Tallahassee Higgins (13 page)

"She wanted me to come ages ago, but my aunt and uncle wouldn't let me go. Finally, my mother sent me the money and told me to get the bus today," I told the driver, wanting the conversation to continue.

"Oh, yeah?" He braked sharply and shook his fist at a delivery truck that had stopped right in front of us.

Then, before I could tell him anything else, he stopped to pick up a couple of ladies.

"Charlie, how's it going?" The first one through the door plopped herself down behind him, shoving me to the other end of the seat, and her friend squeezed in between her and me.

"Just great, Ellie," the driver said, and from then on, he forgot all about me. Those ladies talked his ear off about a friend of theirs who was just getting over some horrible operation. Maybe they couldn't read the sign over his head that said, "Please do not talk to the driver while the bus is in motion."

"Hey, kid," the driver said, suddenly remembering me. "This is where you get off." He pointed across the street. "That's the terminal, right there. You be careful now, don't talk to nobody. Lots of weirdos hanging out there, no place for a little girl like you."

"I'm not a little girl!" Glad I'd tucked Melanie out of sight, I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulder and walked past him.

"Just get your ticket, sit down on a bench next to some respectable person, and don't look at nobody, okay?" he continued.

"And don't go to the rest room unless you really have to, honey," one of the ladies added.

"I know how to take care of myself." I glared at them both. The bus doors closed and away they went, still talking. Probably about me, now that I wasn't there to hear them.

I could see right away what the driver meant about the weirdos. A ragged old woman was squatting by the terminal door. She had about five shopping bags gathered around her, and she was talking to her fist. She held it in front of her face and shouted at it. The fist nodded and jiggled back and forth, but it stayed right there, listening to every word.

I sidled around the woman, looking at her out of the corner of my eye till it hurt, but I don't think she even saw me. "You heard me!" she screamed at her fist. "That's right! That's what they want to do, but they can't fool me, no, not Tillie. They won't get away with it."

Inside it was almost as bad. The benches were full of people staring off into space like zombies, their suitcases and bags at their feet. All of them seemed to have horrible, hacking coughs, and I was afraid somebody would collapse and die right in front of me.

I found the ticket counter and took out my money. "How much does it cost to go to California?" I asked a woman who reminded me of Mrs. Duffy.

She started fooling around with the computer in front of her. "Are you under twelve?" she asked.

"I'm ten," I lied, remembering that Liz always said I was ten when we went to the movies. She didn't have to pay as much for my ticket that way. "My birthday is August fifteenth." I gave her a big grin so she'd think I was a nice little girl, not a liar or a cheat or anything.

She nodded. "Are you going with your family?"

"Just me. I'm meeting my mother." I grinned again even though she hadn't seemed to notice the first one.

"Urn," she mumbled, barely glancing at me. Then she started giving me all these options—family rates, specials, all sorts of stuff—but no matter how low she got, the fare was more than I could afford. Finally, I thanked her and told her I had to talk to my aunt about it.

I went around to the other side of the counter where the ticket agent couldn't see me and asked the lady at the information desk for a schedule of California buses. By studying it, I discovered I could get to Boulder, Colorado, for fifty dollars. Thinking I could hitchhike the rest of the way, I bought the ticket and sat down next to a nice-looking old lady. Taking Melanie out of my backpack, I smiled at her and she smiled at me. "So far so good," I whispered to her.

Since I had almost an hour to wait for the bus to Boulder, I pulled
National Velvet
out and started reading, but it was hard to concentrate. I kept expecting to see Uncle Dan come charging into the bus terminal with Aunt Thelma behind him.

Finally, the loudspeaker announced the arrival of the California bus and rattled off the places it was supposed to stop between here and there, including Boulder. Grabbing my backpack, I joined the group of people heading for Gate Twelve, handed the driver my ticket, and got on the bus.

I picked a seat way in the back, where I thought the driver might forget about me, and made myself comfortable. Maybe I could stay on this bus all the way to California if I hid in the bathroom or something. Let them do whatever they wanted when we reached Los Angeles—even put me in jail. I'd call Liz, and she'd take care of everything.

