The Penderwicks in Spring (26 page)

“That’s good, Daddy,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mr. Penderwick set down Minnesota and went to the kitchen to discuss driving schedules with Iantha.

“It better not be Skye driving us,” Batty told Ben. “Because then you’re on your own and I’m walking.”

“Walking to school, right?” asked Ben with one last gasp of hope. “Batty, don’t go to Boston.”

“I have to. I
have
to.”

Ben groaned.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jane, coming out into the hall.

“Nothing,” answered Batty before Ben could say something stupid.

“So you guys need a ride to school? We’ll take Flashvan.”

The good part was that Batty had no problem getting into Flashvan with Jane. The bad part was that Jane wasn’t yet used to driving Flashvan, which had something called a clutch. Neither Batty nor Ben
understood anything about clutches, and since neither did Jane, there was lots of jerkiness and muttering and lots of inching this way and that to get Flashvan pointed the right way out the driveway. At least Jane didn’t stall during that part, but she did stall at the bottom of Gardam Street in full view of the bus stop, where Batty had a wild impulse to flee right then and there, throwing caution and Minnesota to the winds. But she refrained and stuck out the entire uncomfortable, lurching ride to Wildwood. With this one benefit: that when Jane took a look at Batty’s pale, anxious face and asked if she felt all right, Batty could answer truthfully that she might indeed be a little carsick.

The rain and fresh air drove away the car sickness, but Jane and Flashvan sat stubbornly in front of Wildwood, waiting to see that Batty, Ben, and Minnesota got safely inside. Since Batty couldn’t walk right away from the school with Jane watching, she had to change her plan on the fly and go with Ben into the building. It turned out not to be as great a risk as she’d feared. Because they’d made it to school early, there wouldn’t be many people around to see Batty and then wonder why she wasn’t in class. So she helped Ben lug Minnesota not only into school but all the way to the second-grade wing. They stopped outside his classroom.

“I’ll leave you here,” she said. “And I’ll go out the side door. Less chance that way of being caught by anyone from my class.”

“Promise you’ll come back home,” said Ben sadly.

“I promise I’ll come back home. Now put Minnesota down on my count: three, two, one.” As they lowered Minnesota to the floor, Batty spotted a possible threat to her plan—Texas lurching down the hall toward them. “Ben, intruder alert.”

“Those twins again?” Ben had been forced to dodge them several more times the day before.

“Not the twins. Remy,” she whispered to Ben. “Distract her so that I can get away.”

Ben couldn’t believe that even more was being asked of him. “Distract her how?”

“I don’t know, talk to her.”

“
Talk
to her? About what?”

“Please. Please, Ben.”

“I could talk to her about Minnesota, I guess.” Of all the things his sisters had ever asked of him, this was one of the worst.

“I don’t care what you talk to her about. Just do it.”

Batty put her hand on Ben’s back, shoved him toward his fate worse than death—and also Texas—and slunk away toward the side door, willing herself into invisibility. Then she was outside, sprinting across the parking lot, around the hedge, and flying back toward Gardam Street. In five minutes she was sheltering in the bus stop, wet, yes, but exhilarated. She’d made it this far, and soon a bus would arrive to carry her away to Boston and Jeffrey. Eagerly she watched through the glass, wanting to spot the bus the moment it came into view.

Oh, no. She closed her eyes and hoped she hadn’t
seen whom she thought she’d just seen. This would be so much worse than Remy with her cardboard Texas. This would be worse than the entire actual state of Texas. She opened her eyes again and peered out through the rain. Instead of a bus, a man was heading her way, a man running through the rain, a man, she saw as he got closer, who was wearing shorts and an
ARMY
T-shirt. Which proved that it was exactly the person Batty least wanted it to be: Nick, out for his morning run, and right on target for the bus stop.

But here came the bus! Now it was behind Nick, and now it was passing him. Everything was all right. The bus would reach Batty before Nick did, and she’d get on, and he’d never know the difference.
Hurry, bus, hurry, hurry, hurry.
Using her backpack to shield herself from Nick’s view, Batty stepped out of the shelter just as the bus roared to a stop, brakes squealing, wipers hammering, doors banging open.

