Runaway (14 page)

Then she started sneaking out at night. She'd tuck me in, and when she thought I was asleep, she'd kiss me on the forehead and whisper, “I'll be right back, baby,” then lock up the van and leave.

I used to fall asleep or stay asleep, but one night I got scared and was awake all night, wondering what was taking her so long to come back. Some days it was daybreak before the door squeaked open. She always smelled strange—musty, like burnt rope. Or spicy, like cloves. Or flowery, like too much perfume. Then she'd whisper, “Shh, baby, go back to sleep,” and she'd conk out until one or two in the afternoon.

At that point I didn't like living in the van anymore, but I didn't actually
hate
it until Eddie showed up.

Eddie. Why couldn't my mother see what a creep he was? Why did she think hanging out with him was more fun than hanging out with me? She'd actually kick me out of the van! “Don't make a fuss, baby, go play!”

I'd stand outside the van thinking, Play? Where? because we were usually in the parking lot of a supermarket, or just along the side of the road somewhere.

I didn't understand that they were inside doing drugs.

I didn't understand that she didn't want me to see.

I didn't understand that in a weird way she was trying to protect me.

I just knew that because of Eddie I had to play on the side of the road or in the dirty snow of a parking lot. “Why do you like him?” I'd ask her after he'd gone.

“Why do you like him more than me?”

“I don't, baby. Don't be silly,” she'd whisper. “He's just helping me through this rough time.”

“How? How is he helping?”

She'd give me a dreamy smile, then whisper, “He says he's got a line on a place…maybe we'll live there….”

Then she'd be out like a light, and I'd be on my own for the rest of the day.

         

4:30 p.m.

You probably think my mom was a loser, but she wasn't. She wasn't, you hear me? She was married to my dad, and everything was fine until he got killed in some freak tractor accident.

Yeah, that's what I said, a freak tractor accident.

I don't even remember my dad. Mom showed me his picture over and over, but I don't actually remember
him.
To me, my dad is the picture that my mom kept in a silver locket around her neck. The picture that Mom would look at and cry over.

She didn't have a job before the accident, but afterward she got one cleaning hotel rooms. She didn't make very much money, though, and for years we kept getting kicked out of apartments because there wasn't enough money for food
and
rent. She never
told
me that was the problem, she'd just say, “It's movin' day, baby!” and when I'd complain, she'd laugh and say, “You'll love the new place! It's near the park!” or “Wait 'til you see all the kids!” or “This one's right around the corner from your school! No bus, no fuss! You'll be able to sleep in 'til eight!”

But the new place was always smaller and dirtier than the last place, with bars on more windows and bigger bugs in the kitchen. And every few months angry people would pound on the door, and pretty soon we'd be packing up again.

Eventually I figured it out and I asked her, “Mom, can't you get them to pay you more?”

She just laughed and said, “Oh, baby, baby. That's not the way the world works.” Then she kissed me and said, “Don't you worry your pretty head about it. Everything is
fine.
”

But one day while I was having my after-school snack, there was a knock on the door and a gruff voice shouted, “Police! Open up!”

Mom grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me into the bedroom. “Hide here,” she whispered, pushing me under the bed.

“Why?” I asked. “What's wrong?”

“Shush, baby, shush!” she told me. “Don't make a peep! Stay right there!”

I was quiet, but I didn't stay put. I crawled over to a hole in the wall that my mother had covered up with a drawing I'd done at school. I peeled the picture back and watched and listened, and that's how I found out that my mother was in trouble for stealing money out of hotel rooms.

It took two days for her to come back from the police station.

It took two weeks for us to get kicked out of the apartment.

It was the last real home we ever had.

         

Still the 3
^rd
, 8:30 p.m.

Don't get me wrong when I say this, okay? But there's something magic about writing. I wish I had a thesaurus because I don't mean good magic. I mean like sorcery. Spell casting.
Strange
magic.

Why? Because when I write, I talk about stuff that I would never normally talk about. I admit stuff that I didn't even realize I felt. I confess stuff that I always just lie about.

It's weird, and it's funny, too. Ironic, I guess, is a better word. Do you know how many people have tried to get me to “open up”? And for all their efforts I've never talked about
any
of this before. Not with social workers, not with kids at school or kids at shelters, not with counselors…especially not with counselors. Counselors are the worst! They try to act like they're your friend, but they do it in such a smug way. They sit there like they have all the keys to you but want to casually flip through the whole ring of them before choosing in what order to unlock you.

Their favorite phrase is “I understand.” They use it all over the place! For example, they use it at the beginning of interrogations: “Holly, I understand that you are upset because Gemma pulled down your pants, but why do you think pouring motor oil inside her backpack is the way to solve the problem?”

The counselor, of course, assumed I was the one pouring the motor oil (which I was), but I wasn't about to cop to it. I was already wise to their “I understand” s. If they understood, they'd know that filling up that brat's backpack with motor oil didn't even come
close
to settling the score.

Counselors also like to interject “I understand” into your rages. They think saying “I understand…” while you're yelling and trying with everything you've got not to cry will calm you down. How stupid is that? It just makes you madder! How can they “understand” when they haven't even let you finish telling your side of things yet!

But the most irritating way counselors use “I understand” is as a proclamation of their vast knowledge of you. You can have said barely anything, and there they go, telling you, “I understand.” They say it all knowingly, with a deep, calm voice like they're channeling God. “I understand.”

Give me a break.

I actually think people telling me “I understand” is why I started lying about what happened to my parents. Lying was easy, and a lot less painful than the truth. Oh, social workers always had a big fat file on me, so they knew the real story, but everyone else? I told them the snowstorm story.