Rummaging in my backpack, I pulled Melanie out. "You look indecent," I whispered. "I'm embarrassed to be seen with you. Don't you have any clothes?"

I made her shake her head. "You let that dog ruin them, remember?"

Checking to see if anyone was looking at me, I held Melanie up to the window and watched Washington slide past. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the White House or the Capitol, but all I saw were rainy streets jammed with cars and buses and block after block of row houses and little stores.

"Say good-bye to the nation's capital," I told Melanie. "We'll probably never see it again."

Stuffing her into my backpack, I slumped down in my seat and closed my eyes. How long would it be till I got to California? I wondered. The bus wheels rumbled
soon, soon, soon
till they put me to sleep.

I didn't wake up till the bus slowed down for its first stop in Hagerstown, Maryland. Waiting to get on were two people—an old man and a state trooper.

W
HEN THE TROOPER
stopped to talk to the driver, I slid down in my seat and held
National Velvet
in front of my face. "Maybe he just wants a ride," I whispered to Melanie. "Or maybe he's after a dangerous drug smuggler who's riding this very bus."

But I heard the trooper walking down the aisle toward me, his shoes creaking with every step he took. I didn't look up and I didn't take down my book, not even when he stopped next to me and I could feel his eyes boring into me.

He cleared his throat. "Is your name Tallahassee Higgins?" he asked.

Without taking my eyes off the sentence I was reading over and over, I shook my head. "There must be some mistake. My name is Melanie," I mumbled. "Melanie Russell."

"Come on, Tallahassee." He took my arm and pulled me up and toward him. "Let's go," he said.

Everybody on the bus turned around and stared at me as the trooper led me up the aisle. I guess they all thought I was going to jail or something, and I was scared they might be right. Maybe that's what happened to runaways.

The trooper led me to his car and told me to get in the passenger side. Then he drove a couple of blocks to the state police headquarters. "Your aunt is coming to get you," he said. "She'll be here in about an hour. Have you had anything to eat?"

I shook my head. "I'm not hungry."

"How about a soda, then?" He paused in front of a vending machine and dropped in some coins.

Handing me the cold can, he took me into an office and gave me a long lecture about the dangers of running away. "Do you know how many kids disappear in this country every day?" he asked me. "How many run away and are never seen again?"

"I wasn't running away," I whispered. "I was going to see my mother in California."

"But you bought a ticket to Boulder. As far as your aunt knows, you don't have any friends or relatives there."

"I didn't have enough money to get all the way to California, so I was going to stay on the bus. I thought I could hide in the bathroom or something." I bit my lip to keep from crying and stared at a poster of missing kids hanging on the wall behind the trooper. Their smiling faces were all lined up under the words Have You Seen Me? I stared at each blurry face, hoping I
might recognize one, but I was pretty sure I didn't know any of them.

"Are you listening to me?" The trooper stopped in the middle of his long speech about the terrible experiences of runaway kids. "What do you think would have happened to you in Boulder?"

"What difference would it make? Nobody would care." I could feel a big, hard lump filling my throat, cutting into it as if I'd swallowed glass.

"Do you really believe that?" The trooper leaned toward me, but I didn't look at him. The lump was making my eyes fill up with tears, and I didn't want him to see me cry.

"Why do you think I took you off the bus?" he asked.

I shrugged and tried to sniff back the tears. Thinking it might help to drink some soda, I took a swallow but it couldn't get past the lump, and I choked on it. While I was coughing, the trooper told me how Aunt Thelma had called the police and reported me missing.

"She was really upset when your school called to ask why you weren't in class," he said. "Believe me, Tallahassee, your aunt cares about you."

"Huh," I snuffled, still fighting the tears but beginning to lose the battle.

"And your mother—what about her? Don't you think she cares?"

That did it. Tears came splashing down my face, and my nose started running, and I put my head down on the desk and bawled like a baby. "I don't know if she does or not," I wept. "That's why I wanted to see her. To find out. And also to make sure she's all right. She doesn't know how to take care of herself very well."

