Bennie! Izzy let out a half laugh and reached for a peanut. Oh, man, was she glad to know Ben’s uncle called him a dumb nickname. She’d put that in her back pocket for later.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ben lied. “We called her.”
Uncle Steve looked each of them in the face and then said, “The little guy’s practically asleep already.”
“No, I’m not!” Oliver forced himself to sit up straight.
“I guess it’s okay as long as you told the lady you’re staying with. I’m in enough trouble with your dad as it is.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Ben said.
“I got some old sleeping bags in the back. You can stretch out here on the floor.”
They took turns in Uncle Steve’s grimy bathroom while he found the bags and three flat pillows. Then he brought in three glasses of water and put them on the coffee table. “In case you get thirsty in the middle of the night.”
“Thanks,” Ben said, downing half his glass immediately.
“Russ sure did a good job on your ink,” Uncle Steve said, gesturing to his nephew’s arm. “Lemme see the other one.”
Ben glanced a little nervously at Izzy, then peeled off his T-shirt so a third tattoo, hidden under his sleeve, was visible. The wolf and the scorpion were both black, but the large bird with enormous wings and tail feathers blazed across Ben’s shoulder in bright reds and golds. It looked almost three-dimensional, as though it might fly away at any moment.
“You keep the nicest one hidden,” Izzy said. Ben didn’t say anything back, but his uncle gave a sharp laugh. Izzy wished she could stare at the bird for a few minutes, but she couldn’t do it now, when Ben was standing right next to her, half naked. She didn’t want him to think she was interested in his bare chest or his muscly arms. It was this creature drawn so skillfully on his skin that fascinated her.
Izzy didn’t believe for one minute that the tattoos held no meaning for Ben, that they were just random signs of rebelliousness. You didn’t cover one whole side of your body with any old design. Ben had picked these particular beasts for a reason. One that bites, one that howls, and one that flies.
The new tattoo had caught Oliver’s attention too. “Wow! That’s even cooler than the scorpion or the wolf! What kind of a bird is it?”
“It’s a phoenix,” Uncle Steve explained. “From Greek mythology. When the phoenix dies, a new bird rises up out of the ashes of the old one. So in a way, it never dies.”
“It’s reborn,” Ben said.
“It’s a reminder that people can start over too, and have a new life,” Uncle Steve said.
Oliver leaned forward and gently touched a golden wing. “Are they real?” he asked.
“No,” Ben said. “They’re kind of a symbol.”
“A symbol of hope,” Uncle Steve explained. “They remind us not to give up.”
“Oh.” As he often did these days, Oliver looked wounded. “I wish they were real. I’d like to see one come back to life.”
The sleeping bags looked dirty and smelled moldy, but Izzy and Oliver were so tired from their long walk, they fell asleep almost immediately. Whether Ben slept, Izzy didn’t know. When he shook her awake before the sun was even up, she groaned. She was still sleepy, and her hip was sore from lying on the hard floor. What the heck was she doing in Eastman, anyway, sleeping in Ben’s uncle’s stinky sleeping bag? What had seemed like an adventure late last night seemed like an idiotic idea this morning. She wished she were back at home in her own bed.
Oliver was already up, quietly folding his sleeping bag.
Ben put a finger to his lips and whispered to Izzy, “Get your stuff together and grab the sleeping bag, just in case we need it.”
“I have to use the bathroom first,” Izzy whispered back.
Ben shook his head. “No time. Too noisy. We’ll stop somewhere.”
“But I need to,” Izzy said again.
Oliver put his hand on her arm, his face pinched with worry. “Please, Izzy. Let’s go while we can. Dad has been gone a whole day already.”
Izzy sighed and nodded. She’d come this far—she wouldn’t let Oliver down now. She picked up her gear and tiptoed out the back door with the boys. Ben pulled it closed in quiet, incremental clicks.
The leaves that had already fallen made a soft crunchy noise as they walked past a line of dark garages.
“I hope your uncle doesn’t wake up,” Oliver whispered.
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “He usually sleeps late. I told him I’d wake him when we were ready to go to school.”
