Counting Backwards (8 page)

“Why did you run away, Taylor?”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk.”

“I’m just asking questions. I’m trying to learn your side of the story.”

Why did I run away? It isn’t the right question. The right question is, why didn’t I run away sooner? Why didn’t I have a plan? Why didn’t I do a better job of disappearing?

“I don’t know,” I say finally.

“What were you doing when you made the decision to run away?”

I think back to a few weeks ago. It was a weeknight and it was hot, too, I remember, because the AC wasn’t working. But my mom didn’t want to call the landlord to fix it because we were late on the rent, which was pretty standard by then.

“I was on my way to the bathroom,” I say to Dr. Deb.

It was the middle of the night, and I had to go pee. I came out of my room and tripped over this guy who was passed out in our hallway, some sleaze my mom brought home from the bar. I’d heard them laughing earlier that night, and I’d just locked my door and gone to bed, figuring he’d be gone by the time I got up, which was usually the case. But there he was, lying in my hallway, fat and bloated and disgusting, while my mom was passed out in her own bedroom across the hall.

“What happened to make you want to run away, Taylor?”

It wasn’t what happened. It was what didn’t happen. It was like everything came crashing down then. I could no longer
pretend that she was going to stop drinking, that she’d wake up the next day and decide to change. She wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. She gave up on sobriety and she gave up on me.

“I just wanted out of there,” I say at last.

“Out of where?”

“Out of our apartment, out of my life. I wanted
out
.”

I taste the memory in my mouth, like sour oranges, and it makes me sick. I don’t want to go back there.

“How did you feel in that moment, Taylor? Right before you ran?”

But I can’t answer her, because the feeling is rising—stronger and faster than ever before. I feel the fist squeezing me, cutting off my air. My heart’s pounding and my mouth goes dry and I have to get out of there. I have to just
go
.

I jump up and run out of her office, tearing down the hallways as fast as I can, right past the safety manning the door. When I get outside, my face hits the sunshine, my shoes hit the grass, and I’m running. Running for my life. I sprint away from the healing center as fast as I can. It feels so good to blur everything around me, leave everything behind, and focus only on what’s in front of me. After a few more strides, my chest opens up and I can breathe again.

“Stop!” a safety shouts. I fly right by him, past the soccer field and the maintenance shed. Seconds later I hit the back
fence and grab hold of it, shaking it with both hands until the metal bites into my fingers. Another safety comes up on my side and I run the other way, pumping my legs as hard as I can. I’m not going to stop, for him or anyone else. I feel so good in that moment, so free. I could run forever.

That’s when the safety’s arm appears out of nowhere.

With superhuman strength he clotheslines me in the chest. My feet fly up, my back hits the dirt, and my head smacks the ground with a tremendous thud. My eyes roll back into my head and snap wide open.

I stare up in a daze at the ultrabright, cerulean sky.

I’m lying there in the grass with my throbbing head and aching chest when the laughing begins. It erupts from my gut with volcanic force. I can’t stop it. I can’t control it. I’m so shocked by the force of his takedown that I laugh, like a maniac, while the safeties stand over me like sweaty, red-faced devils. It’s the same thing I did when the cops caught up with me, but I can’t explain that to them. I can barely breathe. Besides, I don’t think they care.

They haul me to my feet and drag me up the hill. I laugh. They take me into the first floor and shut me in a time-out room, and my laughter escalates to semi-hysteria. I lie down on the cold, hard floor and grip my cramping stomach, trying to calm down, trying to breathe.

Finally the laughing gives way to spontaneous giggles, then a steady
he, he, he
and at last, hiccups. I wipe the tears from my eyes and roll over onto my back.

Now I’m angry.

That a grown man tackled me—roughly, even by boy standards—and they stuck me in here just for running. I
want to smash something, but there’s only a toilet, a sink, and a metal chair, all bolted to the floor. There’s nothing I can break, throw, or pound, except something of my own, and I’m too damn sore for that. Plus, there’s a safety outside the door, watching me through the reinforced glass, and a camera behind a cage documenting it all.

