Survival Strategies of the Almost Brave

by Jen White

  The first thing we did, once we got on the road, was I called Julie, both of her numbers. Her cell phone still made a weird beeping noise, but I left a message on her home phone telling her to call us at Tattoo Guy’s number.

  After that, Tattoo Guy called a doctor. The doctor lived sort of close to the rat house. And now the doctor was expecting us, and Tattoo Guy had to drop off his truck load before the next day, so we had to hurry, but he said what was wrong with stopping real quick to get something to eat? So hungry Billie had won—with rat spit coursing through her veins, and it seemed to make her especially cranky.

  Right now, Billie smiled at him, but not the golden one. Her drink was as big as her head, and I did not see how she was ever going to eat the double cheeseburger she’d ordered.

  “That’s too much,” I said. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  She took a huge bite. Sauce dripped down the side of her mouth and rolled under her chin. “Nuh-uh.”

  “Thatta girl,” said Tattoo Guy, patting her on the back. “I like a kid who can eat.”

  Eat. Consume. Wolf. Gobble.

  I was pretty certain it was Billie’s burger that taunted my hypothalamus—the part of the brain that controls hunger. Every animal has one. Once, I saw on TV that if you could trick the hypothalamus into believing you were full, then your stomach thought it was true.

  But my hypothalamus wouldn’t listen to me; it was much too smart to be tricked.

  Tattoo Guy shoved a handful of fries into his mouth and swallowed. His Adam’s apple bounced, like a wattle on a turkey’s neck.

  “You sure you don’t want anything?”

  I shook my head, even though an angry knot formed in my stomach. Plus, my head was killing me.

  Shut up, hypothalamus!

  I tried to reason with it, reminding it that I had actually eaten this morning. A little. I guess I had been so worried about calling Julie and about getting away from the Spoon Guy that I hadn’t really eaten very much.

  Tattoo Guy took another gulp from his soda cup. “Well, I have some extras in case you change your mind.”

  “Here,” said Billie, placing an extra hamburger in front of me. “Eat it.”

  I clasped my hands under the table and tried not to look at the burger. I shook my head. “I’m not hungry. I don’t need anyone to buy me food.”

  “Yes, you do. You lost our money.”

  Tattoo Guy ignored us, completely engrossed in his fries. His lips smacked with each new bite of greasy potato perfection.

  “I didn’t lose it. I know right where it is.”

  Billie shrugged. “Well, it’s still lost even if you know where you lost it.”

  Smack. Chew. Crack. Slosh.

  Survival was such hard work. Even with my head throbbing, all I wanted to do was eat. So I swallowed my pride and picked up the hamburger Tattoo Guy had bought for me and stared at it.

  Billie said, “Eat it.”

  Tattoo Guy had already finished his food and balled up his wrappers. He looked at his watch. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  He stood and walked to the front seat and then tossed the empty bags out the window.

  “Shouldn’t you throw those in the garbage?” asked Billie.

  Tattoo Guy sighed and opened his door to retrieve the bags. “If I’m not careful, you girls are going to make a saint out of me.”

  Only then, with nobody looking, could I take the first bite.

  It was probably the best hamburger I had ever had in my entire life. It felt good to be a carnivore. All the blood in my body rushed to my stomach, and for a second I didn’t have to think about Dad or if Julie would ever pick up her phone. I just thought about how it felt to eat. And how nice it was that my stomach had something to do other than complain that it was empty.

  Tattoo Guy got behind the wheel and turned the engine on. “Let’s roll, ladies. I’m on a deadline. I don’t got all day.” But he said it with a wink and a smile. Sometimes a smile makes all the difference.

  Survival Strategy #43:

  TRUST YOUR HEART

  “Are you awake?” asked Billie, smiling. Her face was too close to mine, and her breath smelled like Froot Loops.

  For a second I couldn’t remember where I was. Then I did. We were at the hospital. And maybe it was morning.

