Survival Strategies of the Almost Brave (2 page)

“Knock, knock,” Billie said.

Jokes were our thing. We used them to pass time while Dad searched for the perfect shot.

“Liberty!
Knock, knock.
”

“Who's there?”

“Ice cream.”

My stomach grumbled. “Ice cream who?”

“Ice cream when I see your underwear!” She laughed like it was the funniest joke she'd ever heard, even though we'd recited it at least one hundred times.

“Get it? I scream.”

“Yeah, I get it. That's a good one, Billie.”

The door to the gas station opened. The old man came back out. He turned and looked at us. “Afternoon,” he said, tipping his hat.

He seemed nicer now. Should I say something? Maybe he could help us. His truck door creaked open, he paused for a second, stared at us, and then … it was too late. He slammed the door and drove away. I glared at his bumper, wishing I had an invisible string to attach to it so he could drag us along.

The desert sand rolled around us like giant waves in the ocean. Up and down. Down and up. I had never seen red sand in person before, until Dad came and got us. At first it had seemed pretty, but now, being left in it, it felt like being lost at sea—a red sea made out of sand.

 

Survival Strategy #3:

BLUE SKIES DO NOT MEAN HAPPINESS

The last time I saw the ocean, we'd sprinkled Mom's ashes across the water. Our boat had bounced on top, like how the fish food bounced after I fed our goldfish, George and Martha. And I had started to feel a little sick. And it had only been nine days since Mom had died. And maybe I didn't want to believe it was all true.

So I'd stopped watching the waves roll up and down, and instead I looked at the sky. The sun glowed bright against the blue with little white sheep clouds floating everywhere. Little lost sheep clouds. It was a perfect beach day. Mom's funeral on the best beach day ever.

Julie had said, “You need a bucket, Liberty?”

I nodded.

“Joe. You have a bucket around here?”

The man named Joe driving the boat shook his head and pointed to the water. I couldn't throw up in there because that's where Mom was going. And I didn't even know this man Joe, who Julie said she paid to take us out in the ocean so Mom could be “put to rest” where she'd always wanted to be resting.

I didn't know Mom always wanted to rest in the ocean.

I thought she always wanted to be with us.

But Julie said Mom
did
want to be resting in the ocean.

And since my grandma and grandpa were dead before I was ever alive and the only other family we had was Dad and we didn't know where he was, I had to listen to Julie. Because:

1. She was Mom's boss at work.

2. She was our neighbor.

3. She was Mom's best friend.

So Julie said what Billie and me had to do.

Which you would think would be okay because at Julie's condo she had a lot of candy.
A lot.
Not old, stale butterscotches, but jars of
candy
—the good kind, like M&M's, and Twix, and Starburst, and even some that I didn't recognize from Canada, like Coffee Crisps, and Sweet Maries (Billie liked those), and Wunderbars, all stuffed into jars across her kitchen counter. I'm sure all that candy wasn't good for her and that's probably why she was kind of fat, but what was I supposed to say about that?

Billie and me always liked the candy, but I didn't think just because she gave us candy, and took us to SeaWorld once, she should be the boss of us. But she was, because there was no one else who wanted two sisters to live with them for always.

At our condo, I'm-Sorry-You're-Dead flowers from Mom's friends at the hospital lined our island in the kitchen. My favorites were the purple snapdragons from Dr. Hammond, Mom's onetime (I think not-divorced) boyfriend. She didn't date him long but I liked the flowers he sent. She said dating with kids was too complicated. Once at the grocery store Mom showed me how if you squeeze snapdragons on their sides, their mouths open up like baby birds'. Snapdragons were my favorite talking flower.

Joe stopped the boat right next to an old buoy because he said the waves were getting rough. Seagulls stared at us with their give-us-some-food eyes.

Julie said, “That's far enough.” And she handed me a big vase with cats on it.

“Mom doesn't like cats,” said Billie.

I nodded. It was true. She didn't. Allergic.

