Runaways (10 page)

But the reading wasn’t all of it. There was something else going on between Stormy and Pixie that Dani didn’t like at all. Not that she was jealous, for heaven’s sake. Fat chance. It was just that she overheard enough of what they were whispering to make her wonder if Stormy was talking about the Frankenstein rumor again. When she asked him he always denied it, but one time Dani was sure she heard him saying, “How did he sew the head on?” At least it certainly sounded like that was what he said. That night as soon as Pixie left for home Dani asked him about it. They were still standing out in front at the time, watching as the spooky old black car crawled off up Silver Avenue, taking Pixie home to the ranch house.

“I didn’t say that,” Stormy insisted. “I wasn’t the one who said that.” Then he cocked his head the way he always did when he was thinking, and after a while he went on, “Tell me again. How come I can’t talk to Pixie about Frankenstein?”

“Because.” Dani let her exasperation show in her voice. “Because it will just make her feel bad. You know. Wouldn’t it make you feel bad to hear people repeating gruesome rumors about your parents? I mean, even if you knew it wasn’t the truth.”

Stormy nodded slowly and then asked, “What if you didn’t know it wasn’t the truth?”

Dani sighed angrily and demanded, “What on earth are you talking about?” But Stormy only turned around and went back into the house. When Dani followed she found him in the kitchen watching Linda peel potatoes.

It was during the last week of school that Dani found out something else that really made her mad. Something that she might not have figured out if she hadn’t been looking through some of Pixie’s books one night after she’d gone to bed. Just kind of skimming through them so she could decide whether Stormy might like to hear them or not. She had started looking through a boring, old-fashioned book called
The Five Little Peppers
when she suddenly remembered something Pixie had said the afternoon when she first came to visit. Something about liking the Jerky Joe cabin because it reminded her of a game she used to play. A game that came from a book
about a family with five kids.

So that was why Pixie had found Dani’s house so “fascinating.” Because it was like the house in
The Five Little Peppers.
The dirt-poor little Peppers who had to use only one candle at a time and even had to pull out basting thread carefully so it could be used over again. Dani slammed the book shut and threw it across the room. Then she lay awake for a long time thinking up sarcastic questions she might ask Pixie. Questions like “How rich do you need to be to think it’s fun to play a game about being poor?”

Dani didn’t get around to asking about
The Five Little Peppers,
however, because another question had started to bother her more than anything else. And that was how, with Pixie around almost every afternoon, she and Stormy were going to find time to work on their running-away plans.

There had been a time, right at first, when Dani wouldn’t have minded leaving Stormy out of her plans. But since he’d begun insisting on going along, and especially since she’d started dreaming about the Gila monster truck driver, she’d kind of gotten used to the idea of the two of them going together. Or she had, at least, until Pixie started complicating things.

It hadn’t been easy, for instance, to find a few seconds to threaten Stormy with what would happen if they didn’t start making some money. To say, “Look, we haven’t had a chance to even talk about getting the ticket money lately. Because of you-know-who.” She nodded to where Pixie had gone into the kitchen for a drink of water. “I can’t wait any longer. So maybe we’d better just forget about you coming too.”

Stormy listened, rolling his eyes thoughtfully, before he said, “But there’s just two more days before school’s out. And then Pixie won’t come here all the time.”

Dani huffed angrily. Then she said, “Yeah, well …” Actually she hadn’t been thinking about that. How, as soon as school was out, they wouldn’t be seeing so much of Pixie anymore. After she’d thought a while longer she said, “Well, okay. Till school’s out. But if we don’t start getting somewhere right after that, I’m going to take off by myself.”

She should have thought of that. How things would be back to normal during summer vacation, when there wouldn’t be any need for Pixie to spend so much time at the cabin. But then the last day of school came and went and just one day later, somebody knocked on Dani’s front door at one o’clock in the afternoon—and there she was again.

“Hey,” she said. “My mother had to come to town for groceries and stuff, so I came along. Would it be all right if I stayed until five again?”

And while Dani was saying, “Well, I don’t know. I guess I’d better ask …” Pixie waved at the tank and yelled, “Okay. She says it’s okay.”

