Restoring Harmony (18 page)

37

WHEN I CAME TO, MY GRANDPA WAS STANDING over me asking me questions like my name and date of birth and what year it was.

“Is the car okay?” I asked. My head was throbbing, but I was able to climb out on my own.

“I’m more worried about you right now,” he said.

The kids were huddled next to Grandma, and Michael was crying.

“I’m fine. We’ve got to get to Jane’s before we attract a ttention.”

“You hit your head,” Brandy said. “It’s got a bump.”

I touched my forehead. “Yeah. . . .” I grimaced. “Don’t cry, Michael. I’m okay.” I gave him a quick hug and then I walked around to the front of the car. Both the headlights were broken and the front grill had been pushed in. “The car looks like it will still drive,” I said.

“Of course it will,” Grandpa said. “It’s a Studebaker. They’re battleships.”

I ignored how dizzy I felt. “Great, let’s go.” Grandpa was still poking at me, trying to see into my eyes. “You can examine me at Jane’s, okay?”

“Well . . . all right. But I’m driving.”

“You were going really, really fast!” Brandy said, leaning over the seat once we were back inside.

“Yeah, I remember.” Was her voice always that shrill?

“Why?” Grandma asked.

I laughed. “I couldn’t help myself. It was fun.”

“Teenagers and cars,” grumbled Grandpa.

I rolled my eyes and instantly regretted it because it made my head swim with dizziness.

“You give me directions,” Grandpa said.

He owned a detailed map for every state in the country, and we had been able to find approximately where Jane lived before we’d even left Gresham. I navigated while Grandpa drove five miles per hour.

Jane was outside in her front yard mulching the flower beds when we pulled up. Her long, white braid swung over her shoulder like a rope when she bent down.

She dropped her rake and hurried over to the car. “You made it!” she said.

I jumped out and gave her a hug. She was even tinier than I remembered.

“Oh, your face!” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I tried to smile, but it hurt.

She fussed over my forehead while Grandpa parked the car, hiding it from view. In less than ten minutes, I’d been put to bed with a cold compress and a cup of tea.

“Don’t get too comfortable, girlie,” Grandpa said. “I’ll be waking you every two hours to make sure you’re not dead.”

“I knew I could count on you,” I said.

He tousled my hair, and it seemed like every follicle hurt. He went off to have breakfast, leaving me to rest. We’d made it to Kelso in one piece, and now all we had to do was wait for Spill. Assuming he could get away from the Organization. Assuming he really wanted to. After all, he’d stayed until he was twenty-one when he should’ve left. Had he done that for a reason, or had he changed his mind?

Except for a stunning green and purple bruise on my forehead, I was fine. I’d been resting in the back room since we’d arrived the day before, but I couldn’t really sleep because my nerves were practically raw with worry. The Organization had to know we were gone by now. Plus, I was uneasy about connecting with Spill.

We’d stayed overnight at Jane’s to give him a chance to catch up with us, but because we had no way of knowing when he’d be able to leave Gresham for sure, we also had designated a meeting spot just outside of Seattle two days from now. We were both hoping to meet up on the road somewhere along the way, though.

At lunchtime, Grandma brought me a bowl of steaming vegetable soup.

“Are we ready to leave tonight?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Tomorrow.”

“We promised Spill we’d drive at night,” I said.

“No light,” Grandma said.

“Right. Okay. After dark. I get it.”

She shook her head, frustrated, and let fly some choice swearwords that made me laugh. Then she made a motion like she was driving the car and then crashing into something. We both giggled. “No light!” she said again.

“Oh! The headlights? I smashed the headlights, didn’t I?”

She nodded. “Dawn,” she said. “Eat.”

I accepted the food, but my appetite was gone. This was bad. It was dangerous to drive during the day because we might be spotted, but without lights, the condition of the road was probably too risky in the dark. This was all my fault. If I hadn’t been messing around, the headlights wouldn’t be smashed.

