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Washington, something I didn’t know, although Dad might have told me once. Granddaddy reads all the world news, commenting on an earthquake in Bolivia or the Russians in Afghanistan, and then he turns to the obituaries.
    “Oh, Lord,” he’ll say, “Abel Bullard’s dead,” like I might ever have known or cared to know Abel Bullard. And then he’ll explain to me that Abel Bullard, on the outside chance I didn’t instantly know, was the brother of Miss Hattie Bullard, who used to sing in the choir at church, about a thousand years before I was born.
    Granddaddy isn’t completely out of it, though, not by a long shot. It took him about three days to see through that scam I cooked up about wanting to come visit him. I guess he knew the number of times I previously had wanted to come visit him amounted to approximately zero.
    It turns out that the Carlsons went apeshit when they found out I had run away. They called all over town, even had the police looking for me. Mom, naturally, hadn’t told them where Granddaddy lived, and all Trey knew was that we had relatives somewhere in North Carolina. Also, Mom, the scatterbrain, didn’t bother to tell them where Dad and the lovely Beverly were staying. Trey knew they were going to South Carolina, somewhere. I was counting on Trey’s failure to comprehend geography. But I guess his parents would have been a little embarrassed to tell Mom that her pride and joy had been misplaced. Not that she’d care. Also, she didn’t give them any addresses in Europe. She didn’t give me any, either.
    But Granddaddy had insisted, unknown to me, that Mom give him the Carlsons’ address and phone number. He always wants her to tell him everywhere she’s staying when she travels, but she never does, and it pisses her off that he keeps asking.
    Anyhow, he calls the Carlsons after he sends me to the store for groceries, and they tell him what’s been going on. By this time, the store detective and the Montclair school system have filled them in on all the gory details, and they, of course, tell Granddaddy everything. He tells me the jig’s up, an old expression of his, when I get back, and says he’ll give me one minute to come clean or he’s sending me back to Virginia on the first bus out.
    It all started when Mom told me she was going to Europe and that I could stay with the Carlsons, like this was some kind of great favor she was bestowing on me. You didn’t even like Europe the last time we took you, she said when I pitched a bitch. That was three years ago, I said. I was a child. You were happy enough to stay with friends the last two times we went, she said, and then she went on about how I was trying to mess things up between her and Mark the Narc. I call him that because Mom never found the dope I keep hid in my room until she started dating him, and I’m sure he put her up to looking. Hell, he might have even searched my room himself, in which case I would never forgive Mom for letting him. Mark the Narc wants me in Fork Union, wearing a smart little uniform and standing at attention, so bad he can taste it. Then he can move in. I tell Mom this, and that she can go to China with him if she wants, just forget about me, and she accuses me of laying a guilt trip on her. We didn’t talk much the last two weeks before she left.
    The day of finals in English, I skipped. I meant to go, and I had studied about twenty minutes, which is massive for me, the night before, because I was very close to flunking and facing the heartbreak of summer school. Mom acted like they’d take her job away or something if I flunked English, like if she was a minister and they found out her son was a Satan worshipper or something.
    I went to school that day, or got as far as the parking lot, at least. It’s only a six-block walk, one of the reasons Mom moved to the town house after she and Dad split, she’s always reminding me, like this is a great sacrifice or something.But as I walked through the