Chasing the Skip

by Patterson, Janci

  I rolled my eyes. I guess Dad felt like he had to be terse around skips, since he didn’t have a badge or anything to make them respect him. I wanted to argue, but I didn’t want Ian to think I was some kind of baby, fighting with my dad about homework. So instead I opened up my math book as if it’d been my idea to do the work in the first place.

  We stopped at a fast-food place on our way back to the freeway. The trailer wouldn’t fit through most drive-thrus, so Dad parked in the lot and then waved an arm at me. “I’m going to use the toilet. You come in and grab some food.”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” Okay, so I was starving. But I couldn’t talk to Ian unless I got him alone.

  “I’m hungry,” Ian said.

  “I didn’t ask you. Come on, Ricki.”

  “Give me a break, bounty man,” Ian said. “You can’t starve me to death. I’ll sue.”

  “It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive. You’ll live.” Dad gave me a look. “I’m going in,” he said. “You can starve if you want, but I want you out of the car.”

  “But I’ve got homework to do,” I said, opening Ethan Frome. “I’m really starting to get into this book.”

  I heard Ian chuckle from the back seat. Dad wasn’t buying it either. He just stood there, watching me like there was no way in hell he was going to let me stay.

  So I climbed out of the car and shut the door on Ian, so he wouldn’t be able to hear. Persuading Dad was way easier when skips weren’t listening. “You’re not going to leave him in there, are you?” I asked. “What if something happens?”

  Dad raised his eyebrows. “Like what, exactly?”

  “Well,” I said, “what if he manages to reach the gear shift from the back seat and rolls the truck into the street? Or what if someone comes by and he convinces them that some psycho’s taken him prisoner and they let him go?”

  Dad looked over my shoulder at Ian. “Seems unlikely,” he said. “I have to leave skips alone sometimes when I’m tracking by myself.”

  “But you’re not by yourself now. You have me. And I can watch him.”

  I expected Dad to refuse out of hand, but instead he watched me silently for a minute.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I told you I didn’t want you getting involved with my work.”

  “And I told you that if you didn’t want me involved, you shouldn’t drag me along. If you don’t think I’m capable of watching a guy who’s chained in a truck—who’s so secure you’re not worried about leaving him alone—then you might as well drop me off with Child and Family Services.”

  I held my breath. That last bit was taking it a little far. He might decide I was right about the Child Services part.

  But he didn’t.

  “Okay, fine,” Dad said. “I’ll bring you back some food. But you watch him from outside the truck, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  Dad gave me a sharp nod and then headed into the restaurant, looking back at me once over his shoulder.

  When he was gone, I stood outside the truck, wondering what to do. I mean, I looked like an idiot standing there in the middle of a parking space. I could at least open the door and talk to Ian. Dad hadn’t forbidden that. If you weren’t supposed to leave dogs alone in locked vehicles, you probably shouldn’t do it with skips, either.

  I stepped over to the driver’s-side door—opposite Ian’s seat—and cracked it open.

  “If you’re really not hungry, could you get me a burger?” Ian asked.

  “Um,” I said, “I’m supposed to watch you. Sorry.”

  “Eh. It’s cool.”

  I leaned against the edge of the open door so my head was half inside the truck. “I like your shirt,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “I like metal too.”

  Ian smiled, like he was actually impressed. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a straight-edger.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “But a friend of mine is.”

  The straight-edger scene is kind of different in Salt Lake. In most places it’s just a group of teenagers who listen to metal music and don’t drink or do drugs or smoke, which is cool. But in Utah it’s turned into kind of a gang. The straight-edgers there are always beating people up and graffitiing stuff, which Jake thought was stupid. So he wore the shirt to try to show people you didn’t have to be all violent to be a straight-edger—until some guy decided to take it out on him by bashing his head into a sound wall.

  “That’s cool,” Ian said.

