“I’ll make it work.”
“Really? Because I’m not even sure we can fit everything in the car,” Daddy said, slamming the Toyota’s trunk shut.
“Well, if you’d let me drive the Chevy and follow y’all up to campus …”
“Nice try,” Daddy said. “You’re not taking the car.”
“But it’s my car,” Gracie whined.
“And yet, we’re the ones paying for the gas. You don’t need a car on campus. Not as a freshman. End of story.”
Gracie huffed and stomped her foot, but the way I saw it, she had nothing to complain about. She’d just gotten a huge scholarship to the University of Kentucky. She was getting the hell out of Mursey—something hardly anybody did. Around here, you grew up, got married, and stayed put. Going to college, especially a good state school like UK, was a big deal. Even in my family.
We weren’t poor like a lot of people in Mursey. My great-granddaddy had opened a hardware store, Atwood & Son, way back when, and it had passed down to my daddy when Grandpa died, back when I was only three. Daddy owned the place now, and the business was doing well, so we weren’t hard off. Mama stayed at home with Gracie and me, sometimes selling Mary Kay on the side. We never got to go on fancy vacations or anything, but we never wanted for anything, either.
We weren’t well off enough that Daddy could pay for tuition at a state school, though. Lucky for my sister, she was one hell of a cheerleader—good enough to get the attention of UK, which had one of the best cheer programs in the country. Her tuition was covered. Which made her the first Atwood to go to college.
And it made me the bitter, jealous sister.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for Gracie, but she hardly acted like it was a big deal. Like everybody got to go to college for free. Like it was normal. But it wasn’t. Not in Mursey. I was decent in school and didn’t have an athletic bone in my body—and even if I did, our high school didn’t have any sports that a blind girl could play. The chances of me getting a scholarship were pretty much zero.
The chances of me leaving Mursey were pretty much zero.
I didn’t even get to ride along to drop her off.
“We’ll be back tonight,” Mama said before kissing me on the cheek. We’d gone back in the house so she could grab her purse. “Call your grandmother if you need anything. She can walk down here in about five minutes.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry you can’t come, sweetheart,” she said. “I know you were looking forward to it. I had no idea your sister would be packing so much. There’s just not enough room. Believe me. If I could replace one of those boxes with your butt in the backseat, I would. But Gracie—”
“Might kill you. I get it. It’s okay. I’ll see y’all tonight.”
“Okay.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Love you, Agnes.”
“Love you, too.”
Outside, Daddy honked the horn. Mama ran to the door and hurried out, hollering, “Lock it behind me,” over her shoulder.
I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Lock the door? Mursey was hardly a dangerous town. My parents never even locked the garage door, so it wasn’t something they were real worried about before. I doubted there were kidnappers waiting out in the bushes to take a blind teenager. But I didn’t argue with her.
I never argued.
I tried to keep myself occupied once they’d gone. I turned on the TV, but there was nothing on besides sports, kids cartoons, and some bad movies from ten years ago. I got one of the braille books Mama had ordered for me last year, and tried to read, but I was rusty. I’d gotten so used to reading enlarged text or using magnifiers that it took me twice as long to understand the raised dots on the pages. My mind kept wandering, and I had to rescan each line, my fingers sliding slowly along the page. Ten pages in, and I wasn’t even sure what I’d been reading. I sighed and put the book back on the shelf.
Outside, I could hear a bobwhite whistling. I walked to the back door and pressed my face against the sun-warmed glass. Everything was washed in a blurry white haze. Like the brightness had been turned up way too high on the TV. I blinked a few times, trying to force my eyes to adjust. It was a pretty day, not cloudy at all, and with the summer fading fast, the temperature wasn’t too awful. Warm, but not humid like the last three months or so had been.