“He was nice to us,” Oliver said. “I feel kind of bad about lying to him.”
“So do I,” Ben admitted. “But I’ll explain the whole thing to him later.”
“You’re going to be in so much trouble,” Izzy said.
“Hey, you’re in this up to your neck too, Diz,” Ben said.
Izzy knew he was right.
Ben went into the last of four garages and opened the trunk of the car parked inside. “Put your stuff back here.”
“We’re taking a Malibu?” Oliver was impressed.
“This is the car Uncle Steve’s been teaching me to drive. It’s in good shape. Plus”—Ben reached down and scooped something off the floor in front of the driver’s seat—“he always leaves the keys in it.”
Izzy sighed. “Now we’re stealing a car. I hope I look good in an orange jumpsuit.”
“Not stealing,” Ben corrected her. “Borrowing. I left Uncle Steve a note explaining everything—except where we were going.”
“I left a note for Mom too,” Izzy said.
“You did? You didn’t tell me that.” Ben’s forehead wrinkled.
“I didn’t tell her where we were going—only that we were looking for Uncle Hen. I didn’t want her to think we just disappeared overnight.”
Ben nodded. “Maybe that’s good. They’ll be less likely to call the police right away if they aren’t so worried.”
Izzy figured the grown-ups would still be plenty worried, but she didn’t say it out loud. They climbed in, Izzy up front with Ben. He turned the key, and the engine rumbled like thunder in the predawn silence. They all looked toward the house as the car inched out of the garage, but no one came running out.
Izzy grunted as she slipped her shoes off. The blisters on her heels were raw, and they burned even more than they had yesterday.
“I can’t believe you wore shoes you can’t even walk in,” Ben said.
“I can walk,” Izzy said. “Just worry about your driving, Bennie, so I don’t have to walk.”
“Let’s just go!” Oliver demanded from the back seat.
As Ben made the turn, slowly and carefully, onto Route 9, Izzy glanced at him and saw he was hunched over the steering wheel, his hands holding on to the thing with a death grip. Her stomach did a cartwheel. What in the world were they doing? Was there any chance Ben was really going to be able to drive this car all the way across the state of New York?
She turned around to look at Oliver and was dismayed to see that he seemed to have turned to stone. “Are you buckled in?”
He nodded but continued to stare out the side window, his jaw locked in place.
“Good,” Izzy said. “At twenty miles an hour, we ought to be there by the middle of next week.”
Ben didn’t say anything for a minute, but she saw his chin quiver as he tried not to laugh. After a minute or two she thought she felt him relax a little bit. Finally he leaned back in his seat and said, “I’m getting used to it. It’ll be okay. I can do this.”
And it turned out, he could. After half an hour, with the sun rising, he’d settled into the job, and they were driving at a more or less normal speed. It helped that there weren’t many other cars on the road. In the small towns they passed through, rush hour only meant a few more people going to the post office or dropping their kids off at the regional school.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Oliver asked Ben.
“I printed
out maps before we left Coolidge so I wouldn’t have to have my phone on,” Ben said. “I want to stay off the main highways, since I’ve never actually driven on one before.”
“How much driving experience do you really have?” Izzy wanted to know.
“More than you.”
“That’s not comforting,” she said.
“I’ll be fine. We can’t drive as fast on the smaller roads—that’s all.” Ben turned partway around to look at Oliver. “But we’ll get there, Captain—don’t you worry.”
Oliver nodded stiffly, but Izzy was pretty sure he wasn’t going to stop worrying anytime soon.
As they drove past farms and fields, Izzy fidgeted in her seat. “I really need to use the bathroom,” she said.
“I’m looking for a place,” Ben said.
The excitement of sneaking off distracted her a little bit. We’re pretty brave, she thought proudly. Even if Uncle Henderson was perfectly fine out there in his trailer in the woods, Oliver wasn’t fine without him, and that wasn’t fair. The kid already had too many hard things to deal with for a ten-year-old. Izzy was going to make sure there wasn’t one more.
“Look,” Ben said, pointing. “There’s a diner coming up. We can get gas and breakfast and use the bathroom.”
