Free Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown Page B

mini-crash we’d just had, I was feeling pretty shaken up, and I wasn’t so sure going home was a bad idea after all.
    “Yes, you are,” he said. “I’ll pull the wheel again.”
    “Fine,” I snapped. “Go ahead and pull the wheel. You break us down out here and we’re not getting home at all. Nobody would even think to look for us here.”
    “Mom and Dad—”
    “Mom and Dad think you’re at Brock’s and I’m at Shani’s,” I said. “They aren’t even going to be suspicious until tomorrow morning when the school calls to…” I trailed off. My mouth still couldn’t form around the words. Called to what, exactly? Called to tell them what I’d done? Called to tell them that their perfect daughter was getting expelled and wasn’t going to be going to college after all? “To find out why I’m not in class,” I finished, thinking,
You wish that was the worst of your worries,
Kendra
. “By then,” I continued, “we’ll be almost out of Kansas.” Iflicked a glance at the gas gauge and added silently,
I hope so
.
    Grayson straightened. “Out of Kansas? Have you lost your mind? We can’t just go driving across the country.”
    “Why not?” I asked, shrugging. “Huh? I mean, here we are… we’re driving… and we’d be fine if you’d just chill out. It’s a road trip. Have fun.”
    He shook his head and gave a sardonic laugh. “Fun,” he muttered. “You’re insane. I don’t know why they keep locking
me
up.
You’re
the crazy one.”
    “Yeah, fun,” I said, choosing to ignore his little dig. He was unhappy, but at least he wasn’t shouting at me and reaching for the steering wheel. Or counting, which, to me, seemed like progress. Maybe even seemed as if my plan would work exactly as I’d wanted it to. Like Dr. St. James was right, and all we had to do was make Grayson face his anxiety. “Remember fun? You used to have it sometimes?”
    “Ha-ha-ha,” he deadpanned.
    “Okay. Remember the time we made the woods behind Zoe’s house into a haunted forest for Halloween?”
    He made a noise in the back of his throat but didn’t comment.
    “And we invited all the little neighborhood kids, and you were the headless ghost, and you were so good you made that Ian kid cry?”
    Grayson’s mouth twitched. “Yeah.”
    “See? That was fun. And remember last summer when we snuck out at midnight for that twenty-cent taco sale at Jose Grande’s? And we bought, like, twenty dollars’ worth of tacos? And we both forgot our house keys and we couldn’t get back in?”
    Grayson laughed. “And you had the brilliant idea to throw your shoes at Mom and Dad’s window because they didn’t hear the doorbell.”
    I cracked up. “And they called the cops instead and there we were, holding all these giant bags of tacos on our own front porch.”
    “And your shoes were stuck in the gutter.”
    We both laughed. Mom and Dad had been so mad at us, but we hadn’t gotten into any trouble, because they were also both so thrilled that we were doing something normal. Together.
    “See? That was fun, too. And you didn’t die from it,” I said. “Loosen up, Stuffypants. Enjoy.”
    His face got serious. “Enjoy,” he repeated. “It seems to me that you haven’t been in the mood for much fun for a long time yourself.”
    “What? I have fun all the time,” I said, though in the back of my mind I was scrounging to think of a recent example to offer. “Shani and Lia and I have lots of fun.”
    He rolled his eyes. “If you call standing around trying to impress everyone fun, I guess,” he said.
    I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out.Whether he was right or wrong, I was mostly floored that he’d even paid attention. I’d thought Grayson only paid attention to Grayson. And rocks.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What are we going to do when we hit Colorado?”
    “Keep driving,” I answered. Again, my eyes cut to the gas gauge, which was down to just under a quarter of a tank now. I was