So that was how Pixie stopped arriving every day at the same time, and started showing up any old time at all. And that was how just a few days later, she happened to overhear a very private conversation between Dani and Stormy.

I
T HAPPENED AFTER DINNER
one night when Linda had gone to see the movie at the town hall. Ordinarily Dani would have gone too but tonight it was an adults-only Greta Garbo film. So, wouldn’t you know it, Dani was stuck with staying home alone and, as if that weren’t bad enough, cleaning up the kitchen too.

“Me?” she’d said when Linda asked her to do it. “Why do I have to clean it? You messed it up.”

Linda smiled teasingly. “Okay,” she said. “Fair is fair. I promise to clean up the kitchen the next time
you
make a mess cooking dinner for the two of us. Anyway I have to leave now or I’ll miss the first reel.”

Obviously Linda thought her remark was pretty funny, just because Dani wasn’t much of a cook. But Dani had only frowned and shrugged and went on sitting there at the kitchen table. And she was still sitting there looking at the big mess Linda had made and wishing it would just go away when Stormy slammed through the back door.

“Hi,” Stormy said, looking around. “Linda went to the movie?”

Dani nodded glumly and Stormy nodded back and started wandering around the kitchen looking in all the dirty bowls and pans. After a while he said, “I’ll help you clean up. Okay?”

Dani couldn’t help grinning. Cleaning up a kitchen was one thing Stormy was really good at, especially the part about putting away leftovers. “Okay,” she said, “go to it.” And he did.

He’d just about finished the Spanish rice when it suddenly occurred to Dani that it was finally a nice, safe, private time to talk about the running-away fund. “Hey, look,” she said. “If you can stop eating for a minute maybe we could have a little talk. You know, about running away. I’ve just about decided for certain that I’m going to leave by the end of June. So either we find a way to get enough money for two sets of tickets by then, or you’ll just have to stay here.”

Stormy had been scraping a big old mixing spoon around the bottom of the rice pot.
Scrape, scrape, scrape,
making Dani’s scalp prickle and her teeth go all edgy. He finally quit and put the spoon in his mouth just as Dani said she was going without him. With the huge spoon still crammed into his mouth he stared, glassy-eyed, and went on staring with his eyes getting wider and glassier for so long that Dani began to wonder if the spoon was stuck to his tonsils. But finally he pulled it out and gave it a last careful lick before he said, “No! No, you can’t go without me.”

“Oh yeah? Who says.”

“I do,” Stormy said.

Dani snorted and glared. But she didn’t say, “How are you going to stop me?” because she knew how. All he’d have to do is tell Linda what she was planning, like he’d already threatened to do. They went on glaring at each other for a few seconds before Stormy said, “If we could get to Reno for free, do we have enough money to get from Reno to Sea Grove?”

“I don’t know,” Dani said. “I’d have to figure it out. But how would we get to Reno?”

“Well, maybe like you said before. About sneaking onto the back of a truck and—”

“No!” Dani interrupted loudly, trying to shut the truck driver’s monster face out of her mind. “No. I told you, I’ve changed my mind about that. We can’t do—”

It was right at that moment that something, maybe the tiniest bit of a door squeak or the sound of breathing, made Dani whirl around, and there she was. Pixie Smithson was standing in the partly opened door looking very excited and enthusiastic. Even more enthusiastic than when she thought she was going to be chased by dead rattlesnakes. “Hi,” she bubbled breathlessly, sounding, and looking, as if she were about to start bouncing off the ceiling.

Dani checked her out coolly before she said, “Hi yourself.” And then cautiously, “What’s up?”

“My folks went to the movie,” Pixie said. “So I came here. I came here to keep you company.”

“Yeah, so you came here,” Dani said. “So—what’s up?”

“I heard,” Pixie bubbled. “I heard what you guys were talking about.”

Dani sighed. “Yeah, I was afraid of that.” Giving Old Bubblehead her evilest glare, she asked, “So now what? Are you going to tell?”

“Tell?” Pixie shook her head fiercely. “Oh no, I won’t tell. I don’t want to tell.” She paused, and then, so softly Dani could barely hear, she said, “I want to come too.”

Dani couldn’t believe her ears. “You want to run away?”

