A Girl Undone (3 page)

“I hope you’re right about this.”

The stairs ended in a basement room filled with circular racks of used clothing and smelling of old carpet. “Men’s sizes on that wall. Girls’ in the middle. Don’t even think of paying,” Vera told us. “Just hang your old coats on the rack and we’ll call it even.”

We heard the basement door open. “Vera,” Harris called down. “June from the ladies’ league is here.”

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Now of all times. You stay here till I come get you.”

Vera walked up the stairs and flicked off the light. The key turned in the lock, and light filtered in through three small windows near the ceiling.

“Did you hear that?” I said, scurrying over to the stairs. “She locked us in.”

“Locked us in or locked somebody else out?” Luke unzipped his jacket as he strode over to a rack of parkas.

I could hear muffled voices through the floor. “Not sure.” I climbed up on a rickety table and tried the latch on one of the windows. “Okay, we’re fine,” I said, feeling it give.

Luke was going through the men’s coats, but there weren’t many to choose from, not like the racks of girls’ and women’s clothing that filled the room. Prom and wedding dresses lined the far wall, while more everyday things filled the center racks.

Lots of the clothes looked barely worn and some still had price tags attached. I pictured hundreds of fathers emptying out their wives’ and daughters’ closets after Scarpanol ripped their families apart.

And that thought carried me back to the line of Dumpsters outside the Rose Bowl back home buried under mountains of clothes that families couldn’t bear to keep.

My throat tightened.
You can’t go there now. You need to focus on changing your appearance.

I found a powder-blue ski jacket, but before I hung my black one in its place, I retrieved the Canadian passport that Maggie’s assistant, Helen, gave me in Vegas.

I peeked inside the cover, thinking I should toss it. I didn’t look anything like the photo. The customs agent who saw this would have to be a fool to believe it was me.

It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one I’ve got,
I thought, and zipped it into my new jacket.

From a shelf piled with knit scarves, I picked a fuzzy white one with a matching hat and mittens. Snowflakes embellished with silver sequins were embroidered on the creamy wool.

I pulled the hat over my hair and pouted in a nearby mirror. I looked like a soft, sweet kitten, not the dangerous revolutionary the media was spinning.

Behind me, I saw Luke take off his cowboy hat. His blond-brown hair was tied into a short curly tail at the base of his neck. He stared down at his hat, holding it in both hands almost as if he was saying good-bye.

I threaded through the racks until I stood beside him. “That hat must be special.”

“Yup. My dad bought me this hat.”

Dad or adopted dad, I didn’t ask. All I had left of home was the silver dolphin hanging around my neck that Becca, Yates’ sister, gave me. “Then you have to keep it,” I said and plucked a hat band with a big, flashy spray of brown feathers off a Stetson. “This look like something you’d wear?”

“Never in a million years.”

“Perfect.” I fastened it to his hat. “People will be so mesmerized by this stupid thing, they won’t bother to look at your face.”

He smiled at me with gratitude and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. The back of my neck prickled. “I need to go pick out a shirt,” I said.

Luke sorted through a case of used paperbacks while I found a shirt I’d never wear in real life. Lilac gingham check to go with a pale pink sweater. I made sure Luke’s back was turned, then peeled off my old shirt and put on the new one.

A few minutes later, a car pulled away and Vera cracked the door. “You can come out now.” She locked the basement behind us.

“Where’s Harris?” I said, seeing that he’d gone.

“He’ll be back in a minute.”

Then I realized both Luke’s and my packs were missing, too. “Wait, where are our packs?” I demanded.

Vera started, and pointed under the desk. “Harris tucked them out of sight when June drove up.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little jumpy.”

“It’s all right. No harm done.”

Luke held up a yellowing copy of
Killing Lincoln. “
How much for this?” he asked Vera.

She waved him off. “That? It’s on the house. Sorry to say, we don’t get many readers here anymore.”

“Holy—” Luke crossed the room in two steps and squatted in front of the TV. Vera gasped, and I wheeled around and saw what they saw: an aerial shot of a line of men, women, and children marching out of Salvation’s church, hands over their heads.

State troopers flanked both sides of the road. “Looks like they’re letting them go back to their houses,” Vera said.