Batty lunged forward to board but was blocked by a woman getting off the bus, slowly, one careful step at a time. And on came Nick, closer, ever closer … but
now
the way was clear. Batty leapt on, paid her money, and ran to the very back, as far as she could get from Nick. She heard the bus doors bang closed again. She’d made it!

The bus’s engine revved up, but what was this? The driver was opening the doors up again, and here came Nick, sopping wet Nick, climbing onto the bus, dripping all over everything.

There was one last possible reprieve. He had no money. Batty watched, breathless, as he patted his empty pockets and smiled winningly at the driver, who wasn’t going to let him on for free, smile or no smile, army or no army.
Bang
went the doors again, opening to expel Nick, when a young woman near the front got up from her seat to pay the driver what Nick owed, perhaps hoping that he would sit with her and light up the gloomy day with that Geiger smile of his.

But if the young woman was disappointed when Nick headed toward the back of the bus, it was nothing to what Batty felt, with her intricate plans, her necessary escape, in ashes around her. She slumped against the window, refusing to look at him.

“Okay if I sit with you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Thanks,” he said, and plopped down beside her. “Where are we headed?”

“The bus goes to Wooton.”

“So that’s where you’re going instead of school? Wooton? I’m assuming your parents have no idea where you are.” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “I thought we had a deal. No more running off.”

“I promised not to cross the creek in Quigley Woods. I didn’t say anything about buses.” She knew she sounded petulant, like Lydia in a bad mood, but she couldn’t help it.

“Batty, I can’t let you go on, you know that, right? Let me take you to school.”

“I can’t go to school now. It’s already started.” She began to cry.

“I’ll talk your way in, late or not,” said Nick. “Mrs. Thompson still works in the front office, right? She’ll remember me. I used to give her flowers to make up for the trouble I got into. Flowers I swiped from my mom’s garden, naturally. Stop crying, and tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” she gasped through her tears. “I can’t tell you.”

“Who can you tell?”

“No one. Besides, they all know. Only I didn’t know.” She wept and wept.

“You’re not making any sense.”

“There’s no sense to make. Everything’s fine.”

“Which is why you’re crying, I guess.” Nick looked out the window. “Listen to me. We’re coming up on the next stop, where we’re going to get off and wait for another bus to take us back to Gardam Street. Then you’ll have two options. You can let me take you to school, where you belong, or I’ll take you home to your parents.”

“They’re not home, they’re at work.”

“I’ll call them. I have to call them anyway, to tell them I found you trying to leave town. I’m also going to tell them about your Quigley Woods stunt, as I should have done before. Now stand up.” He got out of the seat and waved to the bus driver that they wanted to get off. “I’m warning you. You’re either
walking off this bus or I’m carrying you off, and you know I can.”

“I hate being too young for anything important,” she sobbed. “I hate it, I hate it!”

“I know, buddy. Let’s go.”

The stop where they got off had no shelter—it was just a pole with a sign that said
BUS
. Silently they stood together in the rain, Batty with her sobbing and Nick with his determination to get her back to safety. Which he finally did, after a bus ride back to Gardam Street—Batty paid both fares. When she refused to return to school, he walked with her to the house and ordered her into dry clothes, called her parents, then waited dripping on the kitchen floor while they rushed home.

By the time they arrived, Batty had gone upstairs to bed and would answer none of their worried questions. She wouldn’t explain where she’d been trying to go, or why. Neither would she agree to be taken back to school that day. Was she sick? No, just tired, she guessed, and proved it by staying in bed for the rest of the day, coming downstairs only for dinner, which she ate quickly and quietly before slipping away to her room.

When Batty refused to go to school again the next day, Iantha took her to the family doctor, who couldn’t find anything wrong, but drew some blood to make sure. No one likes having blood drawn, but Batty didn’t mind it all that much. The now-familiar
fog protected her from the rest of the world, muffling lights, colors, sounds, and sensations. Batty had stopped fighting the fog, wrapping herself in it like a quilt, taking it with her to her room when she got back from seeing the doctor.

Again, she stayed up there, refusing not only to walk the dogs—thanking Jane politely but distantly for taking over the responsibility—but even to go to her piano lesson that evening. Batty’s parents, confused and desperate, tried to cheer her up by talking about her upcoming birthday and even invited Keiko over to try to make plans. They had no way of knowing they were only making things worse. The more people talked about Batty’s birthday, the more her stomach hurt and the more the fog around her thickened, leaving her alone in her dim quiet.

