Zip (16 page)

“He’ll have to catch me first,” Circe said. Lyssa watched the man from her window. His car was smaller than Circe’s truck, and its back wasn’t filled with pigs and peaches. He navigated the dirt road easily, weaving around potholes and broken bits of fence. He’d catch up to them in no time

Circe must have realized that, too. She glanced behind her, eyes wild. “Find a way to distract him,” she shouted

Distract
him? Lyssa’s heart was drumming against her chest. She searched the truck for something to use, and her eyes fell on the tomatoes from yesterday. There were dozens and dozens of them, some as large as basketballs. Perfect. Lyssa grabbed the hem of her muumuu and filled the skirt with tomatoes. Then she leaned out the truck window and took aim…

Splat! The first tomato splattered against the IRS goon’s windshield like a water balloon filled with red paint. The man unrolled a window and stuck his head out so that he could see the road in front of him. Lyssa grabbed another tomato and threw—it splattered across the man’s face

Tomato juice and seeds ran down his cheeks and nose and chunks of tomato got caught in his hair. The car swerved
sideways and halted, nearly slamming into a wooden fence by the side of the road

“We got him!” Circe cheered. She’d been watching from the rearview mirror and when the man ran his car off the road, she pumped her fist in the air triumphantly. Lyssa didn’t feel quite so happy. She hadn’t meant to cause an
accident
. She watched out the window until the man stepped out of his car, just to make sure that he was okay, and felt slightly better.

“It looks like I won’t be going back to the farm for a while,” Circe said, sighing. “How’s Texas this time of year?”

Lyssa’s heart leapt in her chest. Was Circe saying what she thought she was saying? She leaned back against her truck seat. “Really? You want to come to Texas with me?”

Circe shrugged. “If there’s a market where I can sell my peaches, then I don’t see why not.”

Lyssa had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from cheering out loud. Just a few minutes ago she thought she’d be stranded in Idaho with no chance of making it home in time for the Texas Talent Show. Now she had a ride all the way to Austin—and Circe was here to keep her company. Lyssa leaned over and plucked a tomato off the floor, taking a big bite. She felt much better, and lighter, than she had last night. The winds of change were guiding her. They had brought her Circe, after all

They drove for hours, until they reached a run-down little town just off the highway. Lyssa had dozed off but woke up, startled, to a loud and sudden popping. The next second a cloud of smoke appeared from under the hood of the truck, and the engine sputtered off.

Lyssa caught sight of a sign just before they skidded to a stop in the middle of the road:
Bliss, ID. Population: 250
. Lyssa stared out the window. Bliss didn’t look very blissful. There were only a few buildings, and the windows were all boarded up or dark. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where anyone would want to stay for long.

Circe turned the ignition off and then on again. The truck didn’t make a peep

“I was worried this might happen,” Circe said, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. “My alternator belt is actually a garden hose.”

“Can you fix it?” Lyssa asked. She waved a hand over her nose, coughing. The air smelled like burnt toast

“Not this time. I’m going to need to find a mechanic. You stay here with the truck—it’ll be faster if I go on my own.”

Lyssa nodded. Circe pulled her wispy gray wig over her pigtails, tucking a few strands of red hair up behind her ears. She grabbed a fake nose out of her costume supply bag

“How do I look?” she asked, adjusting her nose in the rearview mirror

“Fine,” Lyssa said, even though she thought Circe looked like a fairy-tale witch. Her chest was already clenched with fear, and not just because Bliss seemed practically abandoned. She glanced at the clock on the truck’s dashboard—it was nearly one in the afternoon. She was off schedule already—she didn’t even know if it was possible to make it all the way to Austin in two days. “How long do you think this’ll take? The Talent Show…”

“Don’t worry about the Talent Show,” Circe said, throwing the truck door open. “You’ll be fine. We still have like five days, right?”

“Two,” Lyssa called, but Circe didn’t seem to be listening. Teetering slightly on her stilts, she started down the street, muttering that Lyssa needed to learn how to relax

Lyssa sighed and leaned back against her seat, weaving the ends of her hair between her fingers. How could she relax? There was no way Circe would find a mechanic around here. All the buildings were empty. Their windows were covered in cardboard, and jagged pieces of glass carpeted the sidewalks. Lyssa closed her eyes, trying to recall the sound of her mom’s voice whispering to her:
It’s an adventure…

But the only sounds Lyssa heard were the pigs snorting in the back

She opened her eyes again and looked out the window. There was a poster taped to one of the storefronts and, for a second, Lyssa just stared at it. She was sure she was imagining things. She blinked, thinking the poster might disappear

It didn’t

The words MISSING PERSON were written in thick, red letters over a photograph of Lyssa’s freckled face. Under the photograph was a row of dollar signs and the word REWARD!

Fear blanketed Lyssa’s body and an itchy, anxious feeling prickled along her arms and legs. What if someone walked past and spotted the poster? She would be trapped

Lyssa peered out the window again. She’d thought the street was abandoned, but now she noticed that there were two men standing at the corner of the sidewalk. The men were both tall and skinny. One had a long, bumpy nose that looked surprisingly like Circe’s rubber one, and the other had a bald head so shiny, it seemed like it had been polished. The men were staring at the truck

Was it Lyssa’s imagination, or did their eyes seem to flit back and forth between her face and the poster? She felt as though she’d just swallowed a mouthful of sand. Had the men recognized her?

Broken truck or not, Lyssa knew they couldn’t stay
here. She needed to find Circe. But she couldn’t just stroll into the street. She needed a disguise

That was it! Circe had left the rest of her costume supplies in a bag on the truck floor. Lyssa rummaged through it and put on a short, brown wig and a pair of cat’s-eye sunglasses, checking her reflection in the mirror. Between the wig, the glasses, and the flowery purple-and-blue muumuu she was still wearing, she doubted anyone would recognize her. If she was stopped, she’d just tell people that she was part of a traveling fortune-telling group. Yeah, that would work. Her name was…Ivana. And she could see the future.