I think back to when I was nine years old and this police officer came up to my car door window, asking me where my mom was. My dad was out of town, and we were parked outside a bar because she needed to get some money from a friend inside, but she’d been in there for a while—two hours at least. I should have just gone inside and gotten her myself, but I’d never been to this place before, and I figured if I just waited long enough, she’d eventually come back out.

I didn’t want to answer the officer’s questions, but he promised me my mom wasn’t going to be in trouble, so finally I told him. The next thing I know they’ve got my mom in handcuffs, and they’re stuffing her into a police cruiser while I scream and fight with them. All I want is to go with her, wherever they’re taking her, I don’t care, just let me go. But I can’t because that same lying cop is holding me back.

I spent the night on a cot in a complete stranger’s house, in a room crowded with kids, one of whom spent the whole night wheezing and moaning. I can still smell that room—like Cheez-Its and dirty diapers. It was a night I’ll never forget.

I’ve got to get out of here.

I stare up at the one fluorescent light, at the moth pinging into it, over and over again, trying to . . . I have no idea what it’s trying to do, but I feel like that moth, ramming my head against an invisible wall, getting nothing from it but a wicked headache.

My throat aches with thirst, so I go over to the sink and drink till my belly sloshes around like a bucket of water. The safety drops in a tray of food—dinner—but I’m too unsettled to eat. I sit down in the chair and stare at my thumbs, which is an old habit of mine. Maybe it’s an only-child thing, but when I was little, I used to make my thumbs talk to each other. I’d even draw little faces on them, some happy or surprised, silly even. But I’m too angry for that now. My thumbs would just yell and scream at each other, like my parents. I stare at my thumbs for what seems like hours and try to remember what I was like back then. But I can’t. It seems like that part of me died without me even knowing it.

Finally a safety opens the door.

“Not so funny anymore, is it?” I recognize him from earlier that day, not the one who tackled me, but the one who first told me to stop. I glare at his mucky boot heels as he leads me out to the lobby, where Tracy is waiting. She crosses her arms over her chest and looks at me like I should have known better.

“I left my dinner behind. Can I go back and get it?” I ask. I’m suddenly starving. Tracy agrees, but the first-floor safety tells me dinnertime is over and besides, it’s already been thrown out.

“Seems you caused quite a ruckus out there today,” Tracy says to me on our way up to the third floor.

“I just went for a run.”

“Well, those boys don’t like to exercise much, so next time you feel like running, better clear it with someone first.”

When we get to the third floor, the girls are all standing in their doorways like they’re waiting for me. Or more likely, gossiping about me. I want to scream at them to stop looking at me. I feel like I’m walking up a sandy hill, trying to keep from slipping backwards. Maybe I
am
going crazy. Or maybe it was there all along, waiting for a place like Sunny Meadows to bring it out in me.

Tracy waits for me in the hallway while I go to the bathroom. On my way out, I catch my reflection in the murky mirror. With my chopped hair and crazed eyes, I get a glimpse of the woman I never want to become.

My mother.

Back in my room I lie in bed and wait for lights-out, but when it finally arrives, I can’t fall asleep. My stomach’s growling and my limbs are tight and tense. I get out of bed and
pace the floor, trying to wear myself out so I can fall asleep and end this awful day.

“You up?”

I stop mid-stride and glance down at the air vent. Him again. My mysterious stalker, whose voice I’ve been searching for all day. He must have heard my footsteps.

“What do you want?”

“Meet me,” he says simply.

The memory of my spectacular takedown on the lawn and subsequent time spent in isolation is still fresh, but if I have the choice between pacing the room until I fall into a restless sleep and getting off the floor . . .

“I want your key,” I say, speaking directly into the vent. I want there to be no mistake about it. “The key to the stairwell. That’s the only way I’m coming down.”

There’s a long pause, and I wonder if he’s considering it, if he’d
actually
give it to me.

“Okay.”

“I want it waiting for me at the top of the stairwell.” I know I’m pushing my luck, but I also have nothing to lose.

