Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  When I’m with him.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t think so”

  I make a note to myself that it probably would be a good idea to look up more about the clinical definition of antisocial personality.

  Just in case.

  He tells me everything he knows—and it’s a lot. Apparently there is a law enforcement manhunt across Washington for me and Mom. I know the news cycle will change when Monique Delmont gets the package, but not the hunt for me. That will continue. He tells me that Gemma is going to be on national TV to talk about our friendship and has been buzzing about it at school for two days.

  “Not Caradee?” I ask.

  “No. Only Gemma. She supposedly was your BFF”

  I don’t mind and I say so.“Good for her. She always wanted to be on TV”

  The sun is up now and we get out and walk along the river’s edge. The gravel crunches under my feet and it reminds me of the quarry, but I don’t bring it up. I’ve told him everything, but in broad brushstrokes. The phrase “gory details” comes to mind and I fully understand the meaning of it. I spare him most of the gory details.

  His hand brushes mine as we sit on a bench and I die just a little inside.

  He talks about his mother’s death, his father’s big insurance payoff and how his father’s assistant from work moved in a few months after. Her name is Carmen and when he says it, he always hyphenates it with the word Bitch.

  “I can’t stand Carmen-Bitch,” he says, a theme to which I’m familiar. “She’s moved all my mom’s stuff to the garage and, get this, told me that the reason she did it was because it was too painful for Dad. Like I don’t matter and like he cared about Mom”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I could probably do something about it, but not now.

  He looks into my eyes.

  “The world is an ugly place,” he says. “You make it better”

  If it were any other guy, I’d want to slap him for such a cheap line. But I know that there is such goodness inside Caleb Hunter that he truly means it.

  “We belong together,” he says, Taylor Swifting me, but I don’t care.

  I feel it too.

  Since it seems as though he’s never going to do it, I lean in and find Caleb’s lips with my own. I’m Sweet Sixteen. I’m alive. And for the first time, I know what it feels like to choose a path of your own. The kiss is soft, sweet. It’s watermelon in the summer. It’s a field-picked strawberry in May. I want more, but I pull away. Now. There. This isn’t the time or place.

  I know for sure what has always been there from the first moment that we met.

  Caleb and I do belong together.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Cash: None.

  Food: Whatever we need.

  Shelter: VW bug (which I now call Daisy).

  Weapons: None.

  Plan: Vengeance.

  AFTER THE KISS, CALEB LISTENS to my plan and I drift off to sleep as we drive east on Interstate 90 over the Cascades toward Spokane. We stop in Ellensburg and Caleb withdraws $400 from his father’s bank account, the maximum allowed by his bank’s ATM per day. He’s a smart boy, but I could teach him a few things.

  My first lesson will be at the Idaho Department of Motor Vehicles in Post Falls, Idaho. When we arrive at the DMV office there I ask him to pull into the back of the nondescript building where I get out of the car.

  I walk toward the dumpster like I’m about to greet an old friend. In a way, I am. Mom and I survived one particularly lean spring on food we liberated from a dumpster. She would hoist me to the edge and I’d drop in like I was a paratrooper behind enemy lines.

  Despite the grossness sometimes found there, I kind of loved doing it. It was a treasure hunt of necessity.

  “We have money,” Caleb calls out after me. “We don’t need to do any dumpster diving”

  “For what I need, we do,” I say while he looks on, embarrassed that anyone will see me as I lift the lid of the big green receptacle and climb inside.

  It takes me only a few moments to find what I need.

  I emerge with a handful of driver’s licenses. All had been rejected because the driver in question didn’t like his or her photo. When I return to the car, I fan them out like a Las Vegas card dealer.

  Caleb can hardly believe his eyes.

  Yes, I have a lot to teach him.

  “I’ll use this one,” I say, looking at a young woman with her eyes semi closed.

  “You don’t look anything like her,” he says.

  I close my eyes partially and hunch my shoulders a little.

  “How’s this?” I ask.

  He laughs. We both do. The release feels good. Not as good as the kiss. But like a breeze, some of what I’d been holding inside passes through me. Gone.

  Caleb looks at the license and makes a face. “Am I supposed to call you, what? Juanita now? Is that how this works?.

  “No.” I shake my head. “But that’s a good question. I’ll get back to you on that”

  I sort through the rejects quickly. While most of the licenses belong to women who loathed their photos, there are a couple of men and teen boy rejects that might work, even thoug.

  they aren’t nearly as handsome as Caleb Hunter.

  But then, in my eyes, no one is.

