“You can’t just look at the last line. It’s that whole section there. He’s talking about how he’s gonna tell the story later—with a sigh and all that. When he tells it years from now, he’s gonna tell how the road he took was less traveled. It ain’t about being different—it’s about how we change our own histories.”
“Okay … How do you mean?”
“Sometimes we tell ourselves stuff we know ain’t true,” Bo said. “Just to make us seem better or to give meaning to stupid things, I dunno. He says he took the road less traveled even though he knows he didn’t. Just like some people tell everyone they’re good little Christian girls, even though they’re really gossiping, lying bitches.”
“Mrs. Hartman, are you going to let her talk to me like that?” Christy demanded.
“She wasn’t talking to you, Christy,” said Andrew, who was sitting on the other side of her.
“No. But I was talking about her,” Bo assured him.
The whole room began buzzing again, and I felt Christy start to stand up, but something yanked her back into her seat. Andrew, I figured. Although maybe I should’ve grabbed her, too.
“Enough,” Mrs. Hartman hollered. “Bo, that language will not be tolerated. Principal’s office. Now.”
A chair scraped against the tile, and a second later Bo trudged past our desks, toward the door.
“Can you believe her?” Christy asked, her mouth close and hot next to my ear. “Kicked out of class five minutes after she got here. Just what you’d expect from a Dickinson. And that was a stupid interpretation of the poem anyway.”
But the more I read the poem—and I read it several times that day and even again that afternoon when I got home—the more I thought she might be right. Maybe it was about the ways we rewrite our histories. And if that were true, how would I rewrite mine?
I wake up with a cold, wet nose in my face and two big paws on either side of my head.
It’s the same way I wake up every morning, and for a minute I forget where I’m at. I’m in my little twin bed back in Mursey. It’s Sunday, and I ain’t got nowhere to be.
“Not now, Utah.”
The words ain’t even left my mouth when I remember. The voices on the police scanner, running through the woods, Agnes, the stolen car— The goddamn alarm clock that was supposed to go off at seven.
I bolt upright and Utah scurries backward, then jumps off the bed, tail wagging and ears perked up.
“Agnes.” She’s still fast asleep, her black hair fanned out over the pillow. She looks so peaceful that I almost hate to wake her. But we gotta go. Now. I grab her shoulder and give it a shake. “Agnes, get up.”
“Mmmm.”
“Come on. The alarm didn’t go off. It’s … shit, it’s after ten. Get up.”
Her eyes blink open and she stares at me. “You’re still here,” she mumbles.
I act like I didn’t hear her. “Come on. Get up. We gotta go.”
“Ugh. Okay, okay.”
I jump out of bed and pull on my shorts. Utah whines and nuzzles at my legs, wanting breakfast.
“Fine,” I mumble, grabbing my backpack off the floor and rushing to the bathroom. Hurry or not, I ain’t gonna let my dog starve.
Last night, I’d packed some of her food into a ziplock bag, but I forgot to bring a bowl. I toss a couple handfuls of the kibble onto the bathroom floor. She starts chowing down before all the pieces even hit the ground.
“Good girl.”
I hear Agnes moving around in the other room, getting her clothes on. I get my toothbrush out of my bag and try to clean myself up as fast as I can. I look like shit. But I guess that don’t matter right now.
“Bo,” Agnes says, and I can hear the shake in her voice. “Bo, come back in here.”
“What?”
I step out of the bathroom and look at her. She’s half-dressed, wearing just her jeans and a plain white bra. But she ain’t moving. She’s real still, her shirt loose in her hand.
“What?” I ask again.
She don’t say nothing. Just points to the TV, still on from last night.
“… Atwood’s parents contacted police this morning. It’s believed the teenager may have run away with another girl, Bo Dickinson. Authorities say the vehicle is a silver Chevy with the license plate …”
Mine and Agnes’s most recent school pictures stare back at us from the screen while the news anchor talks, fast and monotone, like she don’t give a damn what she’s saying.
But I give a damn. I give many damns.
My heart starts beating so fast it hurts.
Agnes turns to look at me. Then she says what we’re both thinking.
“Fuck.”
I’d hoped to go to Lexington with my parents when they drove Gracie up to college. It’d mean two and a half hours in the car—one way—but I’d never been to a city that big. We could go to a real mall and eat at a nice restaurant. But my sister put an end to all those hopes when she packed two giant suitcases and a handful of boxes full of her stuff.
“How will you fit all of this in that tiny dorm room?” Mama asked as she lifted one of the cardboard boxes into the backseat, in the spot where I’d normally sit. There was just too much stuff and not enough room for four of us. Which meant I’d be the one left behind.