Page 42 of That's Not My Name

This is it. This is how I get arrested for real.

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror and sigh. I look like shit. Bags under my eyes. Skin a color that would make a zombie wince. Angry red lines crossing the whites of my eyes.

The two stooges didn’t climb out of my room until almost eleven. It’s a minor miracle my dads didn’t hear them clambering down the side of the house. I barely slept after. I couldn’t stop running through Autumn’s plan.

It sounded a lot more substantial last night with the sweet twenty-four-hour buffer before we had to carry it out. The plan hinges on her dad being on night shift, which he is tonight. But now, I’m rethinking our collective sanity.

Tonight, I’m either taking one massive step closer to Lola or a prison sentence.

I pull my phone from my pocket to check the time. Almost ten. Iswear under my breath. Max is supposed to pick me up down the street in about five minutes. I splash my face with cold water, and someone knocks on the bathroom door.

“You okay in there, hijito?” Papá calls.

Shit. I dry my face with a towel, hoping to draw some color into my skin before he worries. “Yup, getting ready for bed.”

I open the door and he’s waiting patiently in the hallway. He smiles at me, and I try to match it. “Did you need the bathroom?”

He shakes his head and fluffs his dark hair. “No, no. I wanted to check on you. Haven’t seen much of you these last couple days. The last few weeks, really…”

“I know, Dad mentioned that too. I just need time.”

“You take all the time you need. I’ll be around if you need me, okay?” His gaze is sad, angry, and animated, all at once. Like he wants to say so much more and it’s a physical effort to hold back the words. To support me without asking me a thousand questions, to give me space when he wants to make sure I don’t vanish too.

I wrap my arms around him. He hugs me so tight that it hurts my ribs, but I don’t say anything. I let him hang on for as long as he wants, and only step back when he does.

“Don’t worry, Papá. I’m okay. I promise.”

His shoulders relax a bit. “Do you want to talk?”

“Not yet. But I will.”

Once I’m done doing things you’d disapprove of.

“Okay. Just…remember, you’re made of hopes and dreams, hijito. We wished for you for so long. I’m here. Whatever you need.”

A vice tightens around my throat and all I can do is nod.

He pats me on the shoulder and goes back down the stairs as I slip into my room.

“Goodnight, my boy,” he calls. I hear Dad shout goodnight from downstairs too.

“Goodnight,” I yell back, shoving down the guilt about everything I’m keeping from them. I can’t deal with that now. There’s no time.

I close my door, flip my hood up, and make sure the mound of pillows under the blankets looks like a curled-up sleeping me. I always thought that was cliché, the whole fake-person-under-the-blankets thing. But if they look in, there has to be something in my bed or I’ll be fucked. I guess it’s a classic for a reason.

I turn off the light and climb out the window. The cold makes my lungs ache, and my breath comes out in a cloud. I slide the window shut behind me, balancing on the eave over the kitchen window. My shoes slip against the frost-covered shingles, but I manage to slide down and bounce into the backyard without much noise.

Max is idling at the corner in the Liberty when I come around the side of the house, and I wonder if he’ll let me drive. But when I get closer, I see the driver’s seat is empty. He’s sitting on the passenger side with his feet propped up on the dash.

I climb in and raise an eyebrow at him.

He shrugs. “I knew you’d want to drive, so I moved before you could hassle me about it.”

“You knew I’d want to drive?”

“Yeah, you’ve got control issues on a normal day, never mind when we’re about to do something stupid.”

He may have a point. “It’s like you know me or something.”

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