Julie had two cats named Snickers and Runts. They were very fat and picky and ate only tuna out of a can. Before Mom died, I cat-sat for them twice when Julie went to Canada to visit her brother.

“Of course she does, sweetie,” said Julie, patting Billie on the top of her head.

“No, she doesn't. She's allergic,” I said.

“Well, these aren't real cats. And we're not leaving the urn. Just your mom's ashes,” she said, taking off the lid.

Billie and me peered inside. It couldn't be Mom. It looked like dirt.

“I thought she would be pink,” said Billie. “Mom loves pink.”

Julie wasn't listening. Instead she was staring out at the ocean like she might cry. Then she pulled a paper out of her pocket and read a poem about flowers and clouds and heaven.

And I took a handful of what-was-Mom-and-looked-like-dirt-but-felt-soft-and-slippery and sprinkled it across the water. Billie didn't want to touch it. And really, I didn't, either. But Julie told me to.

So I did.

Then Julie wiped tears from her eyes and emptied the rest of the vase right there into the Pacific Ocean. And Billie cried, too. But I didn't. Not yet.

Because it didn't seem right. How could we be here without her?

The waves went up and down, up and down, and carried Mom out to sea. And instead of wondering about Mom, I wondered what the fish were thinking. Was there a spotted wobbegong shark down there? Did he notice anything different about the specks of dust floating down to the ocean floor? Did he know those specks were my mom?

I didn't like to think about that.

Now, sitting here at the gas station, it was almost three months since we had put Mom in the ocean. I kept track of it in my notebook. And after that day everything changed. Julie found Dad's old address in Mom's papers. I never knew Mom had an old address—like a treasure map—that told us where to find him. When I'd asked where he was before, Mom had always said he was traveling or she didn't know where to find him. But Julie said the person who lived at that old address had Dad's phone number.

So a few weeks after Mom's funeral, on the day Julie volunteered at the free walk-in clinic, she called him.

She said Dad was sad to hear about Mom. And that he would come and get us, even though we hadn't seen him since I was six years old. She didn't say what Dad had said about Billie or me. She just said that he was coming and that he couldn't wait.

Really?

Probably that was just Julie being enthusiastic. But still, it made me wonder about everything Mom had ever told me about Dad, especially if she had the old-address-treasure-map and never told us. Mostly, it made me wonder what it would be like to have a real flesh-and-bone kind of dad, like I had always wished for when I sometimes looked at the three pictures I had of him.

Maybe he was like Suzanne Gomez's firefighter dad. He seemed really nice, even though she was bratty. He came to our class once to talk about fire safety. She said he coached her soccer team, and he made the best chocolate chip pancakes, and he took her to McDonald's for no special reason at all. Mom never took us to McDonald's. Having a dad around was probably pretty awesome.

Julie had said he'd take us for sure for the summer and probably, if everything went well, then he would have us for always. Didn't he already know he wanted us? Almost all of me knew I wanted him. Isn't that what kids are supposed to do? Be with their dads for always?

But now, looking at the empty road, that was our answer, wasn't it? He was gone. And we were here.

Billie sighed. “I'm bored.”

“I know,” I said. “Tell me a joke.”

She shook her head. “I want to go home.”

I knew she meant San Diego. Billie usually never talked about home, but after what had happened this morning, of course she wanted to go home.

Before Mom died we had only ever lived in San Diego. And Billie and me had never been anywhere. But Dad had been everywhere because he was a photographer. He'd been to Africa and China and Brazil and the Amazon and I think Puerto Rico, and probably lots of places I didn't even know. So I watched
Hunter and Hunted
every day on NatGeo because Mom said Dad took pictures for
National Geographic
magazine. And what if he ever came to visit us? We would need something to talk about, right?

So now I knew a lot about animals; I mean, I knew
a lot
.

Animals are important, like, essential to the human life cycle and the environment; at least that's what my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Mortensen, told me. She said the world would be nothing without the animal kingdom. So that really made sense to me about Dad and why he was gone. Because why would he leave us unless he was doing something really important?

