Runaways (15 page)

Dani gave Stormy a “See, what did I tell you” look, but he ignored her. “Did he say anything about the—Black Phantom?” he asked.

“The Black …,” Linda started to ask before her question turned into, “Ohhh. You mean the bicycle. As a matter of fact Mr. Smithson did mention the bicycle. He asked if it would be all right if Portia brought it with her when she comes tomorrow.”

Stormy lit up like a Las Vegas casino. “Will it?” he asked. “Did you say it would be all right?” And when Linda said she’d told Mr. Smithson it would be, he ran around the room a couple of times, and then said he was going home and go to bed early, so morning would come faster.

Things were different that evening with no Stormy hanging around, and one of the differences was a long talk Dani had with Linda.

It started when Dani came into the living room to look for a book of puzzles and noticed that her mother, who had been curled up on the daybed, was acting kind of strange. The first strange thing she did was to turn her face away when Dani came in. And then, while Dani was squatting in front of the bookcase, there was a sniffing noise, and when she turned around quickly, Linda was wiping her eyes.

Right at first Dani just went on looking through the shelves, pretending she hadn’t seen anything, but she couldn’t help wondering. She couldn’t remember seeing her mother cry before, at least not very much. Perhaps she’d cried a little, way back when they heard that Chance had died, and maybe some angry tears once when the Grablers had refused to mend the cabin’s leaky roof and then raised the rent. But those were the only times Dani could remember. More often, when she’d worried about her mother, it was just the other way around. Like worrying how she could go around being so cheerful when there was absolutely nothing to be cheerful about.

Dani decided she would pretend she hadn’t noticed. She found the puzzle book and started to leave the room when all of a sudden, without even deciding to, she found herself saying, “What’s the matter?”

Right at first Linda insisted that nothing was. “I’m just feeling a little down today,” she said. “It’s the heat, I guess.” But when Dani went on staring at her she sighed shakily and said she was worried about her job with Mr. Cooley. “He’s thinking of selling the bookstore,” she said with a strange catch in her voice. “He’s probably going to move to Arizona to live with his daughter. And if he does, there goes my job. And just when I was hoping we could get in better shape financially, now that we have the rent money from the ranch and all.” She sniffed again and wiped her eyes before she sighed and said, “And now just today, when I was in the market I saw Brenda and she said she and Howie might have to raise the rent again.”

So then Dani said in what she hoped was a “well, then, that’s settled” tone of voice, “Well then, it sounds to me like it’s the perfect time for us to pack up and go back to Sea Grove.” But that just got them started on the same old argument they’d had so many times before. Linda started the way she always did by saying, “But we can’t just go off and leave a bunch of debts here in Rattler Springs.” She sighed again. “Just a few more months with the extra money for the ranch, and I could have paid everything off. But now …” She waved her hands in a shaky “who knows” gesture. “Without a truck, or even a car, we’d have to leave everything behind. And how could we manage in Sea Grove with no money and no place to live and not even any furniture?”

Dani had heard it all before and as far as she was concerned none of it made much of a difference. She was sure that once they got to Sea Grove, Heather’s family would let them visit for a while. And Linda would be able to get a good job and people would let them charge things until they got settled. The important thing was for them to get out of the desert.

So the argument went around and around in the same old way, the only difference being that this time Linda complicated everything by crying. Dani wished she could cry too just to even things up, but for some reason she couldn’t. She just didn’t seem to be the crying type.

It didn’t seem fair. None of it seemed fair. After a while Dani got so frustrated that she slammed out of the house. Out on Silver Avenue she stopped for a moment to consider where to go. Not out across the desert toward the graveyard. Not now when the reddish twilight was already fading away toward darkness. Instead she would go down to the General Store and maybe do a little shopping. Fishing in her pocket, she found a nickel and two pennies. Well, maybe not much actual shopping, but a little “just looking” would give her something to do while she calmed down, and while Linda had time to start wondering where she had gone.

Walking against a grating, sandy wind, she reached the corner and turned down past the Grand Hotel’s bar, where bright lights and loud music were still spilling out of the open door. But a few yards farther on the General Store was closed and dark. She hadn’t realized how late it was.

