Dad took a right turn and we drove through another town. There was one diner with two trucks parked out front. A woman was standing outside, blowing smoke circles through her mouth. She turned her head slowly to watch us pass by.
I hugged my knees and tried to be a small ball that could bounce away. I would bounce out the window and all the way back to Crescent Street. I tried to make it happen with magic but it didn’t work.
The rain came down hard and the windows fogged up with our breathing. You couldn’t see outside anymore. You could only see till the end of your nose.
I’M SORRY, I wrote in the foggy glass. I drew a heart. That was a message for Mom.
My stomach rock hurt and Clemesta stroked my cheek with her hoof.
“I wish we never went on this stupid adventure,” I said.
“It was never an adventure.” Clemesta wrote her own word on the window.
ABDUCTION.
I held my arms tight against myself. The wipers scratched loudly across the window.
“Imagine if you had brain-wipers. They could wipe away all the things you didn’t want to remember.”
“Dolly,” she said. “You can’t keep saying you don’t know. It won’t make it go away.”
I closed my eyes.
Clemesta nudged me. “Dolly. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“I know that.” I counted something on my fingers. “Six days since we were home. That’s a long time.”
“Too long,” Clemesta said. “That’s why they’re looking for us.”
“Who is?”
“The police.”
“For skipping school?”
“No. Because Dad stole us.”
I looked at the back of Dad’s head. Dad who loved me and wanted to keep me safe. Dad who loved me so much because I saved him once upon a time and I was his whole wide world and the best thing he ever did in it.
“He didn’t steal us, Clemesta, you lunatic equus ferus. You can’t steal someone who’s already yours.”
The rain stopped falling but Dad forgot to turn the wipers off. Screech-scratch, screech-scratch. I watched the raindrops on the window dry up one by one until they had all disappeared.
We passed three wooden crosses. Each one had a white cloth hanging from it, like a dead angel had fallen over with her beautiful broken wings.
I started feeling hungry and so did Clemesta. Her stomach made a loud growl asking for food. That made Dad turn around.
“Hungry?” he said.
I didn’t want to talk to him.
“I’m hungry too,” he said. “We could probably stop. Looks deserted enough around here.”
I bit down on my lip so I wouldn’t let any words out.
“Dolly,” Dad said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about your hair. I told you that. Please understand, I had to do it. I had no choice. Forgive me, sweetheart, please. I just want to get you safe.”
SAFE SAFE SAFE. Everyone wants me safe.
“Mom wanted us safe too,” Clemesta said.
Dad’s eyes were shining at me in the mirror. “You’re my brave girl, Dolly,” he said. “My brave girl.”
Brave was good. Better than anything else you can be, like beautiful or famous or rich. Brave is the best of all because you can’t ever lose it or have it stolen from you or leave it behind. It can follow you to the end of the world.
I picked at the scab on my leg and made it open again. The blood came out. The new skin was angry because it didn’t even have a chance to heal.
TOO BAD, I told it. That’s life.
Blood tastes red and like old garden tools left out on the lawn all winter.
Blood rhymes with flood but not with hood or good. That’s because English is full of CONTRADICTIONS and that means things should follow the rules but don’t want to.
RULES ARE FOR FOOLS. That’s graffiti someone wrote on the wall near my favorite park. As soon as we get back home, I’m going to go there with Mom and we’ll have a picnic on the lawn and we’ll go on the swings and swing so high we almost touch the clouds. The clouds will be in the shape of hearts and the sun will be shining. Everything will be JUST PERFECT because we will be safe and home and Dad will be sorry and Mom will be sorry and two sorrys make everything all right and that means YOU KNOW WHO can’t ever bother us again.
“I think he’s the reason we aren’t safe,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Clemesta said.
“Probably Dad had to take me away because I put a curse on YOU KNOW WHO and…and then I bet he called the police. Remember?”
Clemesta looked at me with her blank face.
“Remember that time we met him in Central Park? He and Mom were talking and I was walking in a circle around the bench to make a violent curse on him.
“Mom said, ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you for all you’re doing for us,’ and he said, ‘Oh, please, if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably still be in the closet, convinced the world would end if I ever came out.’ Then Mom rested her head on his shoulder and he said, ‘You were always my favorite beard,’ and they laughed like it was so hilarious even though it wasn’t.”
Clemesta frowned. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”
“It is. And Mom never should have let him out of that closet. She should have locked the door and bolted it with steel and left him inside forever so he could never ever get anyone to make silly plans again. Then I wouldn’t have had to curse him and Dad wouldn’t have needed to take us away to be safe.”
Clemesta sighed. “I think you know the truth but you don’t want to look at it.”
I squeezed my eyes. They were puffed up and the eyeball part felt pinched and itchy from wanting to cry.
“No. We just need to go home,” I said. “Everything will be fine as soon as we’re home.” I found Dad’s eyes in the mirror. “We can be friends again,” I said. “I know you are just looking out for me.”
He put his hand across his heart. I guess it felt warm again.
