Indigo starts running.
“Stop!” I yell, chasing after him.
He’s still ahead of me when we reach a clearing in the trees. On the other side of the clearing is an old VW van. It’s tangled in a dense hedge. It looks a lot like the one Mom used to have. Hers was pale blue. This one is bright yellow.
Indigo yanks open the passenger door. He climbs in.
“No, Indigo!” Finola yells.
The door slams closed behind him.
The three of us arrive at the clearing together. Salix and Finola trip on a tree root. They both go flying. I keep running. When I reach the van, I tug the door open.
“Indigo!” I yell. It’s dark inside the van. Indigo is probably hiding. I climb in after him. The door slams behind me. The door on the other side of the van opens. Indigo is standing outside. The forest around him looks different. I don’t pay much attention to it though. I jump out and grab his arm.
“Don’t run off like that,” I say angrily. Last time Indigo ran off (with Violet) Oren kidnapped him. And Olea nearly killed Mom and me. I’d rather not repeat that.
I turn to drag him back through the van.
But the van is gone.
Gabrielle Prendergast is an award-winning author who has written a number of books for young people, including Audacious, winner of the Westchester Award, Zero Repeat Forever, winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Prize for Children's Literature, and Pandas on the Eastside, which was shortlisted for the Chocolate Lily Award, the Red Cedar Award, the Diamond Willow Award and the Vancouver Book Award. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and has taught writing at Sydney University, San Francisco State University, UBC and Royal Canadian College. She lives in Vancouver.
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