The Opposite of Love by Sarah Lynn Scheerger

Author:Sarah Lynn Scheerger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9884-0
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

BEFORE

29

ROSE

Suddenly everything is happening quicker than it’s supposed to. Rose wraps her winter coat around as far as it will go and curses her luck.

According to her original plan, she was supposed to leave a couple of days after Christmas. Due to circumstances outside her control, she moved everything up to early Christmas morning, and it’s making the whole thing way too complicated.

The original plan called for sneaking out of the house at four in the morning and catching the eight-fifteen train on West L.A. Avenue. She knew that would be a little walk, but it seemed better than running the risk of someone recognizing her at the bus station two blocks down from her house.

The plan required money, so with kind of a Robin Hood philosophy, once and sometimes twice a week she’d strategically removed excess cash from Mrs. P.’s wallet. Not all of it, of course. She waited until her parents were asleep and went through her mother’s purse, looking for bills she wouldn’t miss. The woman only used cash. Rose didn’t even know if she owned a credit card. It was so easy to make a twenty or two go missing without the Parsimmons so much as raising an eyebrow. They didn’t count it, at least not when she was around.

All in all, Rose finds herself walking down Stearns Avenue with four hundred and sixty dollars to her name. Not to be stupid, she’s spread it out. Two hundred in her backpack. One hundred in her bra. One hundred and twenty pinned to the inside of her sock, and forty in her jacket pocket. Somehow the money makes her feel safe, as if she has weapons or armor stashed all over instead of flimsy pieces of green paper. Enough money for a train ticket. Enough for a Motel 6 until she gets on her feet. Enough for food, water, and supplies for a long time if she spends it wisely. Not a lot, but enough.

So it’s painful to think about wasting any of it on a taxi. Certainly, she can’t take a taxi all the way to her final destination. That could deplete her money supply like a hole in a bucket of water. This is where the timing thing just kicks me in the ass. It’s no big surprise that neither the train nor the buses are running tonight, in the freaking middle of the night on Christmas. It’s not like she lives in the city, or even in Van Nuys. No. She lives in Simi Valley. Not a small town by any means, but still sleepy enough to have a backward public transportation system. Everyone and their mother have a car, pretty much.

Everyone has a car, and everyone has a cell phone. Everyone except her. So finding a pay phone in the middle of the night is no easy task. When she finds one by that Circle K across from the bus stop, she ducks her head in, flipping through the yellow pages and looking for a taxi service.

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