 

Survival Strategy #4:

WATCH OUT FOR PREDATORS

An old burned-out car sat a few hundred feet from the gas station. My watch said 1:34. The car looked like a gutted fish. Like the ones we saw with Julie lying in a row at the pier right before we scattered Mom's ashes. That day, there were a lot of fishermen and a lot of dead fish.

In the desert there are no fish, of course. Only rattlesnakes or other dangerous things like spiders, and lizards, and scorpions. In the desert you have to be careful; predators could easily turn into prey.

A blue car pulled into the gas station. The engine clicked off, but no one got out. The car just sat.

Billie came and stood by me.

For a second I began to worry. Could it be Dad in a different car? Had the camper broken down?

The door creaked open slowly, so slowly that I could probably count to a million, and then I saw a tip of a shoe. A lavender shoe so shiny that the sun seemed to glow right from the tip. And then purple nubby pants. And finally, a whole body of a person so skinny she might blow away like a plastic bag, but the wind didn't exist here, so she stayed put. A cigarette dangled from her lips, and her face was covered in miles of wrinkles that could stretch all the way back to the ocean, I bet. She shielded her eyes from the sun. Maybe she was nocturnal.

“What?” she croaked into the crispy fried air. “Speak up, I can't hear you.”

I slunk closer to the cinder blocks and the ice machine, pulling Billie with me.

The Lavender Lady leaned back into her car, adjusting something, and then coughed. “Now it's on. What?” Her neck stretched farther into the car. “I know!” The door slammed so hard, my fillings rattled.

She crossed the gravel parking lot like a slug on the sidewalk after an early morning rain, and silently slipped through the gas station door with a trail of cigarette smoke following her.

The car window was too shaded to get a good look inside. Who had the Lavender Lady been talking to?

I reached into my pocket and felt something squish. I pulled out a smashed Twinkie I got from the camper this morning, still in its wrapper.

“Billie,” I said, holding it up.

She smiled.

“Here.” I shoved it into her hands. But before she could enjoy it, the gas station door slammed open. I turned. It was the creepy guy who worked inside.

He walked slowly, his hands tucked into his pockets. And for a second he paused and stared out at the gas pumps, but then he turned and headed straight toward us.

“Whatcha kids doing?” he asked. The glare off his bald head was so bright, I squinted and shaded my eyes with my hand. “I seen you out here. Where's your mom?”

I flinched; just hearing that greasy man ask about Mom made my head hurt. But I put on my most responsible voice and said, “Our dad will be back any minute. He just went to get…”

I hesitated.

“Ice cream,” Billie said. She circled her small arms around my waist. Since Mom died, she usually only ever talked to me.

“Shush,” I said, elbowing her.

She gripped me tighter.

“Ice cream?”

“Yes, ice cream.” I tried not to look at Shiny Head's eyes and just concentrated on the blue thread that was hanging from the patch above his front pocket that said
VERN
.

“Well, your daddy ain't going to find any ice cream 'round here.”

He put his leathery hand on his hip and gazed down the road as the ice machine switched on. It coughed and hummed.

“All right, thank you. We're okay.”

He stood and stared. My back felt all crawly.

I chanted in my head:
Go away.

Once I saw a lady on TV control minds just by chanting what she wished for inside her head over and over again. I tried it, and sometimes it worked, like when I didn't want Billie to eat the last Rolo.

It could work now.

Go away.

Go away.

Go away.

Billie squeezed my waist harder.

“Unless he went to Monticello,” he said slowly. “That where he went?”

“Yep. That's it. Should be back any minute. We're fine. Thank you, sir,” I said, pulling Billie around the corner where the ice machine sat, fat and heavy.

“Hold up,” said Shiny Head, following us. He pulled on the blue thread, wrapping it tight around his finger. “Why didn't your dad take you with him?”

I backed up.

He stopped pulling and put his hands back in his deep pockets, like maybe he was harmless, like a puppy dog.

Then his eyes narrowed.