by Darlene Ryan
I followed him out. “That was good,” he said as we headed for the car.
“I figured if he thought I didn’t have a brain of my own, it might be a good thing,” I said. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I suddenly had the urge to punch something. Or someone.
“I’m sorry,” Q said.
I stopped walking. “What are you sorry for?”
“We should just tell that jerk to go shove it.” He made a fist with one hand and smacked his other palm with it.
“Yeah, and she and the kids’ll pay for it,” I said. “You’re right. Nobody is going to listen to us. A couple of runaways against a husband and father.” I remembered how my mother’s face got closed when I told her that Evan had hit me. No, no, he was a good Christian. He wouldn’t have done something like that. I was lying. I was making it up.
“Anyway, we get Dylan for the afternoon,” I said. “That’s good, right?”
Q looked at me and smiled. “Yes, it is,” he said.
He looked ahead to where the car was and then back at me. “I’ll race you,” he said. “One, two…”
I didn’t wait for three. I was off like a shot, tearing down the sidewalk. Q came flying up behind me, passing me easily. He leaned against the car to catch his breath.
“No fair,” I gasped. “Your legs are longer than mine. They’re mutant legs, alien legs.”
“Hey, you cheated,” he said, pulling a hand through his hair. “You’re supposed to wait until I say three.”
I reached for the door handle on my side. “You didn’t say that.”
“It’s understood.”
“Not by me.”
His fixed his dark eyes on my face. “Cheater.”
“Alien legs.”
We glared at each other, and then we both started laughing at the same time. And suddenly I felt good. The sun was shining, and at least for this afternoon, I’d know Dylan was okay.
It was more like forty-five minutes before Michael showed up with Dylan in tow. We’d pulled the Honda back into the same parking spot between the RV and the van. I was starting to get crazy, thinking maybe Michael wasn’t going to show after all. He came down the line of trailers with Dylan behind him. He didn’t hold the kid’s hand. He didn’t even look back once to see if he was there. Dylan had a plastic grocery bag in one hand. He stood quietly behind his father. “I figure we’ll be two, three hours at the most,” Michael said.
“Sure,” Q said. He inclined his head in my direction. “They’ll be fine.”
“Great,” Michael said. He looked down at Dylan. “Hey, you be good.”
Dylan nodded his head slowly. “I will,” he said.
“Okay, see ya,” Michael said, and he was gone.
I smiled at Dylan. “What’s in the bag?” I asked.
He looked down at the Superstore bag. “That’s Fred,” he said. “He doesn’t like always having to stay in the van and be quiet.”
“Me neither,” Q said behind me. “I like making noise.” He started dancing from one foot to the other, waving his arms above his head and singing, “Oooh laa, rah, rah, rah!”
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s the bird dance,” Q said.
I made a face at Dylan. “We can do a better bird dance than that, can’t we?”
I twisted at the waist, tucked my hands in my armpits, and flapped my elbows like wings. I must have looked like a total spazoid, but it was worth it to see Dylan begin to smile and start his own arm-flapping dance.
Q stopped first and dropped, panting, into a squat. I sagged against the front fender of the car. Dylan hopped around for about a minute longer. Then he stopped and looked up at me. I leaned forward. “What is it?” I asked.
“Fred has to pee,” he whispered.
It was after twelve, so the mall was open. “Let’s take him in to the bathroom,” I said, offering my hand.
Dylan wouldn’t take it. “Fred doesn’t like to pee in the girls’ room,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder at Q.
“Of course he doesn’t,” Q said. “We’re men. We don’t pee with girls. We pee with guys.” He got to his feet. “C’mon. We’ll take Fred to the men’s room.”
Dylan put his hand in mine then, and we walked across the parking lot to the mall washroom. I looked down the row of campers. The old blue van was gone.
Fred turned out to be a small brown teddy bear in a red jacket. Q took Dylan and the bear into the men’s room, and I made a quick dash to the women’s washroom. Just like I never turned down food, I never missed a chance to pee.
“I washed my hands,” Dylan said when he came out.
“Me too,” Q said, holding out both of his hands, palms up.
“Good job,” I said. We headed for the door. “What do you want to do?” I asked Dylan.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I looked back at Q, who was behind us. “Could we go to the park?” I whispered.
He nodded.
“Wanna go to the park?” I said to Dylan.
“I don’t have to stay in your car?” Dylan asked.
“No,” I said. “We can swing. We can climb the monkey bars.”
“Fred likes the swings,” he said.
I leaned down toward the grocery bag. “Hey, Fred,” I stage-whispered. “Wanna go to the park?” Then I frowned and tipped my head to one side. “What was that?” I asked. I waited, and then I smiled at Dylan. “He said yes.”
We drove down to the park that was halfway between Pax House and the Community Kitchen. I pushed Dylan and Fred the bear on the swings until my shoulders ached.
“Higher, Maddie,” Dylan urged. “Higher!” A faint whisper of memory, of me, swings and my dad floated through my mind. I felt that ache of missing him I sometimes got. I knew it wasn’t really missing him; it was missing the idea of him, because you can’t miss what you can’t remember very well.
