I didn’t take everything—just a little from every stash. Not so much that you’d notice. Not more than like 10 percent.
Next, I considered evicting a dog from his carrier, maybe the yappy Chihuahua. Tying him up someplace. Repossessing his little home away from home.
Harsh.
And it wouldn’t make sense, not really. First of all, the noise. Plus, the dog’s owner would make a stink. Might demand a search.
I sighed, thinking of all the useful things inside my duffel. Wishing I’d gone back for it when I’d had a chance. But we were stuck down here now. Locked in until the next pet call. And I couldn’t show my face even then. How would I explain that my pet’s carrier had disappeared?
No, the duffel was history. I’d never see it again.
The red-and-black slide-in camper was crammed with equipment and smelled like fish, but it was the best place, by far, to hide. In a car or a van, you’d be right in there with everybody else. You couldn’t even sneeze, much less, say, snort out the occasional puff of smoke. The camper, though, was a separate thing—a cozy little nest on the back of a pickup. It had two windows, which were tinted. You’d have to open the door to see us.
I cleared out a space inside the camper, then crawled inside with the critter and moved more stuff around. Fishing gear: some poles, some nets, a couple of coolers. Two pairs of neoprene overalls connected to rubber boots. Camping gear: two sleeping bags, a propane stove, and two duffels full of guy clothes. When I was done, I had enough room to lie down, knees drawn in, with the critter snuggled beside me. I could even sit up if I wanted to.
We settled in for an early breakfast. The critter snarfed the cheese, the PB and J, and the jerky, but the Peanut Blast stuck in his teeth. He shook his head, snorted out smoke, and basically looked annoyed. It kept him busy, though, licking and smacking his mouth.
I rooted around in one of my many excellent zippered pockets for the half tab of Tylenol I’d put there earlier. Found it. Good. I’d left the rest of the Tylenol in the duffel. But I hated to drug him again. It couldn’t be healthy. Plus, I felt less lonely when he was awake. I checked my watch. Morning pet call in two hours. I waited as long as I could, then bit the half tab in half, carefully pocketing one piece, and shoved the other deep into the squishy middle of a MoonPie. I held it out to the critter; one gulp, and it was gone. “Sweet dreams,” I said.
By morning pet call, he was out cold. I could hear the pet people talking, kind of muffled from in here. I could hear the dogs barking and yipping and whining. I watched the critter, snuggled up against my belly. His jacket didn’t look so spiffy anymore. It was grimy and had those plastic drips. The Velcro seemed to be holding, but the whole deal had gotten wollyjobbered. The harness looked a little tight, and his wings bulged between the straps. Maybe they were growing. It hit me again:
A dragon.
Really? Are you kidding me?
An actual dragon.
Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising, given everything else that’s out there. Platypuses and vampire bats. Armadillos and octopi. Bioluminescent plankton and hydrothermal vent worms. You couldn’t make that stuff up. Plus the outer-space phenoms—the red dwarfs, the black holes, the quasars. Dragons weren’t really all that extreme, considering.
But still.
A dragon.
I sighed, then shifted around, tried to find a comfortable position. We’d hit Haines around two p.m., and Skagway an hour later. If we made it to Skagway. This truck might get off in Haines.
Then what?
I’d just have to think of something.
Some stuff you have no control over. None. It’s almost a relief, actually. There’s not a thing you can do.
After a while, the fish smell got seriously rank. I doubted there were actual fish in here. Just probably things that had touched fish.
I wished I could pop a window, but I didn’t want to risk it. Also, I was beginning to cramp up. Pins and needles prickled in my thighs and butt, and my right shoulder full-out hurt.
I’d slipped out to pee after pet call. But the pressure was building again.
Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, I heard voices. I looked at my watch. One forty. The Haines people would be coming to their cars. I pulled the guy clothes out of one of the duffels—the one with the camo pattern—and eased the sleeping critter inside. I packed in a few wadded-up T-shirts to disguise his shape. I squashed myself down, trying to keep every part of me as flat to the camper shell floor as possible.
