Run (3 page)

We pay and head back toward the marina. The steady drumbeat in my head:
Dad murdered, Mom gone, killer gone
.

“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” Hayden asks.

The answer comes to me then and I point over at the ferry.

“On the boat, Hayden. That’s where we’re going to sleep.”

My father left us the code word. I have his wallet, cellphone, and a little cash. Very little. I know better than to use the phone. I feel a little stupid that I thought of it just then. I fish the phone out of my backpack as Hayden and I make our way to take a seat on the foot ferry from Port Orchard, across the inlet to Bremerton and the ferry landing. I look around to make sure no one is watching. I take out the cellphone battery just to be sure. I know about GPS and I know that if anyone is trying to find us, they will probably see if the phone pings any cell towers. On my dad’s key ring is a small brass key. I know that the next morning will be our only chance to use it.

Hayden whimpers about something, but I don’t listen to him. At least he isn’t crying. I can’t deal with tears right now. We have to figure out how we’re going to survive and find our mother.

If the man we’ve been running from all our lives hasn’t killed her.

I chose the ferry for our first night for no real good reason. Just because I saw it and it seemed like we could hide there. Also, because we’re traveling eastbound to Seattle there is no ticket needed. Nothing to deplete our cash. We barely have enough money for the worst motel in Bremerton for one night. The
worst
motel. Again, that’s saying a lot.

I close my eyes to shut out the undulating noise of the foot ferry’s old motor, my brother’s whining, and the two other passengers, who seem to be planning their date night in Seattle. I hope that if I live long enough to have a real boyfriend we don’t have to be so stupid as to look at a newspaper for ideas on what to do on a date. I concentrate on what I saw at the house, our kitchen. Dad’s dead eyes stare at me. He was on his back. A chair had been moved from the round table. A struggle? But not much of one. The knife was not one of ours. It was a hunting knife. We don’t hunt. We’re the hunted. Whoever came to our house threatened Dad. There were papers spread on the kitchen table. Why hadn’t I taken a moment to see what they were? I answer my own question. Because I was scared. That’s why. Mom’s purse was on the counter. Why didn’t I grab
that
?

And, really, why didn’t
she
take it with her?

I THINK OF HER JUST THEN. She is sitting in the kitchen looking at something, some papers. She looks upset, but I breeze past her to get something from the refrigerator. I’m late for school and I don’t want to miss the bus, no matter how lame taking it to school is. Dad is already gone for the day. Mom says my name, but I don’t even turn to say goodbye. I just don’t want to be late for that stupid bus.

Mom has blond hair. Her eyes are blue, the one constant in her appearance. Her name is Candace. A dumb name, I think. She goes by the nickname Candy. At the time we selected our new names, I didn’t like what she’d picked. Candy seemed like the name of a trailer-park mom. My mother isn’t trailer park. Not at all. She is strong and beautiful. She is pretty—no matter what color hair she has. I never looked like her, even when we wore Mommy and Me outfits. I don’t hate her because she is beautiful. I only wish that I had more of her in me.

We had traditions that were unlike those of any of the other kids that I knew at school, my only window to what real people did. If I didn’t go to school, I would have had a completely warped view on family life. Maybe everyone
was
like the Kardashians in one way or another and I just didn’t know it? I could almost see the look on Dad’s face when it was time to leave whenever we were on the run. His anxiety. The way his eyes narrowed and sweat collected at his temples and he’d withdraw a little. I knew that he was worried that we’d be found. We called the nights we left a place to move on “the switch”. We always had pizza while we did it. The person who ate the last slice got to hold the glass bowl with a bunch of names of towns that were written by Mom on small, fortune-cookie-sized pieces of paper.

“Why do we go to so much trouble?” I once asked.

Dad looked at me quizzically. “How do you mean?”

“We could just pick a town. We don’t have to make a game of it.”

“There’s security in randomness,” he said.

My mother nodded. I think her name was Caroline that time. She always took a C name.

“If we are thinking of a place, making plans for a place, then it can be found out. If we are random, no one can know where we’re going, honey. You know, because even
we
don’t know until we make the run.”

It sort of made sense, in the way that parents sometimes can make the most ridiculous things seem normal. Like Santa Claus. Like the fact that only old people die. That all dogs go to heaven. Speaking with authority is something practiced over time. I need some of that strength right now. I have a little brother and a missing mother to worry about.

Dad’s face comes to me just then. I remember the first time I saw it. He’d lived in the apartment next door. We’d never talked to anyone. Mom wouldn’t. But he was always there in the hall, smiling. Waving. Being nice. I was too young to know that he was interested in Mom. I didn’t know that when she let him inside her life she was taking a huge risk. Not the same kind of a risk that came with the man we’d been running from. But a risk of the heart. I think I loved him as much as she did. He was our lifeline to the outside world. Never judgemental at the craziness that Mom created out of a dark necessity.

THE FOOT FERRY’S ENGINE RUMBLES. A woman with glossy black hair and blusher laid down in stripes sits next to me and sets down her bag. It is one of those oversized quilted bags with the delicate print of nautical emblems forming a border—fishermen’s knots, seahorses, life preservers. Nantucket, grandma-style. The bag is unzipped and its opening is like a gaping mouth of a bass with a fat wallet between its jaws. She’s exaggerating her interest in a man, a few years older with a splash of silver on his sideburns, who’s sitting next to her in the way that suggests they really don’t know each other. At least not yet. I watch Nantucket carefully from the corner of my eye. I turn to Hayden and pretend to talk to him, but with the rumble of the boat, I don’t need to use real words. I know what I’m about to do is wrong, but in the scheme of things of what I will come to do to survive, it is small. Tiny. A puff of air. I reach down and in one sweeping motion I take her wallet. Still pretending to talk to my little brother, I put the wallet between my legs and open it, fishing for the folded paper of money.

