Nobody says anything. Everybody’s just waiting for the vacation to start. Mr. C. looks up. Minutes tick by. The only sound is the motor in the wall clock, which seems to get louder and louder with every second. Mr. C. notices the piece of chalk in his hand and walks over and drops it in the trash can by his desk. Then he picks up all the chalk in the chalk tray and drops that in the trash, too. Then he picks up the erasers and dumps them in. Then he puts the Western Civ textbook in the trash. Then he folds up his plan book, where he keeps everybody’s grades. That goes in the trash. He walks to his closet, puts on his coat, and places his hat on his head. He leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind him. More seconds tick by. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Nobody talks. Nobody moves. After twenty minutes, the bell rings. We get up and file toward the door.

Outside the classroom, the halls are noisy with prevacation euphoria. I make my way down to my mom’s office to see if she’s going to go straight home after school. I can’t face the school bus today. Mrs. Pentz is not there. She must be close by, though, because her purse is open on the chair next to her desk. I take Grimshaw’s postcard out of my upward mobility notebook. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. I find my mother’s wallet, open it, and take out a wad of twenties. I leave school, walk to the bank, and empty out my pitiful savings account.

There’s no bus station in Colchis, just a window at the Off-Track Betting counter in Al’s Superette. I learn that there’s a daily bus to Buffalo, which will connect me to buses going to Chicago and points west. Without taking his eyes off a racing form, the guy behind the counter sells me a one-way ticket to LA.

“Bus leaves in forty-five,” he says.

“How long does it take to get there?”

“Depends on your ticket.”

I study the ticket I just bought. Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis, Amarillo, Los Angeles. It sounds like the world to me, or at least a good start. A smile spreads across my face, I can’t help it. There are two doors out. One says EASTBOUND and one says WESTBOUND.

“LA is … west, right?” I joke.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “There’s only one bus.”

He lets me use the phone. I ask Mrs. Kmiec to patch me through to my mother’s voice mail. I tell Mrs. Pentz that I’ve gone to visit a friend in California, and I’ll be in touch when I get there. I borrowed some money, but I’ll pay her back. There. Now I’m not a teenage runaway.