down the aisle. “I can take catnaps. I’ll drink a lot of coffee. We could make it in record time. Three days tops.”
Nanny grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me in front of the fruits and vegetables. She loaded up a cart, even grabbing dry cereal (something we never buy) and milk.
Ahead of us, a mother with five little girls tried to pick out a cantaloupe.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and touched Nanny’s arm. Her skin was soft under my fingertips and warm as a match. Being a felon didn’t seem to set well with her. “Nanny, how we paying for all this?” I clutched the magazine, ready to put it back.
She swallowed. “I emptied our account.” Nanny pushed ahead, now piling yogurt into the cart.
“We’ve only got one hundred and eighty dollars,” I said. “I know that for a fact.”
She looked at me long and hard. “Winston,” she said. “I got us covered. Promise. We have enough to get to where we are going and back. You got to trust me.”
“Okay,” I said, and when my stomach settled some, I picked out a dozen doughnuts. ’Cause Nanny said I could.{ 89 }
60
Stocking Up
I walked Thelma on a bit of grass, gave her something to eat and drink while Nanny did the same for Denny, leading him under a tree on his crocheted leash.
“Like your chicken,” a cute guy with black hair said. He held tight to his girlfriend, who laughed behind her hand. She wore short-shorts and reminded me of Angel. Were all girls the same? All but me? What was Steve Simmons the First doing right now? Did he notice his motor home was missing? Had he called the police?
“Thank you, but it’s a rooster,” Nanny said, drawing deep on her cigarette. She was trying to get three smokes into the one stop. “We’re having him for dinner.”
The couple hurried on.
I’d already used the restroom in Publix (where shopping really was a pleasure, and we got a lot of S&H Green Stamps to boot), washing my face and et cetera.
“Let’s get a move on,” Nanny said. “We shouldn’t have to stop again except to gas up.”
I still couldn’t quite look at her. Not full on. I’d never really thought she was a full-blown thief, but proof was twenty-five feet behind me. And I had a sneaking suspicion { 90 }
she wasn’t telling all about our funds, though in my whole life my nanny had never been anything but 100 percent honest. The one time I took Wilbur’s blackberries from his bushes (I was five), she made me confess then wash his dishes three nights in a row. I cried the whole time, going over the single plate, glass, and fork as she stood behind me saying, “You missed a spot.”
Now, as I climbed into the motor home, I wondered what Nanny’s punishment would be. More than washing a few dishes, that was for sure.
The thought made me light-headed.{ 91 }
61
Checking the Rig Out
I ate three doughnuts (one raspberry jelly, one bavarian cream, and a glazed), sharing bits with Thelma, who rested her head on my lap.
Nanny drove like she expected a tidal wave to wash us away, both hands on the steering wheel, a look of concentration that I am sure Superman uses to blast holes through steel doors.
“I’m gonna wash my hands,” I said, licking icing from my fingers, “and see what this place is all about.”
Nanny grunted.
“Don’t you bet it cost a million dollars?”
This time Nanny didn’t say anything. She would have a crick in her neck, sure, if she didn’t loosen up some.
I stepped over Denny’s cage, giving him a few bits of doughnut to enjoy, then walked to the sink.
This motor home was nicer than our house. The carpet was new and thick; the plaid sofa didn’t even look used. Maybe the Simmonses never went anywhere in this thing.
There was a bed above us. Cool! And then a table, with benches (same plaid cushions as the sofa) built into the floor. A bed over the front seats. A fridge. The countertop was a { 92 }
shiny new yellow (harvest gold, if you’re looking for technical terms), and there was a stainless-steel sink, a big one, considering. There was a stove top and even a microwave. A microwave! I’ve been asking Nanny to buy us one of those for ages, but she was all worried about radiation waves getting out of the machine and cooking us from the inside out.
“You wanna die from a terrible poisoning?” That’s what she asked me the last time I begged for an Amana.
“Not really,” I’d said.
“It’s a terrible way to go. We’re using the stove top and oven only. You’ll thank me later.”
Now I opened the microwave.
First thing I was doing was cooking something—I didn’t know what—in this here fancy-schmancy device! The thing made me smile.
All the cabinets were empty of food, so I pulled the groceries from the bags and put them away, the milk and yogurt and cheese into the small fridge, then locked everything shut. I could get used to the rumble of the road beneath my feet.
Thelma swayed beside me, trying to keep her footing. She had her side glued to my leg. She’s a pretty good traveler, that dog.
I stepped down the hall. One two three.
A shower there. A mirror. The toilet. I sat on it after pulling some TP off the roll and laying it across the seat. { 93 }
Across the way was a closet. I’d keep my clothes in my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag. The idea of using the Simmonses’ coat hangers—it seemed too personal. Wasn’t the toilet seat enough?
I slid the back curtain open.
Steve Simmons grinned at me from the huge bed. “I wondered when you would find me back here,” he said.{ 94 }
62
Huh?
I couldn’t move.{ 95 }
63
Will Wonders Never Cease?
“What?”
