him. To thank him. To tell him it’s right that we should go.
His shoes are off. He’s barefoot. I can smell the sour odor of alcohol oozing from his pores.
“I want to go. Now.” I lower my voice. “We’ll figure the rest out later. I want to leave tonight for California, okay?”
“Okay,” he says. “You do?” His expression is weird. Scared. His posture is odd. He’s not standing like he normally does.
Which room did he come from?
He’s midpoint between Mom’s bedroom door and mine.
“Yes. Right now,” I say. The rush comes back to me, the one from the street. The sense of exhilaration. Of running free. “You brought Blue Morpho,” I say.
“Right,” he says. “I did.” He turns and looks behind him—for what?—and turns back to me. “Your mom—” he says, but I cut him off.
“I don’t care. I don’t give a shit what she does. What she says.”
“Okay, I have to get my shoes … they’re in—”
“You do that,” I say. I smile, but my lips stretch funny, like a cartoon clown. “I’ll be right out, okay?”
“JL?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yes.” I squeeze his hand, and run to my room.
See? He was waiting for me. The money is still here.
“Jackie? Where’d you go, Jackie? Come back!”
My mother’s voice trails from down the hall.
I move faster. Not thinking. Not doubting. Not wanting to hear her crazy words. Simply knowing this is what we need to do. I need to do. To feel better. To get away from Aubrey. From her. From everything.
Just me and Max, on Blue Morpho.
It takes me less than five minutes to shove everything I need in a bag.
Part V
The Blue Morpho’s vivid wings result from
microscopic scales that reflect light.
But the undersides are a dull brown.
When it takes flight, the contrasting colors flash, making it look
as if it is appearing and disappearing.
LATE JUNE
TENTH GRADE
As long as I live, I’ll never be able to adequately describe the freeness of riding on the back of Blue Morpho. The cold rush of air, hair trailing back, tangled in the wind. The rhythmic vibrato of motion and sound that blocks everything else from your head.
Maybe that, alone, made everything worth it.
Or maybe nothing ever will.
But sooner or later the wind dies down, the night sky lightens from gray to mauve to coral pink and back to periwinkle again, before the sun is out, up, rising high in the sky, casting a glare so strong you have to shield your eyes against the onslaught. Gas stations call. Bathroom stops. And you realize you’re not dressed properly and gravel kicks up from the road so hard it leaves angry red welts on your shins. That’s when the pieces threaten to come back to you, at first like a fever dream you can write off as confusion, exhaustion, delusion, as vague and unsure as the landscapes that fly past, but eventually—eventually—so fully, so crisp and unrelenting, you have to force yourself to ignore them, dismiss them, because otherwise they will take you down.
But not yet they don’t.
First the fever dream.
And before all that:
We stop at Max’s house, so he can get me a helmet and gather his things.
“Don’t forget the money,” I remind him, though I’m not sure how much is left of what he’s taken. “And be fast, okay, Max?” because even in this flustered, altered state, I understand time and daylight are my enemy.
“I won’t, and I’ll be as fast as I can. But I have to look out for you. You can’t ride from here to California without a helmet.”
I have to look out for you.
How many people say that without ever meaning it?
But Max means it. He always has.
I wait outside, on the idling, vibrating seat of Blue Morpho, the shivering threatening to return to my body, his sad, dilapidated house before me, looking even more sad and dilapidated in the darkness.
Is that yelling—the slap of hand against something hard—coming from inside?
When Max returns, it’s not lost on me how cautious he seems. How concerned. As if he’s reluctant, when he’s the one who wanted this all along.
“Come on, Max. Please.”
He nods, and squints at me, studying me for answers to questions I don’t know any better than him, as he secures his bag on the back with mine by a bungee cord he loops around over and over, for what seems a hundred minutes, then runs back into the garage and emerges with the silver helmet I wear in his hand.
“You sure, Jailbait?” he asks one more time, strapping