Finding Fortune (2 page)

“It's crazy,” she said over her shoulder as she stepped back to the cash register. “Hildy Baxter talked the county into selling her that old place for next to nothing a couple of months back, and now she's trying to fix it up and rent out rooms.” Gail shook her head. “I don't know what she's thinking. She's way too old to be taking on that kind of a project. And Fortune isn't even a dot on the map anymore. Who in their right mind would want to live
there?
”

I would,
I thought as I waved goodbye to Gail and went out front to eat my pizza at the picnic table. I'd climb up in that tower every day and invite all my friends to come over and explore.

I took my time at the Short Stop, chewing as slowly as possible and watching the rush of customers go by, dashing off to their weekend plans. But after my last bite, I still wasn't ready to go home. I decided to ride downtown to Mom's office and find out when she'd be done. I was used to her working late every so often, but she usually never stayed after hours on Fridays unless she was in the middle of tax season. Maybe she'd be finished earlier than she thought and I could talk her into taking me to get an ice-cream sundae at the Dairy Queen across the street.

Once I got to A-Plus Accounting, I left my bike in the alleyway next to Mom's building and headed to the back door since the front entrance is always locked after five. But something caught my attention as I rounded the corner to the parking lot. I stopped short in the alley. The lot was empty except for a black Jeep that sat idling next to Mom's car, and the Jeep's headlights were blinking on and off even though it wasn't dark outside.

Then I heard my mother's laugh. My throat tightened with dread as I carefully peeked around the side of the building. Mom was standing on the back steps of her office. I watched in astonishment as she lifted her hand to wave at the person inside the Jeep.

I couldn't see the driver's face through the glare on the windshield, but I didn't need to. I knew exactly who drove that car, exactly who had a stupid plastic Hawaiian girl in a hula skirt mounted on his dashboard, ready to jiggle her hips whenever he put his foot on the accelerator. “Please! Call me Rick,” he insisted to Nora and me the very first time we met. “
Mr. Littleton
makes me feel like an old geezer.”

Mom had promised. She kept swearing she and Rick were just friends. Only a few days ago, I had confronted her again after she had joined Rick and his dog on one of their walks around the neighborhood. That's when Mom finally threw up her hands and said if it bothered me so much, she wouldn't hang out with him anymore. No more strolls to the park together. No more offering him iced tea on the front porch whenever he came over to fix something or mow our lawn. But there she was, smiling and clutching her purse to her side as she trotted over to his car in her wobbly heels and opened the passenger door.

“Your chariot awaits!” I heard Rick say.

Mom's high, breathless voice drifted toward me across the hot parking lot. “Where to?” she asked before she climbed inside. “I'm starving!”

My mouth filled with a bitter taste like metal as I hung back in the shadows, watching them drive away.
How could she?
How could she choose going to dinner with Rick instead of taking me out to celebrate my graduation? And what about Dad?

My father would be home from Afghanistan in thirty-six days. I had to do something. Something drastic.

The words from the ad at the Short Stop flashed through my head—
Want to get away from it all?
—and suddenly, I knew. I was going to Fortune and I wasn't coming home until Rick was out of our lives for good.

 

TWO

NO ONE WAS ANSWERING THE DOOR
at the Fortune Consolidated School. There weren't any windows nearby to peek through, but I could hear the ugly blast of the buzzer echoing through the halls on the other side of the tall front doors. It sounded loud enough to wake the dead. Why wasn't anyone coming? Gail had said the landlady was really old. Maybe she was going deaf too.

I glanced over my shoulder at the sky settling into sweeps of purple and pink behind me. It would be dark soon. Still, I'd have climbed back on my bike and pedaled home if my tire hadn't started to go flat. The last stretch along the lonely country road, where the trees petered out and the cornfields began, had felt like I was pedaling through quicksand.

