White House White-Out (7 page)

“We’re rescued!” Josh crowed.

All five kids scrambled out the door. Dink turned on the flashlight and began waving it toward the sky.

They stood in a circle, looking up and listening.

Nothing.

“I know I heard it,” KC said.

“Maybe it’ll come back,” Dink said.
He shut off the flashlight.

Wind blew snow into their faces. Their boots made squeaking noises on the frozen snow.

“There it is again!” KC said.

“I hear it!” Dink said, switching the flashlight back on. “It sounds like a helicopter!”

“I hear it, too!” Ruth Rose said.

Then they all heard it. But Marshall was the first to see it. “Over there!” he yelled.

They all saw tiny blinking lights moving across the sky. They might have been fireflies except for the thud-thud of blades.

“It
is
a helicopter!” KC said. “It’s the president looking for us!”

“Do you think they can see us?” KC asked.

“I don’t know,” Dink said. He waved the light wildly over his head.

“We need more light!” Josh said. “Let’s make a bonfire!”

“With what?” Dink asked. “And we don’t have any matches.”

“Look inside the van,” Marshall suggested. “Some of that florist stuff should burn.”

“Guys, we need matches,” Dink said again.

Josh raced to the van’s passenger door and tore it open. He found some papers Dink had left on the seat.

“Any matches in there?” Dink asked.

“No, but there is a cigarette lighter,” Josh said. He punched it in and waited, then it popped out. “It works!”

“Why don’t we burn that wooden crate?” KC suggested. “We could break it apart!”

The kids worked frantically. They tugged the crate out the van’s rear door. Dink grabbed some tools from a shelf,
and they were able to smash the crate into boards.

“Kick some snow into a big circle,” Dink said.

When that was done, Josh lit a few of the papers. They threw on some decorations from inside the van. They added splinters, then small boards, from the crate. Soon they had a bonfire that lit
up the area behind the van.

“Now just come back, helicopter,” Josh said.

The kids waited, warmed by the fire. No one spoke. Everyone was watching the black sky. Ashes flew upward, melting the snowflakes.

“Wait, what’s that?” Ruth Rose asked, pointing.

“A star,” Dink said. “It’s not moving.”

Josh dragged blankets from inside the van, and they all sat. Dink felt his face warm up.

Ten minutes went by without another sound from the sky.

“Be nice to have a few s’mores,” Marshall commented.

“Be nice to have one huge marshmallow,” Josh said.

“You’d have to share it five ways,” Ruth Rose said.

Dink added more wood to the fire.
He was sure the orange and yellow flames could be seen from miles away, if anyone in a helicopter was looking down. If there even was a helicopter.

Josh tossed the last few boards onto the bonfire. “We’re out of wood. I wonder if there are any dead tree branches around here,” he said.

“I think we’re surrounded by woods,” Dink said. “But I’m not going looking in the dark.”

“We need something that will burn for a long time,” KC said. She looked around. The van’s rear doors had been left open. “The spare tire!”

“Will that burn?” Marshall asked.

“Yes, it’s rubber. It’ll make black smoke!” Josh said.

In a minute, they had dragged the tire out of the van. Josh and KC rolled it onto the fire. The rubber caught fire, and soon dark smoke and flames were
billowing up into the sky.

But the new fire smelled so bad the kids were forced to move their blankets twenty feet away. Right away their warm faces felt chilled.

The fire roared for a while, then settled into hissing and crackling. No one saw or heard the helicopter again.

“Guys, we should go inside and sleep,” Dink suggested. “If a helicopter flies over, they’ll see the fire.”

Nobody wanted to give up, but they were all freezing. They grabbed the blankets and crawled into the van. Josh pulled the doors closed as tightly as he could. He wound some string around the handles to keep the cold out.

Now that the spare tire and crate were gone, there was room to stretch out. Dink kept the flashlight on only long enough for everyone to get settled.

“You know, if we weren’t lost and
freezing and starving to death, this would be fun,” Josh said.

Dink laughed out loud, but inside he wanted to cry. His father would be sick with worry.

“Good night, you guys,” Dink said.

Dink dreamed about Christmas morning back home in Green Lawn, Connecticut. He saw their tree and the presents beneath it. One gift for his mom, one for his dad. But none of the presents had Dink’s name on it.

He sat up with his heart thumping faster than normal. Where was he? Then he felt the lump of Josh’s body next to his and he remembered.

It felt like a nightmare, but he knew it was all real. He, Josh, and Ruth Rose were trapped in a snowbank in the middle of nowhere with the president’s stepdaughter and her friend. Her dog
had disappeared out in the cold. No one knew where they were.

Dink shook his head to clear away the depressing thoughts. He tossed his blanket over Josh and crawled toward the van’s rear doors. Everyone was fast asleep as he unwound the string Josh had used to keep the doors closed. He pushed them open and peeked out.

The fire was just red ashes now. The tire was completely burned, leaving the metal rim charred and black. At least it had stopped snowing.

Dink hopped to the ground and closed the doors behind him. He stretched and looked up. The sky was clear. Dink smiled when he saw the moon. Its glow lit the snow all around him.

Dink walked closer to the fire and checked his watch. It was nearly ten-thirty. Why did it feel like they’d been
stuck out here for much longer?

Firewood
, he thought.
Got to get this fire blazing again
. He knew people were out looking for them and the fire would lead them here. He turned toward the black ring of trees around the clearing where the van had landed. No way was he going there.

Instead, Dink headed toward the road, remembering that he’d seen a small grove of trees there.

He crunched over the snow, sinking almost knee-deep with each step. Josh was right: this could be fun if it weren’t so awful.

He reached the trees and got down on his knees to break off some of the lower branches. He heard something and looked up between two thick branches. Shadows were moving along the road. Behind the shadows came two people with the moon low behind them.
They were walking along the road, heading in his direction.

Dink almost stood up, but then he recognized something about the smaller figure. It was Jo Payne’s hat: white with a red ball on top.

Dink shrank down into the snow, like a rabbit hiding from a fox. Jo Payne and her tall companion were twenty feet away and coming closer. Dink wriggled deep into the snow and prayed they wouldn’t look into the trees.