by Kim Hoover
I looked over at the door handle and in a split second decided to make a run for it. I went hard at the door, pushed it open and dove out. I got up and ran as fast as I could, heading toward a brush-covered entrance to the culvert. One of Mom’s goons came after me. I was lucky. He slipped in the sandy dirt and I sprinted ahead, sliding into the culvert and pulling the brush over the entrance behind me. I stayed still for a while to make sure I’d lost him. I laid flat, perfectly silent. As I resisted the instinct to gag on the dank smell of the storm sewer, I heard him huffing and puffing and swearing. After a while, it was quiet.
I ran through the culvert, tripping over something and falling hard, skinning my hands and elbows. I got back to the neighborhood and Rachel’s window, my heart beating out of my chest.
“What the heck?” she said when she saw me.
I was covered in dirt and leaves and must have looked like some kind of combat soldier. I described what happened through broken breath.
“Thank goodness you got away!”
“For now,” I said.
“You probably shouldn’t stay here. Isn’t this one of the places they would look?”
“You’re right. I can’t go home either. I wish Bev had been more help. I need a solution right now.”
“I wonder if Jane could help,” Rachel said.
I called Grandma and asked her to check on her “niece” again. Within half an hour, Jane called Rachel’s number.
“I’ve already been thinking about this,” Jane said. “I knew you wouldn’t be safe there. I want you to come up here.”
I was confused. “How would we pull that off?”
“I have a credit card. I’ve checked it and it’s still good. My parents haven’t closed it. They probably forgot about it.”
“Hmm. You mean take a bus up there? Or a train?”
“I mean take an airplane,” Jane said.
“Fly?”
“You could fly to Syracuse and I could meet you.”
“I don’t know. Then what?”
“I haven’t really figured everything out. I just know it’s not safe for you to stay there. Give me an hour or so and I’ll call you back.”
While we waited, I cleaned myself up as best I could in Rachel’s room. She brought me a washcloth from the bathroom since her dad was in the house somewhere. We were about the same size, so I borrowed some clothes and a small suitcase. She gave me a baseball cap and some sunglasses and I wore a jacket turned up around my neck.
“That’s good,” Rachel said, nodding approvingly at my disguise.
“I’ve booked you on a flight tomorrow morning,” Jane said when she called back. “It’s too late to get you here tonight, but you have to get to Amarillo so you can take the first flight in the morning. You can take the bus. Just be careful no one sees you. I got you a room at the airport motel. The bus makes a stop there. I used a fake name and paid for it already. The reservation is in the name Samantha Perkins.”
I took a deep breath as I prepared to leave. Then I gave Rachel a hug and jumped down from her window. She dropped the suitcase out, waving me off, wishing me luck. I thought about Mom. I didn’t feel bad. She got what she wanted out of me. Whatever happened next was all on her.
I walked through alleys and side streets on my way to the bus station. I had been there once when Mom and I went to Amarillo with some other moms and daughters to see 2001: A Space Odyssey. I can’t remember why we all took the bus. I guess it was supposed to be fun, but I remember being a little scared on the way home late at night.
Rachel had lent me enough money for the bus and a little extra for snacks and unexpected expenses. Jane said I would have to change planes twice, first in Dallas and then in Chicago. I couldn’t believe I was going to get on a plane by myself! Not just one, but three. The more I thought about it, the more jittery I became and my palms began to sweat so much I almost couldn’t hold onto the suitcase.
I got on the bus, breathing deeply to relax. I wanted a seat by myself, but it was crowded. I ended up next to a fat lady who smelled really bad. She was sweaty and farted a lot too. She was nice, though, and she shared her candy bars with me.
I got off at the motel and checked in without a problem. I stood in the shower for a long time, just enjoying the water washing over me. I still had the culvert dust in my fingernails. It felt good to get clean, and I slept better that night than I had in weeks.
I took the shuttle to the airport terminal right after breakfast and went to the ticket counter to pick up my ticket. They asked if I was okay to fly by myself. I lied and said I did it all the time to visit my aunt in New York. By now, with people all around me excited to be on their way to some distant city, I felt more at ease. I picked up a magazine in the waiting area so I would have something to read.
We got on the plane and I had a seat on the aisle in the back. The flight to Dallas Love Field was a little bumpy, but I thought it was fun. It felt like a roller coaster. The stewardess, a very pretty blonde, kept asking me if I was okay. The bumps didn’t bother me at all. We got there in a little more than an hour. My layover at Love Field was enough time to eat lunch. I spotted McDonald’s and couldn’t believe my luck! We didn’t have one at home. We had to go to Amarillo for that. I didn’t want to spend the money for a Big Mac, so I got a regular hamburger and french fries. Those fries, drenched in ketchup, were the best thing I’d ever put in my mouth.
They called the flight to Chicago and this time my seat was closer to the front and on the window. I sat next to a couple who were going to visit their grandchildren in Chicago. They asked me a lot of questions about myself, so I made up a whole fake life. I told them my name was Samantha and that I was an archer and I was planning to try out for the Olympics in 1976. They were fascinated by that. I said I was going to upstate New York to get fitted for a special bow and arrow that I would use for the tryouts. I was having such a good time being someone else, I almost felt guilty about it.