“Finally,” Izzy said. Then something occurred to her. “Do you have any money? Because I have four dollars and Oliver has two.”
“Yeah, I’ve got some,” Ben said. “I…I took money from Uncle Steve’s emergency stash.”
Izzy’s hand flew to her face. “You mean we stole his car and his money?”
“He won’t be mad. It’ll be okay.”
“How much did you take?”
“About seventy-five dollars.” He turned into the diner parking lot.
“Oh my God!”
“Gas costs money, Dizzy. Did you think cars ran on hopes and dreams? Did you want to have a meal now and then?”
Izzy didn’t have an answer for that. Her stomach had been growling since they’d gotten on the road.
Inside the diner, Ben and Oliver got a booth while Izzy hobbled into the bathroom. A teenage girl looked up from washing her hands at a sink, and an explosion of laughter burst out of her. Izzy had to pee so badly that she paid no attention, but afterward, washing her own hands, she looked in the mirror and saw what must have caused the girl’s reaction.
Izzy’s bright yellow hair, which she’d completely forgotten about, was all smashed down on top, and the chopped-off ends stood out at right angles to her face. She looked like Big Bird after he’d stuck his head in a blender. Plus her clothes looked like they’d been slept in, which of course they had. She was a mess.
She splashed water on her hair and tried to make the spikes stand up again, but she hadn’t brought her gel along, and the wet locks fell onto her forehead like pointy yellow teeth. Water dripped down her face and onto her wrinkled T-shirt. Ben would be sure to make fun of her. But there was nothing to do about it, so she readied herself to face him and walked out.
What she hadn’t expected was that the girl she’d seen in the bathroom would have gathered several friends to wait for her exit. The four of them bent over, dissolving in giggles, when they saw Izzy’s wet hair.
“Oh my God, you made it worse!” the original girl said. “I didn’t think that was possible!”
The girls laughed so hard, they held on to each other as they stumbled out the diner door. All the other customers, including Ben and Oliver, turned to see what was so funny. Izzy was so funny.
She felt like running out of the diner and getting back in the car, but she wasn’t about to let Ben see how humiliated she was. As she walked to the table, people whispered and chuckled, though not quite as rudely as the four girls. She slid into the booth, willing her chin to stop quivering, and looked down at the gigantic plastic menu so she wouldn’t have to see the smirk she knew would be on Ben’s face.
For a long moment they sat in silence, until Ben said, “Oliver wants pancakes. How about you?”
Had he not seen what happened? That would be a miracle. Izzy cleared her throat, hoping her voice wouldn’t come out sounding choked. “Can we afford pancakes?”
“Sure,” Ben said. “We’ll have a good breakfast, then after this we’ll just eat the stuff I brought along.”
Izzy was still afraid to look up at Ben, even though he didn’t seem to be laughing at her.
“Okay, I’ll have pancakes too,” she said.
She felt something tap her hand and dared to glance over at Oliver. He looked very serious as he handed her a small black comb. “Here. I had it in my pocket.”
That even Oliver felt sorry for her was the last straw. Izzy felt her throat close up, but she gritted her teeth and tightened the muscles around her eyes. The tears were there, but she was not going to let them fall. Not in front of Ben.
She blinked to clear her eyes, but that was a mistake. One renegade tear escaped and began a zigzag journey down her cheek. Ben jumped up. “I’ll give ’em our order on my way to the bathroom. Pancakes all around.”
By the time he returned, Izzy had brushed away the tear and combed her wet hair out of her face. She was amazed that Ben had had no comment on her humiliation, but she was careful not to look him in the face, just in case that inspired one.
They ate their pancakes quickly, filled the gas tank, and got back on the road.
It was a chilly morning, and Izzy was glad she’d brought along her sweatshirt. Although she hadn’t particularly noticed the leaves changing in Coolidge, out here in the country, driving past enormous sugar maples and roadside stands of oak and locust, she couldn’t pretend that summer wasn’t over. The trees hadn’t fully turned, of course—it was still early—but whole branches were already red or gold, and some leaves had floated to the ground. The poison ivy that snaked down the gullies toward the creek might fool a city person into taking its pretty scarlet leaves home to press between the pages of a book, but Izzy knew better. Her dad had taught her to recognize the toxic plant from a safe distance.
