Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t. I mean, I knew why I didn’t want to go home. I just didn’t know why this was the only other obvious choice. “Let’s go,” I said, before he could ask any more questions. “I’m cold.”
    We scaled the fence and climbed into Hunka, which blasted hot air on us as soon as I turned it on. We held our fingers directly in front of the vents, flexing and bending them, trying to get the feeling back.
    “So what’s the deal?” I finally said when we’d warmed up. I put the car into gear and began creeping around the outer road back out toward the highway. “I thought you were better.”
    He turned his body away from me, almost curling into a fetal position, and faced the window. “I thought I was, too,” he said.
    “So what happened?”
    He shrugged. “Life, I guess. My brain. I don’t know.” Then he murmured, “It’s bullshit. Can we just drive for a while? I don’t want to go home yet.”
    “Okay.” Little did he know, I didn’t exactly want to go home yet, either.
    I pulled onto the highway, driving in the opposite direction of our house, and started speeding up. My limbs were tingling now, and I was beginning to feel the bumps and pricks where the rocks had dug into my skin. I rubbed one elbow absently, then my knee, and then a spot on the back of my shoulder.
    “I won’t tell Mom I found you at Newman if you don’t want her to know,” I offered. “But you’ve got to stop going there, Grayson. You’ve got to stop… all this. Mom and Dad need a life without worry, you know?”
    I felt a pang in my stomach. As if I had any room to talk. As if they weren’t about to have a whole bunch of worry heaped in their laps in just a matter of hours courtesy of yours truly.
    When my brother didn’t answer, I bumped his shoulder with my fist, playfully. “I’m going to be leaving for college in a few months, and you know you don’t want to see Mom trying to climb that fence in her bathrobe.”
    Grayson turned to face me. There were tear tracks on his cheeks, carving clean lines in the mineral dust that had gathered there. “You think I don’t know that?” he said.
    “It was just a joke.”
    “No, you think I don’t want to stop doing this?” His voice had escalated, and his words bounced against the windows sharply.
    I took a deep breath. Clearly, he wasn’t in a joking mood. But it’s not like I was, either, and it only further irritated me that everything always,
always
had to be about how Grayson was feeling. Why did it feel like I was always the only one trying? “I don’t know, Grayson. You’re supposedly a genius. How is it you can understand everything there ever was to know about metaphoric rocks—”
    “Metamorphic.”
    “Whatever! See, that’s my point! You’re so smart—why can’t you figure this out? Why can’t you just figure it out and stop it?”
    “I don’t know!” he practically roared, his chin wrinkling and his cheeks bright red. I flinched. Grayson wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, but when he shouted, it was loud. “I don’t know,” he said again, more softly. “If I knew, I’d fix it.”
    We drove along in silence for a few minutes, the only sound in the car the hum of the heat blowing on us full-blast.
    “I know you would,” I said.
    He turned his body back toward the window again and took a few hearty sniffs. “I wish I could get away from it, Kendra. Just run away and leave it here and never have to deal with it again. Run away and be normal.”
    We drove along, through rush hour and through sunset, and into evening, when I flicked on my headlights. Grayson hadn’t said anything else, and after a while I began to hear soft snoring rattling against the window. It was no wonder—he was always exhausted after a counting trip to the quarry. I could only imagine how tiring it was—standing in one spot, afraid to move at risk of rearranging the rocks at your feet and having to begin again. Standing in the shadows and counting, counting,