“Yeah, maybe. For now, though, I’ll take another picture and get it in the mail to you tomorrow.”
My grandma sighed—she didn’t even try to hide it—and said, “All right, dear. That would be lovely. I do miss you, though, sweetie, so much.”
She said that every Saturday, too. Her voice was getting that familiar sad, wistful sort of flavor it always did, so I knew it was time to wrap it up.
I took a steadying breath and blinked a few times, then rolled my eyes. Grandmas can be so emotional sometimes.
“Well, I better let you go, Grandma. It’s hot as Hades here, and I know Rodeo’s eager to get moving so we can roll down the windows and cool off a bit.”
“All right, baby. Be sure and send me that picture of Ivan, now.”
“I will,” I said, stepping back toward the old lady waiting patiently for her phone.
“Oh, wait, honey,” Grandma said quickly. I thought she was just trying to keep me on the line, and I didn’t mind that one bit. “I’ve got some kind of sad news about your neighborhood.”
“My neighborhood?” After years of driving around so aimlessly, it sounded weird to think of a neighborhood as mine. It sounded weird to think of anything as mine except for a bus, a bearded weirdo, and now an exceptional cat.
“Yeah. Remember that little park at the end of the block?”
“Of course.” It’d been five years since I’d seen it, but I didn’t even have to close my eyes to picture it, with its picnic tables and rusty old swing set and, most of all, the corner of it that was all wooded and overgrown and wild-looking.
“Well, I’m afraid it’s going away, dear,” Grandma said with a sad click of her tongue.
Everything stopped. Everything inside me, everything outside me. My eyes locked on the cigarette butt I’d been eyeing, still smoking on the hot asphalt by my bare feet. My lungs caught in mid-breath. My fingers froze on the phone, clutching it in a death grip. I forgot about the old lady watching and pretending not to listen in, blurred out the sights around me.
“What?” My question came out as a raspy croak.
“They’re taking it out, the whole thing,” she said, her voice regretful but casual, like it was no big deal, like it wasn’t the worst thing I’d heard in maybe five years. “They’re putting in a new intersection, doing some sort of street expansion. There are so many new houses since you’ve left, so much more traffic.” Her voice droned on while my mouth went dry as day-old powdered doughnuts.
“All of it?” I managed to ask, thinking of that wild little forest in the far corner, that green-shadowed bit of wilderness that held secrets and memories and magic.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“When?” I choked out.
Grandma sighed.
“Next week. They’ve already got it all roped off, with the bulldozers and whatnot parked and waiting. They put signs up, giving notice. They’re tearing it all out on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?!”
Grandma paused a beat. I think she was a bit startled by my panicked shout, but I wasn’t in any state to be all that tactful or diplomatic.
“Yes, dear. Are you all right?”
“They can’t do that.”
Grandma paused again.
“Well, they can, dear. No one’s that happy about it, but it is city property and the city is growing, so—”
“I’m coming back,” I said, and I’m not sure which one of us was more surprised by my words.
There was another beat of silence, and in that pause all the sounds around me came rushing back in, the cars and doors and brakes and voices, but I didn’t care. My eyes rose from the cigarette to Rodeo sitting on the steps of the bus about fifty feet away, happily scarfing down a banana and petting Ivan on his lap. I knew exactly, precisely what he would say, but I didn’t care about that, either. My brain unfroze and for a second I thought about where we were, in Florida, and where that park was, way up in Washington State, and I calculated the miles in between and the hours between then and Wednesday and I didn’t care about that, either.
All that happened in the time it took my grandma to suck in a quick, sharp gasp.
“What? What did you say, dear?” Her voice was surprised and startled and colored just here and there with something I hadn’t heard in it in quite a while: happiness.
I took in a lungful of air and blew it out through flared nostrils. I always flare my nostrils when I’m determined or terrified, so I flared them double right then in that parking lot. I looked down and stomped out the smoldering cigarette with the sole of my bare foot.