  I smiled. Ian, who took an arrest in stride with his head up and his eyes open, thought I was cool. “So are you doing okay back there? It doesn’t look very comfortable to be chained up like that.”

  “Yeah, these chains kind of chafe. You think you could unlock me?”

  “No,” I said.

  Ian grinned. “Kidding. So what are you doing here, anyway? Your old man bring you along a lot?”

  “No,” I said. “Just this last week. My mom sort of took off, so I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” I don’t know why I told him that. Maybe I thought he would understand, since his parents were so messed up. I expected Ian to say something about how sorry he was, or about how awful it was to be left.

  “Lucky you,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means good riddance. Parents are a pain in the ass.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m stuck here, when all my friends are back in Utah.”

  “So why don’t you go back?”

  “I don’t have anywhere to stay.

  “Whatever. Get an apartment.”

  “With what money?”

  “Get a job.”

  “You make this sound easy.”

  “Look,” Ian said. Stretching his chains tight so his hands just barely reached the back of the seat, he leaned toward me, looking at me intensely. “Sometimes you’ve got to grab the bull by the balls.”

  “Won’t that get me kicked in the face?”

  Ian laughed. “Sometimes. It got me chained in a truck. But at least I’m trying.”

  I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. I liked the idea of hitching a ride back home and living my life again, with or without Mom. But there were so many details to worry about. I’d have to have some place to stay, at least while I was looking for a job. Maybe I could get Anna to work on her parents for me.

  “So was it bull balls that got you charged with grand theft auto?”

  Ian laughed. “You know my whole history or what?”

  I shrugged. “My dad has a file on you.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “That your mom’s in rehab and your dad’s in jail.”

  “That it?”

  “And that your aunt had custody of you. We drove by there this morning.”

  “And she helped you find me.”

  “A little.”

  “That figures.”

  He looked down at his shoes, and I watched the sunlight sliding in the window and glancing off his profile.

  “I’m sorry about your family,” I said.

  “Look, girl. What was your name?”

  “Ricki,” I said. “It’s short for Erica.”

  “Look, Ricki, you don’t need to be sorry. Your mom leaving, my mom being a druggie, that’s just life. In life sometimes other people are going to give you shit. But when they do, you just make shitballs and toss them right back. Understand?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.” I leaned against the edge of the truck, trying to make sense of it. But here was Ian, chained in the very truck I’d been whining and miserable about, and not even blinking an eye. So maybe he had something there.

  Then Dad walked toward us, carrying a brown paper bag under his arm, grease stains soaking through the bottom. He gave me a look as he approached. I stepped away from the door, and he opened it the rest of the way, sticking the food on the front seat.

  As I moved to walk around to the front, Dad grabbed my arm an
d tugged me around the back of the trailer, out of Ian’s earshot.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What the hell were you doing?”

  I wanted to tell him I was grabbing the bull by the balls, but he wouldn’t get it. Instead I squinted at him. “I was watching Ian, just like you said I could.”

  “I told you to stay out of the truck.”

  “I did. I just opened the door a little.”

  Dad crossed his arms across his chest. “How many times do I have to tell you not to talk to skips?”

  My mouth fell open. “I was just watching him. It’s not like I unchained him.”

  “But I asked you not to talk to skips, and you deliberately disobeyed me.”

  “I have to obey you? I thought we went over how I’m not your dog.”

  “Ricki, I ask you to do these things for your safety. Skips aren’t ordinary people. They’re criminals.”

  “But Ian’s just a guy. He’s only a little bit older than me.” He was also probably the toughest guy I’d ever met, but I didn’t figure Dad would appreciate that either.

  “Oh, no,” Dad said. “You can’t think of him that way. This isn’t some kid you met at school. He’s in very serious trouble, and you will be too, if you aren’t careful.”

  “I did exactly what you told me to do—watched him and stayed out of the truck. If you want me to be silent so you can pretend I’m not here, fine. But don’t expect me to ignore your skips just because you do.” That wasn’t exactly shitballing, but it was a start.