I stirred my soup, letting it get cold while I sat there feeling sorry for myself because I’d been such an idiot. I could hear everyone laughing and joking while they ate, and it made me kind of lonely. There was only one thing to do. Play Jewels. Someone had brought in my stuff from the trunk, and when I moved my coat, it felt extra heavy. I reached inside the pocket and pulled out Randall’s gun.

38

I’D FORGOTTEN I EVEN HAD THE GUN. SPILL WAS going to kill me when he found out. He must’ve told me about five times to make sure that I left it near Randall once we got him tied up. I guess he didn’t want me carrying it, but I wasn’t a child. Of course, that’s probably what he was worried about, that Michael or Brandy would find it.

Back at the house, when I’d been pointing it at Randall, I hadn’t even looked at it, but now I examined it closely in the golden afternoon light. I’d only ever handled a rifle before, and I didn’t know much about handguns. This one was big. The barrel was at least twenty-five centimeters long, and the handle was probably twenty. Plus it was computerized. There were different settings depending on how you twisted the barrel. I tried turning it, and as it clicked into place, a different word would light up along the top. There were settings for
Stun, Burn, Tranquilize, Fireball,
and
Shoot to Kill.

The trigger was like any gun’s, but the handle had a sort of touchpad on the left side. And there was a section that slid away and revealed a tiny keyboard! I heard the kids coming down the hall and had only a second to shove the gun back in my coat before Brandy and Michael burst into the room.

“Wait till you see the car!” Michael shouted.

“You weren’t supposed to tell her.” Brandy whacked him on the arm.

“Don’t hit your brother,” I said automatically. “You mean where I bashed it in?”

“Not that,” Michael said.

Brandy clamped her hand over his mouth. “Come see!”

I pulled on Grandma’s old sweater, and the three of us went out through Jane’s kitchen door. Behind the house was a single-car garage, and in front of it stood Jane and my grandparents next to what had once been Grandpa’s beautiful car.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We painted it,” Jane said, when Grandpa didn’t answer.

I stared at it in disbelief. They had used something black, and possibly sticky, to cover the entire car, including all the beautiful chrome trim! Grandpa wore a glum expression.

“Hawaiian Green attracts attention,” he said.

He’d just realized that now? He looked like he was about to cry so I didn’t say anything. We were still standing there staring at it when someone rode by on a bicycle. My heart leapt and I ran to the front yard with everyone following me, but whoever it was kept going.

“Oh, that’s just a missionary,” Jane said.

“You’ve got those around here too?” Grandpa asked.

She nodded. We went back inside and settled in for the night. I suppose everyone else slept, but I sat propped against the headboard in my bed and stared out into the dark, praying for Spill.

We’d meant to leave at dawn, but what with sleepy kids, breakfast, and teary good-byes, it was almost ten o’clock before we’d pulled out of Jane’s. We followed the twisty roads out of town, and green marshes bordered the edges, so I drove down the middle again, just in case I lost control. We passed a few people, but not Spill. At one point, we came around a curve and there was a missionary, one of those guys wearing black and white, standing next to his bike, waving at us.

“Do you think he needs help?” I asked as we got closer.

“Keep going,” Grandpa said. “He just wants to tell us about God, and if we stop, we’ll be here all day.”

I stared straight ahead and sped past him. By one o’clock Michael and Brandy were already bickering and tormenting each other, making my head throb. We were all hungry too, so I pulled the car off into a thicket and we sat by the side of the road in the weak October sunshine to have a picnic. I forced myself to join in with the chatter so I wouldn’t worry about Spill.

“Oh, no,” Grandpa said, sighing deeply. “Here comes that missionary. Let’s hit the road.”

He began to scoop up the remains of our lunch, and I called the kids to come back from where they were digging in the dirt. The lenses in Grandpa’s glasses hadn’t been broken in the scuffle with Randall, just scratched, and Grandma and Jane had mended the frames with glue, so he was going to drive for a while to give me a break.

