by Peg Kehret
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PEG KEHRET
Other books by
PEG KEHRET
Stolen Children
Trapped
Abduction!
Spy Cat
The Stranger Next Door
Don’t Tell Anyone
I’m Not Who You Think I Am
Searching for Candlestick Park
Earthquake Terror
Danger at the Fair
The Richest Kids in Town
Night of Fear
Horror at the Haunted House
Terror at the Zoo
Sisters Long Ago
Cages
Nightmare Mountain
DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3 Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) | Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England | Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) | Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) | Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India | Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) | Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Peg Kehret
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN : 978-1-101-56460-8
[1. Foster home care—Fiction. 2. Voyages and travels—Fiction. 3. Dogs—Fiction.
4. Runaways—Fiction. 5. Twins—Fiction. 6. Sisters—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K2518Run 2009 [Fic]—dc22 2008048974
Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
www.penguin.com/youngreaders
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Jenny Moller and Jerry Lindsey,
who enrich my life in countless ways
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The character of Snickers is based on a real dog who was the cherished companion of Julie Carlton. Julie won the chance to memorialize Snickers in a book when she was the high bidder at The Dog Bowl, an auction benefiting Pasado’s Safe Haven. Thank you, Julie, for your generous bid, which helped Pasado’s care for their many rescued animals.
If it were not for Casey Karp, I would be a bald woman. Casey solves all my computer problems, thereby saving me from tearing my hair out.
My first proofreader for this book was Brett Konen, who gave me numerous helpful suggestions. She’s an astute editor and a terrific granddaughter!
My wonderful pet-sitter, Karrie Kamcheff, enables me to travel without worrying about my furry friends.
Thanks, as always, to Rosanne Lauer and the rest of the talented group at Dutton Children’s Books.
1
Most people who have a life-changing experience survive a terrible injury or disease. My life was transformed by a craving for Twinkies.
When I woke up on the first day of summer vacation, I yearned for something sweet, so I decided to celebrate the end of school by eating Twinkies for breakfast. I knew better than to suggest this to my foster mom, Rita, who is a total health-food freak. Rita thinks the perfect breakfast is raw carrots dipped in unsweetened yogurt. For an extra treat, she sprinkles a little flaxseed on the yogurt. Yum-yum.
I dressed, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. I heard Rita’s shower running, so I left a note on the counter. “Rita: I’m going for a walk. Sunny.”
Since Rita is always urging me to exercise, I knew that going for a walk would be okay with her. She didn’t need to know I was walking to the store to buy Twinkies.
Wouldn’t you think the Nebraska Department of Human Social Services (HSS, known as Hiss) would try to match a kid’s background with the lifestyle of the foster family she’s placed with? In my opinion it is cruel and unusual punishment to put a thirteen-year-old girl who was raised on junk food into a home that serves tofu and cauliflower.
It’s hard enough to adjust to a new school and a different neighborhood, often a new town, every few months. It would be comforting to at least get some Snickers bars once in a while, or a big plate of nachos. Instead, I live with Rita, who thinks if she feeds me enough healthy food I will learn to like it. So far this strategy hasn’t worked.
Rita remains optimistic, though. She also hopes I’ll write about my summer activities because the school gives extra credit to any student who turns in an essay, story, or poem on the first day of school in September. This year’s topic is “What I Did This Summer.” How boring! Eating Twinkies for breakfast will probably be the highlight of my summer, and it would be hard to make an essay out of that.
Two blocks from Rita’s house, I left the sidewalk, cut diagonally across an empty lot, and took the trail. It isn’t an official trail yet, although it will be someday when the county parks department gets enough money to maintain it. For now, it’s a well-worn path that runs parallel to Silver Creek.
I have to watch where I walk because the trail is full of potholes created by the dirt bikes and quads that roar along it while thick curtains of dust drift down behind them. The morning sun warmed my shoulders as I relished the summer that stretched ahead with no homework and no tests. Rita had suggested summer school as a way to improve my grade point average, but she backed down when I threatened to run away again.
I had run away from my last two foster homes, and Rita was determined not to let it happen on her watch. She prided herself on winning over even the most uncooperative foster kids. That’s why she’d agreed to take me.