  I spun around and ran back to my seat in the cab, where I knew Dad wouldn’t chew me out anymore. For once his stiffness in front of the skips could work in my favor.

  Dad climbed into the driver’s side and shoved the paper bag at me, leaving a grease smear across the bench seat. I dug some fries out of the top.

  “So, bounty man,” Ian said behind me. “What’d you bring me?”

  “Nothing,” Dad said. “But I’m sure the prison food will be delicious.”

  I didn’t see why he had to be mean. I turned around, extending a fry to Ian. “Want some?”

  Ian smiled, shrugging his cuffed arms. “Guess you’ll have to feed me,” he said, licking his lips.

  My eyes widened, killing my chances of playing it cool. Ian could have fed himself if he bent over a little. That wasn’t the point.

  “He can eat when we get back to Denver,” Dad said sharply. “You turn around.”

  I popped the fry into my own mouth, smiling at Ian. He grinned back, and I turned around slowly in my seat, delaying obedience.

  As we pulled onto the freeway, Dad focused on the merging traffic. I heard Ian exhale, and hot air puffed over my shoulders, blowing down the back of my shirt. I tried not to react visibly, setting my fries on the seat and looking intently at my algebra. The pages had graphs on them covered in parabolas, but every time I tried to make my own graph it came out looking like a line. I was sure I’d missed something, but Ian sitting behind me made it hard to concentrate on figuring out what.

  “So,” Ian said, “is it ‘Take Your Daughter to Work’ day?”

  “Sure,” Dad said.

  I leaned back in my seat a little farther, bench springs creaking. I could hear Ian breathing behind me, his smell drifting across the seat between us. Ms. Langley, my bio teacher back home, said that attraction was a chemical thing based on facial features, anatomy, and smell. It had been that way with Jamie—I’d started liking him when he gave me a ride home on his cousin’s motorcycle, and I was all pressed behind him, breathing him in.

  “Lean back, buddy,” Dad said, and I heard the bench seat creak. “Don’t think about trying anything. You don’t mess with an armed man’s daughter.”

  I wondered then if Dad actually carried a gun on his person. I knew he had them locked in the truck, but that wouldn’t help much in a confrontation with a dangerous skip.

  “If you’re going to be like that,” I said, “why don’t you go back to leaving me with the trailer?”

  “Girl’s got a point,” Ian said.

  Dad’s eyebrows sprang together so fast that I thought they might conjoin. “Shut up,” Dad said. “Unless you want me to gag you.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?” I asked.

  Dad gave me another hard look. “You do your homework.”

  I turned back to my book, drawing yet another axis on my graph paper. “I don’t see why I’ll ever need conic sections, anyway.”

  “You probably won’t,” Dad said. “It’s the diploma that counts.”

  “I don’t have a diploma,” Ian said.

  “You’re making my point.”

  I shrugged. “I still don’t get why they make us do this.”

  Dad nodded. “Get back to old Ethan, then.”

  “Ethan Frome,” I said, “is a weak-willed pansy who couldn’t make a decision to save his life.”

  “How do you know that if you haven’t read the book yet?”

  “I read the CliffsNotes.”

  Dad gave me another look. “Where’d you get those?”

  “Online.”

  “You’ve ruined the book for yourself. No wonder you’re bored.”

  “What’s to ruin? Ethan doesn’t like his wife at all, so I don’t get why he stays with her. If he hadn’t, they’d all have been better off for it.”

  Dad leaned back in his seat, flexing his hands on the wheel. “But he had an obligation to her. So he had to stay.”

  As if Dad knew anything about marital obligations. “Whatever.”

  “I think that other chick should have ditched him, anyway,” Ian said from the back. “She was too good for him.”

  Dad and I were both silent for a moment. I looked over my shoulder at him. “Mattie, you mean?”

