Chasing the Milky Way (10 page)

I
'VE LOST MY SHIP OUT IN
space. I swallow real hard and scan the trees. All I see are branches and birds and sharp mosaic pieces of blue sky mixed in with pine needles and bark. I step back toward the office building, my eyes filling with tears. Why would they just take off like that? Cam and I have a strict leave-no-man-behind policy. I look around the side of an RV and then head over to another one and look on the other side of that, too. Nothing. I stand still and make myself take a few deep breaths because I feel like I have an alien in my throat. It's flopping all around, trying to poke its way out.

“
Psssst.
”

I start and look around one side of the RV that's right in front of me

“
PSSSST,
up here, Cap'n.”

I look up wondering why Cam would be on the top of an RV, but nothing is there. Instead, I see his face staring at me through a tiny back window.

“What are you doing in there?” I say, rising up on my tippy toes to get a better view.

“Hurry, get in,” he says. The RV starts with a
thrummmmm
, and I run to the door. I pull it open. All our stuff is jammed in behind the driver's seat. Bags, bins, PingPing, motorcycle helmet. Everything.

“We get invited to breakfast or something?” I ask, latching the door behind me. I climb the steps. “Where's the Mustang?”

Cam comes out of the back. “Sshhhhh,” he says. I feel the RV switch into gear and we roll forward slightly. Just then I hear a clatter. I look out the window and a lady and a man are running toward us, heading away from a faucet on the side of the bathroom. Plates, pots, and pans skitter along the ground behind them.

“What's happening?” I ask, grabbing Cam's shoulder.

“Come back here!” the lady shouts, reaching her arm out like she is going to pull the RV back somehow.

“Are we stealing this?” I ask as we lurch out of the campground and onto the main road. I see Mr. Hank come jogging out of the building. He and I lock eyes and his head cocks to one side. Mr. Hank is about to connect all the dots, but before he does, the campground disappears behind the curtain of pines running the length of the road. I turn toward the front and pull aside a sheet that separates the cab from the rest of the RV. Mama's in the driver's seat and Izzy is buckled into the passenger seat.

“Get in the back and sit down!” Mama shouts.

I close the curtain for a minute and sit down at the little table. My head is filling with sparks and I try to blink them away. Cam sits down across from me.

“What's going on? I thought we were doing good?” I think of Mama last night with the infinite apple crisp and the dreams and the sky.

“When you went into the cabin, we turned the radio on,” Cam says. “Seems like it's all over the news. They're playing it off like I was kidnapped. Like your mama's dangerous. They ID'd the Mustang. She flipped.”

Mama seems to be driving really fast. I hang on to the edge of the table and try to stay focused on what Cam is saying.

“A minute later, we saw these two people leave their RV, saying something about having a broken water pump and needing to do the dishes.”

That's why they had all the pots and pans. “Oh god,” I say, shaking my head.

“So next thing you know, your mama tells us to haul everything in here and hide. Izzy and I did . . . while your mama drove the Mustang somewhere.”

“You got the Mission Control fund?” I whisper, getting up onto the seat to look over the back of it. PingPing, duffel bag, junk bin.

“It's there,” Cam says. “I got it myself.” He gets up and comes over. My heart clanks a beat on my chest, 'cause I'm not seeing it as I push PingPing to the side and pick up the backpack, looking for the metal tin. Cam reaches down and lifts up the duffel bag. There it is. I collapse into the seat.

“Anyway,” Cam says as he goes back to the other side of the table, “she couldn't have taken the Mustang very far, because she was back in a few minutes.”

We lurch along the road. I watch as we pass a pasture. White and brown horses dot the green field.

“Horsies! Look, Mama!” I hear Izzy say through the sheet.

“Goddamn, goddamnit, sending in the cavalry,” Mama says. “Sending in the goddamned cavalry.”

“Horsies?” Izzy says again, this time it's a question.

“Metaphorically, metaphorically,” Mama says. “Bad news.”

Bad news is correct. I drum my fingers on the table and think. I gotta reason with her. I gotta do something. I gotta get up and
do
something. This is all wrong. We're stealing someone's RV.

“This is more trouble than we would have been in originally,” I hiss at Cam. We jolt over a bump and Cam slides across the seat, planting his foot at the last minute. He stays propped up sideways. A picture takes a nosedive off of the wall, glances off my arm. I grab it just before it hits the floor.

“Uh—yeah, we're in it pretty deep,” Cam says, pushing himself back up. I look down at the picture in my hand. It's that couple. I barely recognize 'em 'cause in the picture they look so happy. Not scared. Not upset. Not what we made them. Just happy.

“Uhhhhh.” I flip the picture over so it's facedown on the seat next to me. “This is
chaos.
”

“Well, chaos
is
exciting,” Cam says, “if nothing else.”

“We need to focus, Cam,” I say. “We got a goal here. Don't forget our goal.”

