Full Ride (31 page)

My eyes well up with tears.

What if Daddy didn't take his fake identity because he wanted a life of crime?
I wonder.
What if he was actually trying to get away from it? What if ‘Roger Jones' was supposed to be a clean slate for him, a chance to start over and be good? And, then—he couldn't stick with it?

Do normal teenagers get this constant sense of seeing their parents redefined?

I don't know if my new version of Daddy's life is right or not. I can't think about it anymore, not when I'm in a car with four other people. Not when I look up and see Rosa waving her hand at me over the back of her seat, then frantically pointing toward the window.

It's the
welcome to tennessee
sign just ahead that she's pointing at.

I lean forward, nod, smile, and flash a double thumbs-up at the rearview mirror so she can see how happy I am to be entering the next state. But I'm quelling panic as I settle back again.

Tennessee,
I think.
Where Daddy grew up. Where I might go to Vanderbilt someday. Or not. Where we'll at least visit Vanderbilt on our way home, after Emory. Where this is the last state before Georgia, before I have to make the plea that will affect the rest of my life. . . .

I'm so flustered, I accidentally hit the contacts icon on Mrs. Collins's phone. The screen floods with names.

Do normal people really have that many people they stay in touch with?
I wonder.

Of course they do. Back when I had a cell phone, I had hundreds of friends available to me anytime I wanted to call or text.

And then, after Daddy was arrested, I had no one.

That just proves none of them were true friends,
I remind myself.
Mom's wrong to worry about me running into any of them. They wouldn't recognize me. I wouldn't recognize them.

But it strikes me that there's an easy way to find out what my old friends look like now, so I can at least see them coming, if they're by Emory or Mr. Trumbull's office. Jala did give me permission to log on to her Facebook anytime I wanted, and now I have a legitimate reason.

I have spent the past three years trying not to think at all about any of my friends from Georgia, but the names come flooding back: Brittany Connors, Alicia Giovanni, Savannah Hayes, Hailey Korshaski, Dustin Ivers, who was technically my first boyfriend, back in sixth grade when everyone started “going with” guys, but never actually went anywhere . . . I log into Jala's Facebook account on Mrs. Collins's phone and start looking up everyone. My old friends evidently didn't learn much from hearing about my father stealing from Facebook: Very few of them have good privacy settings. So I can see pictures of Savannah and Hailey where they're clearly drunk; I can read every word of Brittany's explanation of how God saved her from committing suicide. Some of my old friends have become partyers; some have become devoutly religious; some are fixated on activities like soccer or ballet or Habitat for Humanity. I scan certain Timelines and discover that a few of my old friends have passed through several of these phases over the past three years. And I wouldn't have been able to predict any of it—sometimes it's the ones I thought had the world at their feet who seem to have messed up their lives the worst, while some of the ones I'm almost afraid to look up seem to be doing fine.

I'm like a glutton devouring all this information—I can't stop myself. I'm obsessed.

Oh, wait, what about Annemarie Fenn?
I think belatedly, remembering the friend I was with when I was exposed on Facebook, when I found out I couldn't go on with normal life after Daddy's arrest.

I'm a little worried calling up her Facebook page because, until
that last day, I always felt like I needed to protect Annemarie. She'd always seemed like someone meant for a kinder, gentler world.

Annemarie hasn't made a picture available to the general public, but she's posted a status update for anyone to see:

Thanks to everyone who sent flowers or came to Mom's funeral. Her fight against the breast cancer was long and hard, and she appreciated each and every one of you who supported our family through that struggle.

And below that it says, “RIP Jocelyn Carter Fenn” with her birth and death dates.

The death date was only last week.

Annemarie's mother just died of cancer?
I think.
She had to deal with all that, and I didn't even know?

I haven't seen or talked to Annemarie in more than three years, but I feel a strange emotion burrowing into my gut: guilt.

I should have been there for Annemarie,
I think.
Who did she have to take care of her?

I search back through Annemarie's page. I find a link to a newspaper article about Annemarie and Mrs. Fenn participating together in a breast cancer benefit race, at a time when Mrs. Fenn could barely walk, let alone run.

It looks like Mrs. Fenn found out about her cancer the week before my father's trial.

And then I remember something I hadn't thought about in three years. One day, shortly before the trial, I was hiding away in our house, feeling sorry for myself. The doorbell rang and rang and rang, and even though we'd stopped answering the door long before that, I peeked out and saw Annemarie. And I
almost
opened the door to her,
almost
rushed out and threw my arms around her and clung to her like she was my last hope.

I didn't, of course. I told myself she'd be like everyone else; I told myself she would only want to gossip or make fun of me, or smash me down into the shame so hard that I could never get back up.

I can't place that day exactly in time, but what if that was the very day Annemarie found out about her mother's cancer? What if
she
was coming to
me
for comfort?

I try for balance: I make myself remember how mad I was at Annemarie when I was outed on Facebook. But now even her question that hurt me so much sounds different in my memory:
Why didn't you tell me?
What if Annemarie was just stunned and bewildered and a little hurt herself? What if there wasn't any malice behind her words?

What if she has felt for the past three years that I abandoned her, instead of the other way around?

I have been sitting sideways to look at Mrs. Collins's phone so no one else will see it, even if Oscar suddenly opens his eyes. But now it's my face I need to hide: Suddenly tears are streaming down it. I turn my face to the window, to the riotous explosion of yellows and oranges and reds of the trees around us. It's autumn in all its glory, and this makes me cry harder. Autumn is about endings, and it was a huge ending when I abandoned all my friends in Georgia three years ago. And now, if everything works out with Mr. Trumbull, I will abandon my Deskins friends just as completely. Getting a new identity doesn't just mean being safe from Excellerand. It also means leaving Deskins and never seeing or speaking to Rosa or Oscar or Jala or Stuart or anyone else from high school again. And even though I've told myself they're only school friends, only people I've held at arm's length for the past three years, somehow they became more than that.