“Fine.”

I remember Margo’s matches in my backpack. A light source. I can get the key
and
find out who he is. Mystery solved.

“See you in a minute.”

I go through my ritual of sneak and stealth, sure that I’m
going to get caught, but at the same time not really caring. What more can they possibly do to me? I get out to the stairwell and close the door behind me. When I turn around, I see the key glittering like a jewel on the top step. I pick it up, fit it into the lock, and twist, engaging the deadbolt, then twist it back. I give that key a big, sloppy kiss and tuck it safely into my sock.

I could go back to my room. I have the key and that’s all I need, but I want to know who he is, and I have just enough courage left to try to find out. I descend the stairs quickly, finding it easier to navigate my way in the dark this time. I creep into the darkroom.

“Marco,” he says from across the room. He has ears like a dog.

“Polo,” I say back. With his key in my sock, I’m suddenly in a much better mood.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asks.

“I did. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome. Come sit.”

“In a minute.” I dig in my pocket for the matches. I’ll give him one more chance to confess.

“I saw them bring you in,” he says. “Today on the lawn. Why were you laughing?”

So, he was there to witness my bout of temporary insanity. How many others saw me? I wasn’t really paying attention to who was out there watching. He could be anyone.

“You must think I’m crazy.”

“Not crazy. You looked . . . scared.”

“I wasn’t scared. I was just . . . surprised. I did the same thing when . . .” I’m about to say,
when I got arrested
, but he doesn’t need to know all that.

“When what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Come sit,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because you’re making me nervous.”

“You can’t even see me.”

He groans like I’m the one being ridiculous. “I told you before I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I don’t sit on couches with strangers. So if you want me to sit, you’ll have to tell me your name.”

“My name’s Adam.”

Adam. I rack my brain for someone I know whose name is Adam. No one, but there’s still a ton of guys I haven’t met. Assuming that’s even his real name. I pull the matchbook out of my pocket and silently peel off a match. I want to see him, to be able to identify him in the daytime. Or if I need to, in a police lineup.

“All right, Adam, here I come . . . Marco.”

“Polo,” he says, and I shuffle in that direction. My hands swim in the darkness in front of me until my shin bumps into something like a couch.

“Marco,” I say again.

“Polo.”

He’s close now. I turn toward his voice while my hand feels for the cushion. I sit down carefully.

“Marco,” I say, pressing the match head to the grit, praying it’s a live one. I’ve got exactly one chance to get this right.

“Polo,” he says, and I swipe it. The flame hisses to life, and in the orange glow I see his keys, hanging on a chain around his neck.
Real close
, he said, and he was right. I raise the flame to his face as he snuffs it out like a candle on a cake, but not before I recognize the silver chain around his neck, one I’ve seen in the daytime.

A.J.

Adam.

“What does the
J
stand for?” I ask.

“Junior,” he says slowly. There is a note of defeat in his voice. He must have been looking for me on the first day of school. That’s how he got between Brandi and me so fast. And after I asked for that map of Georgia, he knew just how to goad me into coming down here to meet him—with a key to the stairwell door. But why is he going through all this trouble?

“I thought you didn’t speak.”

“I don’t.”

“But you’re talking now, to me?”

“Why are you trying to run away?”

I think back to earlier that day in the pen, when I cracked my lame jokes and he smiled. He seemed so harmless then, sweet even. And he didn’t ask questions.

“It’s not enough for me to sneak around the dorms at night. This place is making me crazy. Don’t you want out of here too?”

“I’ll be the same person out there as I am in here. So will you.”

“You don’t know me, A.J. So don’t act like you do.”

“I’d like to . . . know you.”

I shake my head, trying to make sense of him. He wants to know me, but he doesn’t want to reveal himself. It seems to me that he’s found his own way to escape, by not speaking at all.

“You know you’re doing the same thing, right? By not talking.”

“I’m aiming to fix that. You’re my little experiment.”

“I’m flattered, but why me?”

“Because you remind me of myself when I first got here—angry, scared.”