“Right.”

“We're supposed to get to BotBlock, not go to jail,” I say, running a hand through my hair.

“Yeah, I know. And we're going to.”

We turn and Cam and I look out the window. We slide onto a paved road and everything smooths out. We stop bouncing around like bobbleheads. The remaining picture on the wall stops shaking like there's an earthquake. I take a deep breath and place my hands on the table. Push myself up. I go to the curtain that separates the cab from the rest of the RV and pull it open.

“Mama, we need to turn back,” I say, teetering as she swerves to avoid something. I can't see what it is from my spot. I wait until we're back in the center of the lines. “This is wrong. We need to turn back.”

“What?” Mama spits. “We can't go back there. Have you lost your mind? They're after us, Lucille, they're after us and they know what the Mustang looks like. I told you they were after us. I've been trying to tell everyone.”

I grip the curtain tightly as we zoom down a road past a farm and then a soccer field where a bunch of kids run from one end to the other. Izzy sits up in her seat and looks out at them.

“You think the world's kinder than it is,” Mama says. “Stay down, Izzy.” She reaches over and presses Izzy's shoulder down. Izzy sinks back into the seat.

“Better safe than sorry,” Mama says as she hits the button on the radio. I watch her hand shake as she flips from news to music to news.

And coming to you next is news of a kidnapping out of Vermont yesterday—

Topping the charts in 1960 was this classic from the—

Keep your eyes peeled for a 1980 Mustang, red, chipped paint with a dented door on the driver's side—

“Just a small town girl,

livin' in a lonely world,

she took the midnight train goin' anywhere—”

I sink to the floor between the two seats and listen.

AMBER Alert . . . Camrin McKinney was among the three children in the car. Both girls are believed to be biological—

Mama slams the radio off.

My stomach feels queasy. “Now you see?” Mama says. “We can't go back. We have to get away.”

Away where? I scan the scenery, not recognizing the route we usually take. “Are we headed toward the coast?”

“I know where we're going, Lucille. Go sit in the back with Cam and let me take care. The world's crazier than you know.”

My jaw feels tight from grinding my teeth. I want to tell Mama that
she's
crazier than she knows, not the world. But I can't. I can't think of a reason to turn around. I can't think of a reason to stop. We're in trouble. We're
really
in trouble. And we're on the run. She's right about that.

“Let's work on Mission Control,” Cam says from behind me. “It'll keep our minds busy.”

“Right, go play,” Mama says.

I cringe at the word
play.
Clench my fists. “It's not—”

“Not today. Not yesterday,” Mama says, shaking her head, not hearing me. I push up from the spot in the middle of the floor and make my way to the table. Try to make myself comfortable. But it's like there is something starting to churn and roll in my stomach. Something I have to push down. And I do. I take a seat and look around the RV. Nice white curtains stand out against dark red walls. The table has a marble pattern to it. I trace the patterns with my finger. The cushion on the seat is plastic-y, but really comfortable. There is a long, couch-like seat running along the wall behind the passenger seat. I pick the picture up from its spot next to me and place it back on a little plastic hook on the wall. I stare at the faces and think,
sorry,
at them. I make sure the picture is straight and then gaze out the window.

“This doesn't look familiar at all,” I moan. “I don't think we're going in the right direction.”

Cam digs into the bags behind me and then comes around and places our Mission Control notebook and laptop on the table. Then he flips to page 7 and turns it toward me. My dream page.

“I already know what it looks like,” I say, pushing it away.

“Maybe you need a reminder,” he says.

I groan and take the Mission Control notebook.

There's a picture of Sunnyside. I drew it a year ago, but it looks so babyish to me now. The trailer park has a dark storm cloud over it. There is a car, the Mustang. It's shiny and new, not all busted up like it is now, and it's blazing out of there, driving way far away. You can tell it's far because of the stars coming out of the tail pipe and the lines showing the speed. Out in front of the car is a beautiful house and a dog, and a little pot of gold next to a tree. There's a picture of Gram up in the sky, looking down through a window, smiling over the new house.

“We got the beginning right,” Cam says. “Blasting off!” He pretends like he is grabbing on to a wheel, speeding into the future.

“Yeah, that part's right.” I take a deep breath. I pick at the pages with my thumb. “Maybe we can return the RV as soon as we get into Seahook?”

“Yeah, we could make that happen. Anything's possible.”

I flip the pages to our Mission Control Protocol for Optimum Achievement and scan the list.

“Well, we swapped out the laptop,” I say, pulling the pencil from the spiral binding. I drag the pencil through the line item. Then scan the rest of the list. I scan it a second time, wishing it would change before my eyes. We haven't finished anything else.

“We're in trouble, Cam. We haven't programmed PingPing, we don't even have enough registration money for the competition.” I drop the pencil on the page.

