Her mother, who had started peeling things at the sink, looked back over her shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Dani?” she asked.
Dani shrugged. She couldn’t very well tell her mother that she was feeling a little nervous and jumpy because she was about to run away. But she could talk about the stupid book. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t see how you can waste so much time reading stuff like that instead of doing something to …” She took a deep breath and then went on, “to get us back to Sea Grove.”
Linda sighed. She came back to the table, bringing the carrot she was peeling. Sitting down at the table, she peeled another long strip and then just sat there, staring at Dani. Not an angry stare. Dani wished it were. She could be angry too then, and not feel guilty about it. Finally Linda said, “Like what? Just what do you see me doing that might change things?”
“Well, like … like …,” Dani began, and then stammered to a stop. Her mother was smiling at her in the pitiful way that always drove Dani crazy. “Well, in the first place you might … Well, in the first place we never should have left Sea Grove. That’s what’s in the very first place.” Then she went into her bedroom and threw herself down on the bed.
Chapter 3
THAT MUCH WAS THE truth for sure. If only Linda hadn’t quit her job and given up the lease on their Sea Grove house before she’d even seen Rattler Springs.
The house in Sea Grove. Even after four years Dani could close her eyes and see exactly how it had looked. It hadn’t been very big, that was for sure, and maybe it was a little bit shabby in an artistic sort of way. But it was on a hillside, beside a grove of incredibly tall redwood trees, and from one end of the front porch there was this incredible view of the ocean. And the school where Dani had gone ever since kindergarten was only about a mile away. A school where she liked everybody and nearly everybody liked her, instead of hating her just because she was new and different. And where Heather Brady, her best friend, lived just down the road with her big, friendly family.
Dani had only been eight years old when they’d left for Rattler Springs, but she’d known right away it was a bad idea. Even right at first when everybody thought that Linda had inherited a real ranch, like something out of a Roy Rogers movie. The whole inheritance thing had happened because Chance Gridley, who had been Linda’s husband for a while when Dani was around five or six years old, had always had a dream about being a big-time cattle rancher.
Actually Dani had some pretty good memories of Chance. For one thing she remembered what a good storyteller he’d been. But according to Linda, it turned out that she and Chance didn’t have very much in common, and besides he had this little problem with drinking and gambling. Like going to Reno and gambling away all his money so they had nothing to live on but Linda’s salary. So there was a divorce and Dani’s mother went back to being Linda O’Donnell. And Chance went off to live in Nevada. He must have gone right on gambling because all at once some kind of miracle happened and he won a whole bunch of money. Enough money anyway to buy a lot of land. At least that was what his letters to Linda began to tell about.
It had been a more or less friendly divorce, and every once in a while Chance would write back to Linda and Dani and tell them how much he still loved both of them, and about the huge cattle ranch he owned now. A cattle ranch near what he said was a nice little Western town called Rattler Springs. And every once in a while he’d send Linda a little child support money even though he didn’t have to, because Dani’s real father had died in the war before Chance and Linda had even met. So Linda would write back to thank him and tell him how she and Dani were getting along.
And then one day they’d gotten a letter from a lawyer saying that Chance had died of a heart attack, and that he’d left more than a thousand acres and a big old ranch house to Linda and Dani. And it just so happened that right at that time Linda was in the middle of her Western romances period, reading lots of books by people like Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. Dani remembered that when Linda began to talk about moving she’d made it sound as if the ranch were in a big green valley with all kinds of barns and corrals scattered around, and horses and cattle and handsome cowboys everywhere you happened to look. And then, without even waiting to see the ranch first, she sold their car and bought an old wreck of a truck, packed everything they owned into it, and they took off. And it hadn’t been until they’d gotten to Rattler Springs that they’d found out the awful truth.
The truth about Rattler Springs was that there’d never been much ranching in the area because there just wasn’t enough water or grass. And the truth about the ranch house was that even though it was big and kind of interesting in some ways, it didn’t have electricity or an indoor toilet. And it was about six miles from town, which was a big problem because Linda’s old truck had broken down for good by then, and there wasn’t enough money left to buy even a cheap old car. Nobody could live six miles from Rattler Springs without a car, so they’d only stayed a few days on their so-called ranch. And when Linda had finally given up and decided to sell the ranch and move back to Sea Grove, she’d found that nobody wanted to buy their worthless, dried-out land. Not even if she practically gave it away. So Linda had found a lousy job in town, and they’d rented the so-called Jerky Joe cabin, and they’d been there ever since. Linda kept saying that they’d move back home as soon as she’d saved up a little money, but four years had gone by and she never saved anything. Instead she read and daydreamed and got more and more into debt, and the desert kept right on telling Dani how it had her now and she was never going to get away.
“Only not for much longer.” Dani rolled over onto her stomach and smashed her fist into the pillow. “You hear me? I won’t be here much longer.” She got up then and started rummaging around in her closet looking for the duffel bag she’d had ever since they’d left Sea Grove. When she found it she dusted it off, opened it up and dumped it out on her bed.
