I stopped. “What?”
“Okay, I’ll go,” she said. “The school year’s practically over, and I was supposed to go to Dubai to visit my parents, but they asked me to delay my trip, so why not? I’ll go with you.”
“Really?”
“When can we leave?”
I laughed, out of breath. “Can you meet me at the movies where we met? I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“I’m on my way,” she said.
“You’re the best.”
“Damn right I am.”
? ? ?
I wouldn’t turn anyone in. Maybe it was wrong, but I couldn’t do it to Patrick and Lex and Jessica. I would just run away, like I always did. But this time I wouldn’t be running alone, and that made all the difference.
The house was empty, and I was glad. I didn’t want to have to look any of them in the face, knowing it was the last time I would see them, and lie. I dug out the packed bag I had shoved in the back of Danny’s closet so many weeks ago and slung it over my shoulders. I grabbed my laptop and found the baseball card with the smiling boy. It was in the dictionary on the bookshelf where I’d hidden it after I’d decided—too late, it turned out—that my school locker wasn’t safe.
I took one last look around the navy blue bedroom. It had never been mine, but I would miss it all the same.
“Bye, Danny,” I said, and closed the door. I hoped he would forgive me.
I went to Nicholas’s room and placed my laptop on his desk. The audio recording of Kai was on there for him to find. Nicholas was smart; he’d put the pieces together the same way I had. I couldn’t turn in the Tates, but if he wanted to, it was his right.
I grabbed a piece of paper from his printer and wrote a short note at the bottom. I’m sorry. Thank you. It was screamingly inadequate, but I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to say. I folded the paper and placed it under the laptop.
I passed Mia’s bedroom without looking at it. I couldn’t think about her, couldn’t try to leave her some kind of good-bye. It was too hard.
Instead, I went to Lex’s bedroom. Lex had lied to me, used me, but I didn’t care. I’d done the same thing to her, and, underneath it all, I think she really cared about me. Probably better than anyone else in my life ever had. For better or worse, Lex was my family, and I wanted her to know who I was. I took one last look at my baseball card—that little piece of my soul, the only proof that I’d ever actually been happy—and I placed it on her pillow, in the dent where her head had been when she last slept. I hoped she would understand what I meant by it.
I went downstairs, backpack on my shoulders, and checked my watch. Ren was going to meet me in twenty minutes. All I needed to do was get out of Hidden Hills. I went into the backyard, dragged a lounge chair to the high wall that separated us from the neighbors, and climbed over.
After hopping a couple more fences, I emerged onto the street. I was well behind Lynch’s car now. As long as he kept watching the gate, he’d never see me. I turned and started to run.
Twenty-five minutes later and pouring with sweat, I collapsed into Ren’s car, my chest heaving. She laughed and kissed me, and I held her close, breathing her in, trying to make sure this memory would burn brighter than any of the false ones I’d created inside of myself.
“What now?” she said when we were on the highway, headed toward the mountains I’d looked at through windows for the last few months, the air getting sharper and crisper with each mile, my chest feeling lighter with each layer of deceit that dropped away as we fled Hidden Hills.
“Now,” I said, “I tell you who I am.”
She smiled and took my hand, and together we headed toward a new life and a new truth all our own.
? ? ?
Yeah.
? ? ?
Or maybe not. But it makes a nice ending to the story, doesn’t it? I think it does.
But maybe instead of calling Ren and asking her to run away with me, I only imagined doing it and wished I were the kind of person who could make that call. Wished I were the kind of person she could have said yes to.
The house was empty when I got home, and I was relieved. Good-byes had never been my thing, and I couldn’t stand to look any of the Tates in the face and pretend everything was okay when I was about to bring their whole world down around them. I’d turn over my evidence against Patrick to save my own ass, because that’s the kind of person I was. The kind I’d always been and always would be, no matter how much I hated myself for it.
I went to Danny’s room, grabbed my laptop, and stuck it into my backpack along with a change of clothes and my stash of cash. I found the baseball card in the dictionary and spent a long moment staring at that boy’s face.
He’d already gotten a raw deal from life, but he was still hopeful. Could still smile and get excited about T-ball practice and appreciate the perfect blue of a cloudless sky over his head.
Maybe I could learn to be that boy again. Beaten down, maybe, but not beaten. I’d had moments of that here, glimpses of what a happy, honest life could be like. Playing Marco Polo with Mia, helping Lex chop vegetables for dinner, laughing with Patrick as I took a turn too sharply in an abandoned parking lot during a driving lesson. Talking to Ren. Almost any moment with Ren, really.
Maybe it was time to try being myself for once.
I said good-bye to Danny’s bedroom and Danny’s ghost as I closed the door, and then I laid my hand on the doors of Nicholas’s and Mia’s bedrooms as I passed them, saying good-bye to them, too. I went into Lex’s bedroom and left her the baseball card. No matter what else might have happened, I loved Lex, and I think part of her loved me, too. I trusted her to take care of that little boy with the gap-toothed smile.
I walked downstairs slowly. I wanted to take the time to remember all of this. This life I had led, this house, this family, the best and the worst of my life. I couldn’t think ahead—the world after this was over was nothing but a big, black blank looming in front of me—so I thought about the past. This house and the people in it were already the past to me.
I went and stood in the kitchen, where the family always congregated. It felt cold now. I’d almost forgotten how cold this entire house felt to me when I first came here. Somewhere along the way I’d gotten comfortable, but now I spread my hands against the marble countertop and felt the cold seep back into my veins and my blood.
It was time. I’d get in the car with Lynch, hand over my evidence to Morales, and then I’d disappear, leaving this house and this family for good.
Behind me, I heard the front door open and footsteps in the foyer.
“Danny?” Patrick called.
I froze.
“Danny?” Patrick said again. His fancy leather shoes against the marble made it easy to hear him walking through the foyer toward the stairs, and his voice moved up toward the second floor. “Are you here?”