Chapter 8
Tucker
Gram forgave me for giving away my phone, but she made me spend my own money to replace it. It took all my saved allowance. After a stern reminder that we had to be careful with expenses if I was going to community college next year, Gram added a third line to our plan.
I didn’t care. I would work ten jobs to make sure I could keep in contact with Ava.
I was careful about how I texted her. I did it late at night, when I could be the most certain Ava wouldn’t get caught if she accidentally turned on the sound. But I heard nothing. I didn’t know if Ava was still in the hospital. I didn’t know if the phone had been found or confiscated.
What if she’d had another seizure and didn’t remember it was in the pillow?
But I didn’t stop. I sent Ava instructions on how to type. How to send a text. How to make a phone call, if she got that opportunity. I reminded her who I was. Who she was. I told her the story of how we met and what we’d done together.
It was two long days before it finally happened. My new phone buzzed with the ringtone that meant my old phone had sent me a message.
Tucker? Are you there?
Over the next weeks, we kept in contact.
She told me what her days were like, studying and cooking and reading her notes.
Her mother had told her that the neighbor next door should be avoided, but one day an older woman with dark skin had walked onto her back balcony and smiled and waved to Ava in a wistful way.
Ava hoped she could talk to her if she ever got a chance.
But that seemed unlikely. Her mother’s paranoia had grown to the point that she never left Ava alone, taking her along on every errand.
I couldn’t currently drive. In Texas, people with epilepsy had to wait three months after a seizure before their license was reinstated. Even though nothing had happened in the hospital, I’d had a bad one a few weeks before. So Bill drove me across town to scope out the situation.
The line of duplexes drooped and sagged. Bill offered to stop in front of them, but I waved him on. Ava was certain she couldn’t get out. The window in her room didn’t even open. I couldn’t risk being seen for nothing.
She told me where they went grocery shopping, one of their few outings. Of course, they would have to go midafternoon on Wednesdays, when we had class.
But Bill and our friend Carlos were game. “We’re seniors,” Bill insisted. “We should have a skip day.”
So the next Wednesday, Bill picked me up for my usual ride to school.
We stopped to nab Carlos and spent the morning at the food trailers in SoCo, trying one item on every menu.
By the time the afternoon rolled around, Carlos was half sick, and Bill was regretting the chicken sandwich made with doughnuts.
Unlike my Neanderthal friends, I felt supercharged with energy, anxious to get to the grocery store and see Ava again.
We waited at the Shelfmart in deep South Austin until Ava and her mother walked into the store.
I didn’t dare go up to them. If Ava’s mother saw me, it would tip her off that we’d been in contact.
Ava looked more beautiful than I remembered. She wore a long gray skirt and a white shirt. The guys got stupid and loud, so I ditched them in the condom aisle where they were acting like morons.
I followed Ava at a distance, quickly turning corners, hoping she would see me and know I had made it like we planned.
She waited until her mother was tied up with the man behind the meat counter and said she was going to the bathroom.
I darted down a different aisle and raced for the back hallway. When I turned the corner, Ava walked straight into my arms and kissed me.
I held her so close. Her hair spilled over my arms, silky and long. I decided never to make fun of musicals again because I totally felt like singing.
She gazed up at me. “You’re exactly as I remember.”
“I’m so glad nothing happened to make you forget.”
We had very little time, so we made the most of it, kissing and holding each other tight, things that weren’t possible whispered over the phone or through texts.
Way too soon, she pulled away. “I have to go. This is risky. But I’m glad you did it.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my window to open. I have to be careful Mother doesn’t notice.”
“Let me know when you do. We’ll sneak you out.”
“We?”
“Me and my friends. You can meet them.”
She nodded. “I have to go.” She pressed one final kiss to my lips, then hurried toward the main part of the store.
I watched her retreating figure with a sense of loss. I needed more.
I sat with Gram after dinner a couple of weeks after the grocery store outing, staring at my phone, willing Ava to write me.
She had to wait until it was completely safe. If her mother caught her with the phone, it was toast.
Gram picked up the plates. “Will you set that down long enough to help with dishes?”
I shoved the phone in my pocket and collected our glasses. “Yes, Gram.”
As we washed our plates and set them to dry in the nonfunctioning dishwasher that now served as a drying rack, she asked, “You going to see her again?”
“She’s been trying to sneak out, but every time she walks down the hall, her mother shows up to check on her. She’s had to drink like ten cups of tea, pretending that’s the reason she left her room.”
“That mother sure does have a firm grip on her.”
I passed her the dirty forks. “We did a video chat the other day so she could show me her window, but it’s like it doesn’t even have cracks around it to open.”
“Did it have a latch?”
“Sure, but there was no way to lift the window. I saw it. It was like the wall and the edges around the glass are one solid piece.”
“Is it a rental?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if Ava would know.”
“Most rentals I’ve seen have been painted so many times that the window is plumb painted shut. But she should be able to cut through the paint with a box cutter, if she’s got one.” She passed me a glass and I rested it in the dishwasher.
“I didn’t think of that.”
“That’s because our windows aren’t painted shut.” She chuckled. “I lived with your grandpa in a place like that off Riverside. If you wanted some fresh air, you best opened the door.”
That night, I told Ava what Gram had said. She didn’t have a box cutter, but she took a butcher knife to the window and slowly carved her way through decades of lacquer so it would open.
It took a week, but she got it done.
Since I couldn’t drive, Bill came up with the idea for a double date. We waited for Ava to come up with a time she thought she could get away. It took patience and several false starts, but finally a couple of weeks after she freed the window, she gave us the all clear to come get her.
Bill and his girlfriend Sarah laughed and joked the whole way over. They called it “Mission: Impossible” and played the theme song to the movie on infinite repeat.
I tried to control my nerves.
When we got to Ava’s street, we parked around the corner and I walked along the cracked sidewalk to her duplex.
The early spring night was cool and dark.
I zipped my hoodie and tried to look casual.
We weren’t completely sure she would be able to get out.
Her last text said she was waiting for her mother to settle in for the night.
I got to the corner and hung out, pretending to read my phone.
It buzzed.
I’m out.
My heart leaped. I hurried up the street to her house. She appeared from the side, a shadow in a sweater and a long skirt. She spotted me and ran in my direction.
I took her hand, and we dashed to Bill’s car.
I had her.