Pixie nodded so hard her ponytail flipped up and down. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Dani checked out Stormy to see if he was as amazed as she was. He certainly seemed to be. At least he was standing there like a stone statue. A stone statue of a bushy-haired kid with a rice pot in one hand and a big spoon in the other. Dani sighed, turned back to Pixie, and asked, “Why?”

“Why?” and that was all. But for a moment her mind went on asking a bunch of other questions. Like “Why on earth would a rich kid who wears expensive clothes and rides around in a custom-built car, and who is only going to be in Rattler Springs for a few months anyway, want to go to the trouble of running away?” When she finally went on, it was in her most sarcastic tone of voice. “May I ask why
you
want to run away?”

For just a second Pixie looked uneasy, uncertain maybe, but then she nodded again and said, “Okay, I’ll tell you why. But you have to tell me something first. Tell me why you and Stormy are going to run away. Okay?”

Dani said no and she really meant it. Meant that why she wanted to run away was nobody’s business but her own. And Pixie agreed with her. “I know,” she said. “It’s none of my business. Except …” She paused, thought and then went on. “Except that other people who are planning to run away need to know, so they’ll know whether their reasons are …” She paused again, looking down at her hands. “So they’ll know if their reasons are good ones.”

Somewhere in the midst of that long explanation, Dani lost track of Pixie’s train of thought, if there’d been one in the first place. But in the meantime she’d somehow arrived in the living room and found herself sitting at one end of the daybed with Pixie at the other, and Stormy sprawled on the floor in front of them. Found herself sitting there on Linda’s bed trying to put it all into words. Trying to explain about Sea Grove and how great it had been and how much she hated the town of Rattler Springs and the school and Jerky Joe’s cabin, and everything. And how Linda wouldn’t do anything about moving back. And then, when she’d almost finished, Stormy came out of his listening trance long enough to say, “And tell about the desert. About the desert talking to you.”

At first Dani only said, “Oh that. That was just crazy stuff.” But then something about the eager, excited way they both were listening made her decide to tell at least about how she’d felt that first day when she and Linda had arrived in Rattler Springs. And that got her started on how, ever since that day, she’d had this crazy feeling that she could hear the desert talking to her. And the first thing she knew she’d told all of it, just like she’d told Stormy, only making it even better and more exciting. She even added a new part about how and where she’d made up her mind. How she’d been sitting in the graveyard looking at all those graves of people who had lived and died right there in Rattler Springs, when she suddenly knew she had to do it. When she finally ran down, Pixie sighed and shivered and rubbed her eyes like she’d almost been crying. She shivered again then, and turning to Stormy, asked, “And how about you? Why are you going to run away?”

Stormy looked startled. Then, as usual, he tipped his head and rolled his eyes before he said, “I don’t know. I just want to. I just”—long pause—“I want to see what it looks like in Sea Grove.”

Dani looked at Pixie and wiggled her eyebrows significantly. What her eyebrows were trying to say was that Stormy had some pretty good reasons even if he didn’t want to talk about them. Reasons that maybe had to do with having a mother who didn’t seem to like having him around, and with having to live in some crummy little rooms at the back of a run-down old hotel instead of in a real house, and stuff like that. Pixie raised her eyebrows back like she understood.

“So,” Dani said. “That’s our reasons for running away. Now, how about you?”

“Me?” For just a split second Pixie looked like she was trying to think what to say, or maybe decide whether she ought to say it. But then her eyes did that quick flash of fire thing, and biting her lip, she nodded slowly. “Yesss,” she said, drawing it out to a sizzle. “See, it’s very important that I run away soon before something terrible happens. Something unbelievably terrible.” She turned to Stormy. “I think Stormy can guess why I have to run away. Can’t you, Stormy? Can’t you guess why I have to run away as soon as I possibly can?”

Stormy didn’t answer. Instead he only did the embarrassed squirmy thing that usually meant he’d been up to no good. Dani was sure she recognized Stormy’s guilty expression, but she couldn’t imagine what he was guilty of that had anything to do with why Pixie had to run away. But then he said, “I didn’t ask her about it. She just told me.” Dani began to get the picture.

She stared at Pixie. “What did you tell Stormy?”

“Well,” Pixie said. “You know that rumor about the machine my parents took up to the ranch?”