Runaways (22 page)

Clenching her teeth and shutting her mind to nightmare memories, she led the way behind the service station. As she picked her way past the door of Gus’s famous rest room, and between piles of junk, mysteriously unrecognizable in the near darkness, she tried not to think about what had happened the last time she’d been there. But she couldn’t help remembering how confidently she had climbed up on the box, and then … She was shaking her head, refusing to think about it, when suddenly a huge, shadowy shape loomed beside her. She tried to scream but her breath caught in her throat, and as she backed away she tripped and fell into a stack of old tires. She was still struggling to get to her feet when she heard Stormy’s voice. She heard what he said, but there was another split second of terror before she understood.

What Stormy had said was, “Hi, Gus.”

“Stormy?” Gus moved closer and switched on a flashlight. The beam moved from Dani’s face to Pixie’s and from there on to … “Stormy!” Gus said. “What in blazes happened to you?”

And then everyone was talking at once. Everyone, that is, except Stormy.

Gus was asking, “Was it that Grabler kid? Did he do this? I’ll tan the hide off that …”

Pixie was saying, “And it’s not just his face. You should see his back, and his legs.”

And Dani was trying, without much luck, to make Gus hear her whispered, “Gus. Gus. Don’t ask him. I’ll tell you what happened.” It wasn’t until she got hold of one of Gus’s overall straps and jerked hard that he started paying attention. But once he started listening he quit asking questions.

The bus had gone by that time, had taken off on its belated trip to Reno, and the main street of Rattler Springs was very quiet. Inside his incredibly cluttered office Gus managed to uncover enough chairs for them all to sit down before he went back out to his electric ice chest and pulled out three root beers. He opened the root beers and passed them around, but after he’d watched Stormy for a minute, he pawed around among the bills and maps and newspapers on the counter until he found a box of drinking straws. Then he sat down and, turning to look at Dani, he said, “Awright, little lady. I want to hear what’s going on here.”

Dani gave him a long, cold stare before she said, “Well, what was going on was, we were running away. We were trying to get on the bus to Reno, only the driver wouldn’t let us.”

Gus nodded solemnly. “Awright, you were running away. All three of you?”

They nodded and Gus nodded back. “And why’s that?” he asked, speaking directly to Dani. “Why’d you want to do a thing like that?”

Dani actually thought, None of your business. Even opened her mouth to say it. But somehow it didn’t come out that way. She looked up into Gus’s sad, droopy eyes under their shaggy eyebrows, and to her surprise she heard herself saying, “Because I need to get back home. Back to where I came from. I’ve been planning it for a long time. At first I was just going to go alone but then Stormy wanted to go too.”

Gus looked at Stormy but he didn’t ask him why he was running away. “Stormy’s been part of the plan for a long time,” Dani said. “You remember the lemonade stand? That was to get money for running away.”

“I shorely do,” Gus said. “And I recollect how Stormy here run off with your bankroll to save it from that Grabler kid.” Dani couldn’t help grinning a little, remembering Ronnie and the grease pit, and Gus chuckled too, showing his snaggly teeth and making his walrus mustaches bounce up and down. And even Stormy’s swollen lips twitched a little.

But then Gus turned to Pixie and said, “So how ’bout you, little lady? Why were you fixing to fly the coop?”

So it was Pixie’s turn. Dani leaned forward and stopped slurping up the last of her root beer. She couldn’t begin to guess which story Pixie would tell Gus. Whether it would be the Frankenstein one or the forgotten kid one, or maybe something in between. But she felt sure that whatever it was it would be worth listening to. But then Pixie sat back, folded her hands in her lap—and proceeded to tell the truth, or something pretty much like it.

She told how her parents were scientists, not mad scientists or anything, but just people who loved studying and learning and making discoveries more than anything on earth, and how they’d always gone all over the earth to do it. “And then I guess I came along sort of by accident,” she said, “but they took good care of me, at least they did when they remembered to. But sometimes they went where they couldn’t take a little kid. Like on a glacier or in the middle of a desert. So they would leave me with my grandmother and most of the time that was okay with me. Only after a while I started wanting to go with them, and when I heard they were coming here, so close to home, I decided I was going to come too.” She stopped and shrugged. “And so I did.”

