Runaways (7 page)

Dani was still watching Gloria and the rest of the crowd and thinking about a town where there wasn’t anything more exciting to do than watch a stalled moving van, when someone punched her in the back. Hard. Not angry hard, actually, but just Stormy’s usual tooth-rattling substitute for a normal person’s “Hi” or “Hey, you.”

“Hey, watch it,” Dani said crossly, but then she saw his face and added, “What’s up?” Judging by his expression, something important definitely was.

There was a suspicious squint to Stormy’s eyes and his voice hissed excitedly when he said, “They’re spies. That’s what they are. Spies.”

Dani was puzzled. “What are you talking about? Who are spies?”

“Those ge—geo—” Giving up on
ge-ol-o-gists,
Stormy went on, “Those guys who are renting your ranch.”

“Oh yeah?” She couldn’t help grinning. “What makes you think they’re spies?”

“Because …” Stormy rolled his eyes around thoughtfully, and went on rolling them until Dani threatened to thump him on the head to get him started. “You know,” he finally said, “like in that book. The one about Jerry and the Nazi?”

“Jerry?” For a moment Dani couldn’t imagine what he was talking about, but then she began to get the picture. A year or so ago Stormy had been hung up on a series of dumb stories about this kid named Jerry who was supposed to be some kind of a superdetective. Even though he was only twelve years old he went around solving complicated mysteries about all sorts of criminals like cat burglars and smugglers. And there had been one story in which Jerry discovered that an apparently innocent toy maker was really a Nazi spy who hid government secrets inside his dolls and teddy bears. All the books were pretty unbelievable and the spy story had been especially stupid. She’d been glad when Stormy finally got tired of them, but now here he was back to imagining that he was Jerry, the detective.

“Oh, I get it,” she said, grinning. “Look, Stormy. The war’s over. The Nazis got wiped out. Or hadn’t you heard?”

Stormy glared. “I know that. But there’s other kinds of spies besides Nazi ones. Gus thinks so too. Gus says, why do they have to have all that scientific equipment just to look for minerals and stuff in the ground. Gus says he knows a guy who did that all his life, and all he needed was a donkey and a pickax.”

Dani shrugged angrily. Actually she was getting a little bit tired of all the famous quotations from Gus. Ever since the day when old Ronnie got dangled over the grease pit it seemed like all Stormy could talk about was his friend Gus. And as if hearing about Gus the champion muscle man wasn’t boring enough, now there was Gus the geologist. For some reason Dani found the whole thing pretty infuriating. Not that she wouldn’t be glad if Stormy found someone else to tag around after. Definitely not. As far as she was concerned that would be just great. And if Gus wanted to finish reading
White Fang
out loud, that would be great too. That is, if he
could
read, which probably wasn’t a safe bet.

“Look,” she said. “There’s nothing mysterious about the Smithsons. They just happen to be perfectly innocent geologists. Everybody with any sense knows that.”

But the next day it turned out that everybody didn’t. At least not at Rattler Springs school. The favorite topic of conversation at school that day, and pretty much all that week, was what the Smithsons were up to, out there at the ranch. Bob Bailey said he’d heard they were government agents looking for a place to test atom bombs. And some other kids seemed to think the Smithsons were counterfeiters, and the stuff in one of those big trucks had been presses for printing money. But the craziest idea was Clara Mason’s.

Clara, who was the only other girl in the seventh grade besides Dani, was a horror-story nut who was always reading about vampires and demons and monsters. And it was her idea that the Smithsons were really Frankenstein types, and all that machinery was some kind of monster assembly line.

Dani thought the whole thing was pretty ridiculous. “Look,” she told Bob, and a couple of other people who happened to be standing around listening. “Just because their clothes don’t look like they bought them at a rummage sale, and they drive a custom-made car, doesn’t make them into some kind of mad scientists. It just makes them a little bit different than most of the people around here. Okay? And you know who’s always suspicious of anyone who’s a little bit different? Hicks and hillbillies, that’s who.”

It was the truth but, as usual, no one appreciated it much. In fact, when she told them that stuff about hicks and hillbillies Bob muttered, “Okay. So I’m a hick. I’d rather be a hick than a stuck-up know-it-all.” And of course some of the other kids who heard what he said went around the rest of the day making cracks about stuck-up know-it-alls.

