Tianna the Terrible (Anika Scott Series) (14 page)

"No, God loves bad people, too," I said, leaning forward and touching her knee. "The Bible says that 'God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.' See, God does love you. You can just ask him, and he'll be your rock, too."

Tianna looked at me hopefully across the bumping, dusty matatu.

"You have to say you're sorry, and ask Jesus to forgive you, and all that," I blurted.

"OK," she said, nodding, and then just sat there looking down.

I looked apprehensively out the back. The driver might stop any minute. There was nobody to help. I shifted uneasily and said, "Come on, hurry up before something happens."

"What do I do?" she asked.

"Just talk to Jesus," I said. "He's always listening."

There was a long, dusty, bumpy pause, and I bit my tongue to keep from telling her to hurry again.

"Um, Jesus," she finally said. "Anika said you love me. Can I please belong to you like she does? I'm sorry for being such a jerk. Please love me. Um, I guess I'm supposed to end by saying amen, so amen." She looked up at me. So much of her dusty hair was in her face I could hardly see her. Then she shoved her hair back and grinned.

"He heard me. He did! I just know it!"

I grinned back, so big that it made my cheeks ache, and started singing again. "Praise the name of Jesus…" Tianna joined in really loud. "He's my rock! He's my fortress! He's my deliverer! In him will I trust!"

The matatu jerked to a stop. We stopped singing and looked at each other, then I looked out the back. I could see level grass, flower beds, big acacia trees, and lawn chairs. "We're at the hotel!" I said and started climbing out.

The driver hadn't taken us somewhere else to beat us up and steal our money. Even so, I was still nervous about facing him. He came to the back and reached to help Tianna out. She ignored his hand and climbed out on her own. Pulling her gym bag with her, she stood behind me.

"I have brought you as I had said," he said, looking at Tianna, "and also I have brought your sister with you."

"OK, I'll pay you for her, too." She turned her back on him and hunched over her gym bag to open it. I guess she was trying not to let him see. She shoved something into my hand and said, "Here, give him this."

It was a ten-dollar bill. I held it out, and he took it with both hands, kind of bowing. "
Asante.
Thank you, thank you," he said and gave us a big smile.

He climbed back into the cab of the matatu, then leaned out. "My mother also is a Christian, and she has sung that song that you were singing. Your God has kept you safe." He gave an emphatic nod and said,
"Aya, Quahairi,"
and drove off.

A wave of relief washed over me.

"What did he mean by that?" Tianna asked.

"I don't know," I said, staring after him. "Anyway, we're safe. God kept us safe!"

I grabbed Tianna's hands and started dancing around. She grinned. I let go and did a cartwheel.

"Come on!" I yelled, bouncing onto my feet again. "Let's go call Mom and Daddy."

I ran for the hotel.

"Wait, Anika!" yelled Tianna, running after me. I slowed down and she grabbed my arm, her eyes full of fear. "Please, Anika. Don't call anyone. At least not until tomorrow. Let's just stay here tonight."

Chapter Eleven

I stared at Tianna and let her words sink in. She wanted us to stay, by ourselves, at the hotel overnight. She also wanted me not to tell Mom and Daddy. And she had all the money.

"I have to call them," I blurted. "They'll be really worried. Besides, I don't think the hotel will let us stay here, just two kids with no grown-ups." I looked at her curiously. "Why do you want to stay here, anyway?"

She looked away from me, then rubbed a hand across her mouth. "I'm kind of scared to go back," she said. "I don't really know your mom and dad that well, and the people at VCA…" She hunched her shoulders and hugged herself. "I mean, I'll go back, really I will—but I just want time to get used to being a Christian."

I looked at the hotel. I'd been here before with Mom and Daddy. We hadn't stayed overnight or anything, but it didn't seem scary. It might even be kind of fun staying in a fancy tourist hotel by ourselves. And Tianna did have enough money.

