Puppet Wrangler (17 page)

Rotten.
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And anyway, Zola had said Arnold was an honest man.

She believed there was good in this guy. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I figured he wasn't the first person the TV business had driven nuts.
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Someone probably knew how to help him.

When he came to, I told him that.

Sort of.

By that time I'd taken the rope off and dragged him into his big lopsided bed.
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I made Bitsie stay out in the hall and keep his mouth shut and I told Arnold that he'd had a seizure. An anti-flatulent diabetic postpartum seizure, I called it, which doesn't actually exist but sounds serious. I told him he'd been hallucinating and saying crazy things about talking puppets and cha-cha lessons and holding people hostage. I patted his hand just like my dad always does (especially with his “difficult” patients) and I told him I was going to get him a doctor.

Then I stuffed Bitsie into my knapsack again and ran like my undies were on fire.

I was at the phone booth by the Petrocan calling 9-1-1
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when I saw the bus to Toronto fly by.

I gave the lady Arnold's address, hung up and ran.

And I mean ran.

Like I've never run before. I knew it was hopeless, but I kept on running anyway. If I stopped running and just admitted I missed the bus, I was going to have to come up with another plan. That was too terrible to even think about.

So I kept running—even though the bus was half a click ahead of me.

I'd spent a month thinking that the big city and everything about it was so much better than hick towns like the one I'd grown up in. But right then I knew it wasn't true.

There are a lot of wonderful things about the country. If you asked me today, I'd list the cows and the beaches and the Turkey Burger off exit 13. But that's not what I was thinking about then.

What I really loved about the backwoods at that moment in time were the country drivers. The type of driver that never breaks 50 k an hour even if his wife is giving birth to triplets in the backseat.

The type that will block traffic for five minutes while he decides whether to turn left and visit Uncle Basil or keep on going straight to the Bingo Hall.

The type that will slow down to zero to admire some roadkill, totally unaware that the Saturday Greyhound to New Cumberland, Goldrink, Neewack and Toronto has had to grind to a halt behind him and, since it was just sitting there doing nothing, let on a tall, skinny girl with stupid orange braids and a wiggling knapsack.

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I'd probably feel rotten if I lived to 112 anyway. But that's not my point.

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I mean, I already knew at least one other…

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For which he owes me, big time. What did that guy eat?

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I have to admit, Bitsie was right about that. He'd seen enough police shows to know if I used Kathleen's cell phone they would have been able to trace the call. I didn't need that.

49
EVERYONE HAS A BREAKING POINT.

It was the Choc-o-rama that did it. I was fine until then. Despite everything I'd been through, I didn't cry once.

Not when Kathleen said she got saddled with me. Not when Nick agreed. Not when Bitsie blackmailed me. Not when the police were after us. Not when the guy wouldn't sell me a bus ticket. Not when Arnold kidnapped us. Not when Bitsie tore his nose off.

So no matter what you might think about me, you can't say I'm a sookie-baby. I did pretty well.

Until we got on that stupid bus.

It was completely empty and I could tell the bus driver was sort of hoping to have someone to talk to for a while, but I went right to the very back and flaked out on the seats. I was hoping the Bess movie would just start up again and I could forget everything for a while, but it didn't happen. It was like there was one of those rude, noisy people in the theater, ruining the movie for everybody else. Every time I'd picture some funny little thing Bess did, the guy in my head would scream, “People like that should be locked up!” or “Selfish brat!” or “Another one of her lies!”

I gave up. I considered lying under the seats and pretending it was Dreemland, but the floor was really sticky and I wasn't prepared to spend the rest of my life glued to a Greyhound bus.

I tried to think of something else, but the only thing I could come up with was how hungry I was.

I hadn't eaten in a whole day. More than a whole day.

I was starving.

I dumped everything out of my knapsack, hoping I'd maybe find a furry grey mint or a rubbery Cheezie or even a hard little hunk of Mum's tofu brownies left over from school. All I found was a grumpy puppet, a stolen cell phone and a busted-up Choc-o-rama.

I turned off the cell phone and threw it back in my knapsack. I gave Bitsie a look that said “shut up” and he did. I couldn't believe it. He's usually not that sensitive to other people's moods.

Then I picked up the Choc-o-rama.

It had been bent before, but now it was completely broken in two. The wrapper was all torn and dirty. A lot of the “chocolatey coating” had chipped off the “crispy wafer filling” and what was left had gone kind of white, like it had been through a terrible shock or something.

It didn't look like a commemorative chocolate bar that anyone would want to keep for the rest of their life even if they'd pledged that they always would, so I decided to eat it.

That's when I started to cry.

It's stupid, I know, but right until that very moment I always sort of believed there was a chance that somehow everything would turn out okay. Even better than okay.

Kathleen would be my friend again. Zola wouldn't lose her job. Bitsie would grow a new beak and quit acting so immature. And Nick would… I don't know exactly what I hoped Nick would do. Not be my boyfriend or ask me out on a date or even take me out for ice cream. I'm not that dumb. He's a grown-up and I'm a kid from Beach Meadows. I guess I just wanted him to notice once more that my eyes matched my T-shirt. That would have been great.

But there I was sitting with a stolen, broken puppet, eating the Choc-o-rama Nick gave me the day I thought everything in my life was just going to keep getting better and better. It didn't taste very good. It didn't fill me up.

And pretty soon, no doubt, I'd be pooping it out into a toilet somewhere.

No wonder I started to cry.

At first it was just tears dribbling down my face and onto my chocolate bar, but pretty soon I was really sobbing. Sobbing—then making this walrus mating call when I tried to get some air—then sobbing again. It just kept coming and coming and coming.

The bus driver ignored me
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and Bitsie tried to ignore me for a while too.
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But then he did something that really surprised me. He sat on my lap and put his arms around my neck.