It wasn’t fair. Just because Dani wasn’t a natural-born desert rat, and because she got pretty good grades without having to study much, the other kids at Rattler Springs Elementary School thought she was conceited.

She walked home that day telling herself she wasn’t ever going to try to tell anybody at that crummy school anything ever again. It wasn’t the first time she’d told herself to keep her mouth shut about how she felt about living in Rattler Springs. But then somebody would start teasing her and she’d forget and start shooting her mouth off again.

Sometimes, when she cooled off, she knew that a lot of her problems at the Rattler Springs school were her own fault. She knew that the reason she got teased so much was because she’d gotten off on the wrong foot when she first came, complaining about everything and bragging about how much better it had been back home. Of course, she’d only been a stupid little homesick eight-year-old at the time, but she still ought to have known better. And she certainly ought to know better now than to go around calling people hillbillies and hicks. But she’d done it, and she knew that for the next few days she was going to have to pay for it.

The next morning she thought about staying home with a planned stomachache. Not an imaginary stomachache. She didn’t go in for imaginary stuff. A planned one. And she probably would have except that at eight o’clock it was already over a hundred degrees in her bedroom and it was obviously going to be a lot hotter before the day was over. So she gritted her teeth and went to school—and nobody even mentioned stuck-up know-it-alls. Or anything else about Dani O’Donnell.

Not that the Rattler Springs student body had suddenly turned over a new leaf. Not a chance. What made the difference was that they suddenly had somebody else to torment. Somebody named Portia Alexandria Smithson.

P
ORTIA ALEXANDRIA SMITHSON WAS
as skinny and blond as her geologist parents and, like theirs, her features were normal enough, but nothing special. All except for her eyes and ears. Her eyes were big and round and bright blue and her ears were big too, and stuck out on each side through wispy blond hair. She looked okay but definitely different and, as Dani had good reason to know, different was dangerous in Rattler Springs.

For one thing her clothes were all wrong. She came into the sweltering, sweaty classroom that first morning wearing a fancy, long-sleeved white blouse, with a monogram on the pocket and trimmed around the collar and cuffs with blue braid. Her skirt, also blue, was sharply pleated, and her saddle shoes looked brand new. It was an outfit that might have been terrific at some big-city school, but the reaction in Rattler Springs was … Looking around the classroom, Dani felt like she was watching a bunch of alley cats reacting to the new cat on the block. It was easy to conjure up a mental image of arching backs and bristling tails. You could, that is, if you were interested in that kind of imagining stuff, which Dani definitely wasn’t.

The expression on the new girl’s face when Mr. Graham had her stand up to be introduced was different too. “Boys and girls,” Mr. Graham said, “I’d like you to meet our new fifth-grade student, Portia Smithson.” He went on then being humorous about how lucky they were that Portia was a girl because the upper grades were short on girls, and long, “or at least heavy,” on boys. Then he looked at Ronnie and Bob, who were pretty “heavy,” all right, and everybody snickered. Everyone except Dani and the new girl, at least. Dani didn’t snicker because it wasn’t particularly funny, and the new girl didn’t either. But, on the other hand, she didn’t look as nervous as you might expect.

What you’d expect, under the circumstances, was a certain amount of terror, and for a second she did look a little bit scared. But almost immediately Dani began to get the feeling that even that little bit wasn’t for real. It was as if the whole thing, the clasped hands and down-turned eyes, was an act. It was pretty believable, except now and then when the eyes flashed up and around the room and then quickly dropped back down.

It must have been those fiery glances that made Dani curious enough to decide to talk to the new girl as soon as possible. At least curiosity was part of it. The other part just might have been a little bit of sympathy for someone else who was coming to the Rattler Springs school and getting off on the wrong foot. Coming possibly from some big-city school, maybe even a private one, judging by the school uniform look of her clothing. It had been bad enough for Dani, and she’d be willing to bet it was going to be even worse for this poor kid. So at the first recess Dani followed Portia Smithson out onto the playground.

Just outside the door she grabbed the new girl’s arm and said, “Hi, Portia. My name is Dani. Dani O’Donnell.”

The big eyes were wide, and at that moment, as blank as a painted doll’s. “Hi, Dani,” the girl breathed in a feathery whisper. “But my name is Pixie now. I haven’t been Portia for a long time.”

