Chapter 5 Bailey’s Gonna Get There
Bailey’s Gonna Get There
You always have a moment to take three breaths.
This was the first thing that Hannah told her. When she started preparing Bailey for this moment, this moment they hoped wouldn’t be happening, Hannah said to make sure that Bailey stopped and took three breaths. You have time, she said. Inhale for four, hold it, exhale for eight.
If you do this first, Hannah said, everything you have to do next will be easier.
They had, in fact, done run-throughs to get ready for this. Bailey didn’t even fight Hannah on the run-throughs because there was no fighting Hannah on this. On being prepared, on doing things that would keep Bailey safe.
Something happens when you have a mother who never asks you what to do. Who instead has the answers for you. You believe her that she knows.
This is probably why it’s almost as if Hannah is standing in front of Bailey now, reminding her why she’s ready for this, reminding her exactly how to get herself where she needs to go: Bailey lives in a secure building.
And Justin is somewhere outside, even if Bailey doesn’t know where exactly outside.
Justin is good at staying close while keeping his distance. If Bailey is going somewhere at night—a restaurant with friends, or a bar—he stays in his car outside. In case, quickly, she needs him.
That is the first thing she is supposed to do, call Justin. The second is to not wait when he doesn’t answer.
Bailey looks down at Hannah’s text. Late drink?
This is what they’d arranged for Hannah to text, at any time of day or night, so Bailey knows the status quo has changed.
Bailey is already moving when the text comes in.
She’s been moving since Charlie’s phone call.
She has been trying not to ask herself: What changed?
Her first thought, her biggest fear: Does it involve her father?
And what did Charlie not want to say about Nicholas?
What was Charlie not willing to say about him over the phone?
Nothing’s okay.
Bailey fills the kitchen sink with soapy water, drops her cell phone inside.
Then she heads to her front door, leaving the apartment empty-handed.
She is empty-handed except for what she grabs from the stack of keys on the wall by the front door.
Two keys, each one on its own key chain: one blue and one red, both of which she pops in her back pocket, heading into the hallway.
She walks past the elevator and moves quickly to the fire exit and the staircase beyond the door. She hurries down the two flights to the super’s apartment. Her building’s super.
When she gets to his door, she knocks several times in quick succession.
“Hello?” she says. “It’s Bailey Michaels.”
There is no answer, which makes it easier. She pulls the blue key from her back pocket and lets herself in.
For an extra two hundred dollars a month, the super has allowed for this arrangement that Hannah has made with him.
He has allowed for Bailey to have access to his apartment for the sole reason that once (only once) she might need to walk through his apartment to use his private exit.
His separate exit. The only exit in the building that isn’t attached to the lobby and the front door.
The exit that leads into the building next door, which the super also manages. It takes you to a different lobby—unseen by anyone who is watching from the street, who may be focused on Bailey’s lobby door.
Now, Bailey walks out of the apartment and into the adjacent lobby, and the elevator banks that take her down to parking level four.
She has a car waiting here. This isn’t the car she uses every day. This is a different car, a small Jetta that Hannah’s best friend, Jules, purchased and registered under her name. Not Hannah’s. Not Bailey’s.
She pulls the red key from her back pocket and unlocks the Jetta, remembering Hannah’s instructions. There is a full tank of gas. And there’s a full trunk. Don’t open the trunk. Get in the car and move.
Bailey reverses out of the garage quickly, using the exit that takes her out to Venice Boulevard, around the corner from her own garage entrance. Where they (whoever they are, wherever they are) won’t think to be looking.
She turns left and then left again until she is heading in the direction of the Pacific Coast Highway and Hannah.
Only then, and only for a moment, does she let herself cry.