“I said I’m coming back,” I said, looking back to poor unsuspecting Rodeo sitting there with my cat.
Then I said something I hadn’t said in over five years.
“I’m coming home.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Here’s a once-upon-a-time for you.
Once upon a time, there were three girls. Sisters.
Once upon a time, there was a mom.
And, once upon a time, there was a box.
“It’s a memory box,” the mom had said. And the three girls and the mom had filled it. With pictures. With notes. With letters. With memories and locks of hair and little treasures. Little pieces of themselves and little pieces of each other and little pieces of their life together.
And then, together, they’d buried that box. They’d buried it under the roots of a tree in a shady, wild corner of a park, and they’d put a big stone on top to mark it and to keep it safe.
“We’ll come back,” the mom had said, “years from now. And we’ll dig it back up. Together.”
And they’d all promised, all three sisters and one mom, had promised to come back for the box of memories. They’d grinned at each other through the spring sunshine and held up their hands and swore in solemn whispers that, no matter what, they’d come back for that box.
And then, once upon a time that was only a few days after that box was buried, everything came apart. In one terrible moment of squealing tires and shattering glass, everything came apart. And instead of three sisters and one mom, there was just one girl.
One girl, mostly alone and completely heartbroken.
A sister without any sisters. A daughter without a mom.
But a girl with a memory.
And a girl with a promise.
A promise she would do anything to keep.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
I squinted across the parking lot at Rodeo, sitting innocent and unawares on Yager’s steps.
I chewed my lip to the point of hurting. This was gonna be tough. Come on, Coyote—this was gonna be darn near impossible.
For Rodeo, going home was a set-in-stone, hard-as-dried-concrete no-go. We hadn’t been back since we’d left five years before. We hadn’t talked about it or even mentioned it in all that time. We weren’t allowed to. Just like we weren’t allowed to talk about my mom, or my sisters. Couldn’t say their names. Not ever. They were ghosts, and they were ghosts we weren’t allowed to look at.
So if I waltzed up to Rodeo and told him I wanted to go back home to dig up a memory box of my mom and sisters, we’d get to no so fast I’d get a sore neck.
I was gonna have to play this one just right.
Now, I was pretty good at playing Rodeo. I’d been doing it for years. But he was a tricky bird to play. You could say that learning to play Rodeo was like learning to play a guitar, if the guitar had thirteen strings instead of six and three of them were out of tune and two of them were yarn and one of them was wired to an electric fence. He’s a handful, is what I’m saying. And the tune I was gonna have to play wasn’t anything simple like “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
I looked at him. I swallowed. I considered. I chewed my lip a bit more.
I couldn’t just have my grandma dig up the box. There were, like, thirty trees in the corner of that park. I couldn’t ask my grandma to go digging holes under thirty trees in August. I had no way of describ
ing which one it was to her … I’d have to be back there, looking around, to have any chance of even finding it myself. Plus, it was my box. My memories. Shouldn’t I be the one to save it?
So, I absolutely one hundred percent needed to get to Washington State. Rodeo absolutely one hundred percent would refuse to take me. It was a puzzler.
Then it hit me. Rodeo absolutely one hundred percent would not take me on purpose. I just had to get him to take me to Washington State without him knowing he was doing it.
My pulse bumped up a notch. Now that … that I might be able to do.
I ran through the options in my head. Pictured the map, dredged up some memories, went back through the files in my brain.
Then, I smiled. Small and quick.
“Yep, Coyote,” I murmured to myself. “That just might work.”
I put on my most casual of faces and ambled over to Rodeo.
He popped the last bit of banana in his mouth and flashed a mushy yellow grin at me.
“You ready to go, pretty bird?”
“Whenever,” I shrugged, cool as anything. I stretched, looked up at the Florida sun, rubbed my stomach. “I’m hungry.”
“Yup. ’Bout that time. What sounds good?”
I looked at the ground, then up at the clouds, my lips pursed in a perfect portrayal of thoughtful consideration. Then I snapped my fingers.
