All Good Children - Catherine Austen [86]
“Thank you for doing this, Coach,” I say.
“Just go. I’ll give you five minutes before I take him out. You have to leave town tonight. Right away.” He starts tugging the tape off Dallas’s coat. “Do you want to take this?” he asks me.
“It’s mine,” Dallas says.
The coach looks at him in surprise. Everyone always blames me for everything.
“It’s the only thing I own now,” Dallas says. He grabs his coat, and we turn our backs on the camera, walk outside into the sights of another camera.
“Good luck wherever you’re going,” Coach Emery says.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum
And said, “What a good boy am I!”
Eighteenth-century nursery rhyme
PART THREE
REJECTION
SEVENTEEN
At six o’clock I leave Dallas at my kitchen table with Celeste and head for Kim’s Trims. It’s dark and the temperature’s dropping, but sweat drips down my ribcage beneath my coat. I walk quickly, careful not to draw attention. The library closes at eight, and after that Dr. Richmond will come looking for his son.
Halfway down Fairfield Road I get a message from Coach Emery. Mr. Graham is awake, confused, suspicious. The police are accessing the school surveillance data to corroborate the coach’s testimony that the principal’s injuries were accidental.
I break into a run. This is how it happens in Xavier’s old movies. The hero embarks on his escape and there’s the bad guy waiting for him, snickering, right behind him all along. Dallas was right—living with hope is like rubbing up against a cheese grater. It keeps taking slices off you until there’s so little left you just crumble.
Kim is alone with the lights dimmed when I enter her shop. “All set?” she asks.
“Do you have the keys?”
She shows me a picture of a fat green car. “It’s a station wagon, two thousand and twelve, legally registered.”
“Two thousand and twelve? That’s ancient. It still runs?”
“It runs fine. The tank is full, and there’s two cans in the trunk in case you run out.”
“Is that possible? It doesn’t tell you if it’s about to run out of fuel?” I picture us stranded on the highway at midnight, hunkered in the backseat under our leather coats, staring through tinted glass at some flat moonlit landscape writhing with drug-crazed freaks and freebies.
Kim laughs at my expression. “It doesn’t speak, so you have to watch the dials. It’s perfectly safe. Your mom knows how to drive it.”
“You spoke to my mom?”
She nods. “She came in for a cut. I did what I could. You got lucky on hair.”
I run my hand over my head self-consciously. “So where’s the car?”
She holds up her RIG and projects a map of the city. She zooms in on the southwest quadrant, then slides the safe streets of New Middletown out of view to display the makeshift world beyond the walls, a sprawling shanty town I’ve been warned to stay away from my entire life. “You know the car park where I live? Just past that, on the south side-don’t go north to the old strip mall, you don’t want to take any valuables that way-but south of the carpark, along the old two-lane highway, you’ll find my son with your car.” She shows me a picture of a white man in his twenties. “This is Churchill. He’ll be there all evening.”
“He’s just standing there?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s a car full of gasoline. What do you expect him to do? He has a second key in case he has to move it.”
“Why would he have to move it?”
“Don’t worry, kid. He won’t. I told him you’d be there at seven.” She checks her watch. “Is that still your plan?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I have to run. Are you coming back with me to see the apartment?”
She shakes her head. “I’m going out to celebrate. But I’ll take your keys.”
“There’s a code for the stairwell—”
“Got it.” She stares at my keys like they’ll open the gates to heaven. “I’m so excited I can’t tell you, kid. Don’t change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
She smiles. “You’re a good boy, Max. I’ll miss you.”
I can’t say the same, but you never know what you’ll miss about your