Page 26 of Persephone's Curse
“Where are you going?” I asked, because she had an overnight bag in one hand and she was wearing leggings and an oversize wool fisherman’s sweater, two articles of clothing she wore exclusively on long car rides or if she didn’t feel good and was planning on spending the day on the couch.
“I was attempting to sneak out so as not to answer any tough questions,” she said, sighing.
“Is ‘Where are you going?’ a tough question?”
“Give me a break, will you, kid?”
“Whereareyou going? Vermont?”
Another sigh. “Yes. I am going to Vermont.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s okay. I’m going to bring her home.”
“Can I come with you?”
“You have school tomorrow, honey.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t missed a day all year.”
“It’s October,” she said. “You’ve been in school a month.”
“Almost a month and a half. I want to see Aunt Bea. I want to see Bernadette.”
Mom took a very mom-like inhalation of breath and let it out slowly through her mouth. I could see it in the air, the faintest puff of white.
“Where are your sisters?” she asked.
“Well, one of them is in Vermont.” She gave me a look. “The others are at Todd’s.”
She checked the time on her phone. “If you can get ready and be down here in eight minutes, you can come. Ifanyonecatches you leaving, you tell them you were going to run away but have decided against it, and you go right back upstairs and unpack, and you stay here. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Meet me at the car,” she said, and didn’t wait for an answer before charging off down the street, in the opposite direction of Todd’s.
I ran.
I ran upstairs and dumped the contents of my backpack on my bed, then shoved clean underwear into it, pajamas, another pair of jeans, some clean long-sleeved shirts and socks, my phone charger, and my laptop (under the delusion that I might actually work on school assignments). In the bathroom, I grabbed my toothbrush and my face wash and my moisturizer and then I was downstairs again, passing not a single soul as I burst out of the house and kept running all the way to the parking garage where we kept the SUV.
Mom was waiting in the driver’s seat, the engine already running, her hands already on the steering wheel, and I climbed into the passenger seat, throwing my backpack behind me. I buckled my seat belt quickly, as if that could keep her from changing her mind.
“Your sisters are going to kill me,” she said.
“I’ll text them.”
“Not until we’re a few blocks away. I don’t want anyone running after the car.”
It took us awhile to get out of the city. I texted Evelyn and Clara as we crossed the George Washington Bridge, the Hudson Riverdark and ominous below us as we slipped from New York into New Jersey.
“Are they upset?” Mom asked after I’d stared at my phone for a while.
“Clara called me a traitor,” I said. “Evelyn hasn’t responded.”
“Sounds about right.”
Once we got out of New Jersey and back into New York (that part always tripped me up, how we left only to come back), the traffic got a lot better. Mom put on the cruise control and let out a big sigh that I thought she’d probably been holding since Eighty-First Street.
