Runaway (11 page)

I'd like to slap her silly! If I could switch places with her, I'd work my heart out. I'd listen. I'd sweat. I'd
try.

Switching places with her would be funny, actually. Her living in the shrubs, me in the house? Sort of like
The Prince and the Pauper,
only it'd be
The Princess and the Gypsy.
I'd enjoy the good life, she'd learn to eat out of garbage cans. I'd become a tennis pro, she'd learn to regret not appreciating what she had.

Nice thought, but it's not going to happen. Reality is, I'm stuck in the bushes. Reality is, I spend my whole day thinking about food and shelter and about how not to get caught. Reality is, I may have survived two months as a gypsy, but I've got six more years to go before I can get a job and rent an apartment and buy real food.

Six more
years.

Am I really going to keep doing this for six more years?

         

Okay. The princess's lesson is over now, and I'm going to say this because I'm hoping it'll help me sort things out:

I don't want to watch other people play tennis for six years. I can barely stand doing it for three days.

I don't want to eat other people's garbage for six
years.

I don't want to run and hide and lie and steal for six
years.

I don't want to feel this all-alone.

I don't want to be this
bored.

That's it, right there. That's the one that's bugging me the most. I'm bored. If my stomach's not aching and I'm not tired or scared or on the run, I'm sitting around with nothing to do. Why do you think I write in this thing? And six more
years
of this? I don't know if I can take that. And then what? When I'm finally eighteen, how am I going to get a job? I haven't even finished elementary school! Nobody's going to hire me. So where's that leave me? On the streets? Sleeping in bushes, eating out of trash cans?

Well, at least I'd be able to get into shelters, but I don't
want
to live in shelters. I want a home! I want a dog! I want someplace where I belong.

And you know what? While I'm actually saying all this, I'm going to tell you something else. When I grow up, you know what I'd really, really love to be?

A dog doctor.

Forget cats, forget horses, I'd be a veterinarian who specialized in dogs. I'd be the best, too. People would come from miles around because they'd heard about Dr. Holly Janquell's special way with dogs.

         

I can't believe I actually told you that.

I'm a homeless girl, hiding in the bushes, dreaming about becoming a vet.

How pathetic is that?

         

Two (?) days later

This is a weird neighborhood. Everyone's got a full-blown park for a backyard (and some for a front yard), but you rarely see anyone around. Cars zoom by on the main road, but the “estates” are dead. Where are all the people? Why aren't they using their pools? Why aren't they out playing golf on their back lawns? Are they too old? Are they on location somewhere making movies? Why have a million-dollar estate if you're not going to use it?

I don't get it.

I don't get it at all.

         

Who knows what day it is…

I finally got caught by the gardener. He didn't
catch
me catch me, he just saw me and chased me off. Better him than that bratty girl, that's for sure. She'd have screeched for the police. He just chattered in Spanish and came after me with his leaf blower.

I think I was just waiting to get caught. I was there way too long. Beverly Hills was not my destination, and really, I was wasting my time hanging out in the safety of that backyard. I guess I just got comfortable there. It may not have been the beach, but compared to the cement jungle? It was paradise.

Hmm.
Maybe that's what happens if you get comfortable someplace. Maybe you need some motivation to move on. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it's not just being comfortable. Maybe it's being
used to.
A place can be very
un
comfortable, but if you're used to it, it gives you a strange sense of comfort. Did that make any sense? For example, why do people stay in places or jobs or relationships that they hate? Why don't they just leave?

Because they're used to it, that's why.

Wait a minute, I can hear you saying. Not everyone's willing to chuck the little they've got and eat out of trash cans.

If it means winding up someplace better than where they were, why not?

Oh, so you don't think I'm better off than I was?

That's because you don't get it, Ms. Leone. You don't get it and you probably never will. Here's the truth: I would WAY rather be hungry and tired and scared on the streets of L.A. than put up with the “comfort and safety” of the Benders' house.

I wouldn't go back there for all the silk sheets in China.

And if you don't think I'm better off than I was, you should see this day! It is drop-dead gorgeous. It's
hot,
but I'm sitting on a park bench in the shade, and there's lots of grass and a nice, cool breeze, and it doesn't
feel
hot.

Ha! I just got a little mental picture of you: You're
in-
doors with the air-conditioning cranked way up because it's 100 degrees and 98% humidity outside and the mosquitoes are swarming and the bugs are atrocious. Am I right? Summers there are awful!
Winters
there are awful. See? Why do you stay? You ought to run away! Hop a train! Stow away on a bus!

What am I saying? You could just buy yourself a ticket.

         

It would be interesting to talk to you if you did it the other way, though.

We could compare scars and bruises.

         

It might be fun.

         

3:10 p.m.

I've been sitting here, thinking
again
about how I talk to you like you're really there. Not out loud like some crazy street person, don't be stupid. I mean in this thing. I wouldn't say two words to you in school, but now I chat away about everything, even the weather.

That's weird enough right there, but what's even weirder is that it really feels like I'm talking to someone.

It really feels like I'm talking to
you.

Why is that?

And why do I keep doing it when I know I'm never going to see you again?

         

4:30 p.m.

I just found out that it's the 18th of August. Unbelievable! How can it be the 18th of August?

Time is a weird thing. In some ways it feels like I
just
left The People's Church.

In some ways it feels like forever ago.

There's that ebb and flow in my mind about other things, too. Where it feels really close, then way far away. The Benders, the train, the bus, Louise, the library, my mother…waves of memories that wash in, then wash out. Close, then far.