But on the flight from Chicago to Syracuse, all I could think about was Jane and this whole ridiculous situation. Was this really a good idea, going to New York? What the heck did I think I was doing, anyway? I’m just a no-name kid from Texas. I’m not an Olympic athlete. I began to think this was all a big mistake. I was so deep in thought when the stewardess came by that she had to ask me three times what I wanted to drink.
Jane had told me she was meeting me at the gate. I had no idea how she could leave school. What if she wasn’t there? I got a tight feeling in my chest, almost a panic attack. I worried I would hyperventilate again, but, when I walked off the plane, there she was. She hugged me so hard it hurt.
“I can’t believe you’re here. Was the flight okay? Were you scared?”
“Everything was fine,” I said. “I wasn’t scared once we got going. The stewardesses are all nice.” She picked up my suitcase and headed for the exit. I felt dizzy. “Where are we going? How did you get away from school?”
She took my hand. “Everything’s fine. You’re here with me now,” she said, steadying me with her gaze.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Don’t worry about my school. It’s not like a prison. I finished my classes, so I just took a cab here. As long as I’m there for dinner, no one will even notice.”
“And what about me? You can’t just parade me around.”
“I know. I can hide you in my room for one night. My roommate is okay with it. But tomorrow we’re going to have to do something different. And I have a lead on something, so don’t worry.”
The unfamiliar surroundings weighed on me and I felt my confidence draining away. The accents were so different from mine, and the people seemed hurried. They were loud and a little rude, so I stayed close to Jane as we made our way through the crowd to the taxi line.
“Now what’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing, I…it’s just I’m…I don’t know, having second thoughts, I guess.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and made me look her
in the eye. “This was right. Remember the last thing that happened to you in Texas? You were kidnapped. It’s a miracle you got away.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I just don’t know where we’re going with this.”
“I want you to be safe. And I think you’re safer here with me than you are there.”
“I understand, but my dad is probably going crazy wondering what happened to me. It’s not like me to disappear like that.”
“We can get a message to him. Rachel can let him know you’re okay.”
“I guess so, but he’s not going to give up trying to find out where I am.”
“Maybe you should tell him what you know about your mom, so he can understand how dangerous it would be for you to be there.”
“No. I don’t want him to know this latest crazy plan she’s got with Hank. He might try to stop her, which would just end badly for him.”
She put her arm around me. “You’re putting a good face on this, but I know it’s getting to you. It has to be.”
I fought back tears. I didn’t want to cry. Not over my mother. Not ever again. “As much as I hate her right now, I would still save her if I could. They’re walking into the trap I helped to set. I wish I could warn her. Tell her to get out before it’s too late.”
“Okay. Well, maybe that’s what we should do then.”
I caught my breath. “What? How?”
“I’m not sure. We need to think. Brainstorm some ideas. Let’s get back to my room and work through this. There has to be a way.”
We got in a cab. I had never been out of the Southwest before, and I was surprised by how green it was. And the mountains, as they called them, were so small. The more I took it all in, the better I felt. The air was different here, wetter. I was sweating a little, even though the driver had the windows down and the breeze blew my hair back. We held hands. Soon we were approaching the school on the long drive up to the entry.
“Pull around there to the back of the building,” Jane said to the driver.
He followed her directions and we got out of the cab without anyone seeing us. We were behind Jane’s dorm building, and we arrived at her room without passing too many other students and no adults.
Her room was very small—even smaller than my office room at my dad’s. The beds looked like bunks, but the bottom was a couch, not a bed. Her roommate had decorated her side all in pink—pink sheets, pink pillows, pink stuffed animals, a pink clock, even the posters she had hanging on her wall had pink borders.
“We call her Pinkie,” Jane said.
I laughed. Jane’s side of the room was mostly lavender and yellow and she didn’t have anything on the walls.
“I don’t want to get too comfortable,” she said. “With any luck I won’t be here next semester.” We sat cross-legged on her couch, facing each other.
“Here’s what I started thinking about,” she said. “Isn’t Rachel’s mom friends with your mom?”
“Frankie? Yes, they’ve been friends as long as me and Rachel.”
“Do you think Joyce might still be in touch with her?”
“Hmmm. I don’t know.”
“She must still have some connection to her old life. I think it’s worth a shot. We should ask Rachel to pay close attention to her mom’s conversations. If they’re still in touch, Rachel might overhear Frankie talking to Joyce and get a clue as to how we can get in touch with her.”
“Okay. Can we call from here?”
“No. We can’t have a private conversation here. And I’m only allowed a few minutes of long distance a day. But I have an idea.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“We can’t stay here more than one night,” she said. “It’s too hard to hide you. So…” She reached over and pulled a road atlas down from her bookshelf. She opened it up to New York. “Here’s where we are and here’s where I know of a place we can stay. We can use it as our base of operations.” She pointed to Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains.
“Base of operations?”
“Yes. We have a mission to finish.”
I shook my head and hugged her. “You are amazing. But what is this place? And how do you explain being away from school?”