As soon as I rounded the bend on Old Camp Road and saw the school with its tower rising up over the fields like a deserted island, I realized I might have made a big mistake. The photo on the bulletin board at the Short Stop hadn't shown the peeling paint around the windows or the crumbling stone steps or the rusted parts of a forgotten playground poking up from the high grass nearby. If it hadn't been for a couple of cars in the parking lot and a room-rate sign taped on the front door, I would have thought the place was completely abandoned.

I hoisted my backpack higher on my shoulders and pressed the buzzer one last time.
This is it,
I told myself as I held the button down for three long seconds.
1001. 1002. 1003. If no one answers, I'll leave my bike in the ditch and walk home.
Maybe I'd even hitchhike. It would serve Mom right for refusing to let me have a cell phone until I started seventh grade. I was so ready to give up that I flinched in surprise when I heard the sharp click of a lock turning and someone grumbling on the other side of the doors.

“What do they think this is?” an old woman's voice croaked. “The Plaza Hotel?”

I flinched again when the door finally swung open and a blinding light shone in my face. I shielded my eyes. Was
that
Hildy Baxter? Listening to Gail, I had been imagining a plump grandmotherly sort of lady with white hair and spectacles. But the person at the door, with her face half hidden in the shadows of her flashlight, reminded me of one of those clowns you see in horror movies. She had on a lopsided brown wig and thick red lipstick smeared into her wrinkles, and she was wearing a droopy cardigan that hung like a sack on her stick-figure body.

“What on earth?” she said. Her voice was as rough as sandpaper.

“I'm looking for Mrs. Baxter?”

“That's me,” she said. “I go by Hildy. What's this all about?”

My words came out in a rush. “I saw your ad at the Short Stop. My name's Ren Winningham, and I rode my bike here from Bellefield. I was wondering if I could rent one of your rooms.”

She turned off her flashlight and reached over to flip a switch near the doorway. A fancy light fixture, piled with dead bugs, flickered on above her head. “Come in here where I can see you,” she said.

I shuffled inside and stood blinking into the dim corners while Hildy lifted her eyeglasses from a chain around her neck, rammed them in place, and finished looking me over from head to toe. I tried to keep my nose from wrinkling. The school smelled like the terrarium I had made for my science project last year. Mossy and damp.

“How old are you?” she asked.

I swallowed hard so my voice would be steady. “Fourteen,” I lied.

Her eyes narrowed behind her thick lenses. She tucked her flashlight in the pocket of her sweater and put her fists on her hips. “So you've run away from home.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I just need a place to stay until…” My voice trailed off for a second. Why hadn't I practiced this part on my way over? “Until my mom and I get some things sorted out.” I wriggled out of my backpack and dropped it on the floor like a bag of boulders. I should have felt better after that, but when I looked up at Hildy again, I felt my eyes start to sting and I had to suck in my breath so I wouldn't cry.

“Well, honey,” she said. “I'm sorry, but the fact of the matter is I can't let you stay. You're underage.”

Something about the way she called me honey suddenly made me want to keep trying. “But I can't go home now,” I said, flapping my arms at my sides. “It's almost dark and my tire's flat.”

Hildy peered around my shoulder at my bike parked out in the weeds and she blew out a heavy sigh. “How about if we call your mother and check this out with her? You got a phone?”

I shook my head no.

Her wig inched back and forth as she scratched the stiff curls at the nape of her neck. I was bracing myself to be turned away when she pushed the front door closed and bolted the lock.
Was she really going to let me stay?

She patted at the pockets of her sweater. “I must have left my phone back on the stage,” she said with another ragged sigh. “Wait here while I go get it.”

My heart sank.
Her phone?
Once she had disappeared down the murky hall, I anxiously checked my watch. It was after eight. Nora would be home from the diner by now and she'd have seen the note I had left for Mom on the kitchen counter. “I saw you with him tonight,” I had written. “I've gone to Allison's and I'm not coming home until you get rid of him for good.”

I paced back and forth under the small circle of light with my mind racing. This was crazy, but Mom had forced me into it. I couldn't remember my mother ever telling me a lie before—not even a white one. But after what I saw in the parking lot at her office, there was no denying it.
She had lied
.