Grandma had packed three huge suitcases, but I’d talked her into paring down to one. She hadn’t brought hardly any clothing, but instead stuffed it with mementoes of my mother’s childhood that she’d apparently been keeping all these years. I’d promised the kids they could ride in the front seat, but I had to lug the suitcase up there with them so there would be room for my legs in the back.

Before we were situated, the missionary guy was close enough to call out to us. “Hi, there!” he yelled. “Can I talk to you folks about the Lord?”

I knew that voice! I dropped the suitcase and ran out into the road waving at Spill. I was jumping up and down, pretty much like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I was so relieved to see him. By the time he braked the bike, we were all trying to hug him.

“Now, that’s a welcome I could get used to,” he said. He looked at me and did a double take. “My God, Molly! Did Randall do that to your face?”

“Of course not. And I don’t think someone posing as a missionary should be using the Lord’s name in vain,” I joked.

Ten minutes later, the two of us sat on our bikes and watched my grandparents and the kids drive off along the dusty road. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of splitting up from them, but Spill was worried that someone might remember seeing our little group if anyone from the Organization asked the right questions. Grandpa was only going to drive twenty-five more miles and then we would all camp together for the night, so I’d agreed.

Spill had given me my very own missionary outfit to wear, complete with white shirt, helmet, black pants, and a necktie. “Very nice,” he’d said when I’d come out from behind the tree after changing my clothes. “Between that bruise and what you stand for, no one’s going to want to talk to us.”

“I do what I can,” I said, laughing.

The ride was really easy for us because I wasn’t hauling anything, and Spill had put all his camping gear in the Studebaker so he was pulling an empty trailer. The day was cool but sunny, and we took the ride at a nice pace.

“How did you get away from the Organization?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, very seriously, “I was at my induction ceremony, and at the end they gave me my gun.”

“Yeah?” I glanced at him. Was he carrying it now?

“And . . . ,” he said slowly, building up to something. “I just shot my way out of the room. I didn’t really have a choice.”

“Spill! Did you kill anyone? Oh, my God! I can’t believe it!”

And then he cracked up laughing. “I’m kidding, Molly.”

I felt myself blush, but then I laughed too.

“It was so easy to get away,” he said, “it was almost boring. I just took the MAX downtown like I had some business to do. Then I bought a new bike, trailer, and camping gear from a Transporter I trust and rode out of town. They probably didn’t even miss me until this morning.”

“What about your stuff?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Your things . . .” I’d never seen where Spill lived, but he must’ve had personal items he’d wanted to bring. “Your clothes and . . . I don’t know. . . .”

He shrugged. “I had to leave it all behind,” he said. “It would’ve looked suspicious.”

I didn’t have a lot of possessions, but if I were leaving home forever, there were some things I’d want. Like the doll Mom had made me, and photos . . . Spill had left everything behind. And not just things, either. The Organization might not be good for him, but they were the people he was close to, all the people who loved him. We were going to have to be his new family.

Around dusk we’d caught up with my grandparents just north of Chehalis. We’d decided to stop there because we were going to have to cross the interstate in order to stay on the back roads, and we’d wanted to try and get some sleep and do it early in the morning, just before dawn.

After a cold dinner of bread, apples, cheese, and salad, Grandma stretched out on the backseat of the Studebaker with the kids sharing the front. I laid out the sleeping bags for us, intending to take the one next to Spill, but Grandpa jumped into it before I could. It wasn’t like I was looking for romance with Spill or anything, especially with my grandpa right there, but I did think it would be nice to lie next to him and look at the stars. And I was so relieved he’d escaped that I almost didn’t want to let him out of my sight.

I lay there staring up at the sky and hoped that someone in my family was looking up at the same time, seeing the Little Dipper too. I must’ve drifted off because a strange humming noise broke the silence and made me sit up.

“No!” I shouted, startling Spill and Grandpa. “Wake up! Wake up, you two! Someone’s stealing the car!”

