Being Fishkill

by Ruth Lehrer

  Then I found a drawing of a baby. I knew it was me. I wondered how she could do that — make it look like me, even though I was only a baby, and how she made it look like the baby didn’t want to be there.

  There were drawings of the river in the spring and drawings of the river in the winter. The winter river looked comfortable and familiar, like she had been there often and knew she would go back. I wasn’t sure how you drew that into a picture. In a story, you could say it out loud in words, but in a drawing?

  Why had she stopped drawing? There weren’t any pictures of me after I was a baby. Maybe Grandpa threw them out. All that time in the shack and I never once saw her even doodle. If I could draw, I wouldn’t have stopped just because Grandpa didn’t want me to. I would’ve drawn until I became an artist and someone put my art in a museum, and then I would’ve moved out and lived with famous people and let Grandpa die on the kitchen floor all alone. The black hole that was Keely burned wordlessly in my belly.

  I stacked up Keely’s drawings and put them back in the box. Then I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave them under the bed? The house could be sold at any time, or they could condemn Birge Hill and everything would be torn down on top of the drawing box. Maybe the Fire Department would use it to practice on, like they did with the cape house another old man willed to the town. He must have been mean too, because the house made everyone mad at one another and they fought for years about what to do with it. Some people wanted to sell it, and some people wanted to keep it. After twenty years, the Fire Department said it was a fire hazard and they were going to use it to practice firefighting. People were so tired of fighting, they let them do it. The firemen made it burn red and blue and green and jumped around a lot with their hoses and water. Everyone who had fought about the old man’s house came to see the firemen burn it down. It was like a party on the Fourth of July.

  I decided to bring the box of drawings to Duck-Duck’s house and put it in the back of the closet with Keely’s ashes. Molly wasn’t going to be in shape to clean closets anytime soon and I knew her house wouldn’t be condemned by the town. I buried the thought that by not taking the box with me, I was leaving Keely all alone. Again.

  Just before I left Birge Hill, I checked my rock box. It was empty except for a torn page from the back of my old social studies book. I slid the rock over the empty box and walked down the hill.

  My escape had to begin on Duck-Duck’s bike. Buying a bus ticket in Salt Run was too risky. Someone might know me, plus the Salt Run bus schedule was way too limited; buses stopped there only once a day, in the morning. It didn’t really make sense. People in a place like Salt Run probably wanted to leave town more than people in nicer, bigger cities. There should have been more stops, not fewer. Especially now that it was June, almost summer.

  I knew I had to leave in the evening, to give myself more of a head start. Molly wouldn’t notice I was gone until morning, if she noticed at all. Carrieville was ten miles south, past Birge Hill, in the opposite direction from school, the opposite direction from town. I could bike there and get a bus at nine at night. I felt bad that I would have to ditch Duck-Duck’s bike behind the station, but I couldn’t think of another way.

  After I biked to the station, I would have to scam a ticket. I looked online and all the bus companies were out to screw kids. You had to travel with an adult or else have a form signed by the adult, have them drop you off, and have someone else pick you up at the other end with an ID to prove they were who they said they were. They had dozens of rules about which buses you could take too. You couldn’t switch buses. You had to sit up front. It even cost five dollars extra to travel alone, which totally didn’t make any sense, since you were taking up one seat no matter if you were with a grown-up or not.

  I made a plan, plus a second plan in case the first one didn’t work out.

  In the first plan, I figured I’d wait for a big family that seemed disorganized and tag along behind them so no one would check for a form or an ID. Sometimes in food stores, parents made their kids bring their own money and pay for their own gum, just to teach them responsibility. You had to wait for each person to individually buy a soda, buy a Hershey’s bar, buy a box of hair ties, when they all could have been rung up at the same time. Maybe there’d be a family like that at the bus station. I read an article on the computer about a boy who traveled all the way to Italy that way. If he managed to fly on an airplane with no ticket and no passport, surely I could get to New York City on a bus. I’d just get in line behind a “responsibility” family and buy my ticket to New York.

  Before I left, I made a ham-and-cheese sandwich and put it in the backpack with my Yodels. Then I thought about it and made a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich too. There was only one juice box left, but I took it and put it in an outside pocket so if it leaked, it wouldn’t get red juice all over my clothes.

  The first night I tried to leave, I waited too long for a disorganized family. It was very late before I realized I should have gone to plan number two. I’d have to try again the next night. Biking to the bus station had been easy; it was almost all downhill. Biking back wasn’t so easy. I was exhausted when I finally climbed in the window and into bed.

  The next night, I went straight to plan number two. I’d printed out the form and signed it, faking Molly’s signature, all loops and no closed letters. I brought it with me to the bus station. There wasn’t anyone else in line when I went up to the one ticket window.

  “A ticket to New York City,” I said, and slid the form under the glass.

  The man glanced up and started to open his mouth.

  “My mom is over there.” I motioned outside the door, where, indeed, there was a woman. She was smoking a cigarette, facing the other direction, and talking on the phone. She looked impatient.