I’m not a bad girl. I don’t do drugs or shoplift or anything like that, but I don’t do much schoolwork, either. Why bother when I’ll be in a different school by the end of the term anyway? Why participate in sports or try to make friends when I always leave so soon?
As for running away, I don’t r
eally want to leave Rita. I ran away before because Hiss put me in unbearable foster homes. In one, the man of the house believed he was Boss of the World. He had to have complete control of everyone, even his wife. He kept track of how long it took his kids to walk home from school, and punished them if they dawdled or stood on the corner talking with friends. He monitored how much toilet paper we used.
I left after he wouldn’t let me have dinner because I had held the refrigerator door open too long while I looked for the mustard. It turned out I couldn’t find it because the mustard had been used up the last time they had hot dogs, but that didn’t matter. I still had to go to bed hungry. How was I supposed to know they needed a new bottle of mustard?
I sneaked out in the night and started walking. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t care. Any place would be better than staying another day, with the Boss of the World. Hiss found me the next day but when I told the caseworker why I ran away, she said I didn’t have to go back. I think the toilet paper part got to her.
Unfortunately, I went from the Boss of the World to living with She Who Hates Anything Pretty. She-Who didn’t let me wear makeup, even if I had a zit to cover up. She-Who wouldn’t let me curl my hair, which is straight as a shelf.
“If God had wanted you to have curly hair,” she said, “you would have been born with it.”
“Then why did God allow the invention of the curling iron?” I asked. I’ve noticed that people who claim to know what God wants always manage to have His opinion be the same as theirs.
She insisted I wear clothes that were a size too large and clunky, old-lady shoes. Small wonder I didn’t make any new friends at school. I looked like an eighty-year-old weirdo.
After I ran away from She-Who, I was placed with Rita. It is my seventh foster home. Some were okay. The Boss of the World and She Who Hates Anything Pretty were the worst.
The one constant in my life, until now, had been that none of the people I lived with cared what I ate. Junk food was cheap and easy, so if I wanted to fill up on Doritos instead of salad, it was okay with them.
Until Rita.
Actually, if it weren’t for her fetish about healthy food, I’d like Rita. At least she gives me some space and lets me make my own choices about clothes, books, and music. She’s smart and makes me laugh—but she believes the axis of evil is sugar.
As I sidestepped around an especially deep pothole, thinking that maybe I would eat Twinkies for breakfast every day all summer, I almost missed the faded, water-stained bag that lay about three feet off the path. Its mossy green color matched the weeds growing beside the trail. I had already passed the bag when a tiny flash of light reflected from its zipper tab, and I realized I’d seen something that had not grown there.
I often picked up litter when I walked the trail after school. Usually I carried it to the trash or recycling containers outside Manny’s Market.
It irritates me that people will use the trail along the creek, supposedly to enjoy Nature’s beauty, and then, by littering, will pollute the very thing they have come to admire.
Over my weeks of trail walking, I’ve trained my eyes to search out man-made materials, those jarring bits of color that don’t belong near the path. Expecting the usual candy wrapper or soda can, I stepped back to pick up the item that had caught my eye.
It wasn’t litter.
The cloth bag blended into the landscape as if it had been lying there for a long time. I wondered how many times I’d walked past and not seen it.
I brushed off the dirt, pulled open the zipper, and looked inside. The bag held bundles of twenty-dollar bills!
“Whoa,” I said. I looked around, half expecting someone wearing a ski mask to leap out from behind a tree, point a gun at me, and say, “Drop it right there.”
No one leaped.
Sometimes I meet other people on the trail, often walking their dogs, but this morning I was alone. A slight breeze rustled the leaves; a bird called to its mate. I sat on the ground and counted the money: eight hundred and twenty dollars!
My hands shook as I stuffed the cash back inside the bag.
I zipped the bag, then stuck it inside my T-shirt, hoping the bulge wasn’t obvious. I tucked the shirt into my jeans, to be sure the bag didn’t slide out.
All thoughts of a Twinkie vanished as I ran back to Rita’s house.
What should I do?
I knew two things for sure:
1. I had to try to find the bag’s owner.
2. I wasn’t going to tell Rita or my Hiss caseworker or anyone else what I’d found.
If the bag’s owner showed up and could prove it was his money, I’d give it back. But if no one identified the bag, the cash was mine. It would be my secret, my ticket to find Starr.
