d found.
“Weren’t you going to call Dad?” I asked her carefully. “You could ask him how much it is.”
She drew her hands back. Her phone was right next to her on the floor. I held back the impulse to grab it, knowing that would backfire.
“Or,” I said, “do you want to wait until Mom wakes up and ask her what to do? Remember how she said she’d burn any money we got from Dad?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“You didn’t see her, Dixie, throwing bags full of food down the garbage chute. But go ahead. I’m sure the mom that got you to buy drugs for her will give great advice.”
Dixie’s expression clouded. “Why are you being like this?”
I stood. “I’m being like this because after everything we’ve been through you still act like they’re normal parents who are capable of doing normal parent things like solving problems and taking care of us. I mean, look at only everything that happened today, never mind our whole lives.” I pointed to the money. “Think about it, Dixie. What kind of a father would use his kids’ room to stash drug money or whatever it is?”
“You think it’s drug money?”
“Or whatever it is. You think he earned this? At a job?”
She halfheartedly straightened a stack of the bills. “I’m sure he has an explanation.”
“I’m sure he does.”
I sat on my bed, barely breathing now, and she stayed on the floor between the phone and the money, staring blankly, looking at neither. After a few seconds she reached over for the backpack and slowly started putting the money into it. “Okay. So what do we do?”
I exhaled. “Let me think.”
The window was still open. Heavy mist had coated the glass in droplets. Sounds from the street—cars, mostly, and a few voices—floated up to me. I’d done it, kept Dixie from calling him, gotten her to look to me for the answers like she did when she was six, eight. Now, I wanted to figure out what Dad would do next, how much time we’d have to come up with a plan. But I was exhausted and cold and the only thoughts I could manage were about myself.
“It’s a shitload of money, Gem.”
“I know.” I stared at the bag and thought about what I would have done if I’d been all alone when I found it. “Let’s put it back under the bed for now. Like it was. And don’t say anything to Dad.”
She’d drawn her knees to her chest. “Maybe he wants to give it to us. Maybe he did earn it, Gem. Maybe he wants to take care of us. This must have been what he used to buy us groceries, right?”
I saw the little girl she’d been, saw it in her face, but more in what she was saying and in her voice—the tired, desperate hope of having to convince yourself of something that should be unquestionable.
“Maybe,” I said, slipping easily back into the role of big sister, comforter. “For now, don’t say anything.” I put the bag back under the bed, right where it had been.
“I won’t.” She got up and crawled under her covers.
I turned off the light and lay on top of my bed. We had a couple of hours before we’d have to leave for school. Despite how exhausted I was, I decided not to let myself sleep. I still had to make sure Dixie didn’t call him, or text him, or go to Mom. No matter what my sister promised, or how tough she thought she was, how grown-up and world-wise and smart, when it came to them she was more fragile than I’d ever been, or would ever let myself be.
11.