         

Fear's like that, too.

         

Still August 18
^th
, 10 p.m.

I didn't want to admit it before, but the wave of fear was crashing, and crashing hard. Everywhere I go, I try to stay in the background. And that great warm-and-breezy park I told you about was the perfect place to spend the day, and maybe the night. But there was this man there. He had thin hair, combed back. He was a little paunchy but not bad, and was of medium height. Just your average middle-aged Joe.

He wasn't homeless. He was wearing businessman pants and shoes, sunglasses, and was clean-shaven. At first I thought he was just enjoying an afternoon in the park, but then I realized that he wasn't really reading his newspaper.

He was watching the playground.

I kept a sly eye on him. He gave me the creeps like I haven't felt in ages. And I made up my mind that nothing was going to stop me from tackling him if he tried to snatch a kid. I'd go down in a splat of gypsy glory if I had to, but there was no way I was going to let him touch a kid.

I was keyed up for over an hour because of this guy. He brought back all these feelings of being little and vulnerable and scared and confused, of gaping wounds in the heart that no one can see.

But then he put down his newspaper and left.

You know how the D.A.R.E. people came to school and told us that drugs burn holes in your brain or make you paranoid or have flashbacks or, you know, do permanent damage to your head? Well, after that guy left, I started worrying that maybe my experiences have been like drugs to my brain. Maybe they're making me have flashbacks or paranoia, or they've permanently branded my brain with suspicion. The guy was probably just enjoying the beautiful afternoon, remembering the carefree joy of his youth by watching kids frolic in the park.

After a few minutes I went over and got his newspaper (which is how I found out what day it is). I actually sat on his bench for a while, but it felt kind of creepy. Like he was still there.

So I went to
another
bench, where I wrote in this and read the paper.

But I still had that creepy feeling, so I left the paper behind and moved again, and that's when I noticed someone lurking in the shadows of the trees behind the bench where I'd been sitting. It was the same man, and he wasn't watching the kids on the playground.

He was watching me.

I took off quick. And I thought I'd ditched him, only when I came out of the Grab and Go mini-market (where I'd done just that, and was all keyed up about it because all I'd gotten was a protein bar and it hadn't exactly been
easy
), I saw him in a car in the parking lot.

I almost pointed and shouted, That guy is stalking me! You hear me? If I wind up dead, it'll be because of that guy right there! But I didn't do that because people would have taken one look at me and thought, Deranged homeless girl. Probably on drugs.

So what would you have done, Ms. Leone? Called the cops?

Well, that's not exactly an option for me, is it. So what I did was go behind his car to write down his license plate in
this
thing. That way if he did snatch me and murder me, there'd be a trail of evidence.

But guess what?

He didn't
have
a license plate.

Isn't that great? Cops will interrogate me for walking down the sidewalk, but they let a guy like him prowl around without a license plate. Maybe he has one that he props in the back window when he's not in pervert mode, but there was no plate when I looked. So I went up to the driver's-side window and shouted, “I'm telling the cops about you, buddy. You are one sick sucker and you'd better leave me alone!” Then I moved away quick, before he could snatch me.

He didn't follow me out of the parking lot, and I didn't see his car anymore, but I've been nervous about it all night. Right now I'm holed up in a Burger King, thinking how if he snatches me, no one will know. No one will care.

There's not a single soul in this entire universe who will care.

         

August 19
^th
, 1:30 a.m., still at Burger King

Remember that essay I wrote where you said I'd used
neighborhood
too many times in one paragraph? You showed me how to use your thesaurus and I told you that the thesaurus was stupid? I told you that if you meant
neighborhood,
you should say
neighborhood
and not use
area
or
district
or
vicinity
or some other lame word that didn't quite mean
neighborhood.
Remember that?

What I didn't tell you was that the thesaurus was lame when it came to finding another word for
neighborhood,
but it was actually an amazing book. I got totally sucked in by some other words on that page. The two I remember are
nefarious
and
necropolis.
Necropolis! What a word! (It means graveyard, you know that, right?) You get this whole feel from
necropolis
that you don't get from
graveyard.
A graveyard seems small. A necropolis seems like an entire
city
of tombstones. It's one of those words you just don't forget.

Nefarious
was good, too. Evil. Wicked. Villainous.

Not-fair-as-us.
That's how I remember that word.

That day I started making up little snippets of stories that put words I found in the thesaurus together. For example: (
ahem
) Camille, a nefarious backstabber, skipped through Necropolis, the City of Dead, torturing souls with her whiny voice. “I told on you, I told on you, nah-ne-nah, I told on you!”

Don't you love that?

Well, you probably don't, but I do, so what do I care? What I'm telling you is that I miss your thesaurus. I used to sneak it out to recess with me when I didn't have a book to read, then sit in my secret corner of the playground and make up little stories to go with cool new words I found in it.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because I'm working on something, and I need a word for
loose
that rhymes with
endured.

I need a thesaurus!

And believe me, it's not something I'm going to find in this joint.

         

August 19
^th
, 4:00 a.m.

Forget
loose
and
endured.
I changed it all around, anyway. I'm finally done (I think). I wanted to finish it before I found a safe place to sleep, but now it's almost daybreak. (I told you poetry was a big waste of time. Ha!)

Anyway, I'm copying it over from the napkins I worked it out on.

Here goes:

NEON IS MY NIGHT-LIGHT

Can the North Star guide the way,

When eyes no longer see it?