Dani looked Portia/Pixie/whoever over with increased interest. “Okay then, Pixie,” she said. Grabbing the other girl by the sleeve, she pulled her back toward the schoolhouse wall, away from some fifth- and sixth-graders who were hanging around staring. There were five or six of them, all boys except for Jeannie Wallace. “Scram,” Dani yelled, and then waited for their reluctant retreat before she said, “Just look at them, standing around goggle-eyed just because you’re new.” She sighed. “That’s the way it always is here. Don’t you hate it? Don’t you hate being here?”

The eyes flashed a signal that, again, Dani didn’t quite get. Anger maybe, or perhaps just curiosity. But the voice was more like little-girl wonder. “Do
you
hate it?” she asked.

“Sure I do. The school, the whole town, everything.” Dani looked the new girl over again, checking out the pleated skirt, the stiff new shoes and the wide-eyed, innocent stare. “You know. The whole place. All of it.” She gestured, taking in the schoolyard and on and on, clear out to the distant hills. “Gruesome, isn’t it?”

Portia’s eyes followed the gesture. “Yes. Yes, it is gruesome,” she said eagerly. “It’s probably the most gruesome place I’ve ever been.”

A puzzling thought occurred to Dani. “Hey, why’d you come? To the school I mean. It’s going to be summer vacation in a couple of weeks. Couldn’t you have skipped the rest of the year? I’ll bet you’re way ahead of the fifth grade here.”

“Well, yes. I guess I could have …,” the new girl started to say, when the noise level on the playground suddenly went up to a deafening roar. It sounded like a riot but it was probably just that the little kids had been let out for recess. Dani started to check to see if that was it, but before she’d even gotten completely turned around something hit her in the middle of the back. “This is Stormy,” she said without even looking.

They were almost the same height, Stormy and the new girl, although Stormy was a lot heavier. Standing only a few feet away, he was staring as if he’d seen a ghost. “Hey.” Dani thumped him on the head to get his attention. “This is Por—Pixie. Pixie Smithson, she’s in the fifth grade.”

“Yeah, Smithson. I heard.” Stormy nodded and gulped before he started to say, “The ge—ge—”

“Geologists,” Dani said. She turned to Pixie. “That’s right, isn’t it? Your folks are the geologists, aren’t they? The ones who are renting my mom’s ranch house?”

“Your mom’s ranch house? We’re renting your house?” Pixie’s face registered surprise. At least it looked like surprise. Dani was definitely getting the feeling that Pixie’s face was not going to be all that easy to read. Stormy’s, on the other hand, was only too easy, and what it was registering at the moment was suspicion and something pretty close to shock.

“Are you—I mean—are your folks really spies?”

“Yeah, spies? Are they spies?” another voice chimed in, and it wasn’t until then that Dani noticed that the fifth- and sixth-grade bunch had edged its way back into hearing distance. It was Eddie Bailey, Bob’s sixth-grade brother, who was asking. “Are you guys really spies?”

Pixie looked bewildered. “Spies?” Turning to Dani, she said, “What do they mean, spies?”

But just at that moment the bell rang for the end of the upper grades’ recess. On their way back to the classroom Dani whispered, “It’s just a stupid rumor. I guess some of the kids are saying that your folks are spies.” She laughed. “And that’s just for starters. There’s a whole lot of even more ridiculous stuff going around.”

Pixie hung back, asking questions like “What kind of stuff?” “Who said it?” and “What did they say?”

So Dani began to explain but she hardly got into the rumors about the counterfeit money printing press, and barely mentioned the one about Frankenstein-type scientists. Pixie was obviously interested, hanging on to Dani’s arm to keep her from leaving, and asking all kinds of questions.

“Hey, we’ve got to go in,” Dani told her finally. “Mr. Graham is really fussy about coming in after the second bell. I’ll tell you some more later.” One thing she especially wanted to tell Pixie was that she’d just have to get used to the fact that in crummy little hick towns like Rattler Springs people didn’t have anything better to do than make up stupid rumors about everything and everybody.

Back at her seat Dani got out her math book, checked the seventh-grade assignment on the board and started to work. But every now and then she glanced back at the fifth-grade corner, where, considering the fact that she’d just been accused of being a spy or something even worse, Pixie was behaving in a surprisingly normal manner. Watching her, Dani felt puzzled and strangely fascinated.