The pickup rocked and squeaked as someone got in. Maybe two people. The engine rumbled to life.
So. Haines it was.
I could feel that friend of Sasha’s drifting away from me, drifting north and east, shrinking into the cold distance. That Bruce guy. I hadn’t realized how much I’d believed in him. Counted on him.
Haines.
We were going to Haines.
I kenned the critter, halfway hoping to feel a friendly thrum.
But no. Still sleeping.
For the first time, I felt totally alone.
30
COCKATIEL GIRL
HAINES, ALASKA
Josh pushed open the grocery door and headed for his pickup, squinting out beyond the rooftops of Main Street. Gray clouds boiled up from the horizon in the west. But it didn’t look like they were going to get here for a while, and they might not have much water in them anyway. If he hurried home, he could probably get in a ride. He’d been tinkering with the mountain bike all winter, and now it was finally ready.
He beeped open his truck door and had just settled the groceries on the passenger seat when he heard some kind of ruckus up ahead.
What was that about?
He shut the door. Looked around.
There. Half a block up, across the street, a girl was jumping out the back door of a pickup with a red-and-black slide-in camper. A big man towered over her, yelling. She started to run away, but the man grabbed for her, caught her by the arm.
She struggled to escape, looked wildly around.
Hey. Not cool.
Josh didn’t know either of them. And he knew everyone in Haines. Must be tourists.
Wait a minute. Josh looked hard at the girl’s face. Maybe he did know her. Well, not exactly know, but he might have seen her before. Her picture, to be exact. With a cockatiel on her shoulder.
No. Couldn’t be.
The man was reaching for a duffel that the girl held clasped to her body. He was still yelling. Josh heard the word “thief.” The girl made a quick twisting, ducking movement; the man swore, let go of her, started shaking one of his hands. “Ow!” he yelled. “She bit me!”
The girl took off across the street, straight into traffic. Brakes squealed. Horns honked. She kept on, running in Josh’s direction.
A second guy joined the yelling man; they lit out after her. More careful about the traffic, but still. Unless she had somewhere to hide, the kid was toast.
“Hey!” Josh called to her. He opened the truck door. “Get in!”
She slowed, looked at him, wide-eyed and scared. She glanced behind her—the men were closing in—and seemed to make a decision. She lunged for the truck, pushed the grocery bags to the floor and scooted into the passenger seat. Josh jumped in, started the engine, gunned it into the street. More horns and squealing brakes. Yelling Man caught up to the pickup, banged his fist on it, yelled some more.
Josh turned onto 5th, then glanced over at the girl. She was staring straight ahead, clutching the duffel on her lap.
Same girl. Wasn’t she? Definitely a lot dirtier than in the picture. But this was the cockatiel girl … or her identical twin.
What were the chances of that?
On the other hand, Haines was a really small town. If you had to come here, you were going to wind up on Main Street at some point. And Josh came through here almost every day.
“Where to?” he asked.
The girl shrugged, not looking at him.
Her hands were shaking, Josh saw. Really scared. Scared of those guys. Maybe scared of him, too.
He turned onto Union. Checked the rearview mirror, hoping that Yelling Man and his friend weren’t following.
They weren’t.
“Look,” Josh said. “I don’t know what happened back there, and I don’t care. Unless those were bad guys, guys who were trying to hurt you, in which case I can take you to the police station—”
“No!” she said.
Well, at least she could talk.
“Okay. So then, where do you want to go? I can drop you off somewhere or … whatever. Just say the word.”
Shrugged again.
That was helpful.
If he headed toward home, or anywhere outside of town, she might think he was a rapist or something. Trying to get her off somewhere alone. He might get bit.
Josh was beginning to wish he’d minded his own business. What had he gotten himself into?
He couldn’t just drive up and down the streets in the main part of town all day. Plus, it was starting to smell in here. Something rotten. Like old fish.