We drove through two more towns before Dad slowed the car near a place with a pig’s head hanging over the door. Someone had written BBQ in big letters on the side of the house, which was really just another one of those trailers. I put my cap on without Dad asking.
Inside, no one was there and there weren’t any menus to read, just a chalkboard with six different things to eat. None of it was healthy and whoever wrote it down was very bad at doing their spelling homework. They wrote BISCITS and TOMATOS and those would get you a big fat red X if you were in Miss Ellis’s class.
A girl came out a door in the back. “What can I get you?”
She had long hair hanging right down her back, and a fat purple bruise on her arm.
Dad and I took a seat outside. The table faced out onto the road. There was a falling-apart wooden house around the side. Probably that’s where the girl lived or where they slaughtered the BBQ piglets to turn them into dinner.
The girl set our food down without saying anything. I picked up one of the ribs and took a bite. The meat tasted sweet. I set it back down and ate the fries instead. They were oily and burnt. I drank my soda and felt the bubbles fill me up like a balloon.
The rain had stopped but everywhere there were puddles of water and the sky was still gray and heavy and saying STAY AWAY to the sun. Dad was picking at his food. Every time I looked up, he was staring at me with his sad shining eyes. It felt like they wanted to eat me up.
I went inside and asked the girl if I could use the restroom. She pointed to a door. I washed my hands with soap and looked at my chopped-off hair in the mirror. It was ragged and messy and you couldn’t even tell that it was actually the color of chestnuts anymore.
Do not cry, Dolly, I said to my face. My eyes were misty but the tears stayed away. There wasn’t anything to dry my hands with, so I left the restroom and went back over to the girl.
“Can I have a napkin, please?” I said. She handed me a couple, and I stared at her bruise. I couldn’t
help it. It was very dark purple and that meant her blood was sitting right there under the skin, boiling and angry at whoever did it to her. I watched it pulse and quiver. It was trying to tell me something important.
“Mr. Angry Bear,” it said. “It was Mr. Angry Bear.”
I swallowed. The rock in my stomach turned.
The girl touched her sleeve and moved it to cover the bruise. There was another one on the inside of her arm, but it wasn’t so fresh. She looked at me and her chin wobbled. I bet she heard a lot of SORRYS after she got her bruises. A lot of crying and begging and PLEASE FORGIVE ME and NEVER AGAIN that really meant UNTIL NEXT TIME.
She didn’t know about the special vanishing makeup that you can paint on any bruise to cover it up. Mom keeps some in the bathroom cabinet next to the jar of face cream that eats wrinkles. It’s called FULL COVER FLAWLESS and it smells like candy.
The girl opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but then she shut it again.
“You have pretty hair,” I said. She blinked, and her bruise stopped yelling at me.
Dad paid the bill and the girl stood in the doorway watching us leave. She looked very small and alone.
“Safe travels,” the pig’s head called. He was trying to be nice, even though someone had chopped off his body and roasted it for dinner.
I saw a dead possum lying on the road but I didn’t call it out. I wasn’t in the mood for any more dead and gone things.
We passed a few road signs and Dad said a curse word.
“What happened?”
“I took a wrong turn,” he said. “Fuck.”
“You shouldn’t say fuck.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Are we lost?”
“Yeah. We need to stop,” Dad said. “Then I can figure out where we are.”
He made a turn in the other direction. I watched the road, the endless rotten road that was taking forever to get us back where we belonged.
“When we’re home we won’t be lost,” I said. “We’ll be found.” I made a wish to make it true. Clemesta stroked my cheek.
“Oh, Dolly,” she said. “My dear and sweet Dolly.”
The car made a beep beep beep noise and Dad said, “CHRIST, WHAT NOW?”
“What’s happening?”
Dad shook his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
The car kept on beeping. In the movies that’s always the sound a car makes before it stops and everyone gets stuck and the zombies come and eat them.
“We shouldn’t have given that coughing woman our Jeep,” I said. “This one is just a heap of junk. It’s CRAP,” I said. “CRAP.” All my mad had come back and I tried to breathe it away.
I looked out at the murky sky and the nothingness and the no houses and the no people and the no lights. Who would help us if the car broke down? How would we call someone to come and get us?
Brave, I said in my head, remember how you are brave.
“Come on,” Dad said. “Come on.”
He banged the steering wheel like it would help the car to keep going but the car just made a gurgling spluttering sound, like it was a person running out of air and coughing out the last breath it would ever take. Then it gave up altogether, right in the middle of the road. Dad tried to steer it off to the side but the car wouldn’t budge.
There were no more beeps. Everything was DEAD STILL except the noisy old crickets who were laughing at our bad luck.
Dad said FUCK and FUCK again and I said FUCK too because I could and no one would even care out here in the middle of America’s nowhere.
Dad banged the steering wheel, but really fiercely this time, with both his fists. I could hear him breathing through his nose, loud and angry.
“Goddamn,” he said. He sat back in the seat and rubbed his face.
He made a sound, like he was laughing or crying or choking, like it was the worst thing or the funniest, being stuck in the middle of the road on the darkest night.