He hugged me!

I threw him off. Sure, I'd done a lot of things I wasn't supposed to do, and I'm not saying I wasn't to blame. But I never would have done them if it hadn't been for Bitsie.

If he thought he could just hug me and everything would be absolutely a-okay again, he was crazy. This wasn't TV.

He picked himself up off the floor, climbed onto my lap and hugged me again.

I tried to throw him off again but he managed to hang on with one arm. I pried that arm off, but by the time I did he'd grabbed on with the other one. We did that switch-o-change-o thing for a while and then I just gave up. I let him stay there. If he wanted to get soaked with tears and drool and snot while I sobbed away, fine. Just as long as he didn't ask me to stop.

The only problem was that his antennae and yellow fuzz-ball hair kept getting in my face. I bent down his antennae and that kept them out of my way, but each time I'd push his hair down it would pop back up and get in my nose again.

So I had to keep pushing it down.

That's all I was doing.

I know he thought I was patting him—like this was a sign of affection or something—because he hugged me even tighter when I did it, but he was wrong. This wasn't about forgiveness or friendship or anything like that. It was just about that stupid hair of his getting up my nose. If I'd had a pair of scissors, I would have cut it off.

Maybe it fooled me a bit too, though, because the longer we sat there hugging and patting, the more Bitsie seemed like the best friend I ever had. I know you're probably thinking that doesn't say much about my other friends. Who could be worse than a lying, cheating, stealing, arrogant little puppet?

But you know what hit me?

It wasn't his fault. Bitsie honestly didn't know any better.

He'd never had a friend. No one had ever cared about him before. How was he supposed to know how friendship worked? He was just figuring things out as he went along.

Like the rest of us, I guess.

And so he made some mistakes
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—so what? I guess we all do when we're learning something. Just think of the clothes I thought were nice before I saw what everyone was wearing in Toronto! It wouldn't be fair to hold them against me now. I didn't realize overalls were so lame. I've learned since then.

I finally stopped sobbing when a man got on at New Cumberland. He looked at me like “Oh-no-I'm-stuck-here-for-four-hours-with-a-nutcase.” But that wasn't why I shut up.

I shut up because he sat down and put a newspaper over his face so he could get some sleep, and I saw that front-page picture of Bitsie and me.

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I bet he was glad I didn't sit down and talk to him after all.

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There's nothing he hates more than bodily fluids, and by that time I was covered in them.

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Some?!? Like a million. But my point is still the same.

50
WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT DO?

It was the shock of seeing the headline that did it. “Puppet Prodigy Disappears.”

I stopped crying. I stopped patting. I just stared at the paper.

It was over. The cops were probably looking for me. They probably thought I stole Bitsie, and no matter what I said they'd never believe the real story. The word “hopeless” popped into my head again. Several times.

I made myself move. I took out Kathleen's cell phone. I was going to call the police. Tell them to pick me up at the next stop. I knew I'd be in big trouble, but at least I'd get something to eat.

The only problem was that the cops would call my parents and then they'd be really worried and probably get upset with Kathleen for not taking better care of me, and then Kathleen would probably fire Zola for not putting Bitsie away herself—and in the end, Bitsie would still have to work at a job he hated.

I realized that turning myself in might be the right thing to do, but no one would be happy if I did it. No one.

Not a soul.

I looked out the window. It was dark. I couldn't see very much. I just kept thinking, No one would be happy if I did.

I decided not to call the police. I decided to fix this mess.

I didn't know how, but I was going to try. If it didn't work, they could arrest me then.

For a long time there was just a whole bunch of stupid ideas banging around in my brain like bumper cars. A lot of them started with “I wish everything could just be…!” and a lot of others started with “It's not fair!”

I probably did an hour of that before I had a plan. I realized there were three things I had to do. Quit wasting time wishing everything was going to be perfect again. Quit wasting time thinking everything was a complete disaster. And find out what else it said in the newspaper about me.

It took a while to make out the rest of the article because I had to read it upside down, but basically it was all about Bitsie. (“Don't let the frumpy glasses and the little-girl braids fool you. This puppet is the hottest comedy act to hit the streets of Toronto since Jim Carrey was a rubber-faced boy.”)

There was also some stuff about my wicked stepfather. Police were apparently trying to “trace the story.”

The photo was blurry and only showed my back because I was running away, the description of Bitsie was wrong and nobody could remember what I looked like. I was insulted, of course,
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but relieved.

So it wasn't a complete disaster. No one would be able to recognize us.
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That was fine, but there was still the problem of Bitsie's nose.

It was 11:30 Saturday night. Bitsie had to be back in the studio with a beak by 7 a.m. Monday. That gave me thirty-one and a half hours to fix his face. I thought maybe if I phoned Laird at The Puppet Plantation he'd be able to do something for us.

I explained the situation to Bitsie.

He stopped hugging me and said, “I'm never going back to that studio and you can't make me!”

He was right. I couldn't. Not after all we'd been through.

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Nobody noticed my green eyes? Or my height? Or even my T-shirt? Kathleen spent $48 for that T-shirt. You'd think someone would have noticed it.

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I hoped.

51
I JUST WENT FOR IT.

Okay. I could deal with that. It just required a slight change in plans.

I grabbed Bitsie and the cell phone and went into the washroom at the back of the bus. I locked the door and told Bitsie what we were going to do. He had that look on his face—the one Bess uses to say “No matter what you ask me to do, I'm not going to like it.” He came around, though, once he realized that I was doing this for him.

I dialed the Puppet Plantation number and handed the phone to Bitsie. We were lucky Laird had no life. It was midnight Saturday but he was at the shop working on some drawings for a new puppet.

Bitsie said, “Hey, Laird,” in Zola's voice, “glad I caught you.”