I stood there, curtain in hand, swaying back and forth. Thelma cocked her head from side to side and grinned. She jumped up on the bed and padded right up next to Steve then plopped down on the unmade bed beside him.
Geezo peazo! Nanny was gonna . . .
She was gonna crap a brick.
What was he doing here? I couldn’t feel my feet. I felt like I do whenever I swim too long. Light-headed and footless. Neither is a good sensation when swimming or when standing in the back of a million-dollar motor home looking at the cutest boy in all of New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
“I said, what are you doing here?” I whispered, and gestured one-handed just in case he couldn’t hear me over the highway flying behind us.
“No you didn’t.” Steve gave me a slow smile.
Had I thought those words? Was I losing my speaking ability, too?
“Okay, then. What are you doing here?” The words came out from between clenched teeth. I looked over my shoulder, back at Nanny, who hunched over the steering { 96 }
wheel. Did she even know I was gone? She was concentrating awful hard. This was gonna be a long dri—
“Come lie down next to me,” Steve said. He sat up, supporting himself with his elbows. Thelma snuggled closer to him.
My stomach dropped. I felt it try to push past my knees and squeeze into my calves. “I can’t do that. And why are you here? Thelma, get off that bed!”
Thelma only moved her eyeballs to look at me, wrinkling her forehead. She let out a huge sigh.
“I said, get off that bed!” I don’t think she took me serious, because I was whispering.
“Where are we going?” Steve lay back down. He was so blond and so cute and so tan. I took a step forward then caught myself. It was like, for that one instant, he had hypnotized me.
Demon!
Beguiler!
“How did you get in here? I mean, why? I mean, Nanny is going to have an infarction. I mean, oh no. Thelma!”
Thelma slunk off the bed, looking at me like I had done something wrong.
“This is not good.”
I turned on my heel, took one step forward, slid the curtain in place and walked in slow motion back up
to my grandmother, who was going to die, just die, when she found out we had stolen the Simmonses’ motor home and their kid{ 97 }
64
No Rest for the Guilty
We’d been on the road for two hours already and were this side of Jacksonville. Turning back now would put us behind four plus hours. I couldn’t say anything.
No, I could not say nothing.
So I didn’t. I sat in my seat, Nanny driving steady, biting at her lip (maybe she needed a cigarette?). I knew for sure I did and I don’t even smoke.
Nanny would find out soon enough. And then what? Why, this would be worse for her health than being microwaved. She was forty-nine after all.
There was no way I would be the one to tell her.{ 98 }
65
Revelation
“What in the hell? What in the hell?”
Nanny braked, not too hard considering we were in something as big as a one-hundred-car train, and flipped on the blinker. I saw her checking out the huge side mirrors. I had to look away. This could prove very dangerous. Whether or not we stopped.
“Winston?”
Nanny continued to slow the motor home. “Winston?”
I stared out the side window, watching Florida come to a halt.
“Hey, Miss Jimmie,” Stephen said. “Churchill.” He gave us both a nod.
I didn’t say a thing.{ 99 }
66
No One’s Getting Saved
“We gotta talk,” Nanny said. “Outside. Winston, you are in big trouble. Get Denny and Thelma.” Nanny made three swipes at her cigarettes before she got ahold of them. She had to be thinking kidnapping, like I was.
Thievery and kidnapping. Maybe even grand larceny. Who knew? I bet these offenses would add up to some years in the state penitentiary.
I released Denny from his cage and scooped him up in my arms. “Let’s go, Thelma.” I kept my voice low. I know Nanny. In the state she was in, well, this part of the highway might explode into flames. She was burning mad.
And I knew, I knew without even looking, she blamed me.{ 100 }
67
A Deep, Deep Lie
“Watch out for ants,” Steve said. “They’re everywhere.” He swiped at his leg then hopped a few feet into a safer zone. Thelma jogged up beside him, and the two of them moved out of the weeds where Nanny had parked, to another area, farther from the highway and the red ants and my grandmother.
Nanny walked and struck match after match. Her hands shook. Bad. She almost could have quit smoking by the time she got her cigarette lit. She drew long on it, then marched over to Steve, smoke leaking from her nose. I woulda been scared to death, but he smiled, flicked his long bangs to the side, and waited. He was so cute! And brave. Or maybe, maybe he was dumb. He should be terrified of Jimmie Lee Fletcher.
But Steve kept smiling that pretty smile. Thelma sat right there at his side. That dog better not adopt him!
I wanted to adopt him.
Stop that kinda thinking.
“Now, Miss Jimmie, I want you to ponder something.”
“Stephen Lovett Simmons.” Nanny pointed with her cigarette. She turned to me. “Did you know about this?” { 101 }
She waved a hand at him, like maybe she could make him disappear.
What?
I pressed my hands against my unbridled chest. “Nanny, are you kidding? How could I know—you came and got me this morning and I”—I swallowed—“and I got into the . . . the”—I wouldn’t say “stolen”—“vehicle and then you drove me to here.” I pointed to the spot where I stood. A breeze blew in from the ocean that looked as blue as crushed velvet. “How could I know?”
