Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown Page A

hours on the road. By then, we’d have enough distance to really make a decision.
    I jogged back out to the car and stuffed the gas nozzle into Hunka’s tank, and then pulled the cell phone out of my purse, turning my back to the wind, which had me gazing at Grayson’s sleeping face in the side mirror on the car door. He looked so peaceful there, and my gut twinged.
    He was probably going to hate my plan. Probably, he was going to demand I take him home immediately. Play the “I’m the older sibling and you have to do what I say” card.
    But maybe not. He was fresh out of treatment, after all. He was feeling better. Maybe he’d be open to it. See that my idea was for his own good. It would be uncomfortable at first, but I had faith he would eventually see what a good plan it was, my kidnapping him.
    I’d missed nineteen calls and at least as many texts. I didn’t have to scan the numbers to know that at least eighteen of those calls were from Mom.
    I knew I couldn’t ignore her any longer, but I also knew she wouldn’t agree with my plan, either. She wouldn’t see the genius in it—not in a million years. And she might already also know about the calc final and be super pissed. And if I even gave her a little bit of time to argue with me, I might not see the genius in it anymore, either. I might wimp out.
    First, I had to call someone else.
    I dialed the number I knew by heart and pressed “call.”
    “Yuh?” a familiar voice said, deep, husky. I could hear video-game music in the background. Super Mario Brothers. Real earworm stuff.
    “Brock?”
    “Yuh.”
    “It’s Kendra.”
    The music in the background came to an abrupt stop. He’d paused the game. The phone rustled a bit. “Hey, Kendra, what’s up? G-Man still at crazy camp or whatever?” Brock was Grayson’s best, and only, friend. They’d met in ninth-grade P.E. class—Grayson’s OCD making it impossible for him to dress out; Brock’s extreme obesity making it impossible for him to do pretty much anything else. They spent a lot of time on the bleachers together, watching everyone else be normal. They were tight. I didn’t even mind, really, when Brock called Grayson crazy, because I knew that, like me, Brock loved my brother, and sometimes calling him a nutcase or making fun of his quirks was the only way to keep from hating him.
    I remembered the first time Brock had Grayson sleep over at his house. Grayson’s compulsions had been getting worse, and Mom was a nervous wreck, sure that he would embarrass himself or have a breakdown of some sort. She’d sat by the phone all night, waiting for him to call, in tears, begging to be picked up.
    When he still hadn’t called by morning, she packed me up in the car and we drove over there to make sure Grayson hadn’t slipped out and walked to the quarry.
    Instead, we found Grayson and Brock in Brock’s front yard, tossing a football back and forth. Brock was lounging back in a lawn chair, eating potato chips, the folds of his stomach drooping down between his legs; Grayson was wearing a pair of green, elbow-length dishwashing gloves, a pile of discarded gloves on the ground by his feet.
    Mom pulled to the curb and rolled down her window. “I hadn’t heard from you. Everything okay?”
    “It’s all good, Mrs. Turner. G-Man cleaned my room for me. Totally arranged my video games.”
    Mom’s eyes got moist and she kept swallowing, and for a second I thought she was going to bawl. “Good” was all she said.
    “We’ve got four more pairs of those gloves,” Brock shouted. “My mom’ll bring him home after that.”
    “I’m good, Mom,” Grayson had called, and the feeling of happiness that swelled through the car almost made me feel light-headed. Mom and I went home and baked cookies together, and I decided right then and there that Brock was a really great friend for my brother. Like Zoe, Brock never expected my brother to be anything other than who he was.
    Just hearing his voice over