“The school part is easy enough because the teachers have training for a few days and we don’t have class. As for the Adirondacks, one of the girls here has a family camp there. They call it camp. It’s a house. She said we could stay there. There’s no one there now, but they haven’t closed it for the season yet. They have a key hidden under a rock somewhere.”
“How do we get there?”
“That’s the tricky part,” Jane said. “We have to hitchhike.” I must have looked like I saw a ghost because Jane grabbed my hands and smiled really big. “Relax, we can do this.”
I had a sensation of weightlessness, like stepping into the air and being suspended for a second before you know you’re going to fall and shatter into a thousand pieces. “Are you sure?”
“I know this is scary,” Jane said. “But we have to stay on the move. My parents are going to figure out I used that credit card. Your dad is going to be hounding the authorities to find you. If we’re going to warn Joyce, we have to do this.”
“I guess you’re right. We’ve come this far. We have to keep going.”
Jane brought me dinner from the cafeteria that night. It was mystery meat with mashed potatoes and broccoli. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I forced myself to eat. I figured I would need the energy. I slept on the couch with a sheet and pillow.
We got up before sunrise and before any of the grounds crew arrived at the school. We cut through the woods to the highway. The grass was wet with dew and the air was so cold we could see our breath. We had packed a few clothes into a backpack and had another one filled with snacks and some water. We carried a poster board that said Lake Placid. By the time we got to the road, the sun was coming up and there wasn’t much traffic.
“How do we know we won’t get picked up by an ax murderer?” I asked.
“We don’t,” Jane said. “But I’ve looked into it. Lots of people hitchhike around here and there’s almost never any problem.”
“Almost.”
“Compared to what you’ve been up to lately, this is a piece of cake.”
We didn’t have any options anyway. It was too far to take a cab and there weren’t any buses that would get us there. We held up the sign and stuck out our thumbs every time someone came by. We walked for almost an hour before someone slowed down. It was a girl, not much older than us, driving a pickup truck. She told us to get in.
Her name was Jewell and she worked in Oneida. She said she could take us that far and could drop us at a good spot to get another ride.
“You guys aren’t from around here, huh?” she said, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “I been here all my life. Ain’t never been nowhere. Steve, he talks about moving to New York City, but he’s full a shit. He don’t know anything about the City. He works in the factory, just like everybody else around here. He pissed me off last night. Come home drunk, all mean and nasty, just about dropped the baby when he picked her up. She’s only a year old. She’s started to walk. She’s a doll. Looks just like him. She stays with my mom while I’m at work. We live with her. Steve says he’s gonna get us an apartment, but he’s full a shit about that too. He don’t save a dime. What he don’t drink away, he gambles away. I’m gonna throw him out. I just have to get the last hundred bucks he owes me. I make him pay me back ten bucks a week. If I can stand it that long.”
Jane and I never said a word the whole ride. She dropped us on the highway near a truck stop and said we should be careful who we got in with. “There’s some lady truck drivers come through here. You girls should get with one a them if you can,” she said. “Watch yourselves.”
We used the restroom in the truck stop and looked around to see if we could find any female drivers. We didn’t see any.
“Let’s walk around the parking lot,
” I said. “Maybe we’ll see somebody out there.”
“What are you girls up to?”
It was a security guard. He was tall and skinny with leathery and sunburned skin that made it seem like he lived outside.
“Oh, nothing really,” Jane said. “Just stretching our legs.”
“Move along. You got no business among these trucks.”
We headed back out toward the highway. When we got to the edge of the lot, we saw a woman climbing up into a rig. I waved to her.
“You girls looking for a ride?”
“We’re headed to Lake Placid,” I said. “Are you going that way?”
“So happens,” she said. “Get in.”
It was a fancy rig. It even had a sleeping area with two bunks behind the seats. It smelled new. We were so high up in that cab! I sat in the middle between her and Jane. There were so many gauges and meters on the dashboard that it looked like a science lab. And there were outlets to plug in whatever you wanted to bring along. You could live in it if you wanted.
“Man, that is cool,” I said.
“Sounds like you might want to learn how to operate one of these rigs,” Darlene said.
“I never thought about it before. How do you learn it?”
“There’s trucker’s school. It’s tough. You have to be strong. And you have to be on your toes. There’s all kinds of dangers out here on the road.”
Jane had fallen asleep on my shoulder.
“What’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened?”
She didn’t even take a second to think about that one. “I had a runaway once. I was driving east into Denver over Loveland Pass. It was March. A snowstorm came up out of nowhere, like it does out there. The wind hit me from the back and the trailer started to fishtail. I was new, and I hadn’t been through something like that before. The rig got ahead of me and I had to pull off onto a runaway ramp. Scared the beejeezus out of me.”
I got the shivers. “Wow. I’ve seen those ramps. I always wondered if trucks really run up on them.”
“Oh, yeah, they do. And sometimes they miss.”
Darlene was pulling a grocery delivery for Lake Placid, so she got us all the way into town. We jumped out at the store where she stopped, but we still had to get to the house, which was out on the lake.