Steve came up next to me, Thelma glued to his leg. “Oh, Churchill knew, Miss Jimmie,” Steve said. “In fact, we were thinking of running away together ourselves in my dear parents’ motor home, but you beat us to it. A shotgun wedding in Las Vegas.”
“We were not,” I said to him. Then I looked at Nanny. “We were not.” My voice didn’t have much energy. How did he know we were headed to Las Vegas? The boy was a demon.
My grandmother was a thief, and the boy I loved was a demon liar. And my dog? My dog was a traitor. If we hadn’t been sixty plus miles from home, I woulda walked on back to the house, crawled into bed, and prayed for a hurricane.{ 102 }
68
Playing
Nanny wouldn’t even look at me.
Her cigarette smoldered.
I came up on her, stepping on tiptoe to avoid her wrath and red ants. “Think about it,” I said. I kept my voice smooth as glass. “Logic tells you. How could I know?”
Nanny didn’t say anything. Boy, was she cross. If she’d had a flyswatter or a paint stirrer, she might have threatened me. Like when I was a kid.
Sheesh! Nanny’s not speaking made me feel like I was a little kid.
Fine. I could play this game too! I stomped back to the stolen merchandise and climbed into the front seat.{ 103 }
69
Too Many Feelings
I spent five minutes trying to pick beggar-lice off my socks and shoelaces. I collected them in a little pile to throw away when it wouldn’t look like I was rolling down the window so I could hear what my grandmother and the stowaway/kidnap victim were talking about.
Behind them, the ocean crashed. There were some awful nice buildings going up along this stretch of the road. I bet it wouldn’t be long before no one could see the ocean at all.
Sigh.
I closed my eyes.
Get past the breakers and I could swim the breast stroke. Great training, an ocean practice. Made pool swimming a breeze.
What was Mark Spitz doing now? They were all in Germany, I knew that. Maybe he was swimming in an ocean there. Not that there was an ocean there. But there was the English Channel. Sort of.
Could I get good enough to swim the English Channel? Could I try when I was sixteen? Shane Gould was just a little older than me, and she was breaking world records. That gave me—{ 104 }
There was a tap on the window.
“I gotta calm down some,” Nanny said, when I lowered the glass. “Smoke another cigarette. You let the dog in. The rooster needs a bit more time out here.”
She opened the door, and Thelma jumped in and came up near my feet. I picked at the beggar-lice in her hair. The noon sun burned at us all. Only a few miles of driving comfort, and I was already convinced air-conditioning was a necessity.
Was jail air-conditioned?
Steve clomped into the motor home and sat at the table. I glanced back at him. He watched me through squinty blue eyes. Geez! He could be a model for Sears or in a toothpaste commercial or something.
“I like your dog,” he said after a moment. Just like that! Like he wasn’t a stowaway. My face warmed up with pleasure. “My mother has one the size of a rat.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew what dog Steve was talking about. Everyone who went a half mile of Leon’s knew. Janet Green Simmons carried the bit of a dog around like a loaf of bread or one big shoe. Ugly little thing, that dog was.
I pulled the last of the beggar-lice from Thelma’s belly, and she slipped over to Steve.
“She likes you,” I said, catching my breath at this betrayal, “even if you are a stupid ass.”
My whole body blushed pink as a setting-sun sky. Now I { 105 }
was a sinner—a motor-home-car-thief-kidnapping-swearing sinner. Who’d been swimming half nekkid in front of the boy of her dreams, Harlequin-romance style.
Steve raised his eyebrows. “I’m a stupid ass because I wanted to come with you all?”
“You made us kidnappers.” I whispered the words between the seats, like that might not make them as real.
He shook his head, and Steve’s blond hair slipped into his eyes. “Naw,” he said. He thumbed his chest. “I am your excuse. You needed a ride. I offered one.”
Huh?
I stared at Steve Simmons.
Wait a minute.
Wait. A. Minute. He w
as right.
“Close your mouth,” he whispered, “or I am coming in for another kiss. You are tempting me.”
“Gross!” I said, then snapped my mouth shut and turned around and faced the long stretch of road in front of us.{ 106 }
70
Feeling A-Okay
The second worst thing? Once I got over my shock? The fact that Stephen had tagged along at all. We started back on I-95, Nanny hitting every pothole next to the highway till she got us on the road.
The worst thing?
I was glad he’d come.
When I was sure Nanny wasn’t looking at me, I let myself smile.{ 107 }
71
The Hows and Whys
“He saw me,” Nanny said. “Sneaking around a few days ago.”
I didn’t answer. Just watched Florida pass my window.
“Said he figured I was up to something the way I checked out the rig. Started it. Drove it up and down the driveway.”
I raised my eyebrows. Those were the only clues?
“Packed up some stuff and waited. Then snuck aboard before I even completely made my mind up. This morning.” Nanny stared out at the road. “Early.”
“Well, well, well,” I said.
Because, sometimes that’s the best answer to that kind of apology.{ 108 }
72
Privates
Signed, Skye Harper Page 5