“Hold up!” Cam says. “I forgot!” He stands and tucks his hands in his pockets. He's smiling real big and I'm wondering what the heck he has to be cheery about. He pulls his hands out and rains a cluster of crumpled bills across the table.

“You didn't,” I breathe, thinking of D-Wayne running after him yesterday.

“He wanted to make a donation,” Cam says.

I pick up a bill and press it flat, then another and press that flat, too. We count up twenty-five dollars.

“How did you . . .”

“I told you. I'm much faster than him. No one catches Mighty Hawk,” Cam says, doing a little dance. “We have enough, right? Put it with the fund.”

“It's more than enough to cover the rest of the registration,” I say, not believing. Cam goes around the seat and pulls out our paint can filled with cash. I check the curtain to make sure Mama isn't seeing our money stash. Cam grabs a screwdriver from the junk bin and pops the lid. I hand him the money and he puts it in and reseals it. Then tucks it back behind the seat.

I cross out
Save up registration money.
Two items down, three to go. I check my watch, 10:00 a.m.

“T-minus twenty-three hours until competition.”

Cam hands me the laptop and grabs PingPing. “We got this. Let's program ourselves a robot!”

I
LOOK OVER THE PROGRAM SPECS.
“It looks like he'll need to go fifteen meters and then turn left. I think that's about three bursts, so you want GoForward, GoForward, GoForward.” I point to an icon and Cam drags it into the BotProg window.

“Zzzzcrshhhhh,” Cam says as he drops the icon into the program.

I think Cam's decided it's not exciting enough for him without sound effects.

“Zzzzzzcrshhhhhh,” Cam says as he drops another icon. He adds the third with a final “kapploowww.” I wait for him to finish.

“Then we need a soft right.” I point to the screen and Cam grabs an icon with the mouse. “I think you've got the wrong one,” I say. “If you hover over it a description will pop up. Here.” I reach over his shoulder and hover over the correct icon.
SoftRight
it says in a little pop-up box. I pick it up and drag it.

“Incoming,” Cam says. “Zzzzzzzcrshhhhhh.”

I release it into the BotProg window. I pull the claw command over next.

Every once in a while I look up, hoping I see the sign for Seahook, New Hampshire. Or a sight-seeing sign that might point us toward the ocean. But nothing. The truth is, I didn't know there were so many dirt roads in the whole USA, but it seems that if you want to stay off the radar, you can just drive from one dirt road to the next to the next, avoiding the pavement. I watch the signs slide by and try to recognize some of them. Burk's Dairy, Al's Fish Hatchery, Old Mountain Road, Old Bridge, and Old Creek. Southwest to Bristol, Laconia, Franklin.

“Does Laconia sound familiar to you?” I ask Cam as I watch pine trees and rocks slide by the window.

“Yeah, I think so,” Cam says. “I think it's in New Hampshire.”

“Right,” I say. “You're right. It's up north, though, and we seem to be north of it . . .”

“But it's still in New Hampshire, and you know what else is in New Hampshire?” he says, getting up and pulling PingPing toward the table.

“BotBlock,” I answer, going to our supplies. I pull up my duffel bag, take out the MCIIB, and set it on the table.

“Destiny,” Cam says, tapping his knuckles on the Mission Control notebook.

“I'm hungry,” Izzy says from the front seat.

I picture that lost PayDay and my stomach makes a loud growl.

“I'm hungry, too,” Cam says, looking toward the back of the RV.

I follow his gaze, wondering what kind of snacks these people might keep.

“Reconnaissance mission?”

Cam nods.

“I'm really hungry,” Izzy says, getting her whining voice on. “I'm really, really hungry.”

“Enough,” Mama grunts.

“I'm really—” Izzy says. Then she switches into her Queen Nomony voice. “I demand a banquet.”

“Just a minute,” I say. “We'll see what we can find.”

“Mama?” Izzy says.

“Izzy,
I'll
help you in a second,” I say.

“Mama, are you okay?” Izzy says as the RV lurches to the side. I spin and run to the curtain, pulling it open. I see Mama mutter to herself and then she takes a ragged breath in. The kind that you take when you're trying to keep cool. The kind you take when you have fireworks going off in your brain, when you think your heart might explode.

“Can you stop the R—” but before I can finish my sentence, Mama slams the brake to the floor. And it's not because I said so. I topple forward into the empty spot between the seats, my forehead barely missing the radio console. Everything grinds to a halt. I see Cam land on the floor between the seats. He's got PingPing in his hands. And good thing, because it looks like that robot was about to crash down the stairs. The Mission Control notebook teeters on the edge of the table, then plummets to the floor. I lift myself to a sitting position. Izzy unbuckles her seat belt. When I look up, Mama is sitting there, jaw dropped. Dust floats in the partially open window next to her. Then, as if someone flips a switch, she starts to scream.