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“Fia?”
I startle, smack my head against the wall. Ouch.
“Annie?” I push open the closet door. She’s standing in the middle of my room. She has one hand out, palm up, the way she always comes into a room where she knows I am. She’s waiting for my hand.
I hide my horrible hands behind my back. “What?”
She looks scared. Nervous. I stand and rush out of the closet. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
“I—I didn’t see anything. I heard. Fia, what have they been doing to you? What have they made you do? Tell me. Please tell me.” Her voice cracks and if she cries, I will cry and I won’t, I won’t let myself cry.
“Bad things,” I whisper. “I’ll never tell you.”
She holds out both her hands and I trip forward, let her wrap her arms around me. “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to tell me. It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving. Today.”
“Really? You want to leave?” My heart expands, bursts—hope, there is hope, I have hope for the first time in years. We’re going to leave! Annie wants to leave, so it won’t be betraying her, won’t be taking her away from hope for her eyes.
“Pack your things,” she says. “I’ve got all my stuff ready. We can probably sell my laptop and braille equipment for a few thousand dollars. Enough to get back to Aunt Ellen’s. Once we’re there, we’ll figure out how to get ahold of her. I’ll leave a note for Eden so she knows why we left and can find us if she wants to leave, too.”
My heart sinks. “You pac
ked? When did you decide we should run?”
“Last night. I’ve been up all night, reading train and bus schedules. Do you have any cash at all? There’s a Greyhound station. It’s a long walk, but we can do it. And you can figure out how to sell my laptop, right?”
She sounds so hopeful, so determined. I back away and slump on my unmade bed. “We can’t. They already know.”
Annie frowns, shakes her head. “No, we need to leave. We need to get you out of here.”
“We should have run last night, the moment you thought of it. It’s too late now. They already know what we’ll do. Clarice will be watching. So we can’t do it.”
“But—”
“No. Not today.”
Annie’s shoulders collapse. She tries to walk over to my bed but trips on a pile of shoes. I haven’t been keeping the floor clean. It’s dangerous for her. Bad, bad Fia.
“Sorry. Here.” I take her hand, lead her to the bed. She sits next to me, every line of her body turned down.
“I’ve ruined everything. I’m so sorry.”
“Hey.” I put my arm around her shoulders. It’s my job to take care of her. And I will. “It’s okay. Now that I know you don’t want to be here, I can fix this.” I smile; she can’t see how wicked my smile is. “I’ll get us out of here. You need to be ready to go at a second’s notice. It won’t be easy. I don’t think we can go back home.” She has to understand. I know—I can feel—they’ll never just let me go. We’ll have to hide.
Forever.
But if we hide together, then it’s not hiding. It’s escaping.
She nods, sits up straighter. “Anytime. I’m ready. And, Fia?”
I am trying not to think of escaping. I am not planning anything. I am letting the future be a complete blank. If I have no plans, they cannot see my plans. I live now and only now. “What?”
“I know we have a future. And whatever you’ve done, whatever you think you’re guilty of? You’re not. It’s not your fault. You know that, right? You’re a good person.”
My eyes sting and my throat aches and my heart hurts and she is wrong but I want her to be right. I want it so badly, it has to become true. When we leave here, we will leave all this, and things won’t be wrong all the time, buzzing constantly at the back of my mind and in my hands and in my stomach with the wrongness of everything. I will feel right. I will be good.
As I finish randomly picking stocks, Clarice smiles at me like she knows something I don’t. I know what she thinks she knows that I don’t. I know she saw us leave, that she’s expecting it at any time.
I smile back at her. I hope that she’s personally taking the extra patrol duties or whatever security measures they’ve put in place. Because it’s a waste of time. I can be patient. Annie is on my side now. I can wait and wait and not plan a thing. I am not planning a thing.