39

October 4th-Hard times, hard times, come again no more.

-Stephen Foster

WE STRUGGLED OUT OF OUR SLEEPING BAGS, BUT we lost precious time because we kept bumping into each other. Grandpa elbowed me on my bruise, making me see shooting lights too.

“Quick, Molly, help me get this camping stuff together,” Spill said. “Jack, you climb in and I’ll pull you.”

We threw the gear and Spill’s backpack into the trailer. Grandpa sat precariously on top of the load and I hoped we didn’t hit any bumps or he might fall out. We jumped on our bikes and rode after the fading red taillights.

“At least they’re going north,” Spill said.

My front tire hit a rock and I almost lost control of my bike. “Should we turn on our lights?”

“I guess we better,” Spill said. “I doubt they’ll worry about being chased by bicycles.”

We flipped on our bike lamps, but in the pitch black they barely illuminated anything. The taillights were getting further away and then the car disappeared around a bend. Spill and I were riding neck and neck despite his load, and I would’ve been impressed if I’d had time to think about it, but all I could do was worry about Grandma and the kids.

“I have an idea,” I said. “I’ll ride on ahead and I’ll shoot out a tire.”

“What?”
Grandpa and Spill both yelled together.

“With Randall’s gun.”

“I thought I told you to leave it next to him after you taped him up,” Spill said.

“I forgot. I stuck it in my pocket and I just found it when we were at Jane’s.”

Spill let out a long groan. “You have no idea what you’ve done, Molly.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that Randall can get thrown out of the Organization for letting someone take his gun off him. He’s not going to rest until he gets it back.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Crap.

“Don’t let her fire it, Spill,” Grandpa yelled from the trailer. “I don’t want her shooting up my car!”

“Your car’s ruined anyway,” I said.

“Well, what about your grandmother?” he yelled. “And the kids!”

My fiddle was in the trunk too, which gave me second thoughts.

“Relax, Jack. No one’s shooting that gun.”

“Why not? I’m an excellent marksman, and if I ride faster, I can get close enough to shoot out a tire.”

I actually wasn’t sure I could ride faster. I was starting to lose my breath already, and I found it really annoying that Spill seemed perfectly fine. Of course, I’d just been in a car accident. That was probably why I felt so light-headed.

“Did you figure out Randall’s password?” Spill asked in his infuriatingly calm way.

“What do you mean?”

“His gun has a thumbprint screen,” he explained. “If your thumbprint doesn’t match his, then you can’t fire his gun without typing the password into the micro-computer first. It’s so no one can use it against him.”

“You mean I can’t shoot Randall’s gun?” I asked. “At all?”

“Exactly.”

“But I held him at gunpoint, and he let us go,” I said.

“He did?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He did.”

“Huh,” Spill said.

I could hear the smile in his voice. And that’s when I knew.
Randall had let us escape.
I had pointed his gun at him, and he had released Grandpa so we could get away. What exactly did that mean? Would he let Spill go too if he met up with us? And how hard would they look? Would Aunt Lili send Randall? Were we safer than we thought?

“That was the interstate,” Spill said. “We’re across it now. I guess that’s one good thing.”

“If we catch them, it is.”

After almost twenty minutes of riding, we came around a bend and saw the taillights of the Studebaker stopped in the road. Except they were at a weird angle-sort of lifted in the air higher than they should’ve been.

“Oh, my God! They’ve crashed!” I said.

I put everything I had into that last stretch, and when we pulled up next to the car, our bike lamps showed Grandma, Brandy, and Michael standing there chattering like birds.

“What happened?” we all yelled. “Are you guys all right?”

“Okay,” Grandma said.

“A bad man stole the car!” Michael said.

“And Grandma hit him on the head with a statue!” Brandy added.

“And he ran away!” Michael said.

“Bam!” Grandma held up a black trophy with a silver cheerleader on the top. I took it from Grandma and examined the little plaque in my bike lamp.