Gus nodded, his ugly old face puckered into a thoughtful frown. “And it warn’t what you ’spected, I guess,” he said.

Pixie shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t.” And then to Dani’s astonishment she began to cry. Pixie’s crying was like everything else she did, different and dramatic and very impressive. For a moment Dani was really shocked. She put her arms around Pixie and patted her and tried to get her to stop, but for quite a while Pixie went on sobbing and wailing and thrashing around like a wounded wild animal. And then she stopped. Stopped wailing, sat up straight, wiped her eyes and looked up at Dani through soggy eyelashes. She didn’t smile or anything, but in between the clumps of wet eyelashes Dani saw that weird flicker starting up again—or maybe it had been there all along.

“Awright,” Gus said. “So what comes next? What are you kids going to do now that you’ve missed the bus?”

“I don’t know,” Dani said, “except that I better go home and tell my mother that we’re all right. She’s probably running all over town looking for us by now.”

Gus shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “Don’t think so. Leastwise I saw your mom just a few minutes ago and she wasn’t running around none.”

“You saw my mother?” Dani couldn’t imagine where. She would have been at the store until around five-thirty or six and then she would have gone home and after that … For a while she’d have been home waiting but by now she’d surely be out looking for Dani. “Where was she?” Dani asked Gus. “Where did you see her?”

Gus grinned. “Right where she usually is,” he said. “In the bookstore. I was walking up Main just a few minutes ago, and I saw as how the lights were still on in the bookstore so I sauntered by to take a look-see. And sure enough, there she was, along with Al Cooley and two or three other folk. Seemed to be some kind of a meeting going on.”

“A meeting?” Dani said uneasily. She looked at Pixie and made her eyes say that didn’t sound good. Leaning closer, she whispered, “With the sheriff, maybe. Maybe they’ve called the sheriff already.”

“The sheriff?” Pixie sounded pleased. “Do you think it’s the sheriff? Let’s go see.”

S
TORMY DIDN’T WANT TO
go. When he heard Pixie say the sheriff might be at the bookshop he shook his head, and looked like he meant it. Dani knew why. He didn’t want to have to answer questions about what had happened to him. Dani looked at Gus, asking him for help. “That’s fine,” Gus said. “You little gals go on down and see what’s what, there at the store. Stormy and me’ll just stay here.” Then he lowered his voice and said, “Maybe I can get him down to the Careys and have Mabel take a look at him. See if there’s anything she can do.”

“Good idea,” Dani whispered. Then she told Stormy he could stay with Gus and, grabbing Pixie’s arm, pulled her out of the station.

“Mabel?” Pixie asked as they hurried down Main Street. “Who’s Mabel?”

“Mabel Carey. An old lady who used to be a nurse,” Dani said. “Closest thing to a doctor in Rattler Springs.”

“Good,” Pixie agreed. “He should see a doctor. Or the closest thing to one.”

Gus was right, the bookstore’s lights were still on, and from the dark street it was easy to see the people inside without being seen yourself. There were five people in the store. Linda was still there, Gus had been right about that, too. And her boss, old Al Cooley. And to Dani’s surprise, Pixie’s mom and dad were there too. But the fifth person was a stranger. An important-looking stranger in a suit and tie was sitting at Al’s beat-up old desk, shuffling through a stack of papers. He was acting, Dani thought, kind of in charge, like a sheriff might be, but maybe a little too relaxed for a sheriff investigating a report of missing kids.

Dani and Pixie watched for a long time, peering in around the book displays in the window, but except for a lot of talking, nothing much seemed to be happening. As a matter of fact all the people in Al’s bookstore were looking strangely relaxed, cheerful even, nodding and smiling and even laughing out loud now and then.

At one point Dani pulled Pixie away from the window and whispered, “That man at the desk. Do you think he’s a sheriff?”

“Sheriff? No, that’s just Mr. Bridgeman. He’s a lawyer or something like that.” Pixie sounded disappointed. “The sheriff must have left.”

A few minutes later three men came out of Lefty’s Bar and stood around talking. Talking and laughing and, it seemed to Dani, staring toward the bookstore. Pulling Pixie away from the window, Dani headed up the street. “Come on,” she whispered. “Pretend we’re just window-shopping.” Pixie caught on right away, and they window-shopped all the way up the block and down the other side, until Main Street was empty again. But when they got back to the bookstore nothing had changed.