Autumn, like memories of her father, made Izzy feel sad. Autumn was change you could actually see, which was preferable to the kind that blind-sided you, but still. It meant something was over and done with, whether you were ready for it or not.
Ben had handed Izzy the maps he’d printed out from the computer, but he’d pretty much memorized their route already, so there wasn’t much for her to do. Uncle Steve had left some old CDs in the car, and Izzy played a few of them to fill up the silence, even though she’d never heard of the bands before. Most of them were country and had silly names like Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Around nine o’clock they passed a sign that read, “Welcome to New York, the Empire State.”
“Look, Oliver! We’re in New York already!” Izzy said. But when she turned to look at him, he seemed to be in the same frozen position he’d been in before. “Are you okay?”
“Stop asking me dumb questions!” he yelled, suddenly coming alive.
Whoa, the kid was flipping out.
“I need to stop at this gas station,” Ben said. “I drank too much coffee at the diner.”
“Okay. You should pee too, Oliver,” Izzy said.
“Stop telling me what to do, Izzy! You aren’t my mother!” His eyes bulged out of his head as he glared at her.
She was about to say, “Thank God for that,” but then she saw the shock on Oliver’s face as he realized what had just come out of his mouth, and she remembered that she couldn’t say anything the least bit mean about his mother. Not ever.
Ben pulled the car into the station and turned it off. “Hey, Oliver, man, you don’t have to go to the bathroom, but it’ll do you good to get out of the car and stretch,” he said.
“I don’t want to keep stopping all the time,” Oliver said, though less angrily than before. “I just want to get there as fast as we can.”
Ben got out of the car and opened the back door for Oliver. �
��We’re gonna get there—don’t you worry about it. But I have to take a few breaks now and then. Okay? I’m not used to driving this much.”
Oliver gave a quick nod, then followed Ben and Izzy as they trooped inside to get the keys to the restrooms. His shoulders drooped, but his face stayed hard. Ben stopped at the soda machine before getting back behind the wheel. By the time Izzy got to the car, Oliver was already buckled in again, motionless, eyes focused on the road ahead.
* * *
Around noon, Izzy studied Ben’s maps. It seemed as though they were just south of Oneonta, which was well into New York State. The distance from home made Izzy simultaneously uncomfortable and excited. She kept imagining what her mother must have done when she walked into her bedroom and found that note. Probably the first thing she did was call Dr. Gustino so the two of them could blow a few gaskets together. And what were they doing now? Was Izzy’s disappearance enough of a worry for her mom to call her dad? Was Dr. Gustino on his way home from St. Louis? Had anybody thought to call Uncle Steve? It made Izzy nervous to imagine what must be going on back in Coolidge, or to think about what would happen when the three of them got back.
“What do you think your dad will do?” Izzy asked Ben. “I mean, he gets mad pretty easily, doesn’t he?”
“He does now,” Ben said. “He didn’t used to.”
“When your mom was around, you mean?”
Ben nodded.
“I guess when she left, you both got mad,” Izzy said.
He gave her a quick look with his razor-blade eyes. “We’re not the same. I’m nothing at all like my dad.”
Izzy turned away and mumbled under her breath, “I wouldn’t say that.”
Ben’s voice was icy. “You don’t even know me, so don’t go thinking you’ve got me all figured out.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to figure you out.”
To stop herself from thinking about the consequences of their getaway, Izzy tried to concentrate on other things. Maybe she could come up with something funny about driving. What would Jerry say? What’s the deal with teenage drivers? They got the music on their phone, they’re texting somebody—there’s a movie up on a screen in the ceiling, and they’re eating pizza and breaking up with their girlfriend at the same time. Multitasking. They do everything simultaneously so when they get home, they can take a nap. I think you should be about forty-five before you get the keys to a car. And preferably married. With an extremely boring life.
Someone Else's Shoes Page 12