It took some time, but we even got Fred to try the slide. He was way too scared to go down by himself, so Fred sat on Dylan’s lap and Dylan sat on my lap. Then Fred decided to give the monkey bars a go. That was Q’s department.
He helped the small brown bear climb up and sit on a rung about two thirds of the way from the top. Then Dylan decided he had to try it.
I stood by the bars, which were shaped sort of like a red metal igloo and watched Dylan climb while I bit the inside of my cheek. I was way more scared of the monkey bars than Fred the bear was, but I didn’t want Dylan or Q to know that.
When Dylan, Fred and Q were back on the ground, Q said it was time to head back up the hill. Dylan didn’t argue. He tucked the bear back into the plastic bag and took my hand.
It was quarter to four, and there was no sign of the blue van. We parked at the top end of the row, next to a dark-brown RV that was as big as a bus. We walked down the row of travel trailers and back up again. Nothing. I looked at Q over the top of Dylan’s blond head.
“They could have gotten held up,” Q said softly. “And he’s the type to take advantage. It’s okay.”
We took Dylan in for another pee. I had a granola bar in my backpack, and I gave him half.
“We’ll go down the mall,” I told Q.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go back to the car and watch for them.”
I walked Dylan down the mall. We stopped at every kiddie ride so he could get on. I didn’t have any money to make them shake or bounce up and down, but Dylan didn’t care. He made vroom-vroom sounds in the red race car and said giddyup to the purple horse. He was too busy making all the sticks and buttons move in the black helicopter to do any sound effects. When he got on the giraffe, Fred insisted that I ride the elephant. I kind of felt like a dork, especially when a couple of girls about my age walked by and laughed. Then I reminded myself they could have been laughing about my clothes or my hair or maybe not even about me at all.
Q was sitting on the hood of the car when we came out of the mall. He shook his head slightly as we walked over to hi
m. “Is my mom here?” Dylan asked.
“Not yet,” Q said. “She’s probably still at the doctor.”
I squatted down to his level. “Are you tired?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, but Fred is.”
“So how about Fred gets in the backseat and has a nap, and you keep him company?”
“Okay,” Dylan said. “Fred still takes naps because he’s younger than me. I don’t take naps because I’m a big boy.”
I settled him in the backseat with one of my blankets and then went to sit next to Q. “Where are they?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said, pushing his sunglasses up on his head. “I’ve been around this end of the lot three times.”
“They are coming back for him, aren’t they?”
Q blew out a breath and tilted his head to one side to look at me.
“Aren’t they?” I repeated.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
I looked over my shoulder, through the windshield. Dylan was asleep, his head against the back of the car seat, hugging the bag with the teddy bear inside to his chest.
I pressed a hand to my own chest and closed my eyes for a few moments. When I opened them, Q was watching me. “What do we do?” I asked.
“They’ll probably be back,” Q said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“What if they’re not?”
He shook his head. “Don’t go there for now,” he said.
seven
They didn’t come at five o’clock. At five thirty, I gave Q some of my money for supper. When he came back, I woke up Dylan and sat with him while he ate chicken nuggets and yogurt.
“Maddie, where’s my mom?” he asked. “Is she still at the doctor?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes doctors can be real slow.”
Q was sitting in the front seat. He pointed to the parking lot and got out. I wiped a blob of yogurt from Dylan’s chin. “Share with Fred,” I told him.
“Where are you going?” he asked, one hand reaching for me.
“I’m just going to talk to Q,” I said. “You can see me through the window. I promise.” I got out and then turned around and waved at Dylan. “He’s scared,” I said to Q. I folded my arms across my chest. “What do we do? Do we go to the police?”
Q shook his head. “No.” He zipped his jacket. “I’m going to go down to the hospital. It’s possible the other two are really sick and they’re still there.”
“We’ll come with you?”
“No. I don’t want to scare the kid.”
I looked back at Dylan again and made myself smile at him through the side window. “Take the car, then,” I told Q. “We’ll be okay here for a while, or I can take him over to Tim’s.”
“He’s better where he is,” Q said. “It’s not that far, and maybe I can even hitch.”
I sighed. “All right, but be careful. Don’t get in with any weirdos.”
He leaned over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ll be as fast as I can,” he said. He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out the keys to the car. “Here,” he said. “In case you have to take him to the bathroom or something. Lock the car.”
“I will,” I said, tucking the key ring in the pocket of my jeans. I watched him head out, cutting rapidly across the lot. I felt for the shard of glass in my jacket pocket. It wasn’t a knife, but it would do. Then I got back in with Dylan.
“Where is Q going?” he asked.
“He’s going to see if he can find your mom and dad,” I said.
“Maybe they got lost.”
“Maybe they did.”
I ate the last couple of chicken nuggets and finished his milk. Then I wiped his face with a paper napkin, and we walked the trash over to one of the garbage cans next to a cart corral.
“What do you want to do, kiddo?” I asked.
“Sometimes my mom sings us songs,” he said.
“I’m not a very good singer.”
His face fell.
“How about ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat’?”
