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note from Michael to the bus driver.
Please allow Sashato take the Cary Fork bus to visit her grandparents. She is to get off at the park.
It shouldn’t be this easy to sneak away, but in the chaos of bus boarding, it is. The kids on this bus smell a little better than the ones the Caboose way. Like lotion and chewing gum. Their sneakers look newer. The driver is bored. He barely glances at my note. If there were Greyhound buses here, buses that went to other cities, I’d sneak on one and end up in a faraway city with my clothes stuffed in my backpack and my eyes wide, ready to see new things. I think of how proud that would make Michael.
    At the park in the center of Cary Fork, I climb off the school bus and walk as though I know where I’m going. Only once the bus is out of sight do I sag to a stop. Taco Bell is still open, but I didn’t bring any money. I eat my sandwiches, which are warm and taste like vinegar and paper bag. I drink the can of soda Phyllis sent with me, which is also warm. I sit on a bench, one of six. There’s no caboose here. A bird lands in the grass. I have the girl’s blood on my knuckles.
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    I think about how it would be if I looked up and my mother was there. I am never in Cary Fork. I don’t
know
that this isn’t where she ran to. I could look up right now and my mother’s truck could be there, blue and clean. I’d prefer that she jump out of the truck and run to me, fling her arms around me, grab me, and take me with her. ButI would settle for me chasing after her, getting my hand over the tailgate, which after all these years has a little more rust, and hefting myself into the truck bed. I would lie on my back with the brown pine needles and the flat spare tire until my mother pulled into the driveway of her new home, which would be brick and white and on a hill. When Mom got out of the truck in the circular driveway, I would sit up. I would surprise her.
    She would cry. She would apologize for leaving. “I had to get out,” she would say. “I was losing my mind, and I had to get out. I’ve thought about you every day.”
    I would understand. I mean, I do, sort of. Understand. A little more each day, I feel like I’m losing my mind living in Caboose, where so many bad things have happened, and you only ever see the same things over again: coal-filthy buildings and flood-damaged roads and headlines filled with bad news. I wouldn’t have to work hard to understand why she felt like Caboose was a cage she was trapped in.
    But I would make her wait before I forgave her.
    The inside of the house would be clean. On a shiny oak table inside the door, there would be an iris. Not the part of your eye, but the flower. The walls would all be cream and beige without any Sticky Tack or nail holes. There wouldn’t be any streaks on the windows. The carpet would be new and smooth. My gaze would trace the vacuum lines.
    It would take me a few nights to forgive her. Once I did, I would crawl into her bed and rest my head on her extra pillow. She would pat her shoulder and open her arms to me, and even though I’m too big to want to cuddle, I would scoot over and do it anyway. She wouldn’t smell like Phyllis, like hair spray and dryer sheets. She wouldn’t smell like she used to, either, back before she left, when she worked at the Burger Bargain—like grease and weariness. She would smell new. Like soap and flowers and faraway places.
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    Phyllis arrives shortly after the police car. I don’t remember throwing rocks at the streetlights. There is glass on the sidewalk. My mother isn’t here.

6
    â€œI would like to get a job,” I tell Phyllis.
    I’m more comfortable with her now. Comfortable enough to eat at the table at regular hours of the day. Since I’ve been staying with her, I’ve more or less figured out her body