Signed, Skye Harper (12 page)

“That’s good to know,” I said. My forehead broke out in a sweat.

“You shouldn’t be doing things to maybe get people pregnant,” Nanny said.

I raised my eyebrow. Something she should know. Talking from experience.

Steve swung around in the seat. “What I am trying to say is, I’m an okay person, Miss Jimmie.”

The sigh Nanny let out should have blown my hair back. “I know that, Stephen,” she said, and she climbed into the compartment above us. I could see she was bone tired by the way she tried to get up into the bed. “Drive us into New Mexico.”
{ 173 }

Steve started the engine and shifted the motor home into gear. He pulled away from McDonald’s then reached for my hand. “Come sit closer to me, baby,” he said.

“And I am listening to you
both
,” Nanny said from above us. “I have ears like a hawk.”

Steve grinned at me. “I know you do, Miss Jimmie,” he said.
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102

Waiting

“You getting all As?” I said. “For real?”

Steve nodded, glanced in the rearview, and then reached for my hand again. “Sure am. Hoping for a scholarship to Ohio State. Great football team. Far from home.”

I nodded. Almost as good a goal as participating in the Olympics. Though he would be heading into Yankee territory.

“And why haven’t you told your momma and daddy this?” I swung my legs around till I faced Steve. I took his hand in both of mine.

He shrugged.

“You do too know.”

“I see you,” Nanny said. But her voice was tired, and when I looked behind us, expecting Nanny’s head to be hanging down watching me and Steve, there was nothing. Not that I don’t believe my grandmother doesn’t have psychic powers or the ability to look through steel with her laser-beam eyes. She knows stuff. She reads minds. That’s the truth.

“She’s not looking,” I said.

“She could be,” Steve said, whispering. “Let’s see if she
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is.” He tugged me close and I knelt next to the driver’s seat.

“Tell me why you don’t tell them you are doing good.”

“Kiss me first.”

My heart pounded in the back of my throat.

Outside the window, Texas was black as an armadillo hole. The moon had fallen over sideways and spilled milky light on the dark road.

Oh, I wanted to kiss him, something bad. But I couldn’t always be kissing Steve because he said so. “Tell me,” I said.

“Kiss me.”

“Tell first.” Somehow I had floated a couple inches from Steve’s face. He smelled like marshmallows. How was that possible what with all the burgers he’d eaten? Did Colgate make marshmallow-flavored toothpaste?

Steve let out a long breath of air that I thought sure might fog the windshield.

I moved back to my chair still holding on to his hand. From above us I could hear Nanny in her beginning-sleep snores. We had time.

“Geez, Churchill, I don’t talk to people like this.” He stared straight ahead, like the black ribbon of road, with its bit of cream moonlight, was the most important thing he’d ever seen. Steve let out another big breath. He glanced at me, all side eyed. “But I guess I can tell you.”
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103

Truths

I settled back in my seat, turned sideways, Steve’s hand warm in my own.

“Look,” he said, “people don’t know this.
No one
knows this.”

“Okay,” I said.

Steve cleared his throat. “Everyone thinks my mom and dad are perfect.”

They do?
I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut. Maybe I was a bit too close to the Simmons family since I bused tables at Leon’s and now knew of my nanny’s ill fortunes with Leon himself. I nodded instead of speaking.

“So, my mom is like a pillar in the community. She gives all this money to the Elks Club and to charities and she even gave this hunk of change to help with the wing of the children’s hospital.”

Yup. I knew about Fish Memorial. When I shot a nail through my foot with a nail gun, I visited the children’s wing, and I saw a picture of Janet Green Simmons, right there on the wall, cutting a big red ribbon with a giant pair of scissors. Her dog was at her feet like a tiny stuffed animal.

“My mom . . .” Steve’s voice went down a notch. “We’re
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good friends, Churchill. Like, really good friends.”

I leaned closer.

“We do all kinds of things together and she surfs with me and takes me places. But. Something’s happened.”

Steve looked me in the eye. Like stared at me a whole three seconds. I wanted to say keep your eyes on the road, but I knew something big was coming, so I kept my mouth shut and stared back.