  “She’s always like that,” I said, and sniffed. It was an I’m-all-alone-but-I’m-not-going-to-cry sniff. “It’s her boyfriend. He doesn’t like me. They want me to go be with my dad.” Then I bit my lip, like I was going to cry unless someone distracted me.

  “Here you go,” said the guy. He was young. Maybe younger than Keely. Younger than Keely had been. He was playing a game on his phone, and I could tell he didn’t want to deal with a crying kid. He definitely didn’t care about my fake mom and her fake boyfriend. “Bus leaves at nine o’clock,” he said.

  One of the other rules was that kids weren’t supposed to travel at night without a grown-up, but the ticket guy seemed to have forgotten that.

  “Th-thanks,” I stuttered. “Do you have a tissue?”

  “In the bathroom,” he said, and went back to his video game.

  I was halfway there.

  I waited for 9:00 in the bathroom so no one would see me and remember the kids-can’t-travel-at-night rule. The bus arrived late, and I held tight to my backpack so they wouldn’t put it under the bus, and when I got up to the driver, I turned and waved at the parking lot, as if there were someone there watching. The driver didn’t say a word. I was starting to understand how that boy had gotten all the way to Italy without a passport.

  I sat toward the front, but each time the bus stopped, I moved a couple rows back, finally getting to the back near the bathroom. It smelled a little, but I figured if the driver didn’t see me, he would forget I was there. Then he wouldn’t remember that someone had to pick me up at the other end. After a little while, I ate the ham sandwich and a Yodel.

  I must have slept, because I woke up when the bus driver started talking to us.

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” he called out. “We have a malfunction, and I need everyone to exit the bus at this station. Another bus will come to take you to your final destination.”

  “My God,” said the man sitting in front of me. “Why do they have to stop every time a check-engine light goes on? It could be a stupid oxygen sensor, and still they’re going to drop us off at a station in the boonies in the middle of the night and make us wait all night. JEE-sus.” He stood up
and grabbed his bag from the rack above us.

  I clutched my backpack and tried to hear what the driver told the other passengers and what they said to him. Wait. Don’t wait. Another bus coming later. Quicker to rent a car. Why doesn’t the bus company service these vehicles? Just my luck.

  Everyone got off the bus. They grumbled about being dropped at such a small station, and they called motels and rental cars, and one by one they all left. No one asked me what I was going to do. I hid in the station bathroom for a long time so no one would remember me and ask what I was doing in the boonies all by myself. When I came out, even the ticket man had left. I was alone in the one-room station. There were vending machines with potato chips and gum, and a video game that played a buzzy video song every five minutes. I timed it. The seats were hard orange plastic, bolted to the floor.

  In the corner, there was a pay phone. No one used pay phones anymore, so the change slot was full of gum and cigarette butts. I checked for a dial tone, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. I wanted to dial Duck-Duck’s number, which now was only Molly’s number, just to hear her voice. But it was two o’clock in the morning, and I was running away. If I dialed, I would listen to Molly say “Hello? Hello?” and then hang up.

  My chest hurt like there was gravel moving along with my blood, but I decided I would be brave like the pioneers, or like Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis.

  I tried to sleep on the bus station seats. If those orange chairs were movable, I could have put two together, like a couch or a bed. I would fall asleep, and then a truck would honk when it rumbled by or the video-game machine would suddenly play its whirly music, and I would wake up again. Finally, I pulled the machine’s plug out of the wall. I fell asleep and dreamed of school lunches. I was walking the long cafeteria line, gazing at the soggy bagel pizzas and stringy gray meat in brown sauce. What is that? I kept asking. What is that? At the end of the line, the cash register rang me up, all by itself, and I gave it all my money. Suddenly, I was out in the cold winter air with nothing to eat.

  When I woke up, the station door was open and swinging with each gust of wind.

  There was no one there.

  It was eight o’clock in the morning when the ticket man came back. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t even nod. You would think a kid all alone would make the guy say, Hey, what’re you doing here? but no. I guess he wasn’t really into his job.

  There was still no bus labeled New York City. Finally, I went up to the window.

  “They said there would be a replacement bus to New York,” I said, and I held out my ticket.

  “You missed it, kid. Came through at four a.m. Maybe you were asleep.”

  “When’s the next one?” I could feel my armpits turning sticky and my hands starting to shake, which was stupid, since what was so hard about hanging out another few hours?

  The ticket man tossed the schedule through the slot in the window. He turned around so I would know he wasn’t going to read it to me, and then he started type-banging on the computer. I wondered if he would lose his job if his boss found out he ignored a minor stuck in the boonies all night.

  Then I realized my backpack was gone. Did I really sleep through someone stealing my bag? Did I really sleep through the bus coming and going? All my Yodels, my clothes, the tiger card, and Keely’s lipstick were gone. All my food and money too.

  I don’t know why I felt so bad just then. It wasn’t like anyone had hit me. Suddenly, the walls turned grayer than they had been, and the stone in my stomach, which had never really gone away, squeezed up against my throat as hard as ever. I felt sick down in my belly and up in my throat. I had to go into the bathroom and press wet paper towels on my eyes really hard to keep from crying.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I stumbled outside, and it was then, in the morning sun, that I started to cry, even though Fishkill was never supposed to cry. My eyes and nose started hurting from the rising pressure of the stone in my throat, and I knew I could never win. I had lost my backpack. I had lost Duck-Duck. I had lost my mother. I was just like Grandpa, I was just like Keely. I would never get to New York City. I would end up on the street, eating food out of the garbage, never getting to go to the library. There was a sharp pain in my chest, like the rocks had broken up into pointy little shards and were pushing my heart right out of my chest.

