“It’s me,” she says, in a voice so calm it makes the hair on my arms stand up. “There may be a problem. I need to know—” Her hand clenches tighter around the phone. “How long?”
She’s moving even before she hangs up, throwing my closet door open and grabbing an old backpack that I keep meaning to get rid of. Then she’s at my dresser, pulling drawers out and stuffing random fistfuls of clothes into the bag.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to go.” She doesn’t bother to close the drawers once she empties them. That carelessness from someone who irons my socks on a regular basis is more unsettling than her words. I don’t move. “Katelyn, now!” She crosses to the desk and yanks me away with such force that I nearly topple to the floor. My history book thuds as it hits the ground, and Mom’s grip tightens at the sound.
“Mom, stop! We’re not moving because I made you a dating profile. It’s gone, deleted. I know you get freaked out by stuff like this.” I raise my eyebrows and add, mostly to myself, “But you’re scaring me.” My heart beats painfully in my chest. I’m about to offer to go buy hot butterscotch for the ice cream and to suggest she take a bath, but she’s not calming down or showing even a hint of embarrassment over her behavior. If anything, she squeezes my arm tighter.
“What is going on?” I say.
She raises her eyes to mine and holds my gaze for several beats, a few seconds maybe, but it’s enough to give weight to her words. She releases my arm. “They found us.”
“Who found us? Who was that on the phone?” I stand completely still in the center of my room, but my blood is racing like I just ran a marathon. Mom is cautious to a fault, and I’m used to her worrying over little things, going so far as to randomly pick me up in the middle of a sleepover or to install tracking software on my phone. Once she even made me “break up” with my best friend when she found out her mom was a cop and kept a gun in the house. Never mind that they had a gun safe, which my friend didn’t even know the location of, much less the code to.
But this…She isn’t panicked. She doesn’t look scared. She looks scary.
“Grab only what you need from the bathroom. I’ll explain once we’re in the car.” The thing that keeps me from asking more questions is the sheen of sweat on her forehead, along with the quick, methodical movements she makes as she circles my room, grabbing essentials until my bag is full.
Mom’s paranoia is not new to me, but we’ve been doing so well lately, and even at her worst, she’s never dragged me out of the house with such hastily packed bags before. Granted, I’ve always followed her strict internet rules until now—well, mostly—but all this because of a dating profile?
It makes no sense. She speaks again when I fail to adopt her urgency. “Right now. You need to trust me.”
And I do. I don’t know what’s going on or why she’s having the mother of all freak-outs, but I know something is wrong and that she’s doing what she thinks she has to do to keep us safe.
And for now, that’s enough.
I slide past her into my bathroom, grabbing only what I need—but for what? How can I possibly pack for a trip I don’t know anything about? Mom’s breathing is rapid as she darts down the hall to her room. I catch a glimpse of her face, hard and determined…but not surprised. Almost as though she’s been waiting for this.
I stop hesitating after that. I sweep a hand through the bottom shelf in my medicine cabinet, knocking the contents into a toiletry bag. I get back to my bedroom just as she does. She’s changed into jeans and a dark T-shirt and is carrying her own bag now. She rushes me down the hall, down the stairs, and through the kitchen, flipping every light switch on and detouring into the living room to turn on the TV and crank up the volume. I watch her like she’s a stranger.
Then we’re gone, not out the front door, but the back, running barefoot through the yard, right up to our neighbor’s seven-foot-high wooden fence. Mom tosses our shoes and our bags to the other side, then bends and laces her fingers together.
“I’ll boost you.” Every gesture speaks of urgency.
I place my foot into her hands, and her strength in launching me off the ground draws a gasp from my lips. Mom is five foot nothing and weighs a buck ten soaking wet. Her sudden strength makes my blood race even faster.
The slats dig painfully into my stomach until I get both legs over the top and jump down. My palms hit damp grass, and before I can turn back and wonder how Mom is going to scale the fence without help, she lands next to me.
“Mom,” I say, impressed despite the panic nipping at my heels. She ignores me and grabs my hand, just as I’ve tugged my shoes on. We race through another yard, around the side of that house, and then stop. Mom starts up the walkway to Mr. Guillory’s front door.
“Do not say a word,” she tells me, setting our bags out of sight and slapping a bright smile on her face. She rings the bell.
Mr. Guillory is well into his seventies, with a generous paunch and a full head of silvery-white hair, which stands in sharp contrast with his dark skin. Even at this hour, he greets us with his usual friendly smile as he opens his door.
“Well, hello there, Melissa, Katelyn. What can I do for you on this lovely Friday night?”
“Actually, we’re a little embarrassed,” Mom says, looking indeed as if that were the case. “We’re having a girls’ night junk-food fest, and we decided”—she puts an arm around my shoulder and taps her head with mine—“that we couldn’t rest until we ate our weight in snickerdoodles. Would you be willing to spare a cup of sugar? We’d be glad to share some of the cookies with you.”
Mr. Guillory is only too happy to gift us with as much sugar as we want. We follow him into his kitchen—or, rather, I follow him. Mom disappears somewhere after the entryway. Before I can wonder if I’m still supposed to keep silent, she reappears. Mr. Guillory straightens up after retrieving a nearly full bag of sugar from one of his lower cabinets.
“Perfect.” Mom snatches the bag from him a little too quickly. “We’ll bring the cookies over tomorrow.”
As soon as Mr. Guillory sees us to the door and closes it behind us, Mom retrieves our bags, grabs my arm, and hurries me onto the dimly lit street. She dumps the sugar in a trash barrel on the way and pulls a set of keys from her back pocket. Not her keys. These have a small pocketknife and a Dallas Cowboys star dangling from them.
Mom has the driver’s door of Mr. Guillory’s car, a cream-colored vintage Mercury Comet, open in seconds. She reaches across the bench seat and pushes open the passenger door for me.
“You took his keys? Why would you do that?”