  “Take these,” I say. “They’ll come in handy someday”

  He drives the car around the building and parks next to the spot where a trio of teens are waiting to take their exams. One is a girl. She’s a redhead with pale white skin and freckles that remind me of Hayden’s shoulders when he’s been out in the sun. She looks nervous and I want to tell her that driving is not so hard. I’ve never had a real lesson and I do all right. I can’t parallel park, I bet, but who really needs to ever do that in Idaho.

  “Watch and learn,” I say as he turns off the ignition.

  Caleb follows me into the DMV. There is a line of people with bored-to-tears expressions all over their faces but I stomp my way to the front the second a patron steps away from the counter. I have two choices just then—a female or a male agent. Mom taught me to always go with the man if crying is a necessity.

  This guy is in his forties, with gray-at-the-temple hair and wire-framed glasses that suggest neither hipster nor loser. He had a crisp blue shirt and is as neat as can be. The woman is wearing a sweatshirt with a horse on it.

  He’s a good choice, I think.

  “I’m going to be in so much trouble,” I say, tears already in place by the time I make it to his station.

  He thinks I’m number 321, the color flashing on the screen for the next available DMV agent. Some big guy with a beard is, but seeing my tears, he backs off.

  “How can I help you?” the DMV agent asks.

  “I was in here earlier and some jerk put a big dent in my mom’s car. Her brand new Nissan Juke! I’m going to get blamed for it. I tried to get his insurance information, but he wouldn’t stop”

  “I’m sorry about that, miss,” he says.

  I wrap my arms around myself like I’m trying to contain my concern when, in fact, I’m just warming up.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I ask, managing a terrified look in my teary eyes. At least, that’s what I’m going for. Terrified sometimes looks crazy. I dial it down a little. “My mom’s got a mega temper.” I let the tears flow down and a woman in a leopard top and black jeans approaches.

  “Help her,” she insists, taking off her sunglasses to ensure that her look is a searing one. “Can’t you do something?.

  “Please sit down,” the agent tells her, looking at the slip of paper in the lady’s hand. “342 won’t be called for awhile”

  “Government employee,” she sneers. “Don’t give a crap about the people”

  “Hell yeah,” says the big bearded guy, with lug-bolt-onsidewalk voice.

  The woman turns to me and pats me gently on my shoulder. “I am a witness. I saw what he did. We should call the news”

  I wouldn’t have picked that
leopard top if my life depended on it, but I like her. A lot.

  After consoling me and making the DMV agent feel about two inches tall, she takes her seat along with the others, now all riveted by what’s going on at the counter.

  He looks at me, then the crowd. He’s befuddled.

  “What can I do about it?” he finally asks.

  I don’t wipe my tears. The more evidence of my distress, the better.

  “I have his license number,” I say. “Maybe that’ll help?.

  He shakes his head. “I can’t look it up. That’s against policy”

  I cry some more, this time a whole lot louder.

  “My mom’s going to kill me. It’s not my fault”

  The woman is back, and with her, the bearded guy. They are now a team. That’s nice.

  “Help her,” she says with a glare of disdain in her eyes, aimed like a rifle at the clerk. “Do something right for a change. Just because you hate your job doesn’t mean you have to hate the world”

  “What this lady here just said,” the bearded guy snaps.

  The DMV man looks around. I see sweat blooming from under his arms. As disgusting as that is, it looks like a pretty good sign to me. Plus the fact that I’m pretty sure the beard guy drives a Harley.

  “Let me see your ID?” he asks, as though he needs to follow some rule when breaking another one.

  I slide the license from the dumpster over to him.

  He looks at it, then at me. My heart beats a little faster. There’s always a slight risk in this part but I know that he won’t help me if he thinks I’m from out of state—and if that’s the case, why am I at the DMV in the first place? I’m there, of course, because it isn’t the police station, and outside of that, I figure only the DMV would have access to the confidential information that I need.

  “Juanita,” he finally says, “you can’t say you got this information from me. I could lose my job”

  I sniff a little, but not too much.

  “I won’t, sir,” I say. I give him the license number of the van from the truck stop. He provides a name and an address in St. Maries, Idaho. He hands me a pen and some paper to write it down, but I don’t need to. I’ll remember it just fine.

  I turn around and the crowd is with me.

  “Thank you,” I say loud enough for everyone to hear. “Our government really does care about us”

  It was a lie, but the guy in the sweaty blue shirt deserves some kind of praise.

  I play that address over in my head.

  I know the little girl is not named Selma, but in my mind I still call her that. From the business center at the Best Western, I printed out an article about her from the internet. I know her name is Angie Starr and that she’d last been seen in a park in Missoula, Montana. Her hair is different in the photograph to what it had been through the window of the van that early morning when I saw her draw that sad face, but I know how easy it is to change a girl’s appearance.