It was, Dani decided, as if nobody was the least bit worried, not even Linda. As if the Smithsons weren’t the only parents around who could forget about their kid when there were other things to think about. Dani was beginning to feel really angry, watching them talking and laughing with the lawyer guy, while she and Pixie were still missing, at least as far as anybody knew. Lost on the desert, maybe, or even kidnapped.

A lot of time had passed and Dani had gotten a little careless about staying out of sight when Linda looked up at the clock and then out toward the window. Dani stepped back but it was too late. Her mother had seen her. “Come on,” Dani said to Pixie, “we might as well go on in.”

They might as well, she was thinking, face up to all the trouble they’d caused, and get it over with. But while Linda was unlocking the bookshop door she didn’t look particularly troubled, or angry either, and all she did when Dani walked in was give her a quick hug and say, “Dani. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Pixie went over to talk to her parents and although Dani couldn’t quite make out what was being said, the discussion seemed to be calm enough. Actually, it looked like the most natural sort of parent-kid conversation Dani had ever seen them having.

It was then that Dani really began to feel resentful. It was as if the adults had all decided, for some sneaky psychological reason, to pretend that the whole thing was no big deal. That the whole running-away attempt had just been some unimportant little childish prank. Dani frowned and went on frowning while Linda introduced her to the man at the desk.

“Mr. Bridgeman, this is my daughter, Danielle,” Linda was saying. And what Dani thought of saying was something like, “Yeah, I’m Dani. I’m the one who planned the whole thing and talked the other kids into going along with it. So if you have to put someone in jail, it might as well be me.” But she had just gotten started when, from directly behind her, there was, not a knocking, but a thumping noise as if someone was banging on the bookshop’s door with something besides their bare knuckles.

Everyone turned to stare, and sure enough, the person outside the door was Gus, and the reason he was knocking with his foot was because his arms were full of Stormy. A Stormy whose cuts and bruises were now accented by daubs of Mercurochrome, and who seemed to be sleeping peacefully in spite of all the thumping and jiggling. Dani ran to the door and the next few minutes were absolute confusion.

“Shhh,” Gus was saying. “Let the little feller sleep. The pill Mabel gave him kind of knocked him out. Where can I put him? Anyplace he could sleep it off for a little while?” No one answered Gus’s question right away because everyone, all the adults at least, were too busy making gasping sounds and asking Gus things like “My God, what happened?” And even though Dani would have been glad to explain no one was asking her any questions. When Al suggested that they could put Stormy to bed at his house, they all followed him out the back of the store and down the short path that led to his front door.

Dani had always liked Al Cooley’s big, roomy old house. At the moment it was cluttered with half-full packing boxes, but the room where they put Stormy still looked pretty good. Besides a nice double bed, it had a bunch of other furniture, like dressers and chairs and even a small sofa. Dani sat down on the sofa and watched while Gus put Stormy on the bed and Al looked for a box of blankets. Stormy moaned once and then went on sleeping, and the whole crowd of people, Linda, Al, and Gus, the Smithsons and even Pixie and the lawyer, stood around staring at each other and down at Stormy’s poor beat-up face. At last everyone tiptoed out. Everyone except Dani. Sitting down had been a mistake. She tried to get up but her muscles refused to cooperate. Suddenly she was too tired to move.

When her mother came back a minute later, Dani was curled up on the sofa and already half asleep. But she woke up long enough to say, “Someone ought to be here with him, in case he wakes up. And besides, I’m tired.”

Her mother stared at her for a moment before she said, “You do look exhausted. You stay right there.” She found another blanket and as she was tucking it around Dani she whispered, “Dani, what
did
happen to Stormy? Do you know?”

Dani tried to nod but it was too much work. “Yes,” she said. “Gus knows too. Gus can tell you.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Linda said. “And Pixie. I’m sure Pixie can explain everything.”

Dani was sure of that. For just a minute the thought of what a Pixie explanation might be like almost woke her up. But not for long. It couldn’t have been more than a minute later that she fell fast asleep and stayed that way until early the next morning, when a faint sound made her open her eyes. Linda was standing beside Stormy’s bed feeling his forehead with the tips of her fingers.