I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. Nora would cover for me. Of course she would. She'd been just as worried as I had been about what was going to happen with Mom and Dad. She was even the one to come up with our private code:
Rick Alert
.

Before Dad had moved out, Mom had started picking on him about
everything
. How would he ever get promoted to manager at the printing plant now that he was leaving for a year? Why hadn't he gotten out of the army reserves when he had the chance? Why did he insist on keeping a smelly old hunting dog even though he barely went hunting anymore?

But whenever Rick was around, Mom turned into someone completely different. She acted like Allison did whenever she had a crush on a guy—all flirty and weird, asking him a flutter of questions about the bank he managed and what it was like volunteering for the Bellefield Rescue Squad. Nora started to take more notice after she found her missing Desert Bronze eye shadow in Mom's bathroom.
“Rick Alert,”
she had whispered when she showed me the evidence. We had never seen our mother wear eye shadow a single day in her life, and suddenly she was coming home from the drugstore with a tube of Big & Bold mascara and three colors of Covergirl Eye Enhancers.

In a few minutes Hildy was back, holding out a clunky flip-phone and fixing me with a no-nonsense stare. “The cell service out here is pretty hit or miss,” she said as I reluctantly took the phone. “But I can usually get a signal when I'm in the foyer. Go ahead and give it a try.” I edged away a few steps, nervously punching in my sister's number. I'd had it memorized ever since Nora had gotten her own phone when it was her turn to start junior high.

The call not only went through, but Nora picked up on the very first ring.

“Hi, Mom,” I blurted out. I cleared my throat, fighting to keep from sounding so phony. “Yes, I'm totally fine. I'm sorry I ran out of the house like that. But I was so mad, I just needed to get away for a little while and think about things. And I figured you probably needed some space too, considering how much we've been fighting lately.”

I closed my eyes as I pretended to be listening to my mother vent. I could hear Nora breathing on the other end, trying to absorb the situation. She finally spoke up in a strangled whisper. “What's going on?”

“I'm in Fortune,” I babbled back at Nora. “At a rooming house.”

“
What?
Your note said you're at Allison's,” she hissed. “And what do you mean you're at a rooming house? There's no rooming house in Fortune. There's
nothing
in Fortune.”

“Yes, there is,” I said. “And Mrs. Baxter, she's the lady who owns this place, she says I can stay here if I have your permission.” I glanced over my shoulder to flash a grateful smile at Hildy.

“Ren,” Nora said. “What are you talking about? This is sounding really weird.”

My pulse sped up. Hildy was motioning for me to hand over the phone. “Uh—here's the thing, Mom,” I stammered. “Mrs. Baxter wants to talk to you and make sure it's all right for me to spend the night. You don't have to worry about the money part. I'm paying for everything myself. With my babysitting money. Okay? Here's Mrs. Baxter.”

Please, Nora,
I prayed as I thrust the phone at Hildy. I knew she could do it, as long as she didn't panic. My sister was good at acting. She had gotten a standing ovation at the high school last year when she played the part of the mother in
The Glass Menagerie
.

“Hello, this is Hildy Baxter,” Hildy barked into the phone. “Yes, your daughter's fine. She seems like a real sweet girl. Sounds like you two just need a little time to cool off. She'll be perfectly safe here … if that's what you decide to do.”

There was a long pause and then an uncomfortable, puzzled expression flickered over Hildy's face. I could hear the faint tinkle of Nora's voice chattering on and on at the other end.
Stop, Nora
. I pressed my knuckles against my mouth.
You're overdoing it.

Hildy was shifting her feet restlessly. “No need for explanations, Ms. Winningham,” she said. “I believe in giving people their breathing room. And if it makes you feel any better, I'm a mother too. I understand.”

Hildy nodded. “You better write down my phone number though. Oh, you've already got it … Yes, that's all right with me. But you'll have to come and get her tomorrow, I suppose, because her bike tire's flat. When should we expect you? No … no, you don't need to give me an exact time. The afternoon works. We'll be here. See you then.” My body tingled with relief as Hildy passed me back the phone.