I crouched down beside Luke. “Do you recognize anyone?”

He followed the line of people on the screen with his finger. “That’s Jemima’s family but I don’t see her. There’s Ramos and his wife and kids—”

Vera wrapped her hands together and began to pray.

I couldn’t tell who the people were. The shot was from far away and even Luke was guessing, counting how many adults and children went into each house.

Come on, where’s Beattie and Keisha? I thought. Where’s Sarah and Jonas, Luke’s little brother and sister, and Nellie and Rogan, the mom and dad who raised him?

We watched over a hundred people come out of that church, before the doors closed. Luke bowed his head. I twisted my fingers, wishing I had answers.

“Where’s my daughter!” Vera cried. “Where’s my grandbaby?”

“There’s forty people missing,” Luke said.

I went through everyone I could remember before it clicked and I stood up. “The Council. The Council members and their families are all still in the church.”

Vera looked at me, panicked.

“I think it’s a good sign,” I said, wrapping my hand around hers. “I think it means they’re probably alive.”

“Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.”

Luke got to his feet. “I think Avie’s right. We should assume the people still inside are being questioned.”

He sounded like Barnabas, the same calm under fire, but his jaw was clenched. He was trying not to freak Vera, but he didn’t believe his family was safe.

The door swung open, and the smell of hot eggs and onions blew in. “Who’s hungry?” Harris called.

“I know I am.” Luke walked toward him, faking a smile. “Whatever that is smells good.”

Harris handed Luke a burrito. “What about you?” Harris asked me.

“Yeah, thank you.” I tore back the foil and bit into the first hot food I’d had in four days. The cheesy eggs melted in my mouth as I watched Luke wolf down his, grateful he had something to take his mind off Salvation.

Harris sipped his coffee. “You know your way around livestock, son?”

“Yes, sir. Horses, and goats, mostly. I don’t know much about cattle.”

“That’s all right. I thought we might hitch you two a ride with a rancher needing to haul some stock.”

“Sounds good.”

“You know where you’re headed?”

“Laramie,” Luke said.

“Laramie? We’re not going back to—”
Boise.

Luke silenced me with a look.
No Boise. Don’t even ask
.

“What about Canada?”

Three sets of eyes landed on me. “Canada would be safer,” Vera murmured.

“That’s not the direction we should be headed,” Luke said.

I stared right back at him. Luke hadn’t been on the run for as long as I had. If he had, he’d think twice about dodging the feds for two thousand miles so we could hand over the evidence personally, and instead come up with a way to get it there without getting us killed.

The room went silent while Luke and I pretended to be absorbed in what we were eating. Meanwhile, Vera rifled through a shoe box on a shelf.

A moment later, she handed me a gold ring with a dusty chip that looked like a diamond. “Since you two are traveling together, you better look like man and wife.”

The gold was scratched like someone had worn it a long time. I slid it on my ring finger and held up my hand so Vera could see it fit.

“A little toothpaste will shine that right up,” she said.

Luke frowned into his coffee. Maybe it was me disagreeing with what he wanted or maybe it was his family still trapped in Salvation, but he wasn’t happy.

3

Vera packed me into the car as soon as we were done with breakfast. “We’re going to Selena’s Dream,” she said. “Do a little something with your hair.”

Vera wasn’t criticizing. She was trying to keep me alive.

I smoothed the hat over my hair, surprised that Vera was driving me herself. I scanned the street for people who might be watching.
Two women riding in a car alone?
I was about to say something when Vera laid her purse between us on the front seat. A gun peeked out from a holster sewn right onto her shoulder bag. Vera was packing?

“Wow. That’s handy,” I said.

“One of the ladies in the hospital assistance league makes and sells them.” Vera gave the bag a pat. “A man better think twice before he messes with a woman in this town.”

“You know, back in California, girls aren’t allowed to have guns.”

“Well, why not?”

I shrugged. “I was told it was too dangerous.”

“And it’s better to leave you unarmed and completely helpless? Where’s the sense in that?”

“Crazy, right?”

Vera spent the rest of the drive chuckling to herself about Californians and their strange notion about keeping women safe from guns. Selena’s beauty salon was tacked onto the side of a one-story house. We opened the sliding door, and four Chihuahuas raced to greet me, tapping their tiny paws on my shins.

