Almost Home by Jessica Blank Read Free Book Online

eating all the stuff she doesn’t want to buy. I imagine her car full of grocery bags curving around the tiny hilly streets to get back home and then I think about our driveway, the birds of paradise and bougainvillea clustered up around the door. I think about all that stuff while we’re eating. When we lie down in our sleeping bags, I turn my back to Tracy. I don’t want her to know I’m at my house in my head and not here with her. I can feel her watching me, though, and after a while she pokes me. I roll over and she’s propped up on one elbow staring at my face. Her eyes are full like she wants to say something but she doesn’t. I almost ask her what, but I’m afraid if I talk it’ll break something. After a long time she picks up her hand and wipes my hair away from my eyes and off my forehead, soft, in this way that’s almost like a mom except awkward, like her hands aren’t supposed to move that way. It’s weird but I like it and I stop thinking about our driveway. She keeps on doing it until I fall asleep.
    The next morning when the cars start and the sun comes up the space next to me is empty and her stuff is gone. There’s nothing there to look at except asphalt and a Dumpster that’s all emptied out. It smells like muffins baking and my stomach growls.

rusty
    “h old up!” this voice yells from behind me and I almost jump out of my skin. I don’t know if it’s a cop or what till I turn around and see the stringy blond-haired girl, halfway across the parking lot, careening up to the car like some crazy bird with half a wing. I recognize her face: I’ve seen her around the corner on Pacific, a little past the liquor store next to the beach; she’s the only other one out here in Venice near my age. But now out of nowhere she’s running in five directions at once, toward me and the guy in the car, who hasn’t even told me his name yet. He’s old, and at first he looks nervous, but then she catches up and throws her arm around my shoulder, squeezing her face next to mine so it’s me and her in his open window and I can feel her heavy breath. “You taking good care of my baby brother?” she asks the guy and when he nods, his eyes all wide, she grins and says “I’m Tracy. You wanna take care of me too?” I start to say something, but the guy leans over to open the passenger door so we both just get in.
    She shoves me over so I’m on the brown pleather hump pressed into him. I fumble for a seat belt, but the one in the middle is half stuck down in the seat and won’t come out. While I’m tugging, she leans into me quick and soft and whispers “My name’s Tracy; we’re from Fresno and I’m two years older.” Then she leans back, rests her feet up on the glove compartment, and points her face into the breeze.
    I’ve only been doing this a couple weeks. When I got off the Greyhound from Bakersfield a month ago I had two hundred bucks and Jim’s number crumpled up in my pocket. I’d had it memorized for practically a year but he insisted on writing it down, like he wanted to make sure nothing got in the way of him finding me to start our new life in L.A. He gave me everything I might need, toothpaste and money and a map, and he told me to stay in a hostel and call him every night till he came. He wished he could drive us to the city in his convertible Volkswagen and get us our own place first thing, but he said they might come find us if he quit with no notice on the same day that I ran away.
    Jim is the choir teacher at Bakersfield High and we’ve been in love since spring of ninth grade. It was perfect and secret for eight months, till my mom came home early from work and saw his Cabriolet pull out of our driveway. She stopped talking to me then and started going through my shit, and even though I hid everything he ever wrote me, Jim was nervous. After he heard her click onto the line one night when we were talking, he said we’d have to go someplace else if we wanted to stay