On the Loose (4 page)

No school! Finally something is going in my favor. And yes, our mascot is the mighty Chihuahua. Other schools tremble in fear of us.

“And while I was sitting here flipping through some magazines that have given me way too much information on women’s health, I came up with this brilliant idea. We could leave tomorrow morning and camp through Saturday. What do you say?”

I say I’d rather go to school.

I’ve never been camping. Never wanted to go camping. I’m not a chichi-froufrou type of girl. I don’t mind a little dirt or my hair getting messed up, but hanging out in the middle of nowhere without the comforts of home is not my idea of a good time. I like TV. I like being steps away from the refrigerator. I like my wi-fi as strong as my mochas.

“James, it’s too early in the year for camping. It’s kinda chilly.”

“It’s never too early to hang out by the water. We’ll just bring some jackets for the evenings. Aren’t you excited?”

Excited doesn’t begin to describe what I’m feeling.

“Did you find out anything about Millie yet?” I take a deep breath. “Do you guys have something to tell me?”

I hear him turn a magazine page. “Wow. Did you know the most popular day for a baby to be born is Tuesday?”

“Focus, James. What did the doctor tell Millie?”

“We don’t know anything yet. We’ll hear something in a couple of days.” James greets someone in the waiting room then continues. “So in the meantime, it’s out to the lake for us.” His excitement comes through the staticky phone line.

After a few more minutes of listening to James extol the virtues of roughing it, we hang up, and I lay the news on Maxine.

I find her lounging on the couch in the living room watching a talk show.

“Guess what?”

She sips on some iced tea. “You’ve realized I’m your very best friend?”

“No. Guess again.”

“Kelly Ripa is really three hundred pounds in real life, but through the magic of television she only appears that painfully skinny?”

I study the TV. “Pretty unlikely. The big news is we’re going camping.”

Mad chortling erupts from my foster grandmother. “Correction.
You
are going camping. I am permanently banned from any more family camping trips. During the last outing I
accidentally
fed some raccoons and skunks, so I’m sure I won’t be allowed to tag along this time.”

Maxine fumbles with the tassels on a throw pillow and returns her attention back to the screen.

“Please go with us.”

“I don’t think so.” She lifts the remote and turns up the volume.

I throw my body next to hers, forcing her to scooch over. My face is close to hers, eye to eye, nose to nose. “This is about Sam isn’t it? You won’t go with us because you don’t want to leave your boyfriend. Your
secret
boyfriend.”

She blushes scarlet. “Now, Katie.” She clears her throat. “Don’t concern yourself in these matters.”

“I know you see him every day on the sly. I think you can go without your little rendezvous for a few days. Besides, you owe me.”

“Owe you?”

“I’m sharing my room with you.”

Maxine rolls her blue eyes and shrugs. “Big deal. You didn’t have a choice.”

“And . . . I have yet to tell Millie her mother has a boyfriend. A boyfriend you’re too chicken to tell people about. I sure hate keeping things from her . . .”

“When do we leave?”

The doorbell chimes, and I race to the front door.

Frances stands on the front porch, balancing a stack of textbooks and magazines. Her glossy black hair hangs loosely in her face, and small tortoiseshell glasses sit crooked on her nose. And yet she still looks stunning and edgy chic—as always. Why she is friends with me, I’ll never know. The two of us couldn’t be more different.

“I thought we could use the time off from school to brainstorm for our science fair projects.” Frances holds a science journal in my face as she walks past me into the living room.

See what I mean? Frances is a genius. She just never turns it off. She makes high school look so easy, juggling fifty million clubs and activities with her four-point-oh. I get a day off from school and what do I want to do? Watch MTV and paint my toenails. Frances’s idea of a great day? Reading articles on plant photosynthesis.

Frances’s home wasn’t touched during the storm, which is kind of sad in a way. Everyone should get to experience sleeping next to a crazy grandma who snores like a man three times her size.

