The car is, thankfully, all electric. There’s no sound as she drives off.
Once we’re far from the house, once it all sinks in that we’re safe, that we’re not going to get caught, Suki lets it all out. “I feel such a sense of accomplishment!” she yells into the night. It’s that adrenaline rush. It should be a freeing feeling like after stealing a pack of gum from a store. Or like the time I stole those jeans without the security tag. You hold it all in, waiting, waiting, and then it comes so fast. At least that’s what should happen.
What do I feel? I feel a void. Empty. Numb.
46
ALI
I wake up at three A.M. dreaming of bats flying out of a cavern. My mother is standing in front of the entrance inviting me in.
I sit up in my bed. It’s been a week of harassment from the Core Four. From Blythe’s little crew of minions. Tormenting me on social media to no end. I just keep blocking and blocking. Sammi reported one of their hate pages to Instagram.
But one goes down and another goes up. Fake account after fake account, messaging me that I’ve stabbed a girl in the back. That I’m not a true friend. That I’m a slut. A liar.
I ignore them. I stop going on social media altogether. Delete it from my phone. But I think about it nonstop, how much Blythe hates me. Maybe she was right. I didn’t have to mention her in the article, did I? But how could I leave her out? She tried to get me to erase it all. She was trying to get me to see that he was a good person. That he just made a mistake. And that I should live with that mistake forever.
Sean Nessel will forget. One day someone will ask him about it and he won’t even know what they’re talking about. Not me. I’ll always remember. And I’ll always remember that Blythe was part of it.
Maybe I’m a terrible person. I can’t decide.
* * *
* * *
My room is dark, the light from my laptop a blue glow. I’m searching for plane tickets to Albuquerque because I want to see my mother. I don’t know if my dad’s going to understand this. It’s not a scheduled trip, but I feel trapped here by Blythe and her friends, Sean Nessel, even my father. Especially him, how he’s been looking at me lately, like he wants me to say more and like I have so much to hide. I thought writing the article would help make me feel better, but it’s still in me, all the hiding and secrets and shame. There’s this nagging need for my mother. Or maybe it’s just a nagging need to escape.
I reconcile it. I have to.
* * *
* * *
I walk into my father’s room. Edge onto the side of his bed and whisper for him to wake up. He rubs his face and squints into the white fluorescent glow of my computer. The bed creaks in harmony.
“This better be something incredible,” he says.
“I want to see her.”
“Who?”
“Mom.” He sits up in bed and scratches the fuzz around his chin.
“You have plans to go over spring break, honey.”
“No. I mean, now. Over Thanksgiving break,” I say, and I know that this could hurt him because he should be enough. But I spit it out. “I want to see her, Dad. I need to be around her right now.”
I see it in his face. The wheels moving. He takes my computer and slips his reading glasses on to look at the prices. He does the rest quickly. On his phone. Calling my mother at one o’clock in the morning. I can hear her voice from the phone, worried. Yes, she’s saying, Yes, of course, send her out here.
I have two connecting flights. I’m flying all day Monday. But I don’t care how long it takes.
* * *
* * *
Saturday morning.
My father goes outside to get the paper and that’s when he sees it. The hot pink spray paint in front of our house. The white spray paint on the street.
He’s sitting downstairs waiting for me. I come down bleary-eyed and tired from too many bad dreams.
“If I could only get you out of here sooner,” he says.
My neighbor has a power-washer and she’s already getting the Ali Greenleaf sucks cocks off the sidewalk and the street. It comes off in tiny strips. Like it had never even been there.
It’s like I knew. I knew they were coming for me.
That dream was a premonition. I don’t believe in dreams as premonitions generally, but this one I can’t deny. That I felt it. Maybe I felt Blythe’s guilt.
Blythe didn’t write those things, I’m sure. But she approved of it. She orchestrated it. She stood by watching. They wouldn’t do anything so destructive without her.
This is what happens when you get the wrath of Blythe Jensen.
I feel sick. I’m tempted to call her. How could you? Part of me, and I know this is sick, but part of me understands why Blythe did it.
I couldn’t just let you get away with disobeying me, could I?
Isn’t that what she’d say to me?
How could I not, Ali? How could I not?
* * *
* * *
Monday. I’m flying over the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s always a jolt flying over the desert each year. Brush, settled dust, and patches of green.
My mother is wearing a long pink skirt with bells and cowboy boots when she picks me up at the airport. Her hands stretch open, and she rests her fingers across my cheeks. “Let me look at you.” Then she wraps her arms around my body. We stand in this long hug as people grab their luggage. Her bells jingle as I shift.
I climb into her car, a small used four-door. “One day I’ll get the white Jeep,” she says. This is what she always says. There’s always an unfulfilled dream with her.
We bump along the highway for two hours through the desert with the windows open because that’s how long it takes to get from Albuquerque to Truth or Consequences. The mountains that seem to line the horizon here no matter where you look are striped with ragged colors of red and yellows. Some of them are flat on top like a crew cut. Miles and miles of bramble.
My mother lives in this little peach house with a pink door. The peeling paint looks worse in the glare of the sun. The crystal blue sky. Big and wondrous. Yellow-and-white-striped fabric blocking her yard from the street hangs outside on a twig fence, blowing in the wind. Little pots of cacti and desert plants surround the front of the house.
“It’s very dry, Ali. You have to drink a lot of water.”
“You say this every time, Mom.”
She takes my hand and leads me inside. There are all sorts of pillows strewn about. Silky, cozy-looking pillows. I sit on my knees and then stretch out.