This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

operator said again. “And where’s your mom right now?”
    I gave her the address for our house, and then she asked me Mom’s name.
    “Her name’s Corinne Quillby,” I said, “and she’s twenty-nine years old.”
    “All right,” the operator said, “and what’s your name?”
    “My name?” I looked at Ruby where she stood staring at me, her back still leaned up against the jukebox. I smiled at her. “My name’s Boston Terrier,” I said.
    Ruby smiled back. “And I’m Purple Journey,” she whispered.

C H A P T E R   3
    I must’ve drifted off to sleep sitting up in my bed, because the next thing I heard was the sound of him tapping on the window outside. Ruby didn’t move, and I figured she was either asleep or pretending to be. I scooted down toward the end of the bed and reached out and unlocked the window and opened it. It was a new window and the frame was made out of plastic, so it slid up easy without making a sound. The window frames in the house we’d lived in with Mom were old and made out of wood. Sometimes we couldn’t get them open no matter how hard we tried. I scooted back toward my pillow and waited for him to climb in.
    The windowsill was painted white, and even though it was dark in our room I could see Marcus’s fingers close around it to pull himself up, and I heard the sound his shoes made when they scraped against the side of the house as he climbed up into our room, first one leg and then the other.
    “Be quiet,” I whispered.
    “I’m trying to,” he whispered back.
    Once he’d climbed in all the way he walked right to our closet and stepped inside and closed it behind him. I lay down and covered myself up with the sheet and pretended to be asleep. We always did that in case Miss Crawford or one of the other workers heard him coming in the window and opened our bedroom door to check on me and Ruby. I always imagined hearing somebody’s footsteps coming toward us, the bedroom door opening, and that crack of light coming in the room from the hallway and lying across my bed. “Easter?” one of them would whisper.
    I’d stir in my pretend-sleep like they’d just woke me up, and I’d wait a second before saying anything. “What?” I’d say.
    “You okay?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I’d say.
    They’d peek in the door, see me and Ruby both in our beds, and decide things looked just fine. That’s what I hoped would happen anyway. I didn’t know what they’d do if they found Marcus Walker hiding in our closet.
    I lay there with my eyes closed and waited a few minutes, and then I whispered his name. “I think you can come on out,” I said.
    I heard the closet door open slowly, and I could just barely see him as he stepped out and walked toward the bed. “Hey,” he said.
    “Hey,” I said back.
    He might’ve snuck in three or four times before that, and we never did much except whisper to each other and tell stories about our lives and our families. We lay down side by side on the bed together one time, and the last time he’d snuck in we’d given each other a quick pop-kiss before he left. I didn’t know if he was my boyfriend or not, but I thought he might be.
    Tonight we sat on my bed with our backs against the wall. Our feet hung off the side of the bed. It looked funny to see my pale white feet beside his black sneakers in the little bit of light coming in the window. He smelled good, and I knew he’d put on some of his dad’s cologne, but I didn’t know what the name of it was. We’d already run out of stuff to talk about, but only because he just wanted to know one thing: who the man was that I’d been talking to at the baseball field.
    “His name’s Wade,” I finally said.
    “Who is he?” Marcus asked. I took a deep breath to let him know I didn’t want to answer that question; I didn’t want to talk about Wade at all. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I just thought it was weird.”
    We were quiet for a second, and then