I listened to the sounds of the frogs. They weren’t mean like the crickets, they were worried about us because there weren’t any other cars and probably no one was going to find us. Maybe ever.
“I’ve got to move the car out of the middle of the road,” Dad said. “My brave girl, do you think you could help?”
I had to sit up front in the driver’s seat and hold the wheel, like I was driving the car for real. Dad went behind to push, and I kept both hands very strongly on the wheel. Dad pushed and pushed. I could hear him grunting and then I felt the car rolling. Dad called STEER TO THE RIGHT and I steered and the car moved and Dad pushed us into a patch of field that was wedged against a wire fence. I kept my hands on the wheel until Dad leaned in the window.
“You did great,” he said.
“Probably I saved the day,” I said. My hands were still shaking.
Dad nodded.
“I’m very brave. And smart. Because I’m only seven and I can already drive.”
“How about that,” Dad said.
He walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He poked around and then he slammed it shut again. “Piece of shit,” he said. He banged on the roof with his hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “That stupid woman. Maybe she’ll die tonight of coughs. That would serve her right for giving us this rusty old heap.”
Dad sighed. “I think we’re going to have to spend the night out here. It’s getting too dark to go walking around, and I can’t leave you. So we’re going to have to stay where we are until morning.”
“Oh.”
“We’ll do our best to protect you,” the frogs croaked. The Frog Princess was called JUSTICA RIBBIT and she said she liked helping people, except French ones who were after her legs.
Dad climbed into the back to see if he could make the seats go flat like a bed. He yanked at them for a few minutes but nothing happened.
“Looks like these don’t go all the way down,” he said.
He covered the seat with one of his shirts and made me a pillow out of a pile of rolled-up clothes. Then he handed me his sweatshirt to use as a blanket.
I lay down on my car-bed and Dad banged the door shut.
He climbed into the front and leaned over to remove something from the glove compartment. Then he opened up the car door again.
“I’ll be right here,” he said.
I watched him out the window. I could see a small orange light near his mouth, and a cloud of smoke glowing white against the black sky. I didn’t like him smoking cigarettes but I liked watching that tiny light shining in the dark. It reminded me of my glowing universe on the ceiling back at home. The real Alabama sky was wide and forever too, sprinkled with bright and twinkling stars. I didn’t want it to be beautiful, but it was.
I hugged Clemesta in my arms. “You’re very silent,” I said.
“I’m very tired.”
She still smelled of the bubbles from the Chambersburg Comfort Lodge, but now that was mixed with other smells, like greasy-food diners and National Parks and throw-up and tears.
I heard a noise and it made me jump. I wondered if there were any wild mountain lions nearby, because they can smell people and track them and then creep up and eat them if they’re feeling hungry. I didn’t know any lion greetings, except HELLO, SIR LION.
Dad was still outside. His cigarette was finished but he was just standing there, his arms folded, his eyes looking out to the road, staring at nothing.
LOOK AT THE STARS! I wanted to tell him. Look up and see the lights right up there in front of your eyes!
But he just kept looking out at the dark.
“I wonder if Mom is asleep yet,” I said. “I wonder if she can even fall asleep when she misses me so much.” I slipped my hands inside the pockets of my shorts and squeezed them into two tight fists. “Oh,” I said. “My heart-stone from the National Park.” I searched both pockets but it was gone. “I think I left it behind in the other shorts.”
Clemesta sighed. “Well, that’s anoth
er forever lost thing.”
I tried not to cry.
Dad climbed in and we all shut our eyes.
I lay very still in the back. I pressed at my loose tooth with my tongue, trying to make it hurt.
“We’ll be okay,” Dad said.
We all woke up when the window went BANG BANG BANG. I thought for sure it was the lion and that it was going to smash the glass and gobble us up but then I saw that there was actually a very bright flashing light and a voice outside saying, “YOU CAN’T BE HERE.”
My heart was racing so fast it felt like it wanted to run away. I pulled Dad’s sweatshirt over my head, but not before I saw the face at the window like a ghost.
I heard Dad say something, but the person was still knocking on the window.
“Sir, sir,” it said.
I poked my head out to have another peek. Dad wound down the window.
“Sorry, Officer,” he said, “our car broke down earlier. It was already dark out and I didn’t want to—well, I have my kid with me so I couldn’t leave. I didn’t have a phone to call for help.”
“I’m no police,” the voice said. It sounded deep and scratchy.
Dad held his hand to his eyes and squinted them against the light.
“I’m no police,” the voice said again. “But you can’t be out here all night sleeping in the car. Especially with your little one in the back.”
I sat up. The man was older than Dad but not as old as Pop. He looked strong, with enormous wide shoulders and bulgy muscles and a very thick neck. His eyes were friendly like a cartoon dog who licks your hand and chases naughty cats up trees.
“The car’s dead,” Dad said. “We can’t get anywhere else tonight.”
The man shone his flashlight toward the back to look at my face, and then turned it back to Dad.
“Where you headed?”
“A little further south,” Dad said. “Texas.”
“That’s a couple hours yet. You’ll need to rest up.”
All the Lost Things Page 18