I can't do this,
I think.
I can't, I can't, I can't.

But I have to.

I sniff, making a disaster of my attempts to keep my crying silent. A second later I feel Oscar's warm hand patting mine and then, wrapping around mine.

He's holding my hand.

And it feels wonderful.

It doesn't mean a thing,
I tell myself.
He's still asleep and just flailing around, or . . . it's more of his joking around. . . .

But I know lies, and I know truth, and there is no way I can make myself believe this.

I glance quickly toward Oscar, and he is so completely
Oscar.
Of course all that flirting that was supposed to be fake was actually real—it was Oscar being awkward and scared that I wouldn't like him back, and me being awkward and scared about letting anyone get too close. A normal guy, acting interested straight out, would have sent me running. But Oscar was slow and steady and goofing around, and just so
kind
every time I needed him to be that way.

And now here we are and he's holding my hand.

And I'm holding his right back.

Without even opening his eyes, Oscar slides his other arm around my shoulder and pulls me close and whispers in my ear, “Will you go to homecoming with me next week?”

And I can't. I can't be that girl, the kind who gets to go to dances and have a boyfriend and squeals when he gives her flowers. Daddy stole all that from me when he stole everything else. And anyhow, I probably won't even be in Deskins by next week. It won't be safe. I don't know how fast Mr. Trumbull will be able to get new identities for Mom and me, but I could be in a new school by then, I could be an entirely different person.

I snuggle against Oscar anyhow. I snuggle against him and I whisper back: “Yes.”

I am an emotional wreck by the time we get to Atlanta. Or, I should say: I am
still
an emotional wreck; I am even more of an emotional wreck than before. I am keeping layers of secrets now. Oscar has to let go of my hand before anybody else notices and take his turn behind the steering wheel. And it's like Oscar and I have silently agreed not to announce, “Hey! We're going to homecoming!” That's too delicate a secret, too fragile to hold up for everyone else's examination. But he keeps shooting me meaningful glances that our friends would have to be blind not to see.

Or do they notice, and they think it's no different from the way he looked at me yesterday or the day before?
I think.
Has he been looking at me like this for weeks or months or years, and
I
never noticed?

What does it matter if I'm going to change my name and vanish from Deskins and never see Oscar again?

Stuart is driving again as we hit the crazy traffic of Atlanta.

“Speed up and go around that car in front of you,” Oscar advises him from the passenger's seat.

“I can't,” Stuart snarls. “My parents can tell if I speed, because of the GPS.”

“I bet that just shows your average speed, not one burst of going seventy-five,” Oscar scoffs. “But here, if you're so scared, I'll disable that function. . . .”

He starts fiddling with the GPS, and suddenly the whole screen goes black.

“Now I don't know where to go!” Stuart screams, instantly soaring into full-fledged panic as cars zoom around us.

“Take the exit for I-85 north,” I tell Stuart from the backseat.

Everyone turns and stares at me except Stuart, who seems more focused on returning his breathing rate from “hyperventilate” to “normal.”

“You know your way around Atlanta?” Oscar asks me curiously. “Have you been here before?”

The way he's looking at me, I am so close to answering honestly. I am so close to telling everything.

“I heard the GPS voice say it a minute ago,” I tell him instead. “Weren't you listening?”

How can I lie like that, even now? I am a terrible person. I deserve to lose my friends. I deserve to live the rest of my life in exile.

It's a good thing I deserve that,
I think.
Because that's the only future I can have.

Oscar restores the GPS, and we get to Emory. We park and lug our bags into a huge auditorium, then the beaming admissions officials direct us to dinner in a huge dining hall. I look around and try to decide if any of the students look like fifth-year seniors or grad students.

Were any of them here four or five years ago when my father stole laptops?
I wonder.
Did he scam any of their parents or grandparents into sending him money?

I can hardly stand to be on Emory's campus, thinking that. But Rosa is looking around like she's reached the promised land,
and Oscar and Stuart are drooling over food choices in the serving lines: “Pizza and cheeseburgers and pasta and soft-serve ice cream and vegan choices and sushi and . . .” Stuart lists.

“They have dining halls like this at Ohio State, too,” Jala snaps, rolling her eyes. “For students who live on campus, anyway.”

I have no idea what I end up eating. I can't pay attention at the info sessions afterward either.

Tomorrow,
I think.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow . . .

We're matched with current Emory students to spend the night in a typical dorm room. I forget my host student's name five seconds after hearing it. I'm sure she thinks I'm a total idiot because I ask nothing about college. I put my sleeping bag on the floor of her room, and then I sit down, staring at the wall.

“Want me to show you where the best parties are?” she asks eagerly.

“I just want to sleep,” I say.

But of course I can't. I lie on the floor and pretend to as unknown-name-girl and unknown-name-girl's roommate head out to party without me; I'm still wide-awake hours later when they tiptoe back in. I hear them whispering a little too loudly about what a lousy student guest they got. Then I listen as their breathing slides into the soft steadiness of sleep.

I wish Mom could be here to do this with me tomorrow,
I think.
That would be okay, if we could do this together. I wish I could call her or text her right now to tell her how scared I am.

But it's three a.m. by now, and of course Mom doesn't have a cell phone. And I can't call our home phone, because Mom is still staying away. Tonight she's at another nurse's house—it wouldn't be right to call and wake up the woman who took Mom in even though Mom's excuse was that Whispering Pines Apartments had to fumigate for bedbugs.