She went on then, past the post office, but just as she turned to take the path that led back through the vacant lot, something made her look back toward Gus’s place. And there it was. Silhouetted by a dim glow that oozed out through the gas station’s greasy windows, a beat-up old truck was parked at an angle, its large, lumpy load covered by a flapping tarp. Dani whirled and ran for home.

Later that night, lying in bed in her stuffy room, with the window tightly shut against the blowing sand, Dani pounded her pillow in frustration. Everything, it seemed, was falling apart at once. Pixie’s offer to provide ticket money by asking for a bike, Stormy’s interest in the running-away plan, and now maybe even Linda’s job at the bookstore. Everything seemed to be slipping away.

And there was something else that seemed to be slipping away too. Something important that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but what it felt like was a kind of—certainty. A conviction that she’d had ever since that day in the old graveyard when she’d decided she really was going to run away. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. Grabbing her pillow with both hands, she held on tightly, telling herself over and over again that she was going to leave before—before the end of June. She held on to that idea and the edge of the pillow until she went to sleep.

I
T WAS EARLY THE
next day, barely daylight actually, when the Smithsons’ car pulled up in front of the O’Donnells’ cabin and unloaded Pixie and the Black Phantom. Stormy, who’d arrived early too, went to the door with Dani. Even though they were right there as Mr. Smithson pushed the Black Phantom up onto the porch, he didn’t have much to say to them. Just a hurried hello and good-bye before he turned back to where Mrs. Smithson was waiting in the car. Strangely silent as always—both of them.

But Pixie was the same as always too, except, of course, for some pretty spectacular scabs on her hands and knees. Bouncing into the living room, she jabbered away about what a good bicycle rider she was turning out to be, and how she’d been wearing some special knee pads that belonged to her mother, in case she fell off again.

“Knee pads?” Stormy asked. And when Pixie just went on jabbering about the bicycle, he asked again, “Your mother wears knee pads?”

“Yes, you know, for digging. She wears them for digging,” Pixie answered, and went right on about how fast she could start and stop, etc., etc. She didn’t seem to notice the anxious look on Stormy’s face but Dani did. She had already figured out what was worrying him when he poked Pixie and asked, “Where? Where does your mother dig?”

He went on asking “where” but before he got Pixie’s attention Linda came in and Pixie started talking to her. Stormy shut up then, but he hadn’t forgotten because when Pixie followed Linda into the kitchen he started in on Dani. “Those knee pads. For digging.” He nodded with an “I told you so” expression on his face. “In graveyards, I betcha.”

Dani snorted. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “People wear knee pads for all sorts of digging. Like in gardens, for instance.”

“Gardens?” Stormy sounded like he’d never heard the word before.

“Yeah, gardens.” Dani shrugged, admitting to herself that it wasn’t a word you heard much around Rattler Springs. “Or when you’re digging up minerals and like that. You know, like geologists do.
Geologists,”
she repeated significantly. “Like what the Smithsons are.”

Stormy nodded but he didn’t seem convinced. However, he quit worrying about knee pads as soon as they went back out to look at the Black Phantom, even though they were right there hanging over the handlebars. Staring at the shiny black bicycle, Stormy’s eyes had the same glassy look they got in the midst of a good story.

Dani had been planning to have another ticket-money conference with Stormy and Pixie as soon as Linda left for the bookstore, but the way it turned out there wasn’t much time. Stormy wasn’t in the cabin very much that morning. Instead he spent most of it riding up and down Silver Avenue in the blazing sunshine. Except now and then when Pixie insisted on having a turn. And even then it was impossible to talk to Stormy, unless you wanted to talk about bicycles.

It was after his second or third turn, while he waited on the porch for the next one, that Dani stuck her head out the door and said, “Look, are you guys going to ride that thing all day or can we save out some time for a little talk?”

“Talk?” Stormy said blankly, as if he hadn’t the slightest idea what they might have to talk about.

“Yeah, a talk.” Dani looked around and lowered her voice even though Linda was long gone and no one else was around. “About the ticket money. We’re going to have to do something in a hurry, now that the bike money …” She paused and then added with special emphasis, “Now that the bike money got wasted.”

Stormy looked at her blankly for a moment before he got the point. “Not wasted,” he said. “The Black Phantom’s not wasted.” Cocking his head, he looked at Dani thoughtfully before he added, “You can ride too. You want a turn?”