He let me cry for a long time, and when I was done, he handed me a box of Kleenex. I used up at least a dozen blowing my nose and wiping my face.

"Now," he said, "I want you to promise me something, Tallahassee."

I looked at him then, and his face had a nice expression on it, kind of sympathetic and stern at the same time.

"I want you to promise me that you'll never try to run away again." He paused a moment, waiting for me to nod my head or something.

When I didn't say anything, he added, "You may not realize that running away is against the law. If you try it again, I'll see that you're put in a detention center for a while. I don't think you'd like it there."

"If my mother sends me the money, I can go to California, though." I stared at the missing kids again, and their faces made me sad. When those pictures had been taken, nobody had known they'd end up on posters and milk cartons and grocery bags all over America.

"If your mother sends you money, that's totally different." The trooper's words hung in the air just long enough to make it sound like a very big "if."

"And, in the meantime," he added, smiling at me, "you'll stay with your aunt and uncle the way your mother wants you to. Right?"

"I guess so," I mumbled.

"You don't want your picture on one of those posters, do you?" He had followed my eyes to the missing kids.

I shook my head and shifted my gaze to the linoleum floor. The poster was beginning to scare me; it made me think of dying and nuclear war and all the other frightening things that worried me sometimes at night.

Just then, the door opened and a woman stuck her head into the office. "Officer Milbourne, Mrs. Higgins is here for her niece."

Officer Milbourne stood up and held out his hand for me to shake. It was a big hand, warm and hard, and it squeezed my own very firmly. "She's probably going to be mad at first," he said, winking at me. "They always are when they're worried, but, remember, it's because she's upset. She wouldn't be upset if she didn't care about you."

I nodded, but my mouth felt dry and my stomach quivered. It was okay for him to stand there winking and grinning as if he were sharing a little joke with me. He wasn't going to have to ride all the way back to Hyattsdale with Aunt Thelma.

"Tallahassee!" Aunt Thelma rushed into the office. For a minute I thought she was going to throw her arms around me, but she stopped short a foot away from me and clutched her purse to her chest instead. "Thank goodness, you're all right!"

She was more than upset, I thought. She was mad, furious, ready to kill me. I wished I could stay here and talk to Officer Milbourne a little longer. Listening to him describe the horrible fate of runaways would be better than getting into the car with Aunt Thelma.

"You had your uncle and me worried to death!" Aunt Thelma frowned at me. "How could you do such a thing?"

I hoped Officer Milbourne would say that she should be glad that my picture wasn't going to be added to the missing-kids poster, but he had his head bent over a pile of papers on his desk.

"I just wanted to see Liz," I mumbled.

Aunt Thelma opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again as if she were forcing herself not to say something awful about my mother. "Can I take my niece home now?" she asked Officer Milbourne.

He came out from behind his desk, put his arm around my shoulders, and gave me a hug. "Tallahassee just misses her mom," he told Aunt Thelma. "Maybe you can help her get in touch with her."

I looked at Aunt Thelma hopefully, but all she said was, "Get your backpack, Tallahassee. It's time to go."

She thanked Officer Milbourne again for all the trouble he'd gone to, and then she herded me out the door and down the hall. The last I saw of Officer Milbourne, he was staring at the missing-kids poster.

***

Outside the rain had finally stopped and the sun had come out, heating up everything. The car was steamy and hot, and I got in reluctantly, knowing Aunt Thelma was getting ready to yell at me. For a few minutes, though, she sat absolutely still, holding the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

"Well," she said finally, "I have never been so mortified since your mother left! Of all the ungrateful, irresponsible, selfish things to do! Don't you ever think of anybody but yourself?"

I put my feet on the dashboard and started picking at the hole in my running shoe. I could feel a trickle of sweat running down my spine. "After what you said last night and this morning, I thought you'd be glad to get rid of me."

"What about Dan? Did you think about him, how he might feel?" Aunt Thelma struck the steering wheel with her fist. "You know how much Liz hurt him by running off. How could you go and do the same thing?"