  It definitely wasn’t my mother I wished for at that moment. It wasn’t even Duck-Duck. It was Molly who I wished would be in that blue SUV pulling up to the station. I ground my eyes into my hands and wished for a magic moment, like I was in a Harry Potter book, and then I cried even more because I knew Harry was just a story and magic rescues were just hog hokum, as Grandpa would say. I sank down on the bench and put my face against my knees.

  “Fishkill?” said a voice. “What are you doing here?”

  It was Worm. He was standing a few feet away from me. He wore a baseball cap and had three empty soda cups under his arm. His father was standing by the door of the blue SUV, unfolding a map.

  I wasn’t used to such big people. Worm’s father was taller than the SUV.

  Then I realized they had seen me crying, all by myself, with no backpack. I almost ran, but I didn’t know exactly where I was or where I would run to.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”

  Worm’s father folded the map and walked over, a mountain above me. “Is Molly here?” he asked.

  “No.” I didn’t have the energy for lies. I didn’t even have the energy to wipe the tears off my face.

  “Are you all by yourself?” He looked worried, almost as bad as when Worm got beat on. “Where are you going?” I could have said I was going to my grandmother’s and he might have bought it. But it was only a little voice that came out of my mouth. Nothing like my regular voice. Maybe a bit like my voice used to be, before I became Fishkill.

  “I ran away,” I said. I was almost afraid just those three words would bring the cops. Worm’s father looked so sorry for me that I thought the big mountain was going to cry too.

  “Come on,” he said. “I bet you need breakfast.”

  Worm threw out their soda cups in the bus-station garbage can, and I got into the backseat of the SUV. I had to dig the seat belt out of the crack between the seats.

  “It’s brand-new,” said Worm. “Top-of-the-line Ford Explorer. It’s a V-six.” He looked very pleased. “The old Jeep died. The clutch and the transmission and the exhaust system all went kaput at the same time. It was epic.” He pushed a pile of Dunkin’ Donuts napkins, two Coke cans, and a half-empty bag of Doritos off the backseat so we could both fit in.

  Even though the car was big, Worm took up most of the backseat. I remembered how Duck-Duck and I would sit in the back of Molly’s car, and there would still be lots of room — room enough for groceries or backpacks. The car was warm and the sweatshirt thrown across the back of the seat smelled of boy sweat. I would have thought it would stink, but it was actually kind of nice after sleeping in a bus station all night.

  I tried to smile. “Where are you going?”

  “We were going to a skeet convention, but my dad got lost. We got up at four in the morning, and we’re still going to be totally late.”

  His father gave a snort.

  “The GPS died,” said Worm, “and we drove the wrong way for forty-five whole minutes.”

  His dad apparently had figured out where we were, because he drove us straight through the little town and right up to a McDonald’s.

  “Let’s have breakfast,” Worm’s father said, “and then we can decide what to do.”

  We went into the McDonald’s and ordered. Both guys seemed to know exactly what they wanted without looking at the pictures and the descriptions even once. I knew I was taking a long time to choose.

  “How about an Egg McMuffin?” asked Worm. He seemed fine about the fact that I had just crashed his weekend with his dad. He didn’t even mention that I had been crying.

  “Okay,” I said.
>
  Worm and his dad both ordered a Double Sausage & Egg McMuffin the size of my head, with hash browns on the side. Worm got a chocolate milk, and his father got a super-large coffee. I was going to get orange juice, but I changed my mind and got chocolate milk too. Breakfast was good. It was the kind of food you could eat without thinking about it.

  “I ran away from home once,” Worm’s father said.

  “Really?” I said politely. “How come, Mr. —”

  “I’m Cork,” he said. “You can call me Cork.” He ate the last half of McMuffin in one bite.

  “I wanted to go to Yankee Stadium,” he said, “but I got on the wrong bus and ended up in Buffalo.” He took a swig of his coffee. “What happened to you?”

  I might actually have told him — he was so nice to buy me breakfast and everything — but Worm was sitting right there. There was no way I was going to say why I ran away in front of him — that Molly didn’t want me, so I was on my own now.

  “Let’s check in with Molly,” Cork said. “I’m sure she’s worried sick.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. She might not be awake yet. She might not even have noticed I was gone.

  Cork made me dial the number and then he took the phone.

  “Hello?” he said. “It’s Cork. Don’t worry. I found her.”

  I went to the bathroom and stayed there for a while. I washed my hands and spent a long time washing bus-station tears off my face. When I thought the phone call was probably over, I went back out. What other choice did I have? I couldn’t even run away right.

  “Molly’s sister is coming for you,” said Cork. “We’re going to meet her halfway.”

  Molly wasn’t coming.

  “What about your skeet convention?” I said.