Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown Read Free Book Online

looked at me, his eyes slits behind his glasses, and reached down with his left hand, scooping up a handful of rocks.
    He cleared his throat a few times. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he shouted, flinging the rocks at me. They hit me, hard, drying up my laughter. I covered my face with my forearm.
    “Ouch!” I yelled, struggling to get up. “That hurt, you jerk!” And this time I pushed him. He barely moved, but produced a rock out of nowhere and tossed it straight at my forehead. “That’s it!” I shrieked, and body-slammed him, knocking him down and pummeling him with my fists, the way we used to when we were kids and would fight over who got to sleep in Zoe’s tent at backyard campouts or who got the last Oreo in the bag or whatever stupid stuff kids argue about.
    We rolled around in the rocks for a few minutes, arms and legs flailing and rocks scraping white lines onto ourcheeks and scalps. Grayson was older, taller, but he’d gotten so skinny, and I easily matched him, my muscle tone making up for the years between us.
    After what seemed like forever, we finally stopped, panting and rolling away from each other. Truce. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, then noticed how red my hand was from the cold that I didn’t feel anymore.
    “Come on,” I said to the sky. “It’s freezing out here.” I pulled myself up, looking down at the dent we’d made in the rock bed and giggling despite myself. “They’re going to know we were here,” I said. “Mom and Dad will be getting another phone call.” I reached down toward Grayson, whose eyebrow was seeping a little blood right above his glasses. He took my hand and let me help him to his feet.
    “If Mom’s smart, she’ll tell them to
vada ad inferno
,” he answered, taking off his glasses and wiping them with his shirttail. He grinned at me. “Go to hell,” he explained.
    “Since when do you know Italian?”
    He smirked, made that
uh
sound again, twice, and stuck his glasses back on his face. “I know a lot of things,” he said. “I’m sort of a genius, in case you don’t remember.”
    I rolled my eyes. Of course, we all remembered. Like any of us could forget. Our Grayson had an IQ of roughly nine billion. The elementary school guidance counselor had actually called him a “genius.” Until he’d gotten so sick with his OCD that he couldn’t go to school anymore, it was all we ever heard. Grayson-the-genius this, Grayson-the-genius that.
    I was the one who brought home straight A’s. I was theone who’d wear the honor ropes at graduation. I was the one who
would
graduate. But I was never a genius. Of course, I could go to the bathroom without counting the bumps on the ceiling, too. I guess there’s a good and a bad to everything.
    “Well,” I said, tromping through the rocks ahead of him, across the bottom of the quarry. “I’m not a genius, but I do know one thing.” I flicked a glance over my shoulder at him. He was following me, eyes firmly glued to the quarry floor. His finger was up in front of him again, bent like a claw. He was counting steps. “I can still kick your ass.”
    When I looked over my shoulder again, he was still counting, but I could see the corners of his mouth twitch with a grin. Barely detectable, but there nonetheless.
    We hiked up the steep quarry wall, our feet raining down rocks behind us, and soon were standing at the top, looking out across the basin, as I’d done when I arrived. We paused, shoulder to shoulder, our bellies rhythmically stretching for breath.
    “How’d you know I was here?” he asked. I could feel him shiver next to me. The motion was contagious; soon I was shivering again, too. “Mom send you?”
    I shook my head. “I heard you.”
    He glanced at me, then kicked a rock off the edge and watched its path down the side of the quarry. “Why were you here, then?” he asked.
    I chewed my lip. Considered his question. “I don’t know,”I said. And, in truth, I