He turned south on Front, checking the rearview mirror. No Yelling Man. No red-and-black camper. He looked at the girl again. Long, dark hair. Ugly orange coat. A little bump at the bridge of her nose that somehow managed to look cute. Maybe thirteen years old, fourteen max.
Could she really be the daughter of the woman whose phone he’d found? The woman who had disappeared?
What was she doing in Haines?
“I need to find a bathroom,” the girl said. “I have to pee.” Still looking straight ahead.
“Uh, okay,” Josh said.
“But first I have to go to a drugstore. And then get something to eat and drink.”
Josh would have gone for the bathroom first, but that was just him.
“I can pay,” she said, turning to look at him for the first time. “I can pay you for gas, too.”
She had nice eyes. Like in those pictures: very, very green. They seemed sad, though. Sad and scared.
“You don’t have to,” Josh said.
“But I will,” she said. “I’ll pay.”
She said this so fiercely that Josh nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
This was one strange girl, Josh decided. She spent ages in the drugstore—doing what, she didn’t say—while Josh waited in the truck. Hoping Yelling Man and his pal wouldn’t spot him parked right out there on the street. Thinking about maybe leaving her there. But somehow not able to do it.
And then she took a way long time in the sandwich shop, deciding what kind she wanted. Which made Josh more than a little nervous, to be honest. He kept looking out at his truck, half-expecting to see one of Alaska’s finest pulling up behind.
Aiding and abetting. How much time do you get for that?
She took her duffel with her everywhere she went and was extremely picky about bathrooms. Extremely. The one in the drugstore didn’t suit her for reasons she didn’t go into. The one in the sandwich shop was too dark, she said, and small. Gave her the creeps, she said. Didn’t Haines have, like, a highway rest stop, something like that?
Best thing he could think of was Chilkat State Park. Josh headed out Mud Bay Road, explaining what he had in mind. It was a secluded, bumpy road, but she didn’t seem especially worried. Not inclined to bite. In the parking lot, he sat in the pickup. Again. And waited. Basically, forever. It started to rain, lightly at first, and then hard. Those clouds he’d seen—they were full of water, after all. So much for the bike ride.
There’d been a couple of other cars in the lot, but now they cleared out.
He ought to take her back to town, just drop her off. This girl was a major pain. How did she get to be his problem? Let her sucker somebody else into chauffering her around.
Josh sighed. But if she was who he thought she was, she’d lost her mom. And that voice on the phone when he’d called? He was pretty sure it was hers. The saddest voice he’d ever heard.
Dad? Are you there? Dad?
Josh twisted around in the seat, checked out the women’s room door. Still closed. What did girls do in bathrooms, anyway? Besides the obvious. No wonder their lines got so long.
But in this case, he was beginning to get an idea. Because there was something funny about that duffel. Every once in a while, it had moved. Swear to God, it twitched. Once, it out-and-out squirmed.
Each time this happened, the girl had clutched at the bag and developed an interest in the scenery. Pointing out the window. Asking questions. Super-talkative, all of a sudden. What’s that mountain called? Is Skagway over that way? Look, is that a bald eagle? Once, when the duffel twitched, he’d asked about it. She’d started scratching her knee—violently—claiming she’d moved the duffel, claiming she had an itch.
One thing Josh could tell about her, she wasn’t a thief. Or at least, hadn’t been for long. Because only a basically honest person would be such a terrible liar.
31
FULL-OUT SEISMIC NUTCASE
HAINES, ALASKA
I fed the critter, sitting on the toilet seat with my clothes completely on. He lay on my lap, chewing, making happy little grunchy noises.
For a little guy, he could really put it away.
While he was busy, I punched a Tylenol caplet out of its plastic bubble. I bit off about a quarter. I shoved the large piece into one of my many attractive zippered pockets, along with the bubble pack. I opened the hoagie the critter was eating, tore off some of the processed cheese product, wrapped it around the smaller piece of Tylenol, and molded it all into a rubbery little cheesefood ball. I pushed it back inside the sandwich.
