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xxi. Is This The End?
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Funny thing was, though Blair had a very precise plan in mind, she somehow ended up going completely off-book.
She guessed Sarah had already found John B by then and they talked and kissed and probably spend the night together but she forced herself not to think about what her sister was doing because she knew that, in Sarah's mind, she was doing something far different, too. But there she was; in the dead center of town.
Her hands were shaking and she felt like her body wasn't hers anymore. Last night, Sarah told Blair that she and John B had sex in the bell tower of an old church. She was halfway asleep but immediately perked up at the news, and did her best to react without any of the excess bitterness that came with her father footsteps on the other side of the room and the heaviness of a locked door. And while Sarah knew exactly who she was (not a Kook anymore, John B's girlfriend, a Cameron rebel . . .), every inch of Blair's body was telling her to go back home.
Go home and cry. She brushed the voice away and kept walking past the busy masses. Who told her it was a good idea to wear some brand new, pristine white shoes and clothes that had yet to be worn outside her walk-in as a runaway?
Once she caught side of a phone booth in the distance, one of those old ones you see in the movie but always ignore in real life, her pace quickened as much as it could with the weight of a bike pulling her back. She tossed it against the grass and waited for an old man to finish calling his wife. He smiled at her as he left the booth; he smiled like her grandfather.
Blair locked herself inside and slid a couple cents into the system, then immediately began pressing the buttons she's been replaying in her head over and over again all night. She had biked around the whole island looking for everyone and no one all at once, looking for an escape. She finally made her way up to Battery Jasper and spent the night there, wrapped up in a ball, wallowing in her own self-hate and misery.
She brought the phone up and shut her eyes when it began ringing. Then her heart skipped a beat when a polished woman answered. You could hear it, teeth like ivory pearls. "Hello?" With no control over herself at all, Blair started sobbing. "I'm sorry, who is this? If this is a prank call, I'm busy, so I will be hanging up now."
"No, wait!" Blair stuttered, stumbling over her own cries. The breathing on the other like froze and she sniffled. "Mom . . . it's me. It's Blair."
Georgia Rutherford sighed and Blair could hear nearby tinkling. A margarita glass with a toothpick stabbing three perfect slices of grapefruit. "What's going on, darling?" she spoke softly, like a woman whose tongue cost millions. "Tell me."
