Runaways (20 page)

“We’ll be gone by then,” Dani said.

Pixie smiled again, but this time it didn’t look so innocent. “I know,” she said. “Let’s plan.”

The first part of the plan was buying the tickets, which, because of Pixie’s birthday money, shouldn’t be a problem. At least not a financial one.

“But we’ll have to be careful about Mrs. Arlen,” Dani told Pixie.

“Mrs. Arlen? Who’s she?”

“She runs the post office, and sells bus tickets too,” Dani told her. “But she’s real nosey. Like if I went in there and bought three tickets, one adult and two for kids, she’d want to know if the adult was my mother and if I was going to try to pretend I wasn’t twelve yet. And if she found out who the tickets were really for, it would be all over town in five minutes.”

“So,” Pixie said, “what are you going to tell her?”

Dani shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

“Hmm.” Pixie squinted. “I know what I could tell her. So I’ll buy the tickets. Okay?”

Dani said she guessed that would be okay, and then she made the mistake of asking Pixie what she was planning to tell Mrs. Arlen.

“Well.” Pixie thought for only a split second before she said, “I’d tell her the tickets are for my aunt Cassandra and my cousins who came to see us a few days ago.” She paused but only for a second or two and then went on. “See, they came in their car, which is this big long Oldsmobile convertible—a green Oldsmobile convertible—only it broke down—and they can’t wait until it’s fixed so they’re going to take the bus to Reno and then home to San Francisco—they have to get home right away because my oldest cousin—Edwina—my oldest cousin’s name is Edwina—she just had her eleventh birthday so she’s not too old for a child’s ticket—well, Edwina has to play her violin in a concert on Saturday, so they just have to be home on time—see, my cousin Edwina is a famous violinist and she—”

“Pixie,” Dani interrupted. “Is your cousin really a famous violinist?”

Pixie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, grinning. “I don’t think I have a cousin named Edwina.”

It was about then that Dani decided that Pixie really should be the one to buy the tickets. After all, most of the money was hers. And besides, if Nosey Rosie started asking questions this time, she’d get more answers than she’d know what to do with.

So with that decided, Dani went back to working on other parts of the plan. The hardest part, she decided, the almost impossibly hard part, when you really thought about it, would be getting Stormy down to the bus stop and onto the bus. To get him across town and up Main Street without Gloria spotting him, or anyone who might know by then that he was missing. She’d had a couple of ideas, but nothing that seemed very possible, when Pixie asked what else needed to be worked on.

When Dani explained the problem, Pixie’s first suggestion was that they should have Stormy wear a disguise. “Maybe we could dress him up like a girl with a wig with lots of curly hair that would kind of hang down and hide …”

Pixie was still gesturing with both hands to show how the curls would cover most of Stormy’s face, when she suddenly froze and said, “Oh, hi, Stormy. You woke up. Hey, guess what? Dani changed her mind again. We’re going to run away after all.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Stormy said. As he shuffled toward them Dani was able to recognize, even through all the cuts and bruises, a typical Stormy frown. The kind that usually meant there was no use arguing with him. And in a strange way, it was good to see him being his normally stubborn self. “No dress,” he said. “I won’t wear a dress.”

“That’s all right,” she told him quickly. “You won’t have to. For one thing, we don’t have a wig. We’ll think of some other way, won’t we, Pixie?”

So Stormy sat down with them at the table and they went on working on how to get him to the bus stop at five o’clock that afternoon without anyone seeing him.

Pixie’s next suggestion was that they find a wheelbarrow big enough for Stormy to curl up in, cover him with a blanket and push him down Main Street to the bus stop.

“No, I don’t think so,” Dani said. She might have pointed out that curling up in a wheelbarrow wouldn’t be too comfortable for a person who’d just been beaten half to death, but she settled for saying that she didn’t know anyone who had a wheelbarrow big enough to hold a nine-year-old kid.

The plan they finally settled on was mostly Stormy’s idea. “We could go out to the gully,” he said pointing away from town, toward the east, “and down the flash flood tunnel. And then way out around to Gus’s. To the back of Gus’s.”

