Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

knowing that your efforts were ridiculous, but hoping they’d work anyway.
    I didn’t blame him for wanting to get away from it.Most of the time, I wanted to get away from it. Sometimes I thought even Mom and Dad wanted to get away from it. Especially Dad, who never really understood, I don’t think, that this was something out of Grayson’s control. He got it on an intellectual level. But he was forever telling Grayson that all he needed was “a skill to fall back on” and shouting at him sometimes to stop it, exactly as I’d just done.
    Only Zoe had ever seemed to really understand it. She’d never tried to get away. How ironic that, in the end, she was the only one who did get away.
    I heard my phone vibrate against the seat behind me. I glanced back but didn’t reach for it. I had a feeling that, no matter who was calling, it wasn’t going to be good. Either it was Bryn, telling me that I’d been wrong about Chub and he’d turned on me, or it was Shani, wondering if what everyone was saying about me and the calc final was true, or maybe even Mom, reeling from a phone conversation with Mrs. Reading.
    I couldn’t answer any of them right now. Like Grayson, I just wanted to get away. I needed to get away. I needed some space to figure out what had gone wrong. To decide when I’d turned into this person who needed to be perfect all the time and was willing to do just about anything to keep it that way. Mistakes? Not me. Control, control, control. Perfection and control. But when did that happen? Was it when Zoe left? Was it when Grayson started gettingreally sick? Or was it the day I was born, and I was only just now realizing it?
    I knew exactly what would be waiting for me at school tomorrow. What devastation I’d brought onto my college plans. God, did I still
have
college plans? Could I still go to college if I got expelled, like Chub? I never, in a million years, thought that would be a question I’d be asking myself.
    What’s worse, I knew what was awaiting me at home. What betrayal I’d brought down on my parents. How disappointed even Shani and Lia would be.
    I wanted to get away from it all.
    Just like Grayson.
    I was coming up on the interstate exit, the green signs telling me to get into a different lane or I’d end up heading west. I turned on my blinker and peered into the rearview mirror. The headlights behind me were thick. My phone lit up in the backseat as it buzzed again.
    We could
, I thought.
We could get away. The two of us.
Neither of us could go home and pretend life was wonderful. Both of us knew it never would be, even if it was for entirely different reasons. I could help Grayson escape his OCD. And I could get away, too.
    Away from all of it.
    The more I thought about it, the more it not only seemed like the best choice.
    It seemed like the only one.
    I turned off my blinker and eased the car onto the exit ramp. At the bottom of the ramp I pressed the gas pedal. Grayson’s body rocked as Hunka accelerated onto the interstate.
    I settled back in my seat and took a deep breath to steel myself.
    Grayson didn’t know it yet, but we were running away.

CHAPTER
NINE
    I needed gas. I’d punched through rush hour, crossed the state line into Kansas, and made good time on the other side of it, blowing past towns I’d heard of in passing conversations over the years between my parents—Bonner Springs, Basehor, Tonganoxie, Lawrence—without even noticing the miles that stretched between them. Funny how when you had no idea where you were going, really, it seemed as though you would get there really fast.
    It was totally dark outside now, and the rumbling in my stomach told me it was well past dinnertime. Also, the rumbling in the backseat. I knew from the insistent buzzing of my cell phone that Mom had been trying to call.
    I didn’t want to ignore her, but I couldn’t reach the phone from the driver’s seat, and I didn’t want to stop. Something told me that if I stopped too soon,