Success!
I pull five bills from the wallet. I don’t even look to see if they are larger than ones, though inside, I’m praying that they are. Nantucket looks over at me and my heart sinks like a deep-sea diver’s weights. I’m in trouble. She must have seen me do it. I don’t know what I’ll say to wriggle out of it. My heart starts racing and I prepare my excuse, my professed sorrow. I’m on drugs. I’m a klepto. My brother made me do it. Not the true reason—that I need the money because my dad is dead and Mom is probably being held captive by some monster.

Her look, thankfully, is only a glance in my direction.

She turns to the man and I drop the wallet back into her purse. My brow is soaking and I try to shake off my anxiety.
I did it.
I got the money.
The boat docks and Hayden and I are fifty-five dollars richer.

But our dad is still dead.

And Mom is missing.

I can’t stop thinking of her and him. I can’t let go of the images of what happened to him and what might be happening to her. I want to go somewhere and scream at the top of my lungs. Words that would indicate how unfair things are. How broken I feel. Words that could convey how my being born into this life was unjust, unwarranted. Mean. I want to be the girl who laughs. The girl who has a boyfriend. I want to be the girl who tells others that she hates her mother even though she doesn’t. But I am none of those things. I don’t think I ever will be. I am trapped by circumstances, but I vow that I will never be a victim.

I’ll leave victim status to
him
.

Chapter Three

Cash: $114.05.

Food: Green apple bubble gum, Almond Joy.

Shelter: None.

Weapons: Crappy scissors.

Plan: Still thinking.

IT IS A LITTLE AFTER eight p.m. when we get on the Bremerton to Seattle run, a crossing that takes about an hour. The boat is the
Walla Walla
, a name that I think fits the circumstances of my life right now. Walla Walla is also the city where the state’s toughest prison is located. Hayden always thought the name was funny, but he’s not laughing now. Neither am I. After making a stop in the women’s bathroom, I give Hayden some quarters for a Kit Kat from one of the vending machines. I don’t care that he hasn’t eaten a decent meal since lunch. I have other things to think about. The ferry will cross back to Bremerton and then back to Seattle, then back to Bremerton, with a final return to Seattle well past midnight. I study the routine of the ferry’s crew. I know they won’t kick us off, because we’re behaving. We take a seat next to a sepia-toned photograph of Princess Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter: born in 1820, died in 1896. She has skin weathered like silver driftwood and her eyes are wide and light in color—like amber beach glass, I think. She’s watching me as I plot my way to the end of the night. I know some people believe that her spirit still walks the Seattle waterfront, her ancestral home taken over by white settlers more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Those who see her wandering the streets closest to Elliott Bay insist that she always smiles knowingly at them, then shakes her head and disappears into thin air. I don’t know if I believe any of that, but I have no doubt that if she were on the ferry, I’d ask her how she does it.

I want nothing more than to disappear right now.

My brother and I are seated in a booth near the bathrooms. These are farther away from the snack bar and don’t get as much foot traffic as those next to the areas where the majority of ferry passengers congregate. I watch a crewman go into the men’s room with a bucket in one hand and cleaning supplies in the other. I know that inside the door is a sheet of paper that indicates when the restroom was last cleaned.

“Say something, Rylee,” Hayden says. Chocolate marks his upper lip, but I say nothing about it. I don’t point. I don’t kid him for looking like a pig.

“Sorry,” I say. “Just thinking. Give me a minute.” My eyes leave Hayden’s chocolate-lip and zero in on the crewman with the bucket as he departs the men’s room for the women’s. We sit there as the cars offload. The bang-bang of their tires as they hit the ramp is almost like a drumbeat. Mocking. Telling me that I had better get things in motion. Reminding me that time is passing. Somewhere out there, our mother is being held captive. She always said this could happen. I don’t know what is being done to her for sure and I want to throw up, but my stomach is empty.

When we are halfway to Seattle, I say to Hayden, “I need you to do something for me.”

He looks up. “What?”

“When I tell you, you’ll need to plug the toilet with a big wad of toilet paper.”

He seems confused, but says nothing.

“Once the water gets flowing, you’ll need to hide.”

He thinks I’m a moron, but I don’t care. I have a plan.

“Where?” he finally asks.

I tilt my head in the direction of the restroom. “There’s a storage cabinet in there. They use it for paper towels and stuff. The lock is broken.”

“How do you know that? And where will I hide?”

I let out a muffled sigh. More of a sisterly reaction than how I really feel right now. But the truth is Hayden doesn’t get anything. And I’m tired of his constant questioning. If he wanted to be in charge of everything, then he should have been born first.

“I broke it, that’s how I know,” I say, reeling in my annoyance. “And you’ll hide in there.”

Once more the look. “How could you have broken it? You’ve never been in
that
bathroom.”

“You’re not going into the men’s room,” I say, softly, trying to control my exasperation. “You’re going in the women’s room.”

“But, I’m a b—” he begins to protest.

I put my fingers to my lips, signaling my little brother to hush. I want to say the words “Shut up, you brat!” but that won’t do. This is about being able to disappear, like Princess Angeline.

“It will work,” I say. “Trust me. No one will know a damn thing.”

He looks startled by my language, the least of my worries. And, really, not that bad, if you ask me. I know plenty of worse swear words.

“After you hide, I’m going to get help. A man will come in there and shut down the toilet’s water flow. Since it’s the last run of the night, he’ll leave the mess for the morning crew to clean up.”