He frowned. “That’s not a song. It’s ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ ”
“It is too a song,” I said. Then I sang softly, “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you’re at! Up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you’re at!”
He laughed. “Maddie, that’s silly. You made it up.”
I shook my head. “No I didn’t. It’s from a book called Alice in Wonderland.”
He leaned against me. “What’s the book about?”
I put my arm around him. “It’s about a girl named Alice and all the things that happen to her.”
“Are there any trains in the book?” he asked. “I like books about trains.”
“I don’t think there are any trains in Alice in Wonderland,” I said. “There’s a cat, and a rabbit.”
He yawned. “I wish I could have a cat,” he said. “But my mom said it wouldn’t be fair to make it stay in our van all the time.”
He snuggled in next to me. “I think your mom’s right,” I said. I leaned left a little to see if there was any sign of Q, but I didn’t see him.
“Maddie, am I going to have a sleepover with you?” Dylan asked. He reached for the grocery bag with his bear and pulled it closer.
“Maybe,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” he said.
It felt as though cold fingers were crawling their way up my back. “What do you mean, Dylan?” I asked.
He laughed. “I wouldn’t have my pajamas and toothbrush if we weren’t going to have a sleepover.”
I looked down at the bag he was still hanging on to. They weren’t coming back for him. Not tonight, for sure. Maybe not ever.
“You know what?” I said. “We need to go brush your teeth and pee before bed.” I was surprised at how normal my voice sounded.
“Can we wait for Q?” he asked. “I don’t want to pee in the girls’ room.”
“Sorry, kiddo,” I said. “You have to use the girls’ bathroom this time.”
He made a face at me.
“And it’s all pinky and lacy in there.”
“Is not!” he said hotly.
I forced a big smile that my face didn’t feel like making. “Oh yes it is,” I said. “You’ll see.”
I helped Dylan do up his jacket, got my backpack and made sure he was still holding on to the plastic bag. It was going to have to be Tim’s. The mall was dark and locked. “Tell you what,” I said. “You walk for part of the way, and I’ll carry you some.”
I swung my backpack onto my shoulder just as the side door to the RV beside us opened. “I’m sorry,” the woman coming out and I said at the same time. I took a step back so she could step down.
She noticed Dylan and smiled at him. She was the gray-haired grandmotherly type.
He held up his bag. “We’re going to brush my teeth.”
“Good for you,” she said.
Dylan scrunched up his nose. “Maddie says I have to go in the girls’ bathroom. I don’t like the girls’ bathroom. She says it’s pink, but I think she made that part up.”
I felt my face getting red. I held out my hand to Dylan. “C’mon,” I said. “We’d better go.”
The gray-haired woman gestured at her trailer. “Would you like to use my bathroom?” she asked.
“Is it pink?” Dylan asked.
“Dylan!” I shook my head at him.
“No, it’s not pink,” she said to Dylan. “It’s white and blue.” She looked at me.
“We couldn’t,” I said.
Dylan pulled on my arm. “Yes, we can, Maddie. I bet she has a toilet and everything.”
The woman couldn’t hide her grin. “I have a toilet, and a sink and a bathtub.”
“Could I have a bath?” he asked.
We both spoke at the same time again, only I said no and she said yes.
She held up her
hand before I could say anything else. “I’m here all by myself. My husband is off talking about his glory days with his college buddies. There’s hot water, and it’s not a bother.”
Dylan started bouncing up and down. “Please, Maddie, please,” he begged.
“Please, Maddie,” the woman said with a smile.
All I could think was that it would be so much easier than dragging ourselves all the way over to Tim’s.
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said.
Dylan cheered, let go of my hand and started for the side door of the RV. The gray-haired woman offered me her hand. “I’m Anna.”
“I’m Maddie,” I said. “That’s Dylan.”
The RV was nicer than a lot of houses I’d seen. Anna showed us the bathroom. It was bigger than I expected. I helped Dylan with his teeth and then filled the tub for him. Anna had given him a tiny red boat and a rubber duck, along with two fluffy yellow towels. I washed his hair and told him he had a couple of minutes to play.
Anna offered me a mug as I stepped out of the bathroom. “Hot chocolate,” she said.
There were little marshmallows on top. “Thank you,” I said. I took a sip. It was hot and chocolaty, made with real milk. I looked through the windshield to see if I could see Q.
“Your brother isn’t back yet,” Anna said.
She thought Q was my brother. Maybe that was a good thing.
I glanced back over my shoulder. We could hear Dylan splashing in the tub. “I’ll clean everything up,” I said. “And I’ll wash those towels for you.”
Anna waved my words away. “Two towels,” she said. “That’s nothing. I’ll toss them in the washer in the morning.”
“You have a washer?” I said.
She nodded. “You can do a load in the morning if you’d like.”
If I’d like. Yes, I would like. But I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to get too friendly.
I glanced at the bathroom again.
“He’s okay,” Anna said. “Let him play.”
“Thank you for letting us use your bathroom,” I said, taking another long sip of the hot chocolate. “And for this.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful that you all stayed together. Do you mind my asking what happened to your parents?”