How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [136]
“I don’t want to have a fight.”
“No, I know. Sorry.” She sounds exhausted. “Why do you think she’s going to El Paso?”
“I found some emails from her mom, trying to get her to go down there. I need addresses, phone numbers, anything you can give me. Do you know where her mom is in rehab?”
“I can get all of that. Damn it, I’m so mad at Oscar for this!”
The car is running under my feet. I turn it off to save gas. Lifting my hand to the back of my neck, I move my head back and forth to loosen it. “Me, too. But that won’t help, either. I have to find her, and that means I can’t be on the phone with you.”
“Wait. Who’s with you?”
I look at him flipping through a heavy CD case. “My friend Jonah.”
“The sweater guy?”
He looks up and I realize he can hear her. “Yes,” I say, meeting his eyes. “The sweater guy.”
He smiles, and it hits me in the solar plexus. I want to cry and make love and hit him and scream and about a hundred other things. I bow my head, breaking away from his gaze. “Sofia, I have to go now. Get all those addresses and numbers together and then call me back.”
“I will.”
When I hang up, Jonah says, “The sweater guy?”
“I kept your sweater. It was with a bunch of stuff she used to like to go through.”
“I don’t remember a sweater.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He takes my hand. “Tell me.”
“I wasn’t planning to go to the shop, but I got stuck in a rainstorm. I was soaked when I came in, and you loaned me your sweater.” I bend my head, feeling shy and silly. “It was—”
“I remember.”
From here, those days seem so innocent. So much easier than this. I don’t laugh. I can’t look at him.
“Maybe I should drive for a while.”
“Done. Merlin probably wants a potty break, too.” I get out of the car and leash him, then walk him into the wide field beneath the bowl of New Mexico sky. Happy and sad, lost and found.
Let me find her, I think. Keep her safe until I do.
Katie
When the bus pulls into El Paso, the sun is overhead and it’s hot outside. Katie washes her face, changes into a pair of shorts, and heads for the city bus terminal.
She’s tired in a way she’d forgotten about. Her shoulders ache, her eyes are grainy and dry from so much crying yesterday, and she’s really hungry but not for junk food. Looking around, she sees a sandwich shop, which isn’t open, and a diner and a convenience store. She ducks into the store and finds an apple and a banana and some pretzels. Later she’ll eat with her mom, maybe. At a Village Inn or someplace like that, where they can have eggs and pancakes for lunch, the way they used to.
The bus maps here are familiar to her, and she’s visited her mom at this rehab before, so she finds the right bus, pays the fare, and sits down. The city looks worn out, something she never noticed before. It’s dusty and colorless and crowded, and it makes her feel lonely.
Why did she do this? What was she thinking? She doesn’t want to see her mother. She doesn’t want to live in El Paso anymore. She’s mad, sure, but not mad enough that she wants to get swept into the foster-care system and lose everything she had.
Merlin! Her stomach sinks as she thinks of him. Her own special dog. Her dog. How could she have left him?
Tears choke her as a picture of his face moves over her imagination. She presses her fist really hard against the bottom of her jaw to keep from crying.
And then there is the bus stop. The one she remembers from before. She sits there for a minute, but when the bus starts to move again, she leaps up. “Wait! This is my stop! Sorry.”
She’s come this far. She might as well see it through.
Sofia’s Journal
JULY 14, 20—
It’s hot. My back is killing me. I’m thinking about Katie, wondering where the heck she might be. My grandmother went to the hospital chapel and lit a bunch of candles.
I marched into Oscar’s room and told him that Katie had run away, that she found out that he had tried to kill himself. He looked shocked. “She ran away? Where is she?”
“They don’t know.” I had to sit down, because my belly makes my back sway so much it’s hard to stand straight. “Probably to see