“I got it. I know exactly what I want.”
“Lay it on me.”
I squinted at him, screwed up my mouth, nodded.
“Yep. I’m sure of it. Only one thing I want.”
Rodeo’s eyes darted to the side, then back to me.
“Oooookay. And it is…?”
“A pork chop sandwich.”
Rodeo blinked at me. Then he peered at the parking lot world around us.
“I don’t know, little pigeon. I don’t think any place around here will have—”
“No, Rodeo. I don’t just mean I want a pork chop sandwich. I mean I want the pork chop sandwich.”
“You mean…”
“That’s right, old man. I want the pork chop sandwich. From Pork Chop John’s Sandwich Shop. In Butte, Montana.” A lot of people don’t know it, but a pork chop sandwich is one of the world’s perfect foods. And a lot of people also don’t know it, but the world’s best pork chop sandwiches are in Butte, Montana. And even more folks don’t know it, but the best place in Butte, Montana, to get a pork chop sandwich is a little place called Pork Chop John’s Sandwich Shop. I knew it, though. And so did Rodeo. I looked him right in his eyes. “I just had myself a Dead Dream.”
Now, if any normal folks had heard me say those words, they might’ve been concerned. But Rodeo … he wasn’t normal folks. When I told him I’d had a Dead Dream, he grinned at me, wide and bright.
Dead Dreams were a thing for us. It was an acronym. When one of us—and let’s be honest, it was usually Rodeo—got a strong, undeniable hankering for something and it just couldn’t wait, we called it a D.E.A.D. Dream, a “Drop Everything and Drive” Dream. Didn’t matter where we were. Didn’t matter what we wanted, or how far away it was. Rodeo loved ’em. He’d had a D.E.A.D. Dream once for a fish taco from a specific taco truck he loved in San Diego. We were in North Dakota at the time. Didn’t matter. There were some songs sung and a lot of coffee drunk and a ton of miles covered and three days later ol’ Rodeo was noshing that taco and rolling his eyes with pleasure. “Was the taco worth the drive?” I’d asked him, and he’d wiped some taco juice off his chin and said through a mouthful, “It ain’t about the taco being worth the drive, woodchuck; the question is, was the drive worth the taco?” I had no idea what he’d meant, but that’s Rodeo for you.
So when I told him in that Florida parking lot that I had a Dead Dream for a pork chop sandwich in Montana, Rodeo was too excited to notice it was a bald-faced lie.
“You calling it?” he said, jumping to his feet. “For reals?”
“Cross my heart,” I said, and he held up his hand for a high five and I gave him a good hard one and he threw back his head and yeehawed and then said, “Well, heck, let’s hit the road, then, sugar bun,” and spun on his heels and climbed up onto Yager.
I stood there for a beat or two. The fake smile I’d plastered on my face went stale and rotted away.
I’d gotten us started. If I could get us to Montana, that was most of the way to where I really needed to get. As long as Rodeo never got a whiff of my real dream, I could get us most of the way there. But if he ever did figure it out, he was gonna hit the brakes fast and forever.
I took a breath. Blew it out. Flexed my fingers.
“You got this, Coyote,” I whispered. “Piece of cake.”
But it wasn’t. And I knew it, even as I put that smile back on and climbed up onto the rumbling bus.
I had to get myself, and a bus, and my dad, all the way across the country in less than four days. And I had to do it without my dad noticing.
CHAPTER
NINE
I spent the next hour or so on the couch, hunched over our wrinkled and crinkled old highway atlas. I traced my fingers over highways, checked distances, calculated miles, estimated drive times. Ivan sat beside me, switching back and forth between dozing off and batting at the pencil I was scratching notes with.
We could make it.
Using some old dental floss as a tape measure, I added up the miles.