Only for Ben and Lydia did it lift a little, though she refused to listen to Ben’s relief about her not making it to Boston. She would listen to anything Lydia wanted to say, grateful for this small sister who knew nothing of dead mothers. But Batty wouldn’t sing, no matter how many times Lydia asked her to.

The few times Skye appeared, Batty pretended to be asleep.

Mr. Penderwick and Iantha didn’t want to upset Rosalind, not at the very end of her freshman year of college, not when she was already planning to be home on Saturday. But when Batty didn’t get up for school on Friday, either, Mr. Penderwick called Rosalind,
hoping Batty would talk to her on the phone. “No, thank you, Daddy,” she answered, and rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. This sent Rosalind into a frenzy, just what her parents had wanted to avoid. Mr. Penderwick reassured her as best he could, but that afternoon, Rosalind called back.

Ben answered the phone—he’d just gotten home from school and was about to eat a bowl of chocolate ice cream. He was supposed to have only healthy snacks after school, but no one was watching, and besides, he’d finally gotten rid of those twins, Tess and Nora, so he wanted to celebrate.

“Ben, it’s Rosy,” she said when he picked up.

“I know.” He put a giant spoonful of ice cream into his mouth.

“How’s Batty?”

“Awful.”

“What? I didn’t understand you.”

Ben swallowed the ice cream. “Batty’s awful.”

“That’s what I heard. Listen, Ben—”

Ben listened, and what he heard made him forget the ice cream. With Batty in such bad shape, Rosalind couldn’t wait even one more day to be with her. She was coming home that very night—this was good, Ben thought—because Oliver had offered to rent a trailer for his car, pack up both his and Rosalind’s college things, and drive her home.

This was bad.

“Batty’s not that awful, not really,” he said.

“Even if she’s just a little awful, I want to see her.”

“Can’t Mom and Dad come get you instead?”

“They’re both still at work, and Oliver’s already on his way to pick up the trailer. Just tell everyone I’m coming, okay? Love you, bye.”

“How long is Oliver going to stay here?”

But Rosalind was already off the phone. Ben hung up and went back to the ice cream, thinking furiously. Life in this house was hard enough with Batty acting so weird. And now Oliver was coming back? If he upset Lydia all over again, Ben would end up with two cuckoo sisters.

There was only one way he could figure out to stop Oliver. Batty had to call Rosalind back, tell her to wait in Rhode Island until the next day, when their mother could pick her up as planned, because Batty had gotten better and wasn’t going to stay in bed anymore, and Oliver should drive his stupid trailer to wherever he lived when he wasn’t staying at the Penderwicks’ house.

Ben finished the ice cream, marched up the stairs, marched down them again because he’d forgotten the cookies Keiko had sent home with him for Batty—because she was just as upset and worried as all the Penderwicks—marched up again, and used his private signal on Batty’s door. She didn’t answer, but he went in anyway. She hadn’t answered the last four times, either. It was as though she’d forgotten what the signal meant.

Batty woke up when Ben sat down on her bed.
She’d spent the whole day drifting in and out of sleep that gave her no rest, full of endless dreams of searching, searching, searching, sometimes for Hound, but sometimes Hound was with her and they were searching together, weeping, for someone else.

“But dogs don’t weep,” she told Ben.

He stared unhappily at this listless and pinch-faced girl who’d stolen his sister Batty.

“Are you going crazy? Because Rafael says that if you don’t have a hernia or an alien implantation, maybe you’re having a full-out wacko breakdown.”

Batty shook her head to clear away the dream cobwebs. “No, I’m not crazy. Stop worrying.”

“Stop worrying!” That was too much to ask of him. “Everybody’s worried. That’s all they talk about.”

“I’m sorry.” She
was
sorry. If she could just disappear, it would be so much easier on everyone.

“That’s okay.” He held up the bag of cookies, hoping they would give Batty the strength she’d need to agree with his plan. “These are from Keiko, and she said she followed a recipe carefully, so you don’t have to make me eat them first. But I ate two on the way home anyway, and they’re regular chocolate chip and really good.”