Patricia McCormick: Cut

I turn and start running again; this time, it’s hard to get going. I put on a burst of speed, lose my balance and stumble a little, then get back in my rhythm. The last open space between Sick Minds and the outside world is the maintenance shed. After that, woods.

The dog who lives next to the maintenance building is standing outside his house, poised, watching me. I wait for him to bark, to let everyone know I’m out here, but he doesn’t. I can see his foggy puffs of breath in the cold twilight. But he doesn’t move; he doesn’t make a sound.

Getting through the woods beyond Sick Minds is easy, much easier than I would have thought. The trees are evenly spaced, with plenty of room between them, as if someone planted them in rows. I look up past their trunks; above is a canopy of boughs. They are pine trees after all. I want to laugh. I want to turn around and go tell Sydney that Sea Pines actually does have some pines. But I don’t. I keep running.

There’s no fence, no wall at the edge of the property; I make a note of this, too, thinking how funny it would be to tell the other girls about how there’s nothing really keeping us inside this loony bin. But I keep running, until the next thing I know, I’m on the side of a road. I pass an old brick house, then a cluster of newer houses; I run through an intersection, then onto the shoulder that runs alongside a highway with stores and more stores on either side.

I don’t know how long I’ve been running. I try to notice, then memorize, the things I pass, but as soon as I tell myself to remember that there was a Dairy Queen on the left, it’s gone and I can’t remember if it was on the right or the left and if it was a Dairy Queen or a Burger King.

As I put more distance behind me and I feel the whiteout effect coming on, I try to hold one thing in my mind: my home address. I say it over and over and over, like the words to amagic spell. I repeat the house number, the road name, the town, the state, the zip code, the house number, the road name, the town, the state, the zip code.

After a while my mouth gets dry and my legs ache. It starts to get dark; drivers put on their headlights. My feet get heavy and clumsy; I weave a little, up on the paved white line at the side of the road, then back down on the shoulder. A horn blares from behind me; I trip, suddenly awake, gravel spraying under my feet before I catch my balance. Up ahead, on a pole, is a pay phone. I decide that the pay phone is my goal.

Suddenly I doubt I even have the energy to make it the thirty or so steps to go that far. My feet scrape along the road, my knees go up and then down, but the pay phone doesn’t seem to get any closer. I stop and wonder how there can be so little difference between running and stopping. I pick up one foot and then the other, and force myself to walk the last few steps.

The receiver is icy cold in my hand. I stare at it a minute and remember then that I have no money. I hang up, then pick it up again. I know you’re not supposed to dial 911 unless it’s an emergency, but I can’t remember what the other choices are. I study the face of the phone, its neat grid of square buttons. Tucked in at the bottom is one that says “O.” I push it and wonder if I’ll get a real person or a recording.

A real person, a woman who sounds like she’s in a room with lots of other operators, says, “Operator. How may I assist you?” She seems to be in a big hurry. A truck rattles by, practically blowing me off my feet. “Operator,” she repeats. She’s already fed up with me, I can tell. I hang up.

I circle the telephone pole, wondering what I was supposed to say to her. Another truck goes by; the wind cuts through my shirt. I wrap my arms around myself and wait to feel warmer; I feel colder. I pick up the receiver, push the O, and pray for a different operator to pick up.

“Operator. May I help you?” This one has a tired, nicesounding voice.

“Yes. Yes, you can,” I say. “Please.”

There’s nothing on the other end; I wonder if she’s still there.

“I need to call my dad.” I didn’t know I was going to say this; it just comes out.

There’s no sound for a minute, then she says, “You want to make that a collect call?”

“Yes. Yes, please,” I say. I give her my dad’s work number and listen to a quick succession of beeps, like the beginning of a tune I used to know. My dad answers with the name of the computer company he works for. I picture him smoothing out his tie and smiling his business smile.

“Daddy?” I say.

The nice, tired operator interrupts, politely telling my dad that he has a collect call from Callie. “Will you accept?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he says. I hear two voices at once, my dad saying “Callie?” and the operator thanking him for using her phone company. Then cars whiz by and I can’t hear anything.

“Callie? Are you all right?”

I shiver. “Fine.” I meant to say I’m fine, but only Fine made it out.

“Where are you?”

I look around. There’s a carpet sign with big paper S-A-L-E letters in the window. “I don’t know for sure.” The carpet store could be anywhere. I could be right around the corner from our house or a million miles away. “I ran away.”

“From Sea Pines?” I picture him covering his eyes with his hand, the way he does when he’s watching his favorite football team lose on Saturday afternoon TV.

I nod. “Uh-huh.”

“Can you tell me what’s nearby?”

Across the highway is an official blue state crest that says Route 22. Underneath is a small square sign that says East. Beyond it is a Dunkin’ Donuts.

“Route 22,” I say. “East, I guess. Across from a Dunkin’ Donuts.”

He makes a tkk, tkk sound, the same noise he makes when he’s paying the bills. “Sayville,” he says. “You must be at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Sayville.”

I feel a little better knowing he knows where I am, even if I don’t.

“That’s about fifteen minutes from here,” he says. “Can you wait for me there? Can you find a place to wait? Go inside the Dunkin’ Donuts, OK?” I can hear the squeak of his chair and I picture him standing up, pushing his chair away from the desk, and grabbing his keys. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Cars whoosh by so I’m not sure if he said goodbye.

I stand on the lip of the highway waiting for a break in the traffic so I can cross over to the Dunkin’ Donuts. Cars stream down the highway in an endless flow in either direction. When it’s clear on one side, it’s busy on the other. Finally I cross halfway and stand on a strip of concrete in the middle of the road as the cars whiz past, practically sucking me up into their wake. After a while I make a dash for it.

The Dunkin’ Donuts is warm and bright; two men in coveralls are the only customers. They seem to be together at the counter, but they’re not talking to each other, just reading different parts of the same paper side by side. I take a seat down at the other end and study the plastic labels under the rows of doughnuts. There are chocolate-dipped, chocolate-frosted, cream-filled, custard-filled, jelly-filled. Too many choices. I sit there and concentrate on not shivering.

The swinging door to the kitchen opens and a waitress in a pink apron and hat comes out. She refills the men’s coffee without even asking if they want more, then comes and stands in front of me. Her plastic name tag says she’s Peggy. “What’ll it be?” she says.

What will what be? I wonder.

She looks me over. “You wanna order?” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “No. I mean yes.” I remember then about not having any money. “A glass of water. Please.”

She eyes me up and down. “That’s it?”

“Yes. Thanks,” I say. She turns around. “Sorry,” I say to her back.