Frances spies Maxine all stretched out and gives her a dutifully polite hello.

“Why, Frances Vega, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes. It’s lovely as always to see you, sweet child.”

Maxine tends to park herself in the pew that Frances feels is reserved for the teens in church. Every Sunday it’s a race to get to pew number forty-seven. Maxine often wins, which infuriates Frances. It’s everything Frances can do to be civil to my foster grandmother, which makes Maxine just gush with fake friendliness.

“Let’s go up to my room.” I pull my friend away from her nemesis and toward the stairs.

“Our room,” Maxine calls out after us. “Feel free to make my bed while you’re up there!”

“So Maxine really is staying in your room?”

“Um, yeah. Did you think I would joke about something like that?”

We enter my bedroom, the best place in the whole house. I love my room. I guess that’s why I was so resistant to share it with Maxine at first. It’s this funky pink color, decorated with retro pictures and stark white furniture. It’s like living in a Pottery Barn Teen catalog. When I lived with my mom, we moved a lot, so I never really got into decorating too much. Plus we were usually in one-bedroom apartments or tiny trailers. My bedroom frequently was wherever the couch was.

“Can you believe it? No school ’til next week.” Frances plops down on my bed, fanning her books in front of her.

“You’ll probably have withdrawal. Hey, speaking of zany, wild fun. Want to go camping with us?”

“Who’s us?”

“Me, James, Millie . . .” I turn my back and watch a bird out the window. My voice barely a whisper, I add, “And Maxine.”

“No, way.”

“Come on, Frances! It will be fun. You, me . . .” I pause, trying to think of why camping might be a good time for someone. “The lake. Burgers . . .” Flies, mosquitoes, snakes. “Nature. Getting some sun . . .” Suffocating in a sleeping bag, sunscreen in your eyes, a five-mile hike to the loo.

“It does sound fun.” Frances grins, warming up to the idea. “And I had considered researching the Brazilian free-tailed bat for the science fair, so it might be a great opportunity to study their habits over the week and see if it’s a project worthy of pursuing.”

“Right.” I nod. “And I’ll study the effects of consuming mass amounts of S’mores.”

“So . . . any word on Millie yet?”

I leave my spot at the window and flop onto Maxine’s bed. “No. James called earlier, and Millie was still with the doctor. He said it will be a few days before we know anything.”

“I’m sure everything will be okay.”

“Yeah.”

“My whole family is praying for her.”

It does make me feel better to think people are praying for Millie. I even had a small conversation with God last night myself. When I wasn’t begging him to muffle Maxine’s snoring, I asked him to please let Millie be all right. My prayer was pretty short though. I couldn’t concentrate with all the noise.

“Are you scared?” Frances shoves aside her science books and focuses on me.

“Nah.” I grab a
People
and flip through the first few pages. “I mean . . . I don’t know . . . maybe.”

“Breast cancer is very treatable, you know. If you’d like, I could gather some research for you. Maybe create a visual presentation with the information.”

I laugh. “No, but thanks.” I twist my hair around my finger. “It’s just . . . what if something does happen to Millie? Where will I go?”

“Why would you go anywhere? You’d stay here.”

“I doubt it. I think Iola Smartly would come and get me.”

Mrs. Smartly is my caseworker and director of Sunny Haven Home for Girls. I still talk to her all the time. In fact, she makes me write her letters detailing my life with James and Millie. Letters. Not e-mails. She’s so outdated.

“Well, then you’d live with me.” Frances seems proud of her idea.

But I don’t want to live with Frances. I think she’s the best friend ever, and it would be great to raid her closet daily, but I’m just now settling into life with James and Millie. I haven’t gotten in any major trouble in the last five months. They totally make me walk the line. Without James and Millie, I could go back to my wild ways and end up in jail. Like my mom. And I’d lose my identity. Instead of being called Katie, I’d be something like Inmate 2046.

