Page 127 of The Story of You

But I woke up fast when a bolt of lightning went through me, the hair on even my mid-puberty nuts standing on end. I caught him from his side profile just as he walked by the aisle. I can’t fucking tell you what or who gave me a warning like that—Mama?—I didn’t know if I even believed in that shit but it was too coincidental that I got the sensation just as he walked by.

Dad.

My heart rate sped up. It was loud, thundering in my ears. No. I must be seeing things. How could that be? It was a lot harder to track people in those days. It’s too easy now with cell phones. But Dad was rich with all kinds of evil-eye-level contacts and enough crazy to hire a PI. It wasn’t improbable.

Silas and I had already come up with several elaborate scenarios of how we thought Dad would find us.

Still. Maybe I was paranoid. I had to find out. As much as I hated our life in that little town, it had taken so much work to establish ourselves and we were finally saving a little money. The plan was to put Silas through business school. Then I’d go through high school via homeschooling like he had whenever the fuck it finally worked for me to.

What were the chances it could be Uncle Pax and not Dad?

Though at the time, I wasn’t sure that was a good idea either. We weren’t sure where Uncle Pax’s loyalties lied.

Inhaling slow, like he might hear me if I did it too fast, I crept as close as I could toward the direction I’d seen him go. Did he know I was here? Was he just toying with me?

I didn’t have to go far.

“Yes. I’m looking for my son, Luke Jones. Do you know where he might be?” I heard him ask my boss the next aisle over.

Shit.

That was my fake name. The eighties were probably one of the last eras you could get a job without proper ID or banking information. I was paid in cash, which was a risk for me too, but we had little choice.

I backed away slowly. Running would alert everyone.

As it turned out, tomatoes would save me that day. Maybe it was a prelude to all the fucking tomatoes Julius would plague our Randall cellars with, but the tomato aisle was closest to the stock room. I was able to slip through and out the back unseen.

I began the day a zombie, but I became the Little Engine Who Could with enough adrenaline running through me to fuel a damn racehorse.

I prayed for many things. Dad not to know where our apartment was—though that was unlikely if he knew my fake name. For Silas and Oliver to be home. For us to get the fuck out of there in time.

I barreled in the door. Silas was in the middle of taking Oliver through his wake-up routine. “Sye. Fuck, Sye, we’ve got to go.”

I grabbed Oliver’s diaper bag and began shoving shit into it. “Darry?”

“Dad. Jesus Fuck. Dad’s here.” Terror bolted through me. I shook. Everything I attempted to stuff into Oli’s bag fell or didn’t go in right.

Silas didn’t ask “If I was sure”. He grabbed what he could. “We don’t have time let’s go,” he said. “I can’t … I can’t see him or I’ll—fuck.”

Silas was on the verge of having a panic attack. I’d seen him have them before. Every day away from Dad was a struggle for him in the early days. He wanted to go back, but we’d come to a mutual unspoken agreement that I couldn’t allow that.

I kept us moving forward and I swiped Brix up—we weren’t leaving him behind.

I peeked out the window, imitating every spy show I’d ever seen. Dad was walking toward the building. There was no security. He’d be able to walk right in. “We’re going to have to take the back stairs,” I said to Silas.

I could barely move. I forced my jelly-like limbs to walk out the door after Silas, me with Oli’s diaper bag, Silas with a duffel full of random shit and I hoped, money.

Two things happened at once. The door to the stairs on the other side of the hall cracked open and I noticed that the door to apartment three-oh-three was ajar. Yanking Silas’s arm, I pulled him into Mrs. Sharma’s place, shutting the door quietly.

Mrs. Sharma was there. Our eyes met and when she opened her mouth to speak, I shook my head pointing to the door. I don’t know what she saw. Probably three terrified children. I’d only just gotten to know Mrs. Sharma. Her style of curry was delicious—maybe better than Lakshan’s—but I knew she wasn’t tender-hearted. That’s not to say she wasn’t caring, but she’d been through some kind of darkness like we had, and because of that she recognized it in us. She understood without us ever having to explain.

She pointed to the fire escape out her window. Only the end apartments had fire escapes in that building—I can’t imagine that was to code, but I couldn’t say what the laws were on that back then—and we climbed out, Oliver attached to Silas, and sprinted to the car.

Did he look out the window to see us pull away? I imagine in a good movie, the camera would have panned to a creepy shot of him in the window, those yellowed blinds pulled just enough to see his Randall silhouette standing there like a handsome wraith.

But I’ll never know. We didn’t look back. We focused on running. And running.

And running.