She never said anything back to that. After that we were just quiet for a really long time. But I felt like I could see her thinking about it.
“I’m starting to think this was a really bad idea,” I said.
We were pulling into St. George, and the red rock hills all around the town looked so weirdly familiar to me. Part of me had missed them like crazy, just for their actual beauty, but another part of me had them all mixed up with every bad thing that had ever happened to me here, which was pretty much my whole entire life. The good news was, I wasn’t feeling queasy anymore, but the bad news was how I was halfway into a full-on panic attack.
“We drove all this way,” she said. “You’re honestly not suggesting we go back without my even talking to her. Are you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see those red rock hills. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting.”
“You don’t have to go to the door. Like I said.”
“But I’ll be right outside in the car, and what if she sees me there? She told me never to come back, ever, and what if she calls the police on me or something?”
“She can’t call the police on you for sitting in a car at the curb.”
“Why can’t she?”
“Because it’s not her property.”
“Oh. Okay. Get off at this exit.”
It wasn’t okay, nothing was okay, but I had to take a break from talking about how okay everything wasn’t, so I could tell her where to get off the interstate.
“You want to be somewhere else while I talk to her?”
“Yes, please,” I said, and actually started to breathe again. Not that I hadn’t been breathing—I mean, enough to keep me alive and all—but when she said that, I started breathing in enough air to break up the panic a little.
“The library?”
“Maybe the coffee place,” I said.
“But first we have to go by the house so you can show me where it is.”
“Couldn’t I just draw you a little map or something?”
“I’d really appreciate it if you would go by with me and point out the house. It’s going to be hard enough to go up and knock on a stranger’s door without worrying that it’ll be the wrong house and the wrong stranger.”
“Okay,” I said. “Fine. But you can see it from the end of the block, so just promise you won’t take me very close.”
She pulled up into a loading zone in front of the coffee place and I got scared again. Because it was really near my house and my school, and everybody I knew showed up here pretty much every day, and I wasn’t sure why I picked the place or how I thought I could get in or get out without running into everybody I knew.
But I didn’t figure I had a right to say all that, because I had picked the place, and after I’d pointed out the house she’d been nice enough to drive me somewhere that wasn’t right where my mom could see me from the front door.
I just got out and stood there on the street, with the door of her car open, kind of bent forward and looking back in at her like I wished I didn’t have to go. Because I wished I didn’t have to go. Out of the corners of my eyes I saw people stop to stare at her mother’s crazy half-yellow Mercedes, but they weren’t anybody I knew.
“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Etta sang from her car seat in the back. She was nervous because I was going, and I knew her well enough to be able to tell.
“I’ll come around and get you after I’ve talked to her,” Brooke said to me. It sounded like a nice, polite way to say “Go ahead and close the door and go now, so we can get on with this.” And then, to the baby, she said, “We’ll see Molly soon, honey. We’ll come back for her. She’s just going to get a coffee and then we’ll see her again.”
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t close the door and we didn’t get on with anything.
“Oh,” she said. “You need a couple dollars for a coffee?”
“That would be very nice,” I said. “Thank you.”
But that wasn’t why I didn’t close the door. I actually hadn’t even thought of that yet. She handed me a five-dollar bill, and I said thank you again, but I still didn’t close her car door.
“Seriously,” she said. “I’d like to get this over with.”
That made a lot of sense to me, because it made me think of how much better I’d feel when we were driving out of town again and it was all over. I didn’t say anything, because my mouth wasn’t working very well right about then, but I did close her door and then I walked into the coffee place.
There was a clock hanging behind the counter, which I already knew because I knew the place, and it was around 11:30. I breathed a little more and a little deeper, because I figured everybody I knew would be at school. But the minute the door swung closed behind me I saw my science teacher sitting at a little round table right in front of me with his wife.
“Molly,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
I put my head down and looked at the linoleum and tried to get around his table, but he just kept talking.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked me. He said, “We haven’t seen you for ages.”
I wondered if he knew and, if he knew, how much he knew. I wondered what kind of story had gone around about me since I’d left home. People must’ve noticed that my whole family still lived there in town. Well, not my whole family, but everybody except me. Did they think I ran away or something, or did they know the whole truth? Or did
