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CHAPTER 1
ECHO
2009
When you want something bad enough, you need to pay the consequence.Echo could almost hear her mother’s breathy voice saying the words as she steered her cart through Ralph’s grocery store, the wonky wheels pushing her to the right as she tried to make a left into the vitamin aisle.
It was after eleven, and the only people in the store with Echo were two workers who appeared to be around her age. She was nineteen and had never had a job. Not a real one anyway. Clint wouldn’t allow her to apply anywhere, would call her stupid for even asking, so she never pushed him on it because there was no point. It was always easier to do what he said. Less painful that way.
Echo stopped in front of the wall of vitamins, her eyes roving until she found the section she was looking for, the biggest reason for her to be at a grocery store this late at night. She picked up a bottle and read the back as if she would understand what any of it meant. There were so many kinds, and she had no clue which one was the best.
She looked down at her abdomen. “What do you think?”
When you want something bad enough, you need to pay the consequence.
Her mother’s words again. Echo ignored the tremor coursing through her body, making her legs as wobbly as the grocery cart’s wheels. She rubbed her lower stomach, feeling the full weight of how uncertain life had been only a few hours before. How uncertain everything in her life had been for the last four years, even longer, if she was being honest with herself.
She couldn’t hold it back any longer. She allowed the heavy knot in her chest to explode up into her throat, for tears to break free at last. It didn’t feel freeing like she had hoped; it only made her more exhausted, so she made herself stop.
She still had so much farther to go. She threw the bottle of vitamins into her cart and rushed to collect the rest of what she needed: food that didn’t require refrigeration, a refillable water bottle, hair dye, and a burner phone. She then stopped by the candy aisle to grab a family-size bag of Reese’s Pieces, her favorite, because there was no one to tell her no. She already had a duffel bag she’d taken from Clint’s house, which she had placed next to the ice machine near the front of the grocery store. She thought about how Clint kept his gym clothes in the bag, and she hated the thought of his sweaty residue getting onto her food and the few clothes she had taken with her.
It didn’t matter. Being here, free to shop without anyone watching her every move—that’s what mattered. She looked down at her abdomen again. This was all that mattered now.
Echo went to the only open checkout lane and placed her items on the conveyor belt. One of the young store employees reanimated from the corner where she was standing scrolling through her phone and slowly made her way over to Echo.
The green-haired cashier scanned every item as if she was angry she had to move. The only time she paused was when she picked up the vitamins.
“Prenatal, huh? How far along are you?” she asked Echo.
Echo tried to keep the shock from her face of being asked about the thing she’d been hiding. “Um, I think a couple of months.” She wasn’t sure since her period had always been unpredictable.
“You’re so tiny. I bet you’ll show early. That’s how my sister was, like she was about to pop the whole time.” The cashier scanned the vitamins and let out a hoot. “Thirty-two dollars? Shit, that’s crazy.”
Echo quickly calculated thirty-two dollars times maybe seven months, and the knot in her chest grew heavier.
“You’d think if the government really cared about babies, they’d make this shit cheaper, huh?”
Echo shrugged.
“I like your hair,” the cashier said. “Is it real?”
“Yeah.”
“If I had strawberry-blonde hair, I’d never dye it.”
The first thing Echo planned to do was dye her hair, but she smiled and said nothing to the cashier. She needed to get out of there, find a motel for the night. She wished she had a car she could stay in, but she didn’t own one, didn’t even know how to drive, and she wasn’t about to stay on the streets. They would easily find her.
As she handed the cashier the money, the young woman froze and stared at Echo’s face like she was trying to work out a tricky math problem.
“Hey, you have something right here.” The cashier pointed to her own lower cheek.
Ice filled Echo’s head and trickled its way down her spine, making every muscle in her stiffen.
She quickly took her change and the paper bags filled with her groceries. She grabbed the duffel bag on her way out of the store. She wanted to run, but she made herself stop and turn around.
When she walked back into the store, she asked the cashier where the bathroom was.
Thankfully, the bathroom was empty. Echo looked at herself in the mirror, the dull fluorescent lights casting yellowish shadows over her pale face. She turned her head left and saw what the cashier had seen.