  I nodded, my arm tangled in wires from the IV. The nurse had put it in my vein last night. My head was bandaged, and I was cocooned in a clean whiteness that smelled like summer at the beach. I tried to sit up, but my head hurt like I had been dragged across the desert floor by a coyote. Except coyotes didn’t usually drag people.

  I lay back down.

  Billie leaned over me. She held up her finger, which was wrapped in white gauze. “Stitches,” she said, still standing too close. “I got four stitches and I didn’t even cry.”

  I pushed her back so I could see her better. “That’s brave,” I said, trying to focus on her face.

  She shrugged. “I know.” She picked at the gauze around her finger. “I had to get a shot in my finger and one in my arm, but it didn’t hurt that bad.”

  I tried to sit up again. For a second I was dizzy, but then it went away. I squinted at Billie, framed by the bright sun streaming through the window, like a deep sea jellyfish glowing in the ocean deep.

  “Are you all better now?” she asked. “We’re at the doctor’s house.”

  “I know.”

  Last night, Tattoo Guy brought us to “the hospital,” but it looked just like a house on the outside. He said that’s what a hospital looked like out here, where hardly anybody lived.

  Now a nurse came in, not the one from last night. Her curly hair was piled on top of her head, and she had a clipboard in her hand. “You’re awake,” she said. A smile stretched across her face, creating small lines as delicate as a spiderweb. She pulled a chair up to my bed, grabbed my wrist, and fiddled with the needle under my skin. “How are you feeling?”

  I pulled my arm away. “Fine.”

  The room was all white, except for a framed picture of the desert on the wall. The bed I was in was gray metal, and the other bed was white. I was hooked up to a machine that beeped, and my IV arm felt stiff.

  “What time is it?” I asked. I couldn’t wear my watch with the IV in my arm.

  She pulled the clipboard closer to her chest. “Well, let’s see. I’d say it’s about seven thirty. I’m Doris, Dr. Martinez’s nurse.” Her teeth were whiter than any other teeth I had ever seen, like perfect little seashells scrubbed clean by a million grains of sand. “Do you have a headache?” she asked, peering at me.

  I hesitated.

  “It shouldn’t be hurting as much as before. The doctor gave you a pretty good painkiller.” She took my temperature.

  “You hurt your head.” Billie clutched my hand and leaned in close so Doris couldn’t hear. “Are you really okay?”

  The thermometer beeped. Doris wrote something down and then said, “Are you hungry?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, you need to eat. Let me see if I can wrangle up some breakfast. I’ll be right back.”

  I held Billie’s hand and finally answered her question. “I am. I’m fine, Billie. You don’t have to worry.”

  But her face said that she didn’t believe me. I understood that worry. Plus, it made me nervous to be around Nurse Doris. Who was in charge of us? Now people could make us do stuff because all they saw were two stupid kids. They didn’t know how far we had come. They didn’t know what we had been through.

  I squeezed her fingers harder. “I promise I’m okay.” Her flyaway hair was wet and combed back from her forehead. She smelled like apricots.

  “Did you take a shower?”

  She nodded. “You can’t leave me,” she whispered, her eyes glossy.

  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. She was my baby sea turtle. “I won’t.” I closed my eyes again, but I reached my hand out and grabbed the ends of her hair, the tips still wet. Then she set something on my sto
mach. For a second, I didn’t even care what it was; my eyes felt so heavy. But I pried them open. My notebook, with a torn cover, sat on my stomach.

  “Thank you.”

  I sat up higher and flipped through the pages until I saw it, the page I hadn’t let myself read. I knew it was there, like a gigantic ostrich egg, waiting to be cracked open. The page I hadn’t looked at since Dad had picked us up from Julie’s.

  But I remembered what it said, and I remembered Mom’s long fingers curled over the pencil as she wrote it, maybe six months ago. Mom had just finished a long overnight shift at the hospital. I had just finished watching Hunter and Hunted, the episode about killer whales, and I was writing facts about their pods and how they mate for life and how the baby is called a calf, just like a baby cow. And I was wondering if Dad had ever taken pictures of killer whales, when Mom surprised me.