I don't know why I haven't been doing that lately. I guess the older I get, the more far-fetched it sounds. But it's still a great story. Way better than the freak-tractor-accident/homeless-junkie story that's the truth.

The kids in your classroom didn't believe the snowstorm story (probably because you opened your big mouth and told them the truth), but kids at other schools, and especially foster and street kids,
love
it. It's so heartwrenching and tragic, you know? Beautiful parents and their beloved daughter separated in the Alps on a skiing vacation. The parents valiantly searching the vast white mountains, desperately calling their daughter's name as night descends and a brutal snowstorm hits. A torrent of wind and snow engulfs the parents, but they don't give up their search. They cling to each other for warmth, calling, “Holly! Holly!” but they are no match for the forces of nature. They die there on the mountain, tears of despair frozen to their cheeks.

“How did you survive?” some kid always asks, eyes bright and wide with wonder.

So I drop my voice and say, “I found a cave. It had an opening, black and narrow, like a wedge of rich chocolate cake.” Then I cock an eyebrow and whisper, “And inside it?” and before anyone can say a word, I lurch forward with my hands held high like claws and growl, “
Rrrrrrowrr!
A big black bear.”

Someone usually screams. Most kids gasp. And one quivery voice always asks, “Did he try to kill you?”

But here's where I turn the story around. I tell them, “Actually, no. The bear was sleeping. So I went right up and slept on
him.
”

“You
did
?” they gasp.

And real matter-of-factly I say, “I was cold, he was warm. I slept like a bug in a rug.” Then, of course, I have to tell them how the next day I skied down the mountain and found out that I was an orphan, but I make that part quick.

I love the snowstorm story.

I don't know why, but it makes me happy.

         

Saturday, September 4
^th

I saw that van again today. It was stopped at a red light. It was like seeing a dead person standing right in front of me.

I crossed the intersection and went real slow so I could get a good look inside. Some piggy-eyed woman with greasy hair was driving it, and there was a piggy-eyed boy next to her in the passenger seat. A flowered sheet hung as a curtain behind the seats, but I could see stuff bulging up against it.

It was obvious to me that they were living in that van. Once you've done it yourself, you recognize the signs. There was no orange shag on the dash, so that made it a little less freaky, even though I already knew that it couldn't possibly be the same van as ours. For one thing, our van would never have made it halfway across the country, and for another, the last time I saw our van, it was totaled.

Oh, man. Do I really want to tell you that story?

Oh, crud.

Okay, here goes:

There was this guy parked behind us on the side of a windy road. I remember trees. Lots of trees on both sides of the road. The guy was mad at Eddie and pulled a knife. They started screaming at each other, and Mom shoved me inside the back of the van to get me away from them.

She closed the door, and a few minutes later she came in the front door, shaking like a leaf as she put the key into the ignition. I could hear her whimpering, “Please, God, oh please, God, oh please!” as the motor wheezed and coughed and stuttered and died, over and over again.

Finally, the van fired to life. But before she could put it in gear, the driver-side door flew open and Eddie shoved her over to the passenger seat. He looked wild. Panicked. And he had blood on his hands and clothes.

Mom cried, “What happened?” and he threw the van in gear and yelled, “What do you
think
happened?”

He tore out of there, driving fast and crazy, making me slam against the side of the van as he raced around curves.

“Baby, are you all right?” Mom cried, and when she saw that I was hurt, she climbed between the seats and held me close to her, screaming, “Slow down!” at Eddie.

“Shut up!” he screamed back. Then he looked over his shoulder and shouted, “We wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for you!”

I can still see his face. Still hear him shouting. Still feel the van lurching as we catapulted off the road and into a tree.

Mom and I flew forward and crunched hard into the back of the passenger seat.

Eddie flew forward and slammed through the windshield.

For a terrible minute the van teetered, then it shifted and settled onto its side in a gully. Eddie's head was sticking clear through the windshield. There was a lot of blood. I could smell gas. I could hear a tire still spinning in the air.

Mom's eyes were bloodshot. She whimpered and shivered, and then she threw up.

“What are we going to do?” she gasped. “What are we going to
do
?”

I remember my mind racing. Eddie was dead, and the guy he'd fought with was probably dead, too. If we could get away from the van, maybe no one would know we'd been near either of them.

I heaved open the back door and tugged my mom along by the hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked me. “Where are we going?” She looked awful. Thin and sick and petrified with fear.

I pulled her harder and whispered, “It's going to be all right, Mom. We've just got to get out of here.”

That was the day she quit pretending to take care of me.

I guess it was also the day that I grew up.

         

Still Saturday the 4
^th

I've been staying under the sundeck of a beach house. It's nothing like the manor. It's just a plain one-story, made of painted wood. It's up the coast another twenty minutes or so from the cave, which makes it about a forty-minute walk from the manor. It's quite a hike to the rescue wagon, which is about a mile past the manor, but I don't mind. This house is pretty secluded, which is good since after the weekend I'm going to have to start being careful about who sees me during school hours.

No one has used the deck since I got here, and even though lights come on inside the house, I think they're on a timer. They click on at the same time every night, so I'm guessing that this is somebody's vacation home.

I thought about checking for an unlocked window or door because it would be nice to sleep in a real bed for once, but I decided not to get greedy. You get greedy or start rationalizing why you're doing something and it'll come back and bite you. Mom rationalized a lot. “It's okay, baby. Why should we have to live without the finer things? It's not our fault the tractor killed Daddy, is it? It's not right and it's not fair.”

But when she'd lift perfume or nail polish or jewelry, that didn't feel right, either. Not like it did when we'd steal food.