I bent down and rubbed their squirmy bodies.

“Ricky. Lopez. Chico. Jesus! Go to your stations!” The little dogs ran for four doggie beds covered in animal prints. There they sat at attention, wiggling to be let free.

Selena, the stylist, wore a big, yellow rhinestone flower in the black hair that curled down her back. Her jeans looked like they’d been airbrushed on. I didn’t know how old Selena was, but she wasn’t afraid to flaunt it.

Vera introduced me. “This is Tracy. She’s married to my niece’s son, Lou.”

I was getting used to changing my name. Tracy went with the petal-pink sweater I wore.

“I see you like my dogs!” Selena said. “I rescue Chihuahuas.” She pointed at a map of Canada plastered with dozens of little Chihuahua stickers. “Seventy-three dogs I take to new homes across the border. They love them there.”

“Do you have another run planned?” Vera said. She checked to see I was paying attention.

“Ay, no. And I have twelve dogs, but the border crossings are closed. Chief Mountain, Whitlash, Del Bonito. Can you believe it? Today only Detroit is open. I’m gonna have to take the
perritos
to a shelter in Denver maybe.”

I’m screwed, I thought. If a little
perrito
can’t get across the border, no way I can.

I heard only snatches of what Vera was telling Selena about giving me a new look, because I kept thinking about how Luke would push even harder for us to follow his plan if he heard about the border closing. Still, there was a chance we could cross in Detroit. I started when Selena peeled off my hat. “Sorry,” I said.

“Is okay.” She combed her fingers through my hair. “How do you want to look?”

“I have no idea.”

“You think of a word to tell me what you want. Dra-ma-tic? Ro-man-tic? Sex-y?”

“Innocent.” I needed to look innocent.

Selena smiled. “This is your lucky day. You’re going to be blond.”

“Blond?”

She plucked a color chart off the wall and held it up to my face. She and Vera peered at me. “I think Topaz,” Selena said, fingering the fake-hair samples.

Whoa. Suddenly, I’m Norwegian. “But my eyebrows—they’re brown.”

“I’m gonna do a tip-top job. Do the eyebrows, too.”

Selena painted on the chemicals while I sat in the chair, one eye trained on the front door, praying she wouldn’t have any other walk-ins.

Then she and Vera visited while I processed under a hair dryer with Lopez in my lap. That’s when I spied this week’s
People
on the table.

I’d made the cover again, only this time there were two shots: one cropped from the picture of Jessop Hawkins locking the Love bracelet on my wrist, and a fuzzier clip from my broadcast, me—desperate-looking, my spiky brown hair peeking out from the Peruvian knit hat. “Kidnapped Celebrity to Fugitive—What Went Wrong With Avie.”

I pulled it over to me. Paparazzi shots of my house and of Dad trying to shield his face. Pics of Hawkins and an aerial of his Malibu compound. And, oh my God, no! Yates’ mug shot from his arrest at the anti-Paternalist rally in Sacramento.

All the other pictures I’d seen on the news were so old they didn’t even look like him, but this! Selena slid the magazine out of my hand. “Time to wash your hair.” As we walked over to the sink, she tossed the magazine in the trash.

I lay back and Selena leaned in with the sprayer. “When I come to the U.S.,” she said, “I am illegal. No criminal, but illegal. Every day I wonder if I gonna be caught.”

I clutched the chair, not sure where she was going. “That must have been hard.”

“I was very lucky. People help me. I meet my husband. We marry. Now I am legal and I help people.”

My heartbeat quickened. “Are you—part of Exodus?”

She screwed up her face. “What is that?”

“Nothing,” I said, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

“Close your eyes. I’m going to spray.”

I sat back in the salon chair, and Selena turned me around so I couldn’t see the mirror as big clumps of pale blond hair dropped onto my lap.

She blew it dry and then snatched a lipstick off a display and swept it over my lips before she spun me back to face the mirror.

My hair was white blond. I reached up and touched the feathery bangs and the hair that stopped just under my ears. Then I ran my fingers over my icy blond brows.

“Oh.” Vera sighed. “She looks like an angel.”