Dani understood immediately. She explained it to Pixie by saying they would head out away from town in the wrong direction until they came to a dry gully that led to the tunnel that went under the highway about a half mile north of town. And from there they could circle back to where Gus’s property started, without going through any places where they were likely to be seen.

Pixie said she thought her own ideas were a lot more exciting, and that Stormy’s suggestion sounded kind of boring and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable, as in walking all that way on such a hot day.

Dani had to agree with her. “Yeah,” she said, “hot and boring. But what’s good about it is that it doesn’t depend on stuff we don’t have, like wigs or wheelbarrows. And the other good thing is—it just might work.”

Pixie still wasn’t convinced. “But there’s nothing to hide behind out there on the desert,” she said.

Dani nodded. “I know. Except when you’re in the gully. Then you’re out of sight for a while. And once we get to Gus’s property there’s plenty of stuff to hide behind. There’s enough junk on Gus’s property to hide an army. And besides, there will just be the two of us. Stormy and me. You can go downtown and buy the tickets. And meet us at the bus stop. You know where the bus stops, don’t you? Right there in Gus’s parking lot? And by yourself you’ll be all right. Nobody will be looking for you. Not till after the bus has left anyway.”

So it was all decided and there was nothing left to do but try to eat a little lunch, get the money out of Dani’s underwear drawer and pack the duffel bag. The lunch wasn’t too successful. Dani made peanut butter sandwiches but both she and Pixie were too excited to eat, and it hurt Stormy too much to open his mouth.

Packing the duffel bag turned out to be quite different from Dani’s original plan. Because neither Stormy nor Pixie had spare clothing, or any chance to get any, Dani decided she wouldn’t take any either. Instead she filled the bag with things like sun lotion, Mercurochrome and bandages, two Thermos bottles of water and the leftover peanut butter sandwiches.

So that was it. Dani O’Donnell was finally about to do what she’d been planning to do for so long. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get started.” But as the others were going out the back door she suddenly turned and went back.

“Wait. Wait a minute,” she called. “I forgot something important.”

In her bedroom, she got out her notebook and ripped out a sheet of paper. Writing fast, scribbling almost, she wrote:

Dear Mother,

I’m running away with Stormy and Pixie. Pixie has enough money for tickets all the way to Sea Grove. I’m going because Stormy has to get away from Gloria. I’d decided not to go until I saw how she’d almost killed him.

Dani

Reading it over quickly, she knew she’d done a poor job, but she thought Linda might understand. In fact, she was pretty sure her mother would understand. She smoothed out the paper and added one more word, just before her name. The word was
love.

LOVE, Dani

She left the note in her underwear drawer where it surely would be found eventually. Eventually, but not before the Thursday bus was well on its way.

They started out then. Pixie and the money left first, heading toward town. And then it was Dani and Stormy’s turn. At the door Stormy stopped and looked back, toward the front of the house, and said, “The Black Phantom?”

Dani shook her head firmly. “No, we can’t,” she said. “We can’t take a bicycle.”

Stormy nodded sadly. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN
Dani and Stormy started out across the open desert. The sun was still high in the sky, and fiercely hot. Its rays beat straight down on Dani’s head and its fiery breath scorched her lungs. But it wasn’t just the desert’s boring old threats that were making her heart beat faster. Not this time. Right at first it was simply the fear of being seen by someone Gloria had sent out to look for Stormy. Or perhaps by kids who’d recognize them and who, a few minutes later, would blab about them all over town. Or by nosey adults who would ask what they were doing, and what on earth had happened to Stormy’s face.

Time passed, twenty blazing, sweating minutes, or maybe more, before there weren’t any yards or houses close enough to be a threat. But that didn’t mean they were home safe. Who knew when they might meet up with a bunch of kids out snake hunting or exploring? Or when someone, driving up Silver Avenue, might happen to look out across the desert toward the north?

It was easy to see that Stormy was trying to walk as fast as he could, but even so Dani had to stop and wait every few minutes, clenching her teeth to keep from telling him to hurry. And once, when a truck roared by on Silver Avenue, she dropped to the ground and yelled, “Stormy. Get down,” before she stopped to think. He got down all right, but when the danger was past, it wasn’t easy to get him back up. The pain on his face as he struggled to his feet made Dani’s throat swell and throb. With anger mostly, but also with a strange urge to yell and scream, or maybe to cry.

