When Mom put on the turn signal, Milo knew what to do. He unbuckled his seat belt and slid down his seat onto the moldering carpeted floor of the truck, his fries scattering everywhere. Milo crouched on top of his lunch and Mom circled the gas station. He could see nothing but a patch of the slate gray sky, the kind of sky simply marked “gray” in the crayon box. When she shut off the engine, Milo knew they were probably parked behind some dumpster hidden from view.

Mom opened the consul and pulled IT out. Wrapped in an old dishrag, IT was cold and hard and the noise IT made when Mom clicked off the safety felt like a threat.

“Stay quiet,” was all she said. She grabbed the old pillowcase from the back, pulling up the hood of her sweatshirt as she opened the door of the truck.
Milo knew to stay quiet, but Mom always liked to make sure. He didn’t need to be in the gas station to know what was happening. Sometimes they would plead and every once in awhile they would try and fight. But usually they would put the money in the bag and Mom would race out the door before the panic alarm went off.

Mom always got away. Her dust colored hair almost blended into her pale face, a face that could belong to anybody. Milo had seen it happen before; people always forgot Mom. She would whisk past a maître de at a fancy restaurant, leaving the bill on the table for the wait staff to puzzle over. If she needed to, Mom could disappear. Milo worried that she would never reappear. That one day he would wake up in a dingy motel room; the truck would be gone and so would Mom.

An alarm screamed through the empty parking lot.

Thirty seconds later Mom dove into the truck, slamming the door she shoved the keys in the ignition. She flung the gun into the back, to be wrapped up later. The old truck sputtered to life; Mom rammed the car into drive, screeching out of the parking lot. About a mile out of town, Mom slowed down to exactly three miles below the speed limit.

That was another thing Milo learned from Mom.

“Them cops are looking for speeding cars. Go slow and ain’t no one gonna catch you.”

Ten minutes later, after the sirens and flashing lights whizzed past the beat-up old pickup, Mom spoke up.

“Count the money,” she tossed the pillowcase into his lap.

That was always his job. Get down, stay quiet, then count the money. If there was one thing he was good at, it was counting money. Before he left school, he had been the best in his math classes. He always won Mrs. McKinney’s flash card challenge and he could multiply almost any number in his head. At eleven, he already knew more math than Mom ever would.

“Two-hundred dollars, Mom.”

Mom nodded but didn’t say anything. Instead she clicked the radio back on and pulled a cigarette from behind her ear. Darkness was starting to fall and the first specks of stars were beginning to peek through the windshield crusted in bug guts and grime.

“Where are we going?”

“Find a motel. Settle in for the night.”

She looked like she had something else to say, opening and closing her thin lips. But after a few moments of silence, Milo knew that was all he was going to get. Mom puffed on her cigarette as though life itself depended on it. She reached over and clicked the volume up two notches, Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” played in the background marginally louder than it had before.

Milo wished for Billy. He would dream every night that Billy would come and rescue them. Milo knew that Mom would go back to the way she was before, if only Billy would come home. Mom got mad any time he mentioned Billy. Her eyes would narrow and she would clench the steering wheel.

“Don’t you mention his name!”

It was hard to believe he was never coming back. That he was left in some horrible sandy place where bombs went off and killed men in uniform dressed up like toy soldiers. Killed Billy. Milo imagined that Billy had disintegrated, shredded into a million tiny molecules that spread through the atmosphere. Maybe some of his dust was swirling around in the truck right now mingling with the smoke and ashes. He didn’t think he should mention this to Mom.

Pushed close to the woods a sign marked the “Barkley Motel, next right.” The trees blurred together into one black mass, seemingly impenetrable. Milo didn’t want to stay in the woods; he hated the noises the shadows made when they didn’t think you were listening. The driveway to the motel was lit only by a single streetlight, which cast a faint glow on the peach aluminum siding.