that away from me. I contemplated about what to do next. I couldn’t bear the thought of being around her the rest of the summer, let alone for another day. I needed to get away from her and fast. Nothing she could say would ever make what she did acceptable.
I had always been curious about my grandparents. I had formed an idealistic picture of them in my head, of two older people from a Norman Rockwell painting sitting in front of a fireplace; grandpa reading the newspaper, grandma knitting a scarf. Knowing that they were trying to be a part of my life all this time made me want to know them more. I wanted to discover who they were.
Without really thinking things through, I veered off my life plan. I was going to do something I had never ever done before, something on a whim. I turned on my computer and searched the internet for air fares. It was a waste of time. Most of the airline tickets cost more than I had to spend. A Happy Trails Bus Company ad popped up on Google. I looked at their site and saw there was a bus traveling to Greenville, SC, the closest town to Graceville, from Tampa. It was leaving at 1 o’clock in the morning and would cost me less than one hundred and twenty dollars. That was much cheaper than an airline ticket and would leave me a few hundred dollars to spare. I instantly reserved the ticket and decided that I would take the chance. It was the rashest decision I have ever made in my life.
I packed my clothes and placed them in my old suitcase, one that had only traveled with me whenever we moved houses. I grabbed the wad of bills I had stashed under my mattress and stuffed them in my wallet. This was money that I had received for graduation and had planned to use on a computer for college. It was worth the sacrifice. I had never been anywhere outside of Tampa. Riding on a bus to a small town in the mountains of South Carolina to meet two people that may want nothing to do with me was risky, but I felt confident enough to take that risk.
My mother knocked on my door again. “You can’t stay in there forever, Finn.”
“I can and I will,” I yelled. It was an immature response but I wasn’t feeling like being mature and talking. I was seething, too angry to see her point of view.
“I guess I’ll cancel our dinner reservations then,” she said trying to guilt me into opening the door. I didn’t care about dinner and I definitely didn’t feel like celebrating.
“Go ahead and go by yourself,” I said. My stomach grumbled. I was hungry but I wasn’t about to sit down for dinner with her. At that moment, I couldn’t bear the thought of looking at her.
“Suit yourself. I’ll leave you alone tonight but we need to talk about this tomorrow,” she said walking away from my door.
I won’t be here tomorrow, I thought to myself.
***
It was midnight and my mother was sound asleep. She was predictable that way— going to sleep the same time every night. She liked routine. When I was certain she was completely out of it, I called the cab company and asked them to pick me up down the street. The last thing I wanted was for her to wake up from the sound of a cab pulling into our driveway and see me leaving. I wasn’t running away from her, I was running toward something, toward the unknown.
I left the house quietly, carefully tiptoeing to not make a sound. With the one suitcase in my hand, I walked down my street to wait for the cab in the middle of a still and quiet night. There was something very unsettling, creepy even, about being outside that late in the night.
I stood at the end of my street waiting with trepidation, alarmed by any sound I heard. A cat frightened me as it ran across the street. A car drove slowly down the road, its driver staring at me suspiciously. I turned my head in the other direction wanting to avoid all eye contact with him. A squirrel rustled in the trees. I instantly jumped, feeling foolish for doing so. I anxiously kept looking at my phone hoping that time would fly and I would be on my way to unchartered territory.
Chapter 2
The cab