Noni lets herself into Principal Townes’s office between classes and drops a handful of papers on the desk.
“What’s this?”
“It’s what you asked for. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
one more year, little miss demeanor says, her voice muffled in the dark closet, is far too long.
thats it, though, the jailbreak boy says, and sneezes twice. twelve and youre out.
they just transfer you.
he sneezes again. are they still angry about the cigarettes?
theyre angry about everything, little miss demeanor says. theyre angry about the cigarettes and the fights in the yard. theyre angry about morning call.
someone outside the closet in the maze of hallways and squares and insanity notices that they are gone from morning call and tells a second person who is better at managing these things. from their good, straight lines, the others fidget with their uniforms and think about the cigarettes in their pockets and walks about the yard.
are we going to go back today, little miss demeanor asks, or do you think we should run?
the jailbreak boy says, i thought we were going to run.
they open the door and peek out into an empty hallway. somewhere (anywhere) else in the maze, the second person and a third look for them. a fourth is herding the uniformed others into better rows, eager to show when the second and third return that he is good at his job. nobody is any closer to the escaped little miss demeanor and her jailbreak boy, who step out of the closet and take a left turn, a left turn, six steps up, a right turn, twelve steps down, and push through the doors into the whitegreen trafficnoise sidewalkcrackdandelion outside.
this is the eighth time that little miss demeanor and the jailbreak boy have escaped.
they always start at the corner store.
what flavor is this? little miss demeanor asks, holding up a bottle of something that fizzes more than it has any right.
mystery, the woman behind the counter says. she doesnt even glance up.
they take two bottles, leave a handful of cigarettes in their place on the shelf, and wander down the road to somewhere (anywhere) else.
mystery flavor my ass. its squid, little miss demeanor says, and spits a mouthful onto the sidewalk. she tastes it again and spits out another mouthful. its yogurt. its paint.
what color? the jailbreak boy asks.
only green paint would taste like that.
never trust an answer that doesnt have a proper question, he says.
its good for something, still, little miss demeanor says. do you know what ive always wanted to try?
she stops and pours the mystery flavor into a crater in the sidewalk then smashes the bottle against the stone corner of someones front stoop. the bottle cracks, and a few shards fall and shatter, and a few splinters fly into her hand, and she drops it and stares at her palm.
that only works in the movies, the jailbreak boy says.
little miss demeanor scrapes the splinters away and opens his bottle. is there anything else that only works in the movies that i should know about? she asks.
running away. i dont believe its possible. are you going to drink that?
i thought i might, she says. to make sure its as bad as it really is.
she does. it is.
Mack had been gone for three days when Sergeant Fred Humes got home.
“Sometimes he goes out for a while,” Mrs. Humes said, fluttering and red-cheeked, twisting her fingers together as her son set his bags down. “He has some friends…and sometimes after school he goes out.”
“For three days?” Humes asked. He’d been only a number of hours back in the country, a number of seconds back in his home, and this.
Sergeant Fred Humes spent most of his life coming back to things he’d put down only to find that they had grown legs and walked away.
“We’ve spoken to some people,” Mrs. Humes said. “But he’s eighteen, so it’s—”
But Humes was gone, down the hall to the kitchen, fumbling around in the unfamiliar, remodeled space until he found the phone on the wall. Then he was dialing, his mother off in the corner staring at her house slippers and wishing her grandson home. She nearly believed that the forgotten Fred Humes, Sr., had something in his blood that made men want to run away. She nearly believed—nearly, as she was the kind of woman who knew not to wonder too much or wander too far—that she had something in her blood that made men want to run away.
Humes, Jr., her son, bulging and bellowing, took the matter (never his to begin with) into his own hands, and his mother padded quietly from the room and stood in the front hall, staring down at his bags and ordering her hands to carry them to the upstairs bedroom. In the end she left them in the front hall and went up to her grandson’s room, closing the door softly before returning to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.
they find the place where the sidewalk collapses into a cavern of metal dragons that roar and breathe electricity. the machine that eats scraps of paper wont eat cigarettes so they climb over it and follow the tiled stairs down, down into the bowels of something that whirrs and clicks and announces that the next train will be arriving in six minutes.
where should we go? little miss demeanor asks. we can go anywhere. we can go to a cake shop. to the beach. the democratic republic of the congo. alaska.