Lyssa pushed her truck door open and, grabbing Zip out from under her seat, she headed down the sidewalk, tripping over the hem of her muumuu as she unfolded her scooter and climbed on, rolling off in the direction Circe had disappeared. When she reached the end of the block, she chanced a glance over her shoulder to see if the men were following her

Her stomach plummeted all the way to her toes. They
were
following her. She turned around just in time to see that she was about to zoom straight into a trash can. At the last second, she managed to jerk Zip’s handlebars to the right, narrowly avoiding a collision.

“Hey, kid!” one of the men called out behind her. “Slow down for a minute!”

Lyssa swallowed and pushed off harder. More posters of her lined the broken windows. They all seemed to be tracking her with their eyes. Lyssa tried to ignore them as she flew past on Zip. She wasn’t sure what the men behind her wanted, but she didn’t want to let them catch up

“Hurry, Zip,” Lyssa whispered

Her scooter’s wheels squeaked, like it was protesting that it couldn’t go any faster. Lyssa reached the corner where she thought she’d seen Circe turn, but as soon as she made a left, she knew she had gone the wrong way. Crumpled-up newspapers blew down the sidewalks like tumbleweeds rolling through the desert

Lyssa bit her lip, her head spinning. She glanced back over her shoulder just in time to see the two strange men round the corner behind her

“Little scooter girl!” the bald man called after her. The man with the long, bumpy nose laughed loudly

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” he yelled at Lyssa. “We just want to take your scooter for a ride.”

“Looks heavy for a little girl,” the bald man added. “We don’t mind taking it off your hands.”

Any relief Lyssa would have felt that the men hadn’t recognized her was swallowed up in a wave of terror. She wrapped her fingers tighter around Zip’s handlebars. How had she ended up here? Had her mom stopped guiding her?

She kicked off again. There was panic sloshing around inside her chest and it was thick and muddy, making her stomach feel like a swamp. She needed to get away—she needed to hide. She didn’t slow down to think about which direction she was turning or whether she was heading farther away from Circe. As she tore around another corner, Lyssa almost sobbed with relief. There were lights in the building ahead of her, and lights meant people, and possibly a place to hide

The building was run-down and shaped, incredibly, like a giant elephant, with gray bricks and a long trunk with two tusks sticking out above the door. The elephant’s eyes were circular windows with blue-tinted glass. Lyssa barely registered the sign just below the trunk that read
The Siren Choir: Bliss’s Best Burlesque
.

She looked over her shoulder one last time. She could no longer see the two strange men, but the wind snatched up threads of their cackling laughter. They’d catch up to her in no time

Climbing off her scooter, Lyssa pushed open the front door of the elephant building and stepped inside. The air was smoky and it made her cough. There was only one big, circular room in the club, and it was crowded with velvet chairs and tiny tables all facing a stage. Beneath the smoke, the air smelled sweet—like oranges and cinnamon

There was a woman onstage, easily the largest person Lyssa had ever seen: at least seven feet tall, with shoulders as broad as tree trunks. Her hair was yellow blond and formed into a beehive. She wore a mermaid’s costume, and the green scales on her dress sparkled under the stage lights when she moved. The woman looked weirdly familiar to Lyssa, but she didn’t have time to stop and study her. The men were surely catching up

As Lyssa cast about wildly, looking for a place to hide, two more mermaids pushed open a door on the far side of the room, giggling as they looked out into the audience. There weren’t many people in the club right now, but the mermaids waved to a man sitting near the front of the stage, then ducked back through the door. It slammed shut behind them and Lyssa saw a sign attached to it that read
Backstage
.

Backstage! That was perfect. Lyssa grabbed Zip and moved toward that door, weaving around tables and chairs. She stumbled over a chair leg and bumped into a little table but managed to make it across the club just as the front door flew open. She slipped backstage

Before she pulled the door closed, she peered back out into the main room. The two men entered into the club, craning their necks around. Lyssa pulled the backstage door all the way closed and leaned against it, breathing a
sigh of relief. She was safe—for now—but she had no way of knowing how long the men would wait for her outside. Her only choice was to sit it out until she could be sure the coast was clear

She folded Zip up so that she wouldn’t be so noticeable, though the area she stood in was heavily shadowed and so far no one had seen her. The backstage area was crowded with people. Stagehands were gathering props and moving scenery, and there were performers changing into and out of sparkly, feather-covered costumes. The wings were crammed with wardrobes and trunks containing beautiful, beaded costumes and sparkling, sequin-encrusted shoes. Wow, Lyssa thought, Circe would absolutely
love
all this.

Maybe she would bring something back for Circe to wear. Just something small—something that wouldn’t be missed. It would be a thank you for everything Circe had done for her

Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, Lyssa snatched the first thing she saw: a pink-and-green rhinestone-covered bra. She stuffed it quickly into her backpack. For a split second she felt guilty. Chewing on her lower lip, Lyssa pulled her backpack open and felt around inside it until she found her favorite dandelion barrettes. She set those down on the table, figuring it was an equal trade

As Lyssa debated moving farther backstage, a woman began to sing

The voice sounded like thunder—deep and rumbling and fearless—and it made Lyssa forget all about the men waiting for her outside and the fact that Circe was wandering around Bliss somewhere with no idea where Lyssa had gone. The voice worked its way into her chest, at once familiar and magical. Before she knew what she was doing, she had started moving through the wings toward the stage, toward the voice, desperate to hear it better. She picked out the lyrics: lost love and pain and how lonely the world was. Despite the sad words, the song made Lyssa feel warm all the way to her bones.