“She’s leaving. She’s leaving us.”

It felt like someone had punched me a good one in the stomach. It felt like the time I had been swinging on a tree branch that snapped, throwing me onto my back, knocking every bit of wind from me.

“But—” I said, “but wait . . . Are you going with her? I don’t get it.”

Steve shook his head. “Dad’s dropping her off in Europe. And coming back alone. I wanted to stay here. You know, because of school.”

I swallowed. School started in three days.

“I know,” Steve said. “If she loves me, why aren’t I going with her?”

I couldn’t say anything.

He shrugged. “I was supposed to take her to Europe too. But I said I wouldn’t do it. I thought maybe she would change her mind if I didn’t go along. She didn’t. She went without me. She went ahead and left.” He shrugged again.
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“That’s why I got in the motor home. I’d heard your grandmother talking about leaving when I stopped in the restaurant and then saw her in our driveway. I put it all together, and when she wasn’t looking, I snuck on. I just needed something normal.”

A stolen motor home was normal?

“They just fight so much.”

Was he going to cry? What should I do if he did?

But Steve didn’t cry. He held my hand a little tighter and drove us down that dark Texas road, straight into New Mexico.
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104

Too Hard to Hear

We drove in silence for miles. And there was nothing I could do or say, but I sorta knew what Steve felt. A little. So I sat quiet and was just there.
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105

Getting Closer

The sun edged up behind us.

And way out in front of us the horizon turned gray.

“Mountains,” Steve said, pointing with our clasped hands.

“My momma left me, too, Steve. I know it’s not the same. But I sorta get it.”

How could that matter, seeing he had spent his whole life with his momma and she was leaving now. Now that he was almost sixteen. Now that he maybe needed her the most?

That sure wasn’t the same thing as what had happened to me.

I didn’t know my mother.

I didn’t even care about my mother. Mostly.

Steve gave me a smile that was so hurt it took my breath away. “I know,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
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106

Realizing

As I went off to sleep, nodding with the movement of the motor home, I thought,
Now wait a minute. Momma spent my whole life with me till she left. Sure it wasn’t as long as sixteen years, but how does any momma leave any baby that’s come from her body?
And even in my almost sleep, I couldn’t see it.

Mark Spitz was driving the motor home.

“Good thing
you
don’t try to drive, Churchill,” he said, “’cause you fall to sleep as fast as a newborn.”

“Can’t help it,” I said. My mouth wouldn’t move, but I was sure he could read my thoughts.

“You know things aren’t what they should be,” Mark said. “There’s trouble.” I noticed the whole driver’s seat was wet. There was a pool of water near the gas pedal and the brake. Had he gotten out of the pool? And what would Steve’s daddy think of that?

“Winston,” Nanny said.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Go get back on the bed. I’m driving now.”

I opened my eyes to the bright light of Arizona. “They’re huge, Nanny,” I said, and my breath tasted like old hamburgers and something worse.
{ 182 }

“I’m gonna carry us on into Vegas, baby. And what are you talking about?”

“The mountains.”

Steve was sound asleep on the sofa, his hand dragging the floor. Thelma lay as close as she could get to him, her nose under his relaxed fingers. Boy, he was pretty when he was sleeping. Pretty eating a burger. Pretty all the time.

“I know it,” Nanny said. “I’m feeling claustrophobic. How could Judith Lee live here?” There was a smile in her voice.

I could see, tired as I was, that Nanny felt happy about closing in on her daughter. “I called her from a pay phone.”

I perked up some. “Really? What’d she say?”

Nanny shook her head. The Arizona sun blinded me. It sure was bare out here. Where were the trees? The grass?

“Nothing. She never answered.”

I stayed sitting next to Nanny. Swallowed. My throat was dry as ashes. “You thinks she’s moved on?”

“Since her last letter? I don’t think so,” Nanny said. “She has a couple of jobs.”

“What time did you call?”

“’Bout five a.m. Soon as I got up to change places with Steve. You slept right through it. Some hoodlum had torn all the pages from the phone book at the 7-Eleven.”