Despite the warm June morning, goose bumps rose on my arms as I thought of my twin sister. No matter where she was living now, this was enough money to get me there, and give the two of us a fresh start, together.
All I had to do was find her.
2
Back in my room, I pulled the beat-up brown suitcase out from under my bed. It contained everything I wanted to remember about my life, which wasn’t much. The most important item was a photograph of Grandma holding her little dog. I stood on one side of Grandma, and Starr stood on the other. We were three years old, wearing matching white shorts and pink T-shirts. Wispy ponytails on the sides of our heads were held in place by bright pink ribbons. Both of us grinned at the camera.
My dad had vanished before Starr and I were born, and if Mama knew where he was, she never told. Our last name, Skyland, was the same as Grandma’s, and we all lived with her. A few days after the picture was taken, Grandma and Mama died in an auto accident. I don’t know what happened to the dog. Maybe he had been in the car, too.
Starr and I didn’t go to the funeral. Instead we played in the church’s nursery room, supervised by a bored teenager whom we did not know. We were building towers with blocks and knocking them over when the service ended.
Starr and I were taken away in separate cars; I never saw my sister again.
Nobody mentioned Starr to me after that. She had been my constant companion, my playmate, the only person who could understand everything I said because we often spoke what Mama called “twin talk,” a shortcut language that only the two of us knew. Then Starr disappeared, just like Mama and Grandma had disappeared a few days earlier.
I remember looking at the night sky through the car window as I was driven to my new home with my mother’s great-aunt Cora. I wished Starr were sitting beside me, and I wondered where she was. I felt as if half of me was missing.
Even then, Twinkies were my favorite treat. I always nibbled the top off first, then scooped out the cream filling with my tongue. Grandma had often made me giggle by singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to me, changing the lyrics to “Twinkie, Twinkie, little star.”
As I gazed at the sky that night and thought of my sister, I silently sang my own version:
“Twinkie, Twinkie, little Starr. How I wonder where you are.” Of course I was too young to know that my twin’s name was spelled with a double r. All I knew was that the song made sense to me.
Since then I had repeated the ditty every time I saw the first star in the evening sky. It was my mantra; it showed that I remembered my sister even though I didn’t know where she was.
Great-aunt Cora was ten years older than her sister, my grandma, and had an ailing husband. A three-year-old proved to be more than she could cope with, so she talked her son, Jerod, into taking me. Jerod lived alone and had no desire to share his life with a little kid. Most nights I cried myself to sleep, missing Mama, missing Grandma, missing Starr.
Eventually, I ended up as a ward of the state. Jerod had taken me to Nebraska with him, and then left me behind, locked in an empty third-story apartment, when he moved again. By then I was four—only four but already too familiar with loneliness and loss.
When I woke up alone that mor
ning, and saw that all Jerod’s clothes were gone, my first thought had been, Where will I live now? I tried to open the door but the knob wouldn’t turn. I thought I was locked in.
Mama had taught me to call 911 in an emergency. “Don’t call unless someone’s very sick, or there’s a fire, or a burglar,” she had said. I sat on the floor with my back to the locked door. I wasn’t sick; there was no fire or burglar. I waited.
Did anyone know I was in the apartment? I waited for what seemed a long time, but no one came to get me. Even though I wasn’t sick, I decided to call 911, but when I picked up the phone, there was no dial tone. The line had been disconnected.
I was hungry, and the only way to get food was to let someone know I was there. I found a blue towel crumpled on the bathroom floor. I opened the apartment window on the street side, and waved the towel out the window until a woman pushing a baby stroller looked up and noticed me. “I’m hungry!” I called.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m locked in.”
“I’ll get help,” she said, and took a cell phone out of her pocket.
Ten minutes later, two police officers told me how to turn the small lever in the center of the doorknob to unlock the door. When it opened, one officer squatted down so he could talk directly to me. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Sunny Skyland.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She died.”
Those were the only questions I was able to answer. I didn’t know Jerod’s last name, or where he had gone. I didn’t know who my father was. I had no address and no phone number.
Nine years later, sitting in my room at Rita’s house, I still felt hollow inside when I remembered how the police officers took me with them and told me not to worry, that I’d be going to a foster home soon. One of them bought me an ice-cream cone, but her kindness didn’t make me feel less alone.