Dream Country by Luanne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

she knew she was going to be sick. Tearing herself from Ben’s arms, she flew across the car. She retched, holding her stomach, throwing up into another plastic bag, one from a roll she had in her knapsack, being as totally prepared as a Girl Scout on the run was supposed to be. Sage couldn’t stop the tears rolling down her face.
    Mom,
she thought. This was the first time in her entire life that Sage had ever gotten sick without her mother there to hold her head. Why couldn’t it be simple like before? Why couldn’t she have stayed a child? Couldn’t she be her mother’s little girl and have Ben at the same time?
    “You okay?” Ben asked gingerly, from across the swaying car.
    “I’m fine,” Sage called back, leaning against a crate of nuts and bolts. She twisted the plastic bag, placed it carefully inside another. There was a trapdoor in the middle of the car. She and Ben had opened it, pulling back the thick bolt, watching the tracks fly by underneath, needing to know they had an emergency escape hatch. But she felt too weak to pull it open right now.
    She found a small hole in the corner of the car, where the wooden floor met two walls. The hole was ragged, as if a rat had once gnawed its way through. Careful not to tear the bag, Sage pushed it out onto the tracks. She felt bad about littering.
    She cared about the land. She had distant memories of her father teaching her to respect wildlife, to exist alongside other living creatures. He had built her a bird feeder, and she would sit on his shoulders to fill it every day. Touching her two-sided necklace again, she thought of her twin brother. Jake had loved the land so much, he had wandered off into it forever.
    “Jake,” she whispered.
    That had been her first word, her brother’s name. Most babies said “Mommy” or “Daddy” first, but Sage believed that all twins called for each other before anyone else. She touched his face—the tiny eyes, nose, and mouth her mother had carved, smooth against her skin—and said a prayer.
    She didn’t want to be running away from home, but she had to. The other night, her mother had been so crazed, so furious, just because she’d fallen into a river. She had called her “slutty,” just for staying out late with Ben. How would she feel when she found out Sage was going to have a baby? Sage couldn’t hide it much longer.
    She had thought of the trains going by, her mother’s stories about people riding from town to town, and Sage had known she had to head west. She had left that stupid note, afraid that if she took time to write any more, she’d lose her nerve and stay.
    Pedaling her bike through the moonlit streets, her eyes swollen from crying, she had felt an odd sense of relief. At least she wouldn’t have to see her mother’s face once she realized what a horrible girl she’d been. Heading over to Ben’s to say good-bye, she had climbed up the stone chimney to his bedroom window. And she had been so surprised, happy, and guilty to hear he was coming with her. Love was one thing; sacrificing high school, his home, his family was another.
    Sage wished she wasn’t pregnant, but she was. She had a new baby growing inside her. It was going to change everything; it already had. When she’d missed her first period six months ago, she had thought it was stress over school. When she’d missed her next one, she’d blamed it on her new diet. She had thought getting sick every morning had to do with nervousness about Ben, wanting to keep him so badly it was tearing her up inside.
    Morning sickness was supposed to last only three months. For Sage, it had been going on for nearly the whole time. She knew some of it had to do with guilt and anxiety, keeping this secret from her mother, living in a constant state of hiding: the sounds and smells and fears and her size. She had started showing, her belly popping out so far that even her biggest jeans wouldn’t fit. Her mother hadn’t said anything, but one morning