Denny sat on Nanny’s lap and pecked ground-up corn from her hand. She sure was relaxed driving now. Nanny,
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not Denny. I guess that all you need to do is drive across the United States of America and you get yourself some real confidence. Part of me wanted to tell her everything about Janet Green Simmons and her now-used-to-be husband Leon. But I kept my mouth shut.

“Go on back to the bed,” Nanny said. “I gotta smoke.”

“No smoking,” I said. “Feed the chicken.” I grinned at Nanny and went off to lie down.

Arizona sun pushed around the shades like sunshine in a mirror.

“I’ll never go to sleep. Never.”
{ 184 }

107

Wrong

I didn’t even dream.
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108

Close

I awoke to Nanny pulling into some place.

“Gotta clean out the sewage,” Steve said.

What kind of world was this? Steve’s hand was on my lower back and his breath burned on my forehead. “Miss Jimmie said for me to come wake you. She’s taken the animals out. ‘No hanky-panky,’ Steve, that’s what she said. You awake, Churchill?”

Was I?

Steve stretched himself out beside me. Draped his arm across my shoulders.

“Stephen?” Nanny’s voice from somewhere outside the motor home. Standing under the back window? Yup, I was awake.

“We’re here.” His voice was a hot whisper. “Stopped right outside Vegas.”

I opened my eyes.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” I spoke out the side of my mouth so my breath wouldn’t get in Steve’s face.

“You snore.”

“What?” I turned over and sat up. Bright light edged
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around the curtains and spilled down the hallway. Were we on the sun? “I do not snore. I’m too young.” I slid to the edge of the bed, where I caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. My hair was a mess—though much more tame than normal—and a red crease ran down my cheek. I wiped at spit, drying my lips on the back of my hand. How embarrassing!

Steve sat up too, grinning. He seemed healed up and haired over since our chat last night. Almost like it hadn’t happened.

“You should give a girl a chance to clean up.” What was I saying? Steve had been with me all this time, night and day, and had seen me every which way.

“Don’t worry. Only you, Churchill, can make snoring and spit sexy.”

“You’re gross,” I said, and hopped up into the little bathroom so I could do my business and brush my teeth. I refused to let myself smile at his compliment. Gloria Steinem would have been proud.

Steve’s voice crawled under the bathroom door. “You are sexy, Churchill. And your grandmother doesn’t know it, but I coulda copped a feel or stolen your virginity, you slept so hard.”

What?

“Get away from the door.”

“Don’t worry, I got the Lysol spray right here.”
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“I said, go away!”

Steve laughed. Then he said, “I never thought I would spend part of my summer with such a crazy, foxy family.” He tapped on the bathroom door. “You hear me?”

My face flamed the color of a hibiscus. Why did there have to be a mirror right by the toilet seat? “I hear you. Now leave.”

“I’m going,” he said, and I heard him walk down the hall then open the door to the motor home. It closed with a click.

Sitting on the pot, I stared at my face.

Did I look like a virgin, too? Was that bad? And shouldn’t I be a virgin knowing my family’s reputation with losing important things?

I shook my head at myself.

Sheesh.
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109

Getting Up the Courage

“I think we should sit outside the city limits a bit,” Nanny said. She’d already showered, done her hair, had me wash both Denny and Thelma, made Steve change his clothes twice and me three times.

“What’s the big deal?” I said. My nerves were thin as wire.

We were trying to find shade, but it seems Vegas doesn’t have any.

“She’s your momma, Winston.”

Steve raised his eyebrows at me as if to say,
Sure is
, or
Look at me and what I’m going through, losing my momma when you are finding yours,
or
Kiss me
. Truth is, I couldn’t quite read what he meant.

“Wish we were home watching the Olympics,” I said. But I said it real low.

“And you gotta respect her for that,” Nanny said.

“For the Olympics?”

“For giving you life.”

I looked at my fingernails and nodded. “I know, Nanny, but you
kept
me alive.”

For a moment I let myself think of me and Momma
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