Dani felt like yelling, “No! Riding a stupid bicycle in a hundred-degree temperature is not what I’ve been waiting for all my life.” Instead she put her hands on her hips and said, “For your information, Mr. Arigotti, in case you’ve forgotten everything we were talking about, the only thing I want is some
money
for bus tickets.”

Stormy wiped his sweaty face with the back of one hand. “Oh yeah,” he said, “money. For tickets.” And then after a second, “Pixie has some money. I saw it. She has a lot of money.”

Dani had started asking questions like “She has?” and “How much does she have?” and Stormy was still doing his slow-motion concentration thing when Pixie came back down Silver Avenue and braked to a sliding stop outside the gate.

“Hi,” she said as she jumped off the bike and kicked down the stand. “Did you see that? Did you see me burn rubber?”

“Yeah, we saw you,” Dani said. “Stormy says you have some more money. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“Money?” Pixie looked puzzled for a moment before she said, “Oh yes, for lunch. I have some lunch money.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “My father gave me this for lunch. I’m supposed to take you and Stormy to lunch because you’re letting me stay all day. I’m supposed to take you to the Silver Grill. Your mother too, if she can leave the bookstore.”

“Wow!” Stormy said. “Wow!”

Dani didn’t say “wow” but she halfway thought it. While ten dollars wasn’t nearly enough to buy three sets of tickets to Sea Grove, it would do a lot in that direction. For just a moment Dani thought about trying to convince Pixie to forget about Silver Grill lunches and settle for peanut butter sandwiches at home. But that seemed pretty risky. For one thing it wouldn’t be easy to convince Stormy, and besides, Pixie’s parents might ask Linda if she enjoyed the lunch. One way or another, the truth was likely to come out.

“Oh yeah? The Silver Grill?” Dani said nonchalantly, but loudly enough to drown out Stormy’s comments.

“Yes,” Pixie said. “I guess we can have whatever’s left over for ticket money. My father won’t remember to ask for it back. He never does.”

Dani shrugged. “Well, that’s better than nothing,” she said. “It’s not as much as a Black Phantom bike, but it’s better than nothing.”

Pixie’s changeable face went from happy to tragic in a flash. Hanging her head, she said, “I know. I should have told them I wanted to shop for the bicycle myself, but I just didn’t think about it. But I should have guessed he might do something like that. My father is always doing weird things. It’s just that he usually doesn’t think very much about what he’s doing, because he’s so busy thinking about other stuff while he’s doing it.” She stopped then and sighed.

“What other stuff?” Stormy asked quickly.

“Oh, stuff like …,” Pixie started to say but then, after checking out Stormy’s anxious face, she went on more slowly, “Oh, stuff like what they’re working on. You know, in the laboratory?”

Stormy’s eyes widened. “Stuff?” he asked. “What stuff in the laboratory?” But instead of answering him Pixie just looked at her wristwatch and made a little squealing noise. “Hey,” she said. “It’s lunchtime. Come on. Let’s go have lunch.”

That did it. If there was one magic word that would get Stormy’s mind off Frankenstein monsters it had to be
lunch.
So a few minutes later all four of them, including Linda, were sitting around a table in the best restaurant in Rattler Springs. The absolute best, which, as Dani mentioned, wasn’t saying much since its only competition was the lunch counter at the back of the Grablers’ General Store.

There weren’t that many choices on the menu. Linda ordered chicken soup and a salad but everyone else wound up with hamburger steak sandwiches with French fries. For dessert they all ordered chocolate sundaes. But even though the food wasn’t terribly exciting, it was a little better than peanut butter sandwiches, and for a while the whole eating out thing was kind of okay.

Linda told some stories about the bookstore that Dani had heard before, like how prissy old Mrs. Alwood checked out self-improvement books and then snuck out with
True Romance
magazines hidden under her purse. Linda kind of acted out the stories the way she did sometimes, and Stormy and Pixie laughed like crazy. Watching them, it occurred to Dani that they probably thought that having a mother like Linda would be a lot of fun, a thought that for some reason made Dani angry, particularly after she remembered that she used to feel pretty much the same way, when she was their age.