There wasn’t much in the bag. Just a few almost forgotten toys. Little-kid stuff she’d insisted on bringing to Rattler Springs and then had almost immediately outgrown. Things like a small, bristly teddy bear, a Raggedy Ann doll and a homemade stuffed toy that kind of resembled a deformed elephant. After emptying out all the junk Dani climbed up and got her hideous pig bank off the high shelf where she always kept it.
The bank had been a present from Stormy. He’d won it at the school fair almost two years before and he’d insisted on giving it to Dani. Sitting back down on the bed, Dani held the bank in both hands and studied it carefully. It was made out of very heavy pottery and it was supposed to look like some kind of wild boar. Its enormous snout was covered with warts, there was a ridge running down its back and big fangs jutted out of its lower lip. Actually it was kind of artistic looking, in a disgusting sort of way. Dani shook it, trying to guess how much money was inside. If there might be, for instance, anywhere near enough for a one-way ticket to the coast of northern California with transfers in Reno and San Francisco.
It was hard to tell. The pig did feel pretty heavy, and she could remember putting quite a lot of money into it, on her birthdays and Christmas and when she earned a little by babysitting or helping out at the bookstore. But she also remembered shaking some out now and then when something urgent came up, like a new inner tube for her bicycle. She kind of hated to break the ugly old bank but she knew from experience that you could only get the small coins out by shaking. This time several minutes of shaking only produced a dime or two and three nickels. Not even a glimpse of the bills or silver dollars that she knew were in there. So after a while she gave up and went out to find a hammer.
When she got back to her room, she put the wild boar bank in the middle of her bed and stood over it, telling herself that it was a hideous thing anyway and she’d always hated it. “Okay, pig, this is it,” she whispered, and closing her eyes, she gave it a hard whack. But when she opened them there it was, still pretty much in one piece except for a broken fr
ont leg. She raised the hammer and was getting ready to try again when she heard her mother calling her to dinner.
Suddenly realizing how hungry she was, she threw the hammer down beside the bank and headed for the kitchen. Dinner that night was quiet and boring. It was boring because the food was mostly boring leftovers, and it was quiet because—well, because Dani didn’t feel much like talking. Linda chattered away as usual, though, about the weather and what was happening to the people in her favorite soap operas, and then about what had happened at the bookstore that day.
The bookstore, or Cooley’s Book Rental, was in a little building next to the Rattlesnake Bar and just across the street from the Grand Hotel. Actually it was a sort of cross between a bookstore and a library without really being either one. Some of the books were for sale and some could be rented for ten cents a day, but they were mostly secondhand and pretty beat-up looking. And old Al Cooley, who owned the store, was as old and worn out as his books. Which was a good thing actually because just about the time Dani and Linda arrived in town, Mr. Cooley decided he needed a helper and Linda got the job. Not much of a job really, but along with the little bit of money the government gave Dani because her father had died in the war, it was enough to keep two people more or less alive. But according to Linda, not nearly enough to move two people and all their belongings back home, where they’d have to rent a house and buy food to live on until Linda found another job.
Dani had just about finished her boring corned beef hash when Linda leaned over and said, “Dani. What is it? You’re a thousand miles away tonight. What’s on your mind?”
Actually, the “thousand miles away” stuff was kind of a jolt. It was almost as if her mother had read her mind. Had guessed that she was planning on being, well, maybe not a thousand miles away but at least a few hundred, very soon now. Dani couldn’t help feeling a little guilty as she said, “On my mind? Nothing much. I’m just … It’s just that I told Stormy I’d read to him tonight, and I don’t want to.”
“Oh?” Linda tried to put the last of the hash on Dani’s plate. “You don’t want to? Why not?”
Dani pushed the spoon away. “Because. Because I’ve got other things to … And just because I hate it. I hate reading.”
“Oh?”
Dani glared. She’d said she hated reading to make Linda angry, and all she’d gotten was that soft, wide-eyed, “Oh?” That, Dani told herself, was what she really hated. The way Linda always made “Oh” into a question.
“Well,” Linda said, “it’s too bad you hate it, because you’re really exceptionally good at it, you know. I was listening to you the other night when you were reading Doctor Dolittle to Stormy and I was fascinated. You were changing your voice just a tiny bit for each of the animals, and you were every bit as good as that woman who reads on the radio. You know, the one who calls herself the Babbling Bookworm?”
Dani got up from the table very carefully and deliberately. She put her dish in the sink and then turned slowly around before she said, “Well, I do hate it. And what I really hate is when people sneak around listening to things they weren’t invited to listen to.” She was still standing there at the sink just waiting for Linda to do the “Oh?” thing, and thinking how she was going to hate that too, when without any warning the kitchen door crashed back against the wall. No sound of footsteps on the back porch, no knock on the door, no warning of any kind. Just bang as the door flew open, and there he was in the middle of the room, clutching his precious book in one hand and a greasy bag of Beer Nuts in the other.