And . . . I kind of like these people. A lot. They’ve become like family to me.

Even Maxine.

Frances throws a confetti pink pillow my way. “It’s gonna be fine. Really.”

It better be. I can’t go back to Sunny Haven. Sleeping next to Maxine is nothing compared to bunking next to Trina, who liked to show me her secret knife collection on an all-too-regular basis.

I hang my head. “I don’t know, Frances. I feel so lost. So sad.” I sniff. “It’s like I need some hope, you know? I just wish . . .” I shake my head.

“Yes?” Frances’s voice is all concern. “You just wish?”

My head shoots up, and I shoot the pillow across the room at Frances. “I wish my friend would go camping with me!”

And then we’re both laughing. And I forget about Millie.

And cancer.

And bears that might eat me in my tent.

“W
e are the
world! We are the children!”

Beside me Frances groans in agony. Maxine has been singing eighties hits since we backed out of the driveway. Two hours ago. And there’s a reason she’s never been asked to join the church choir.

I stretch my left leg out a little, trying to restore some feeling. I’m sitting in the middle of the backseat, Frances on one side, Maxine the diva, on the other. My foster grandmother is taking up more than her fair share of legroom.

“I. H-a-a-a-d. The time of my l-i-i-i-fe—!”

“Maxine, please stop.” I rub my throbbing head. “You’re upsetting Rocky.”

“Nonsense.” Maxine scratches the dog under the chin and finishes the rest of her inspirational melody. Rocky knows a lot of tricks, and unfortunately, singing is one of them. When anyone belts out a tune, Rocky will howl along. The first time I heard it, I was convinced it was the Scott’s way of driving me out of the house and back to where I came from. And let me tell you, listening to Rocky
and
Maxine wailing some classic Madonna makes for a very long ride.

Millie turns around in her seat. “Mom, knock it off. You’re being obnoxious on purpose.”

“Yeah, Maxine, you have the next three days to push us over the edge. Pace yourself.” James catches my eye in the rearview mirror and winks.

“But I was just getting ready to do my melodic tribute to the nineties.” Maxine sighs.

“Save it for the return trip.”

“Don’t encourage her, James,” Millie murmurs.

James turns his black Honda sedan off the highway, and a few minutes later he’s stopped at a gatehouse and paying for our campsite.

“We’re here!” We weave through the campground, pulling a small trailer between rows and rows of campers, RVs, and tents.

I reach across Frances and lower the window, inhaling the smell of pine trees and barbeque grills. And the occasional odor of dead fish.

“Site number eighty-six. This is us.” Millie points to the spot, and James whips the car in.

James begins to set up the tents, as the rest of us unload the car.

I lift a small cooler and place it beneath the covered picnic table. With my hand shielding my eyes from the sun, I scan the perimeter. Trees to the left. Trees to the right. The lake a mere fifty feet in front of us.

Millie comes to stand next to me, her arm wrapping around my shoulders. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Um, yeah.” I continue my perusal of the area, hoping my eyes will lock on one particular object of beauty.

“The tall pine trees. The lofty cedars. The lapping of the lake. The hum of a distant boat. The—”

“Flush of a toilet?”

Millie’s brows furrow. “What?”

“Where is the bathroom?” These people are out of their minds if they expect me to squat behind a tree.

“Katie, haven’t you ever been camping?”

“No.”

“Never?” My foster mom laughs and pats me on the back. “You are going to have such a great time on this trip. You won’t even care that the bathrooms are on the other side of the campground or that there’s no electricity or hot water.”

And then I’m laughing too. “No electricity. That’s a good one.”

“No, I’m serious.”

My face drops. “But how will I watch TV?”

Frances moves in beside us, her binoculars hanging from her neck. “You brought a TV? What for?”

What for? Is everyone a little lightheaded from all the clean air?

“We’ll be so busy boating, tubing, eating, and swimming you won’t have time to miss your TV,” Millie says.