  “Can I see your notebook?” Her hair was still in a ponytail from working all night, and she hadn’t even changed out of her scrubs. On mornings like this, she usually went straight to bed, but that day she stayed up for a little bit.

  I stopped writing midsentence. My pencil was poised over the paper like it was being held by an invisible string.

  “Why?”

  “Because.” She smiled. The corners of her eyes were thick with tired lines.

  “Okay.”

  She took my notebook and flipped through it. She paused at certain pages, read what I had written, and sometimes she smiled. It felt a little weird to watch her read with me standing there. I felt sort of embarrassed.

  “I need to pay more attention,” she said.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just, I work too much. I hate it. I’m sorry, Liberty.”

  “It’s fine, Mom. We’re fine.”

  But she didn’t know how sometimes I heard her cry when she thought no one was listening. I knew it was hard for Mom to take care of Billie and me all by herself.

  Then she turned to the page where I had glued Dad’s picture of the penguin with the Cheetos-colored feet. She stopped smiling and stared at it for what felt like a long time. Then she quietly turned the page.

  She asked, “Can I have your pencil?”

  “What do you want to do?” I only had twenty-four empty pages left. Once I let Billie draw a picture of a dolphin in it and she ripped the page. Really I only liked me to write in my notebook.

  “I just want to write something,” she said.

  Now, I took a deep breath and stared at what she had written I traced her cursive with big loopy Y’s.

  I love you, Liberty. Trust your intelligent mind, but more importantly trust your heart. Together they will create your best self.

  It was almost too hard, this page, with its corners curled and dirty.

  I put my hand over my chest, hoping I could somehow stop the hollow feeling that grew inside the longer I sat here looking at it.

  With Dad, I had to try to forget the life I had before, otherwise I couldn’t bear it.

  I pressed my fingertips into the grooves in the paper where Mom’s writing had pressed too hard. I read the words again. I didn’t see how I could ever be both parts of myself, logical and emotional. Everything felt too horrible, like I would crack open and explode into a million molecules.

  Survival Strategy #44:

  KNOW WHO TO TRUST

  For some reason, the doctor wore an eye patch.

  “Why do you wear that thing?” asked Billie, pointing to his eye.

  “Billie,” I said, trying to shush her. “That’s rude.”

  “What?” she asked. “I just want to know.”

  The doctor smiled. “It’s fine. My left eye doesn’t work very well, an old mountain bike injury, so I wear this.”

  The nurse came in. “Are you finished with your breakfast, Billie? ’Cause we’re clearing everything away.”

  “No,” yelled Billie, running out the bedroom door.

  The doctor smiled again. People were always amused by Billie. Somehow, this morning, she wasn’t as amusing to me. My head hurt.

  “So, tell me again what happened? I know you told me a little last night, but I want to make sure I have everything straight,” Pirate Doctor said. He was right; I had been too tired to explain everything last night, but I had given him Julie’s phone numbers.

  “I already told you,” I said.

  The skin around his good eye crinkled. “Come on. Billie told me her part, so I have the basics, but there’s more, I know. You might as well get used to telling it, because a police officer is coming by soon, now that you’re up.”

  I ignored my achy head. “No, first we have to call Julie. The truck driver said we could call her first.”

  Pirate Doctor said, “I called her and left a message.”

  I lay back down on the bed and covered my eyes. My insides burned like a bonfire. Where was she? Didn’t she know we needed her? Didn’t she know our dad was crazy?

  He held up a little paper cup. “Also, I need you to take this medicine.”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, it’s your choice, but if you think you have a headache now, just wait until the painkiller wears off.” He jingled the cup of pills.

  I sighed and held out my hand.

  “Now, that’s good. You’ll thank me later.”

  The pills scratched as they went down, and I slopped water all over myself.

  “Come on, tell me what happened to your sister.”

  “The same thing that happened to me. Our dad left us at the gas station and never came back.”