Anyway,
I thought,
if that girl in the matatu tells someone where we are, like I asked her to, people from VCA might already be on their way to find us.

"Um," I said trying to decide. "Um, if I agree, can I call Mom and Daddy and tell them?"

"They'll just come get us and take me back to VCA," Tianna said. Her face was dusty and streaked with tears. She really did look scared.

"I'll tell them not to come 'til tomorrow," I said, shaking her hand off impatiently. Why did she have to be so silly? "Look, if you don't let me call, I'll tell the people at the hotel we're runaways. What if the hotel doesn't let us stay by ourselves, anyway?"

"OK," she said. "Call your parents, then."

"Great! Come on!" I yelled and took off for the lobby again. Tianna followed me in so slowly that I had to wait for her by the hotel desk for ages.

The man looked at us oddly, but he let us book a room after he saw Tianna's money. They changed a bunch of it for her into shillings, too. I actually got through to Daddy's office my first try, which hardly ever happens with Kenyan phones.

"Anika! What's happened?" he said, sounding alarmed. We're not allowed to call home unless there is an emergency.

"Um, I'm at the hotel at Naivasha," I said.

"What!?"

"Didn't VCA call you?" I asked.

When he said no, I told him what had happened and ended with, "The best part is, Tianna's a Christian now, too."

"Well!" he said and paused. "We'll be there as soon as we can. I'm just glad God kept you both safe. That's good news about Tianna."

"Look, Daddy, Tianna doesn't want to go back yet. She wants to stay here tonight. She had money, and we already checked in. I promised you wouldn't make us go back tonight."

He chuckled. "You did, did you? OK, we won't make you leave tonight. But we're not going to leave you there alone, either. I'll call VCA to let them know where you are."

My stomach tightened again at the thought of being in trouble at VCA, and I blurted, "Tell them I didn't run away on purpose."

"I'll talk to them," he promised. "And then we'll come to stay with you."

I hung up with a sigh of relief. No matter what Tianna said, I was glad Mom and Daddy were coming. Now staying here could be fun.

Tianna was staring at me.

"They said we could stay," I told her, grinning.

"All right!" she yelled before I could finish. "Let's go get something to eat."

"Maybe we'd better wash up first," I said, looking at her filthy face. I didn't really want to tell her Mom and Daddy were coming. Even if she was a Christian, she might run away again or something.

After we were cleaner we headed for the restaurant. Tianna must have stayed in hotels with her parents before, because she knew exactly what to do, how to order and stuff. It felt odd not having someone else in charge of us. It was fun, too.

We walked down to the dock by the lake after our late lunch. Beautiful big yellow-barked acacia trees were all around. Hundreds of birds were singing and flying back and forth through the flat feathery-leaved treetops. Sun shone on the blue water, and huge water lilies floated by the dock. Cormorants sat on a twisted, black, dead tree that stuck out of the lake a little way from shore.

I shut my eyes and turned my face into the warm sunlight. Everything was going to be all right. I remembered a picnic our whole family had had here once, and how Daddy took us all for a boat ride afterwards.

"Your family want to rent a boat, please?" a man said right beside me, like he'd been reading my thoughts.

I'd just turned to look at him when Tianna said, "Look, Anika, that man by the hotel. Isn't that Mr. Jackson?"

I spun and looked. It
was
Mr. Jackson. He was heading for the lobby. He hadn't seen us.

"I'm getting out of here," Tianna said and ran down the dock. An Indian family was just climbing out of one of the boats. The little outboard motor was still running. Tianna grabbed the rope from the father, climbed in, and took off.

I stared after her with my mouth open. Where did she learn to run a boat so well? I looked back up at the hotel but couldn't see Mr. Jackson anymore. I swiveled frantically and looked at Tianna's boat going out through the shining blue water. We'd never find her if she got away. And I remembered Daddy saying Lake Naivasha could be dangerous. It didn't look bad right by the shore, but the wind could come up suddenly. I also knew that the edges of a lake where hippos and crocodiles lived could be dangerous.