the jailbreak boy says, we cant go anywhere while were still in our uniforms.
are you afraid of people looking? little miss demeanor asks. they dont care that we left.
everyone back there cares, the jailbreak boy says.
i dont know, little miss demeanor says. sometimes i imagine that they care enough to look for us. sometimes i think ridiculous things, like: theyve got dogs or something, and i imagine that theyve changed out of their ties and loafers and into boots and helmets and are following us through neighborhoods with guns like hunters in a jungle. sometimes i imagine that somebody cares enough to bring us back. sometimes i want them to bring us back, instead of us bringing ourselves back, and i want them to stop pretending the next day that nothing happened, and i want so many things, really, and i want to know why every time we run away i just feel farther from knowing what it is i really want at all.
the jailbreak boy has pretended not to hear her. i dont want to go anywhere looking like this, he says.
the next train will be arriving in five minutes.
When Alexa Townes was eight years old, her mother told her that the hardest thing she would ever have to do would be to keep her head down and stay smart, but Alexa Townes kept her head down and stayed smart.
When Alexa Townes was nineteen years old, her professor told her that the hardest thing she would ever have to do would be to prove herself, but Alexa Townes proved herself every chance she got and graduated with honors.
When Alexa Townes was twenty-one years old, the nurse told her that the hardest thing she would ever have to do would be to raise a baby on her own, so Alexa Townes raised a wild creature made of a mother’s determination and a stranger’s ability to escape from any situation.
“Little Miss Demeanor,” Alexa would say when her daughter had climbed another gate, fallen out of another bed, broken another bone. “Don’t you know it’s us against them?”
When Alexa Townes was twenty-nine years old, the board told her that the hardest thing she would ever have to do would be to run a high school while raising a child alone, but Alexa Townes was already moving into her office.
When Alexa Townes was thirty-six years old, Noni told her that high school was going to be the hardest thing either of them would ever have to do, and she was right.
theyre still angry about the cigarettes, little miss demeanor says. thats all they care about.
they care that we are gone, the jailbreak boy says. we can just go back.
or we can go somewhere else. this time we can stay gone. we can stay anywhere.
we will go back tomorrow anyways.
we wont, she says. not this time.
im going back tomorrow.
why would you go back? little miss demeanor asks, and even though this is the eighth time she has asked this of him, even though she has heard the same answer seven times, even though she knows not only that her jailbreak boy will be back with the others tomorrow, but that she will be there with him—even though they know these things to be true (the hardest things in the world for anyone to admit are the things they think they know), as they stand between dirty tiles and fluorescent lights, waiting with endless people in brown coats for a metal dragon that may or may not be on its way, the jailbreak boy recites his reasons for the eighth time.
because there are real wars to fight, he tells her, and this isnt one of them.
because his dad is in a real war, he tells her, and its nothing like this.
because somewhere else on the planet there is a man who wears a uniform every day and expects the same of his son, he tells her.
because nobody really cares whether you respect them or are afraid of them, he tells her, as long as youre there to shake their hand and make them feel good when they come home.
because running feels good until he remembers that he has nowhere to run.
the train will be arriving in four minutes.
little miss demeanor stares very hard down the dark throat of the train station. do you ever think, she asks one of the coats standing next to her, about what would happen if you never took the train back home?
i would get a cab, i suppose, the coat says after a moment.
no. thats not what i mean. i mean…if you just never came home. if you stayed where the train took you.
i would stay at work forever, the coat says.
little miss demeanor struggles for more words, finds none, and slumps into a silent pout.
the train will be arriving in three minutes.
if they were back in the corner store she wouldnt choose a mystery flavor. next time, she will choose something familiar like ginger beer or white glue or foam shoes or a whole sheet cake with frosted flowers and icing script. next time she will choose something that has a purpose, and next time she wont break anything and she wont ask the jailbreak boy questions that he doesnt want to answer. next time she wont try so hard to find answers for things that arent really questions.
she listens for the train and sings silent goodbyes to todays last-times, while next to her the jailbreak boy straightens his uniform and tries to remember what his body felt like before he put it on.
the train will be arriving in two minutes.
