Chapter 3
I sat down with the sandwich in my lap and thought about my room. The broken dresser. The lock that never worked. My sister's things spread over my side of the floor. My mom's voice saying I'd ruined the trip. My dad acting disappointed in me for making him abandon me so inconveniently. I imagined walking through our front door, apologizing, because in my house, survival always started with apologizing.
Then a strange calm moved through me. No. Just that. No.
When the bus came, I stood. The driver opened the door. "Where you headed?" I looked at the route number, the one that did not go home. "Somewhere else," I said. He raised an eyebrow but took my crumpled five-dollar bill. I sat by the window. I didn't eat the sandwich. I didn't cry.
As the gas station shrank behind us, I pulled an old birthday card from my backpack. It was from my dad's mother, Grandma Nora. She had sent it months earlier with ten dollars and a line written in shaky blue ink. If you're ever nearby, come visit. You always have a place here. I hadn't seen her since I was seven. My mom said she was difficult, which in our house usually meant someone had refused to pretend my mother was right.
May you like
I got off the bus two towns later and walked almost two miles with a blister forming on my heel. When Grandma Nora opened the door, she looked at me for one second, then at my backpack, then at the sandwich still in my hand. She did not ask why I was there. She simply stepped aside and said, "You look hungry."
That night I slept on her couch under a warm blanket with a grilled cheese in my stomach and no one yelling through the walls. The next morning she sat across from me with tea and toast. "I'm old," she said. "My knees are bad. I'm not exactly built to raise a kid." "I don't need to be raised," I told her. "I just need somewhere safe." She looked at me a long time. Then she said, "Okay." And for the first time in my life, an adult said something and meant it.
