through one old Newark neighborhood after another. I didn’t have a destination; I just wanted to get away.
But maybe my heart knew best, because two hours later I ended up at the cemetery where Rachel was buried.
I found her grave. There were no flowers on it. I walked back to the office and bought her a white rose. Not because she liked them—I don’t know that she had a favorite flower—but I only had three dollars in my pocket and the rose was $2.49.
I went back to her grave and put the flower in a little cup in the ground. It looked small against the large headstone. I sat on the grass and talked to her. I told her everything that had happened at school, told her about Mr. Doherty, told her I missed her and I was sorry I hadn’t visited her since she was buried.
I think she understood. At least, I felt better. Like maybe I would get through this whole thing, that there was hope. A future.
I didn’t know how long I’d been there, but it was after six when I looked at my watch. I traced her name with my finger. “I love you, Sis.”
Three more years until I turned eighteen and could get out of my mom’s house. Then I’d never have to see her again.
It took me an hour to ride my bike home, faster than it took to get to the cemetery, but I’d taken the long way there, probably because I hadn’t planned on it.
I glided up the driveway and frowned. My mom had a visitor. I didn’t want to talk to any of her friends. Or worse, what if it was a date? She went out every weekend, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some jerk had come to pick her up.
I dropped my bike in the side yard and went in through the kitchen door. Saw a meal on the table. Two plates, both empty. A bottle of wine, also empty.
I walked through the kitchen to the living room and stared at the familiar jacket draped across the couch. A tweed jacket, with leather patches at the elbows.
A copy of my essay was on the coffee table.
Someone laughed upstairs. Then came the all-too-familiar sounds of sex.
If I’d had a gun, I might have shot them both. Right then, at that moment, I would have done it. I could see my hand with a pistol aimed at my mother, aimed at the traitor, pulling the trigger over and over and killing them.
But the murderous rage passed as quickly as it crept over me, and I broke.
Broken and free.
I went upstairs, passed her room, and quietly entered mine. I packed a backpack with everything I could carry, and stuffed in a small, framed picture of Rachel, Grams, Grandpa, and me. My family, my only family, and they were all dead.
I took all the money out of my mother’s purse—a hundred dollars—and her ATM card because I knew her code. I went into Mr. Doherty’s jacket and found his wallet—he had only forty-nine dollars. I took it, too. I packed cheese, crackers, granola bars, and water to get me through a couple of days. Then I went to the garage, got a sleeping bag from the rafters, and tied it to the back of my bike.
Then I left. It was three days before Mom canceled her ATM card, and by that time I had fifteen hundred dollars.
I never would have gone home, except the cops arrested me six months later.
And this time I was unlucky enough to be sent to live with my dad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FBI Academy
This was supposed to be Class 12-14’s first weekend with forty-eight hours of freedom—they could leave, visit home, go away for R & R, or hang around campus without obligations. But because of the extra weapons training their forty-eight hours of freedom had been nearly halved.
For two hours Saturday morning, Lucy’s group learned more than most wanted to know about firearms. Even those who enjoyed the history of weapons left the classroom sleepy and frustrated.
“That was an effective punishment,” Carter Nix groaned.
They’d been granted a forty-five-minute early lunch break, then would be required to fieldstrip and reassemble the FBI standard-issue Glock. Everyone would be required to perform the task in less than two minutes. For former military, two minutes was a joke; for most of the class, two minutes made them sweat.
Eddie said to the group, “Want to bet who’ll win?”