"Stop her!" I blurted to the man. "We have to stop her!"

He was staring after her, too, and his eyes were wide open, looking very white in his dark face.

"
Ndiyo!
Yes!" he said,
"Yeye ni mtoto tu."
Which means, "She's only a child."

He climbed into another boat and yanked the rope to start the engine. I jumped in after him so fast that I almost tipped the boat over. The boats looked like aluminum rowboats with little outboard engines bolted to the stern.

A second later we were putting across the water after Tianna. The outboard motor smoked and sputtered. I looked up. Tianna wasn't getting any farther ahead, but we weren't getting any closer either. She looked back and saw us.

"Haraka Haraka!"
I said, hitting the side of the boat like it was a horse.
Haraka
means "hurry."

"There is not petrol in that boat," the boatman said complacently in Swahili.

Suddenly Tianna turned her boat and headed for an overgrown stretch of shoreline. Her boat putted into a narrow channel through the reeds—and disappeared.

The boatman slowed down almost to a stop.

"Hii ni njia ya kiboko,
" he said.

A hippo path! Tianna had headed down a hippo path. No wonder the man didn't want to follow her. We hear of people who are killed by hippos every year. Most people don't think of hippos as being dangerous, but if you get in their path when they're going into the water or leaving it, sometimes they just bite you in half. True, it was daytime and hippos mostly come out of the water at night… but still!

I stared, paralyzed, down the channel through the reeds where Tianna had disappeared. I shivered.

"Come on, we have to help her!" I insisted.
"Twende!"

The boatman shrugged and put the boat back in gear. We chugged slowly down the channel. Reeds that were taller than a man stood up on both sides of the boat. I held the edges of the boat so hard that the metal pinched into my fingers. It was hard to hear anything but the motor. Tianna's boat finally came into view. She wasn't in it! I almost choked, picturing her already knocked into the water and dead. Then the boatman pointed to her tracks heading up the bank.

The shore was a hard bank of mud about ten feet wide. Paths went off from it into the thick bush. Hippo paths.

"Tianna!" I yelled, like her name had been torn out of my throat. "Tianna, come back! You'll get killed! These are hippo paths!"

I listened, but all I heard was a bottle bird making its
blup-blup, blup-blup
call, sounding like someone emptying a bottle. I couldn't see anything. We were totally hemmed in by reeds and bush. The stifling hot air smelled like rotting mud.

Just then something splashed behind us in the rushes. I jumped and looked back. Hippo? Nervously, the boatman was looking behind us, too.

"Tianna!" I yelled frantically. "Tianna!"

A terrified scream split the air, then there was a loud slithering splash and the sound of something big going through the rushes to our right. There was crashing in the bushes, too. I jumped so hard that the boat rocked, which made me grip the edges even tighter. Was Tianna dead? Did a hippo get her?

The crashing in the bush came closer, and then Tianna came tearing through the bush off the path and hurled herself at our boat. She hit the boat, one foot in and one foot out. She was going so fast that she went straight over the far side. There was a loud double splash. The boat pitched and bucked under me, and I gripped the edge even harder. Tianna came up screaming and lunged at the side of the boat. It pitched sideways and nearly went over, then steadied.

"Pole pole!"
the boatman yelled from near my elbow. That's when I realized he'd been dumped out when Tianna hit the boat. His wet black hands on the gunnel were steadying the boat now.

Tianna lunged into the boat, landed at my feet with a thump, and screamed, "Crocodile! Crocodile!" pointing shakily back the way she'd come. Then she started a whooping, screaming cry.

"Alikwenda,"
—he has gone—said the boatman, pushing the boat to the edge, where he climbed in.

"Tianna!" I yelled at her and shook her. "Tianna! It's OK. The crocodile left as fast as you did. We heard it go through the rushes."