this is the last time he will be running away. next time he will let little miss demeanor go on her own while he stands with the others in good straight lines. next time he will close his eyes and spell long words like antidisestablishmentarianism and pneumonoultricroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis so that he doesnt have to think about the things that are on the other side of his windows or doors. he will not wonder why people have opposable thumbs or feel joy or make their coffee in little french presses every morning, because those are things that little miss demeanor thinks about, and she will go away and he will stay behind and listen every day for a different pair of footsteps to come back home.
the hardest things in the world for anyone to admit are the things that they think they already know.
the train will be arriving in one minute.
so, the jailbreak boy says, almost too quietly to be heard over the clanging and humming in the walls, so i guess next time youll be going on your own.
its funny, little miss demeanor says, still staring down the tunnel. i thought last time was going to be the last time you ran away. and i thought the time before that was going to be the last time you ran away. and all the times before that. and on, and on.
i guess it just felt like it was worth a shot, he says.
every time i run away i just feel farther from knowing what it is i really want at all, she says again. but i cant stop running away.
every time you start to leave, the jailbreak boy says, you look like you know where youre going. thats why i follow you. because i never know where im going. because i want somewhere to go. maybe i just need somewhere to stay.
but not back there, she says.
maybe back there, he says. who knows. maybe there arent any answers.
we dont even know what the questions are, she says.
i guess we have to find them first. i guess we have to find the questions. do you think the questions are back there?
everything moves in straight lines there, little miss demeanor says. she wont look away from the tunnel. one thing can only lead to one more thing. did you ever notice that, there are so many straight lines, and nobody ever looks…
the train is arriving.
what if we got on? the jailbreak boy says, as the metal monster inhales brown coats into its fingerprintvinyl stomach, puking others onto the platform where the two have always stood together to watch the brown tides surging in and out, never joining, just searching for the questions they never knew (what if we got on?), and he feels a beating at his back like the knocking of a longgone fist against a familiar door, and he steps out into the tide.
from inside the train he thinks to himself that if its his last time running away, then he doesnt need to know where he is going. he will get there. he doesnt have to stay there.
its nice, he says to little miss demeanor, who isnt next to him anymore.
Noni is in the office again, standing in the doorway and staring very hard at nothing in particular as Alexa shuffles around collecting papers and bags. She finds her car keys and jangles them in the direction of the door. Time to go.
Noni doesn’t move, not much, nothing except half of a shrug.
More and more often these days Alexa finds her leaning into walls or chairs, eyes closed, fingers still for once, as if she is falling into the center of the world waiting to be caught. More and more often Noni comes home from having run away in a daze, without answers or explanation, wandering her bedroom with the quiet confusion of someone who no longer knows why she does what she does.
“You know I would tell you if anyone had heard anything about him,” Alexa says, because parents are supposed to make sure that their children know things like this.
A half-shrug; otherwise no reply.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Alexa asks.
“I told you.”
The handwritten pages are in the bag over Alexa’s shoulder. She has read the little story (nonsense, perhaps, the exhausted ramblings of someone who has no answers) four times today.
Parents are supposed to look for clues. Parents are supposed to find the hidden meanings, the secret notes, the messages written for strangers to find. Parents forget what to do when what’s in front of them is exactly what it seems.
“I saw him get on a train,” Noni says. “I know you don’t—” (a tottering: Are you going to talk to her or not? Are you going to talk about this or not?) “I know you think I’m supposed to know something. I don’t know why he actually left. I don’t know why he wasn’t joking. I don’t know why he left school with me and I don’t know why he hasn’t come home and I didn’t know this was a real thing, I didn’t—I didn’t think that, like, people ever actually left. I didn’t think that. I don’t know. And I don’t ever want to talk about this. That’s everything I know, right there, and I don’t know anything else. Swear to god.”
Alexa wavers, just a small breath with no words to hold it up (What does a parent do, Alexa? What does a parent do?), but it’s enough. Noni pulls her backpack higher on her shoulder and leaves. She will be waiting in the car.
Will she be waiting in the car?
The sun filters through the blinds and Alexa Townes (principal, parent, stranger) thinks about all of the last-times that she forgot to kiss goodbye, all of the last-times that belong to somebody younger but not so different now. The sun filters through the blinds and lands goldenfine on pens and tissues and photographs and chairs—and the moment, the story, the smells of cigarettes and bubblegum all run together in a yellowbrownwatercolor of light and sadness, and it becomes a last-time of its own.