Spirit Award
Brianna Buckley
Barlow High School
2017

I wasn’t sure what was harder to believe, that they’d all survived unhurt, or that my mother had been a cheerleader.

It was clear, even in the dark, that there was no way we were ever going to get the car out of the ditch. Plus, the right fender was crushed against the tire. We put the kids in the back of the trailer to sleep, and the four of us sat around a campfire arguing about what to do next.

“We’re still around eighty miles from Seattle, but only twenty or so from Olympia,” Spill said. “I think we should put Jack and Katharine and the kids on a train and meet them at Union Station.”

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“It makes the most sense,” he argued. “Seattle is too far for them to walk.”

When Grandpa agreed, and Grandma added, “Yes-train,” I gave in.

At first light, we unloaded the Studebaker while Grandpa removed his module from under the hood because he wanted to take it back to the farm. We packed as much of our gear onto my bike rack and into Spill’s trailer as we could, but the suitcase was a real problem because even though Grandma had reluctantly left behind a pile of mementoes she’d been carrying for my mother, Grandpa had added his module to the suitcase and now it was even heavier. He insisted on pulling it along behind him, though, so I didn’t argue. I figured his arms would get tired eventually and we could get rid of more stuff then.

We were all set to go when I noticed Grandpa staring at his car. The front end was bashed in from my joyride, black goop hid the brilliant chrome and once-sparkling paint, and tears glittered in Grandpa’s eyes.

I put my arm around his shoulder. “Grandpa, I-”

He shrugged me off. “It’s just a car. Let’s go.”

He turned and went after the others, but I knew he wasn’t leaving just his car behind. The Studebaker stood for everything he’d worked for. He was walking away from his home, his career, his life as an American, everything he knew. I looked for some kind of souvenir to take from the car. There wasn’t anything inside worth keeping, and just when I was about to give up, I spotted the lark hood ornament. It had come loose in the accident and I wrenched the statue off and stuffed it in my pack.

We had to walk our bikes in order for my family to keep up with us, which is actually a lot more tiring than riding them, but even so, twenty miles wasn’t much to me or Spill. It was difficult for my grandparents, and horrible for the kids, though. After two hours, Brandy and Michael were begging to be carried. Spill put them in the back of the trailer and rode on ahead.

By two o’clock we’d been on the road for five hours, and I was willing to bet we hadn’t walked more than halfway to Olympia. My grandparents and I finally caught up to Spill and the kids. He was chasing them around a grassy meadow.

“We’re not going to get there today,” I told him.

“I know. We’ll camp here. Your grandma looks worn out.”

I’d noticed this too and made her sit down while Grandpa and I put together lunch. By the time we’d finished eating, I felt like I could nap, but the kids had to explore every inch of the little field and the creek, so instead, I rested on the bank, watching them make mud pies. “You’ll be sorry,” I said, “when I give you a bath later.” They laughed then, but I had to listen to them scream and cry while I washed them with icy water before dinner.

After we ate, we gathered around a small campfire, trying to stay warm. “Play us a tune,” Grandpa suggested.

Spill added a log to the fire. My arms were tired from walking the bike and I knew it was too cold to play, but we could all use a boost, so I got Jewels out. “Sing along,” I said. My bow slipped sadly across the strings, and music filled the glade, drowning out the sound of the creek.

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its
many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our
ears;
Oh, hard times, come again no more.

I sang softly, but Grandpa’s deep voice rang out loud and clear. Grandma hummed, every once in a while joining us in a phrase. Spill sat silently with Michael on his lap and Brandy leaning against him for warmth.

’ Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin
door;
Oh, hard times, come again no more.

The song was almost two hundred years old, and everyone I knew had at least one reason to sing it. Hopefully, our hard times would be over soon. In the morning, against my better judgment, we would put my grandparents and the kids on a train, and all I could do was hope that we’d meet up in Seattle. If I lost them now, I might as well forget about ever going back to the farm.