Farther away from town she was able to relax a little and concentrate on keeping Stormy moving slowly and steadily toward the dry gully. The gully, or Horny Toad Gulch as it was sometimes called, wasn’t much bigger than a deep ditch. According to rumor, it had been formed by water running down from the hills during flash floods. But there hadn’t been a flood in many years and, as far as Dani knew, the gully bed was always dry and empty. Empty, that is, except for a tumble of jagged boulders, and now and then a sudden speedy slither, when you crossed the path of some awful desert creature. Dani knew kids who thought the gully was an exciting playground, but to her it had always been an evil place. The kind of place where the desert’s voices had always been especially loud and clear.

And the gully was also—
hot.
Shut off from even the slightest trace of breeze, the deep ditch seemed to concentrate the heat, bouncing it back and forth off its rocky walls. As they followed its bed with maddening slowness, waves of heat beat against their faces, and lizards, or something worse, skittered away at their approach. They had almost reached the place where the gully ran under the highway when Dani noticed that Stormy was staggering.

She went back to walk beside him as his shuffling steps slowed, then stopped. As Dani grabbed his arm he lurched and almost fell. Holding him up, she looked around frantically. There was no escape from the sun anywhere, except up ahead where the western wall of the gully deepened to meet the tunnel under the highway. “Come on, Stormy,” she whispered in his ear. “Just a few more steps and we’ll rest. There, in the shade.”

He nodded and stumbled on, to where he could lean against the wall while Dani cleared away some rocks and helped him to sit. They stayed there for a long time. Stormy seemed totally exhausted, almost unconscious. His face was wet with sweat and his tanned and freckled skin looked strangely colorless, except for the dark smudge of bruises around his eyes and mouth. Dani wondered if he would ever be able to get up and go on.

The water in the Thermos was lukewarm but at least it was wet and when she held the cup up to Stormy’s swollen lips he swallowed eagerly. And then, when he stopped swallowing, she drank a little herself before she dribbled the rest slowly over Stormy’s head and face. A few minutes later his eyes flicked open and he said, “That felt good.”

His eyes closed again, but it seemed to Dani that he was breathing more normally. She waited through many more sweltering minutes before he opened his eyes and looked around. Up the gully first and then down toward the tunnel and back to focus on Dani. He stared at her, and then his eyes rolled up toward the sky. “What’s it saying?” he whispered.

“What’s what saying?” Dani asked.

Stormy glanced upward, frowning. “The desert?” he said.

She understood then and, following Stormy’s gaze, she looked up at the desert sky for a long moment before she whispered, “Hey. I don’t know. I’ve been too busy to listen.”

He nodded and closed his eyes and when they opened again he began to struggle to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll miss the bus.”

Dani had thought about that. The narrow slice of shade had widened noticeably since they’d first sat down. She looked up at the sky, where the sun was now much closer to the western horizon. It must be at least five by now or even later, and there was still a long way to go. Missing the bus was a real possibility. “Right,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

The tunnel under the highway came next. It was actually only a large drainage pipe, but large enough for a kid Stormy’s size to walk through standing almost erect. Dani had been dreading it. In fact she’d been forcing herself not to think about it until she had to. Rumor had it that anyone who wanted to catch a rattlesnake had only to go to the tunnel on a hot day and the snakes would be there, escaping the midday sun. At the tunnel mouth she stopped.

“Snakes?” Stormy asked, and Dani nodded.

“I hate snakes,” she said. “Especially rattlers.”

“Yeah,” Stormy said, “I know.” After a while he said, “We could throw rocks.”

“Rocks?” Dani was asking, but then she got the picture. If they threw enough rocks into the tunnel to drive the snakes out the other side, they might be able to make it through without meeting one. It was worth a try. So she gathered up rocks and began to throw. She’d never been much good at throwing, either baseballs or rocks, and the things she did throw didn’t always go where she wanted them to. After a while Stormy began to help, not bending to pick up rocks but throwing the ones Dani handed him, not hard but accurately. Once or twice after a rock landed, Dani was sure she heard an ominous rattling sound. They’d thrown a lot of rocks before they started through.