“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.”
Chapter 27
IT 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.
The light was dim in the tunnel and it got dimmer as they moved forward. At least Stormy moved forward. Dani’s feet seemed out of control, refusing to budge, while her ears worked overtime, listening frantically for any sound that might be the beginning of a rattle or slither. By the time they’d reached the other side Stormy was definitely leading the way. His voice seemed stronger too, although he was still talking through almost motionless lips. “I guess the rocks chased them out,” he said. “Or else it was time for them to go hunting.” He looked up at the sky. “See,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
He was right and, with the tunnel out of the way, Dani could concentrate on their next big problem. The time. One advantage of not being able to afford a wristwatch was that you developed a feeling for the time of day. And at the moment it felt late, like maybe six o’clock or even later. If the bus happened to be on time for once, it might already have come and gone. But there was nothing to do but push on and hope that it would be late, as usual.
The rest of their route led westward through the gully until they were well past the Sagebrush Motor Lodge and the outskirts of Rattler Springs. It was then that they climbed out of the ditch and headed back toward town. They had to pass through Old Town first, where what used to be a residential area was now a shamble of tumbledown buildings that hadn’t been occupied since the silver mine closed. Just beyond the last crumbling, roofless cabin they came to the straggle of broken fencing that marked the western edge of Gus’s property. And the beginning of Gus’s junkyard.
Dani had always despised junkyards as the ugliest and most depressing places on earth, but now she found herself appreciating all the huge, rusty carcasses of long-dead cars and trucks, and even wishing there were a few more of them. A few more enormous hulks for her and Stormy to shelter behind as they moved slowly toward town and the bus stop. The sun was low now in the west and the air seemed a little cooler, but Dani was beginning to feel exhausted, and terribly hungry. She knew it must be very late, certainly way past dinnertime. And Stormy was wobbling again.
As Dani turned to watch him he stopped to lean carefully against an old station wagon, and again, a minute later, on the radiator of a truck. “What is it?” Dani asked him. “Are you all right?”
“I—don’t—know,” he whispered. “I feel funny.”
He staggered then and Dani grabbed him as he sank to the ground. Propping him up against the truck’s front wheel,
she opened the duffel bag and got out the last Thermos. It wasn’t until she had poured water over his head and face and managed to dribble a little between his lips that his eyes opened. “What happened?” he asked. “Was I asleep?”
“I think you fainted,” Dani said. “Did you? Do you think you fainted?”
“I don’t know,” Stormy said. “Maybe.” His eyes, even the poor swollen one, rolled thoughtfully before he said, “I think I’m hungry.”
Dani grinned and said, “I know. So am I.” And Stormy must be famished. There had been the food poisoning and then, before he’d fully recovered, the swollen lips problem. Pawing through the stuff in the duffel bag, she said ruefully, “All I have is some squashed peanut butter sandwiches.”
Stormy nodded stiffly and said, “Squashed is okay.”
A few minutes later Dani left Stormy propped up against the wheel of a truck, eating peanut butter sandwiches by pulling off tiny pieces and pushing them carefully between his swollen lips. Dani hurried off to look for Pixie. For Pixie—and the Thursday bus to Reno.
She had almost reached the garage where Gus repaired cars, and dangled people he didn’t like over his grease pit, when, out of nowhere, an angry voice called her name. Dani jumped, stumbled and almost fell as she looked frantically in every direction.
“Where have you been? You’re late,” the voice went on. And then there she was. Pixie Smithson was sitting on the backseat of a wheel-less, windowless sedan. Sitting there comfortably, looking cool and collected in her stylish safari shorts—and eating a huge hamburger sandwich.
“Pixie,” Dani said. “I know we’re late. But we couldn’t hurry. Stormy’s been too sick. Has the bus gone? Have we missed the bus?”
“Here. Hold this.” Handing Dani the hamburger, Pixie started to crawl out through a window. “No, we haven’t missed it,” she said as she came out legs first and slithered down to the ground. “The bus is late. I bought the tickets and I’ve been going back to the post office every few minutes to ask about it. At least I was until Mrs. Arlen went home. Mrs. Arlen said the bus’s radiator must be boiling again. Anyway, it hasn’t come yet.” She looked at her wristwatch. “Every ten minutes I go out to the parking lot to see—” She shrugged. “But so far, no bus.”
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