Hate to do it, buddy. Have to, though.
He took another bite, chomped down on a good three inches of salami and cheese.
“I’d actually planned on eating some of that sandwich myself,” I told him. Which was why I’d bought a foot-long. But at the rate he was going, there wasn’t going to be anything left for me.
It was quiet in here, and dark. I could hear rain tapping at the roof. That, and the critter’s happy chewing noises. The whole time I’d been here, no one else had come in. Maybe in summer this park would be full of people, but now it was deserted.
Excellent.
That bathroom in the drugstore where I bought the Tylenol—that wouldn’t have been private enough. Not for this. It had been fine for me, but to feed the critter, I’d needed a really private place.
I sighed. I knew I should hurry, maybe wrap up the rest of the sandwich, zip the critter back inside the duffel, get out of here right now. That guy was there in the parking lot, waiting in his truck. Or maybe he was tired of waiting. Maybe he’d gone.
But I couldn’t make myself move. Not yet. I was a mess. Sleep deprived and hungry, with mostly just corn chips and trail mix floating around in my bloodstream. Coming down from a massive adrenaline high.
God, I’d been scared. Shaking. I’d actually been Shaking With Fear. That one big man grabbing me, then two of them chasing me, and then the cute guy with the truck rescuing me, like a fairy-tale prince. But even he was a total stranger. My kindergarten programming kicking in, nearly impossible to override:
Stranger-danger! Run!
And I still wasn’t thinking right, even now. I knew that. I needed to sit here a little while longer.
And think. Try really hard to think.
The critter chomped down again. Nearly got me with those teeth of his. Those razor-sharp baby incisors. “Watch the fingers, fella,” I said.
Could I trust that guy out there? If he was still there. I wouldn’t blame him if he left.
If he’d been going to try something sketchy, he would have done it way before now.
Why was he being so helpful?
True, some people were helpful for no reason. But this guy … I didn’t know anything about him. High school. Tall, with muscles. Long, straight, sandy-colored hair. Probably a junior or a senior. Maybe a football player. An athlete, f
or sure.
In Eugene, a guy who looked like this one would be dating a cheerleader or, alternatively, one of the perkier lacrosse girls. Way out of my league.
If I had a league. Which I didn’t.
I cringed, remembering the first actual sentences I’d said to him: I need to find a bathroom. I have to pee.
Good going, Bryn. That was so way cool.
The critter was looking at me. He cocked his head, sort of questioning. As in, Why aren’t you offering me the rest of my sandwich? He snorted out a puff of smoke. As in, Hurry up! He wasn’t so desperately hungry now. Wasn’t lunging and chomping.
I let him have the last of it.
Back to the important question: Could I trust this guy?
The critter stiffened. He tossed back the sandwich in a single gulp. Then, before I could stop him, he leaped straight out of the duffel and off my lap. He shot under the stall door, scrabbling his sharp little talons on the concrete floor, and disappeared from view.
“Hey!” I said. “Come back here!”
I grabbed the duffel, undid the latch, and took off after him. He was leaning into the restroom door, pushing it, opening it a crack. He wriggled through.
Who knew he could do that?
I found him outside, crouching behind a bush. It was good that he was house-trained, but still …
What was that on the ground beside him? A little mound of yucky something. Not pellets: something that looked like barf.
Had he puked up some of his dinner?
What about the pill?
I glanced at the parking lot. The pickup—still there. But the guy couldn’t have seen the critter; he was screened by a row of bushes.
I gazed out over the bay. Rain dimpled the waters and rattled on the eaves above me. I breathed in the clean smell of it.
I was going to have to trust him. At least, halfway. I was going to have to apologize. I’d behaved badly, like a full-out seismic nutcase. After that, I was going to have to confess about stowing away and stealing the duffel. And then I was going to have to ask him to help me get to Anchorage. Skagway, at least.
Ancient, Strange, and Lovely Page 15