  I’ve done it all my life.

  Caleb, who is nearly speechless by my performance, and I walk out into the bright light of the parking lot with a new sense of purpose.

  I know that I will find the girl.

  I will find him.

  Kill him.

  My name is Alexandra. I was named for my biological father, a serial killer who tortured and murdered at least three teenagers and raped my mother sixteen years ago. He’s dead now. I know for a fact that I’m stronger than he ever thought I could be. The people who understand where I come from are the people who matter.

  The ones Caleb and I can help.

  Q&A with Gregg Olsen

  You have written both fiction and non-fiction, including True Crime. When writing RUN, did you feel that the knowledge you have of real-life crime helped or hindered your plotting.

  Definitely helps. Over my years I’ve had the privilege (and I do consider it so) to tell the true stories of people who have survived the unthinkable. That fuels all of my fiction. RUN was no exception. There’s always a nugget of truth in all of my fiction. Early in my career, I wrote about a woman who’d been poisoned and family members were all but certain that her husband – the stepfather to a fifteen-year-old girl – was guilty. Ultimately, he was proven not to be the killer, but as I wrote RUN I thought of that girl and all of the emotions she had that came with thinking that someone close to you was a killer. Of course, RUN is complete fiction, but the heart of any good story is the conflict and emotion that comes with the action. The plotting is organic, just like real life. I let my characters take me where they need to go. Sometimes, I’m not the boss. .

  When writing crime fiction, inevitably you will lose characters you grow attached to. Do you feel an emotional attachment to any of the characters in RUN.

  Yes. Rylee. I love her tortured spirit and her ability to be clever, kind, and yes, ruthless. For the right reasons, I think. As I wrote the book I was rooting for her all the way. She seemed more real to me than any character I’ve ever created. I like her and I want her to find happiness and strength in life in a very real way. I know where she wants to go . . . and I want to help her get there.

  Rylee has to make some tough decisions on her journey to find her mother’s captor, including leaving her brother behind. Will we see more of Hayden in the next book.

  I’m plotting HUNT right now and I will have some Hayden in it. As tough as Rylee is, she’s come to know different kinds of love. She knows that her brother and her connection to him is a mixed blessing for sure. She protects him in real ways, but most importantly in making sure her mother doesn’t tell him the truth.

  Rylee’s discovery of who her real father is fills her with rage, and it is this anger that gives her the courage to track down her mom’s captor. Is there power in rage, or is it purely dangerous.

  That’s a tricky question. Personally, I believe strong emotions, passions, are good if channeled in the right way. Who wants to live his or her life feeling nothing? Isn’t it better to take that emotional energy into something positive.

  If you were going on the run and could only take one thing with you, what would that be.

  A book. Kidding. An untraceable credit card. A sack of money. Actually, if I was on the run I’d take my dog Suri. She’s a mini dachshund – so she’s completely portable. She’s great company. And she is as fierce as they come. I wouldn’t need a knife, a gun, or any kind of weapon. Suri would take on even the most formidable foes. Maybe even a serial killer.

  What inspires you to write.

  My readers do. It’s really that simple. I write to reach people. There can be no other reason.

  Do you have any tips for budding writers.

  My advice is always the same. If you think you are a writer, then you are. To be a good writer you need to practice. When I say practice, I mean EVERY DAY. I tell new writers that whatever project they are working on must be tended to daily. Even if only a few lines. A paragraph. Whatever. Writing can be difficult and almost all writers look for ways to get out of doing the hard work of the job. If you make it a routine, a promise, a commitment, you’ll have something. I promise. I’m not saying it will be easy, but nothing worth doing really is.

  Gregg Olsen

  A NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING author, Gregg has written nine non-fiction books, nine novels, a novella, and contributed a short story to a collection edited by Lee Child. He is one of only a few authors to have appeared on both the fiction and non-fiction New York Times bestseller lists.

  In addition to US and international television and radio appearances, he has been featured in Redbook, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, People, Salon, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times and the New York Post. His young adult novel, ENVY, was the official selection of Washington State for the National Book Festival.

  A Seattle native, Gregg lives in Olalla, Washington with his wife, twin daughters, three chickens, Milo (an obedience school-dropout cocker spaniel) and Suri (a miniature dachshund so spoiled she wears a sweat
er).

  Follow Gregg at:

  www.greggolsen.com

  Twitter: @Gregg_Olsen

  Instagram: greggolsen