Dani jumped, gulped and then glared. He’d done it again. Snuck up on her, and this time on her mother too. Linda was still clutching the bowl of hash. Her startled gaze turned into a smile. “Well, hello there, Stormy,” she said. “Do come in.”
Chapter 4
“HI.” STORMY’S GRIN ALMOST split his face in two. “You guys finished eating?”
“Just about,” Linda said. With the spoon still poised above the bowl, she turned to Dani. “You’re sure you don’t want the rest of this?”
Dani probably would have said no again, or she might not have, but before she could say anything at all Stormy said, “Hey. That looks good. I’ll eat it.” And then he did. Plopping himself down at the table, he began to eat right out of the serving bowl, shoveling the hash into his mouth at an incredible rate of speed. Over his head Linda caught Dani’s eye and made a face that said something like “poor hungry kid.” Dani shrugged. A person who was about to take off on a long, probably hungry, journey didn’t have any sympathy left over for a kid who, at least, always had plenty of pretzels and Beer Nuts. Turning her back on the disgusting scene at the kitchen table, she headed for her room, but a second later Stormy was right behind her, stepping on her heels as he called back to her mother over his shoulder.
“Bye,” he mumbled over the last mouthful of hash. “We’re going to read now. Thanks for the …?” He swallowed, poked Dani and whispered, “What was it?”
“Hash,” Dani said.
“Oh yeah. Thanks for the hash.”
As she opened the door of her room she could hear her mother telling Stormy that he was quite welcome. But at that moment Dani remembered what she’d left lying right out in plain sight in the middle of the bed. The broken-legged pig bank, and beside it—the hammer.
For a moment Stormy was too busy arranging Dani’s beanbag chair to notice. Dani’s chair, a huge canvas bag full of dry beans, could be shoved and punched into different shapes to fit the rear end of the person who was going to sit on it. Stormy always rearranged it violently before he sat down to listen to Dani read. So while he was still punching and shoving, Dani started to slide the pig bank quietly toward the head of the bed, where it could be hidden under a pillow. She’d almost made it when she heard a voice, a shocked, accusing voice, saying, “Why’d you do that? Why’d you break your bank?”
Trying to sound innocent, Dani said, “Break? Why’d I …” She picked up the pig’s broken leg and put it back where it belonged, but of course it only fell off again. She was about to say that the bank must have fallen off the shelf when Stormy had banged the kitchen door open, when she noticed that Stormy’s accusing gaze had moved to the hammer. He grabbed it up and went on staring, his eyes moving from the hammer to Dani and back again. Even more than usual, his round, flat face looked like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern. Only instead of a grinning jack-o’-lantern it was an openmouthed, owl-eyed one. He gulped once or twice and then his eyes narrowed to a suspicious squint. “You’re going to run away, aren’t you?” he said.
And then it was Dani’s turn to feel shocked, because for a moment it seemed like Stormy had turned into some kind of a weird mind-reading wizard. How else could he know? After all, there were all sorts of things a person could need money for besides running away. He’d watched her shake money out of the bank before. How did he know she wasn’t just going to buy another inner tube?
But then suddenly she remembered something she’d said almost two years before, when Stormy had given her the bank. Something she hadn’t really meant, at least not at the time. But she’d just had an extra-bad day at school, and a quarrel with Linda, and the weather had been even more horrible than usual. So when Stormy insisted on giving her the bank as a bribe to get her to read Tom Sawyer over again, she’d told him it was the ugliest thing she’d ever seen, but she would keep it because it would be a perfect place to keep her running-away fund. It was the perfect place because it was so ugly that every time she looked at it, it would remind her of Rattler Springs, which would make her remember to save running-away money. So she got an ugly pottery pig out of the deal, and Stormy got the chance to hear every word of Tom Sawyer all over again, starting on page one.
The memory of exactly what she promised that day was just beginning to come back when Stormy said, “You said you wouldn’t break it until you were ready to run away.” He was really glaring now, his face tight as a clenched fist. “You said that. Didn’t you?”
The thundercloud face didn’t lighten up. “Were you going to tell me? Were you going to tell me before you did it?”
Dani thought of saying, “No. Why should I tell you?” But instead she sighed and then said, “Yeah. Sure. I’d have told you before I left. Probably I would.”
Stormy shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “No! Not probably. You have to tell me as soon as you start thinking about it because—because I’m going too. When you run away you have to take me with you.”
That was too much. It was all Dani could do to keep from laughing. But she didn’t laugh. She knew Stormy’s quick temper well enough to know that to laugh at him while he was holding a hammer wasn’t a particularly smart thing to do. So she controlled her twitching lips and said, “How could I take you with me?” She pointed at the bank. “There’s probably not even enough money in there for one person’s tickets, leave alone two. And besides, what about your mother? She’d have a fit.”
“What about yours?”
“That’s different.”
“Different? No, it isn’t. What’s different about it?”
Dani didn’t know if she could make Stormy understand but she decided to try. “Well, in the first place, I’m older.”
Runaways Page 2