“Three thousand six hundred miles, more or less,” I told Ivan. He yawned at me. I agreed. It was doable. “If we say an average of sixty miles an hour, that’s a mile a minute. Three thousand six hundred minutes. That would be, let’s see…” I did the long division, just like Rodeo taught me out of the old textbooks we used for my homeschooling. “Sixty hours. There are … ninety-six hours in four days. That gives us thirty-six extra hours for sleeping and eating and stuff. We can make it. Just in time.”
I gnawed on the crumbly remains of the pencil’s eraser. Yawned a big ol’ I-was-awake-most-of-the-night yawn. Looked at Rodeo, up behind the wheel.
“I just gotta keep him driving. And, of course, completely unaware of where we’re going.”
I closed the atlas. Tucked my notes into the pages of the book I was reading.
“Hey!” I called out to the front of the bus. “How you doing? Need anything?”
“Just peachy, prickly pear! I can almost smell that pork chop sandwich!”
“All righty. You let me know if you need any company!”
I leaned back into the comfy-ness of the couch cushions. I knew I should go up and get to gabbing with Rodeo, but my heart was all aswirl. I hadn’t thought about that box for … shoot, I didn’t know, years.
Ivan stepped onto my lap, turned a few times, and then settled in. His warmth was calming.
I closed my eyes, and then I gulped, and then I let the memories play behind my eyelids. I wasn’t supposed to. There ain’t no use in looking back, Coyote, Rodeo always said. He used to be able to tell when I thought about them—my mom and my sisters. I’d get quiet, I’d get sad. He’d shake his head, his eyes all watery. No, baby. Don’t go back there. Your happiness is here, now. You gotta leave all that behind. But I never could, the way that he could. I just got better at hiding it. Better at looking at those forbidden memories in secret.
And I’d thought that was enough. That I could hold them in my heart, tucked away behind my eyes, and it’d be enough. But that had all changed when my grandma told me about the park. It changed when I remembered that day years ago, and the box, and the promise. Secret memories just weren’t enough anymore. They never had been, maybe. But now I knew it.
At some point, without even realizing it was happening, I drifted off into sleep.
I dreamed about warm hands soft in mine, and shoulders touching, and whispered promises, and a family waiting for me to come home.
* * *
I woke up with a start. Not quite an oh-my-god-my-secret-kitten-is-gone-and-my-crazy-dad-is-gonna-find-him kind of start, but close.
I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. It felt like evening and the light was kinda gray and it smelled a little like rain, but I wasn’t worried about dim light or precipitation. I was worried about the fact that the bus I was lying in wasn’t moving.
I jumped up.
Rodeo was sprawled in his bed, bare feet sticking out of the blankets. The secondhand clock we had hanging above the windshield said seven o’clock. We’d only made it four hours before the lazybones decided to take a break. I kicked one of his grubby feet. Not mean, just urgent.
There wasn’t much of a reaction, so I bent down and grabbed his foot and shook it like a dog killing a snake.
Rodeo’s head shot up, looking … well, rather pissed off.
“What are you doing, Coyote?” His voice was thick with sleep and confusion.
“Excuse me?” I asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He blinked at me, looked down at his blanket-covered body, then back up at me.
“Sleeping.”
“Exactly. And we got miles to cover, papa bear. Get your butt up.”
“Coyote,” he started, and it was generally never a good thing when he started a conversation with my name and then a pause. “I drove for, like, twelve hours last night. That kinda thing can make a fella tired, you know. I have to sleep sometime, kid. This Dead Dream turns into a nightmare pretty quick if I fall asleep behind the wheel and we slam into a highway overpass. And unless you got a driver’s license, honeybear, this bus is gonna have to stop moving when I do. Now leave me be. Those pork chop sandwiches aren’t going anywhere.”
He rolled over, pulling the blanket dramatically over his head.
I cursed myself silently. I never should’ve let myself fall asleep.
I craned my neck, looking out the windows.
“Where are we?” I asked. When there was no answer, I kicked at the blanket and asked again. “Where are we?”
The blanket growled.
“I am in bed. You are standing over me shrieking like a damn harpy. That’s where we are.”
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise Page 5