  His one visible brown eye blinked. “She said that. But why does she have a bruise on her cheek?”

  “Ask her,” I said. I didn’t know why I was protecting Dad. Maybe part of me still thought he was ours, even though he was awful. His blood was my blood, and that counted for something, didn’t it?

  “She said she fell.”

  I picked at the corner of the sheet where a thread had come loose. His one good eye bored into me like it was never going to stop searching for the truth. I closed my eyes and focused on the pounding in my cranium. I had always liked that word. Cranium. It sounded smart. But inside my head there was Billie’s face—no squiggly line between her eyes, no dirty hair or pinched face. Just her golden self. Before everything happened. That’s how she should always look. She should.

  But I just couldn’t tell. Not yet.

  “She fell,” I said finally, waiting for the Earth to crack open because I was such a big, fat liar. But nothing happened.

  Pirate Doctor said, “Hmmmm.”

  “You can’t separate us. We are staying together. Billie and me. Promise.”

  He paused. “Doctors never make promises.”

  “I don’t care what happens to us, but we have to stay together. I take care of her. She needs me.”

  “I’m not the one who gets to make that decision, but I’ll do what I can. I promise.” He smiled, like maybe he meant it.

  Survival Strategy #45:

  BEWARE OF PRISONERS

  After that, Doris showed me the shower. And she let me pick through a box of old clothes and shoes that had been donated to the hospital. Billie said she liked her new-old unicorn T-shirt, but I thought it looked too small. And the Junction County Jamboree T-shirt I wore had an itchy tag. But the only other T-shirt was a Big Bird shirt, so, no thank you.

  Then someone knocked at the door.

  It was a police officer, except this time he had on a uniform and a shiny badge. He said his name was Officer Buck, but that “all the kids” called him Officer B. What kids? Junction felt almost too small to have children.

  Officer B wrote down our names, Dad’s name, a description of the camper, and our address so he could “sort everything out.” Also he had Julie’s phone numbers. And he, too, said he would call her. Then he stuck his pen in the spiral binding of his notebook and said, “I sure am going to work hard to help you girls.” Then he winked.

  I wasn�
�t sure what that wink was supposed to mean. Yes, he would work hard? Or no? Was he just trying to get Billie and me to like him?

  Then Officer B said we had to go with him.

  Pirate Doctor didn’t want us to go because I had a concussion and I was dehydrated and maybe had something-something stress disorder. And Billie had had the first of her rabies shots and tests, but there were more tomorrow. And she was dehydrated, too.

  But since, I guess, the police station was only around the corner, Pirate Doctor finally said okay.

  The police car was blue. In San Diego they were black and white, like normal. And Billie got to sit in the front, even though she was only eight, because Officer B said the station was real close.

  “You sure you don’t want anything to drink?” Officer B asked, gesturing to the small red cooler under Billie’s feet at the bottom of his squad car. “It’s a hot one out here.”

  “No, thank you.” I shifted closer to the inside of the car door.

  Billie already had an orange Fanta sitting in between her legs. She took another gigantic drink, and an orange mustache formed above her lip. Then she examined the stitches on her finger. “That stitch right there hurts the most,” she said.

  “Don’t touch it,” I said. “It will get infected.”

  “I’m already infected with rat germs. But the doctor gave me a shot for that.” She smiled. “I’m full of rat spit.”

  “That’s the truth,” I said. Then I stared out the window at scrubby bushes, desert, and an occasional little baby house. We turned a corner and pulled in front of what looked like the house we had just left, except this one had a handicapped sign in front.

  “Where are we?” I asked him.

  “The station.”

  A small sign out front said JUNCTION COUNTY POLICE STATION.

  “There are a couple of people who want to interview you girls. We’ll be finished lickety-split.” He unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door.

  Billie turned to me. “What do they want?”

  “Just to ask us some questions. It’s okay,” I said, eyeing the police station again. It didn’t seem very threatening, but I couldn’t let my guard down.