  “Right, that chick. She totally didn’t need to stick around with that punk. If she’d gone, she wouldn’t have ended up all crippled in the end.”

  I turned around to face him. “She gets crippled?”

  “Sure,” Ian said. “I thought you said you read the CliffsNotes.”

  “I didn’t get all the way through.”

  Dad shook his head. “My own daughter can’t even finish a set of CliffsNotes.”

  “It was a library computer. I had a time limit.”

  “Still.”

  I turned sideways, lifting my knee onto the seat and leaning against the truck door to get a better look at Ian. “I can’t believe you’ve read Ethan Frome.”

  Ian smirked. “I went to school once too.”

  “Didn’t graduate, though,” Dad said.

  “How would you know, old man? Is that in your file?”

  Dad chuckled. “You told us so a minute ago.”

  “Oh. Whatever. I might have graduated if they gave us decent books to read.”

  “And what, in your opinion, is a decent book?” Dad asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. The Shining was a pretty freaky movie. Must have been a good book.”

  Dad sniffed. I could tell he wasn’t impressed.

  “Regardless,” Dad said. “Algebra or Ethan Frome. Get on it. Now.”

  “Jeez,” Ian said. “Someone needs to get laid.”

  Dad slammed on the brakes and jerked the truck off the road. I bounced sideways in my seat, whacking my head on the window.

  The truck lurched along the shoulder for a few feet and then stopped. I expected Dad to turn around and slug Ian, but instead he pulled on my shoulder, tilting me back in my seat, his eyes stretched wide with horror.

  My hand went to my forehead. I thought I might be bleeding, but when I turned to see my reflection in the side mirror, I saw a pink spot on my temple, nothing more.

  “I’m so sorry,” Dad said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  I pulled at my seat belt. It should have locked up or something, but I guessed the truck was too old.

  Dad and Ian were both staring at me.

  “Look, can we just go?” I
asked. “I don’t get why you stopped in the first place.”

  “Just don’t fall asleep or nothing,” Ian said. “If you’ve got a concussion, you might not wake up.”

  “You,” Dad said, turning around to face Ian. “Shut your mouth. Disrespect me again, and you’re gagged. Clear?”

  “You sound just like my old man.”

  “There’s a common element in those two relationships,” Dad said. “And it sure isn’t me.” He gave my forehead one last look. I could feel a bruise forming, but it didn’t feel concussion-bad.

  I dug out my novel. As Dad pulled back onto the road I muttered, “I’m the common element with both of my parents. Maybe that’s why they both walked out on me.”

  Dad sighed, but he wasn’t going to get into it with me now. Not in front of Ian. If I thought he would, I’d never have said that out loud.

  I wasn’t more than a page in when I felt Ian’s knees pressing into my back through the seat. I could feel his body heat through the disintegrated padding.

  I turned to face my window, catching Ian’s eye in the side mirror. He looked up at my forehead like he was checking to see if I was okay. And then at the same moment, we both smiled.

  Another breath drifted over my neck, directed and cool, as if Ian was blowing on it deliberately. The only kind of contact we could have locked up in here with my dad.

  Cheyenne, Wyoming.

  Days since Mom left: 30.

  Distance from Salt Lake City, Utah: 441.44 miles.

  6

  Dad stopped for gas in Cheyenne, between Laramie and Denver, right where we had to switch freeways.

  “Come on, Ricki,” he said. “Get yourself inside.”

  I looked at the gas station. Dad didn’t like the way I’d watched Ian last time so, unfair or not, there was no way he was going to let me help now. But I still wanted to talk to Ian—to know more about him.

  I climbed out of the car.

  “We just ate,” I said. “I don’t need anything.”

  “Well, I’m going to use the bathroom, so you get something for later, and don’t go back to the truck until I’m done.”

  The bathroom door was on the outside of the building, so Dad waited for me to go into the store before he went inside.

  The cashier must have seen my hesitation, because she leaned over the counter toward me. “Can I help you, honey?”