Fabulous Five 008 - The Runaway Crisis

by Betsy Haynes

  She had never paid much attention to Shawnie's other friends before, but now that she thought about it, she couldn't remember ever seeing Shawnie with anyone else. Didn't the other girls from Copper Beach like her? Were they jealous of her beautiful clothes? Or did it have something to do with the reason Tony didn't like her?

  Katie jumped, startled by a sound she couldn't identify. She glanced toward the living room where Willie sat on the sofa watching television. Her mother couldn't have made the noise. And besides, Katie thought, it sounded as if it came from the basement.

  Maybe it was Libber, she thought, looking around for the yellow cat. I haven't seen her all day. Maybe she went downstairs with Mom sometime and got stuck down there when the door closed.

  Katie opened the door to the basement and flipped on the light switch. "Libber?" she called softly as she crept down the stairs. The basement was dark and musty, and she hated going down there after dark. It made her shiver, reminding her of the spooky stories The Fabulous Five used to tell at slumber parties when they were younger.

  "Here, kitty, kitty," she called. "Come on, Libber. I'll take you back upstairs."

  That's funny, she thought when Libber did not appear. Where is that cat?

  She was growing accustomed to the dimness and she scanned the dark shapes of storage boxes sitting around the room for a pair of golden eyes and a long, flicking tail.

  Suddenly one of the shapes moved. Katie felt a scream gathering in her throat, but before she could utter a sound, she heard someone call her name, and Shawnie stepped out of the shadows.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rushing forward, Shawnie whispered, "Shhh! Don't make any noise. Please!"

  "How did you get in here?" Katie whispered back over the pounding of her heart. "You scared me to death. And what are you doing here, anyway? You promised you'd go home."

  "I know I did," said Shawnie. Her eyes were big and pleading. "And I was going, too. But when I got around the corner, I knew I couldn't. I thought about coming back here and talking to your mom, but I knew she'd just send me home again and that this time she would see to it that I got there. I was sitting in the grass behind your house trying to decide where to go when I heard your car pull out of the driveway. I peeked around a bush and saw that you were both in it, so I tried the door on the side of the garage, and it was open. You can figure out the rest."

  "You mean you've been here all day?" asked Katie.

  Shawnie nodded.

  "And I'll bet you haven't eaten anything either. You must be starved."

  Shawnie nodded again. "I almost died when I smelled pizza a little while ago. But don't worry about me. I'll be okay. The main thing is not to let your mother know I'm down here."

  Katie's mind was racing. How could she not tell Willie that Shawnie was hiding in their basement? But Shawnie was right about one thing. If Willie knew, she would take Shawnie straight home to her parents. I have to stall while I figure out how to handle this, she thought.

  "There are a couple of slices of pizza left," she said. "I'll sneak up and get them out of the fridge." Seeing panic in Shawnie's eyes, she added, "Mom will just think I ate them."

  Katie managed to get the pizza slices and a can of soda out of the refrigerator without attracting Willie's attention and slipped back down to the basement. She watched Shawnie gulp down the food and thought about her predicament. Most of all she wanted to be fair. Fair to Shawnie. Fair to her mother. Even fair to Shawnie's parents since she knew they were genuinely worried. But how could she be fair to everyone? She was caught in the middle.

  "Did you know that your parents are offering a one-thousand-dollar reward for information on where you are?" she asked.

  Shawnie's face lit up. "They are? Cool! Maybe you can call them when I'm ready to go home, and they'll give it to you."

  "Moms already called them and told them that you were here last night," said Katie, regretting it the instant the words were out. Now Shawnie would never trust Willie again. That only made her own predicament worse.

  Shawnie must have sensed Katie's helpless feeling because she moved closer and said, "I know you're trying to do the right thing. That's the kind of person you are. You're fair and you always try to help people when they need it. That's why you've got to promise that you won't give me away. I can't go home. All I can tell you is that I'll be in terrible danger if I do. You're the only one I could turn to who would listen or care."

  Katie didn't know what to say. How could she possibly not do what Shawnie was asking when she needed help so badly? At least her parents knew she hadn't been kidnapped or anything like that. But still . . .

  "Katie? Where are you, sweetheart? You have a phone call."

  Katie shot to attention at the sound of Willie's voice. "I'm in the basement . . . looking for Libber," she shouted. "I'll be up in a minute."

  Turning to Shawnie, she whispered, "I have to go now. I'll try to get back down later and bring you some blankets and stuff. We'll figure out what to do in the morning."

  Racing up the stairs, she shut the basement door behind her and grabbed the phone.

  "Hi. It's me again," said Jana. "I was just wondering if you found out anything about Shawnie from Dekeisha."

  "Not yet," said Katie. "I called twice, but her line was busy both times." She briefly considered confiding in Jana that Shawnie was in her basement but decided against it. Willie might overhear, and Katie wasn't prepared for that. "I'll try again now," she added, "and I'll let you know if I find out anything."

  Katie hung up the phone a moment later and started to turn away when she changed her mind. Maybe she ought to call Dekeisha after all. It wouldn't hurt to check out a few things about Shawnie while she had the chance. This time the phone rang, and Dekeisha answered.

  "Hey, I saw you at the movie with Tony Calcaterra last night," said Dekeisha after the two girls had exchanged hellos. "I thought you two would start dating sooner or later."

  "Right," said Katie. "Tony and I did go out last night, but it's Shawnie Pendergast that I'm calling about."

  "Oh, so you finally found out about that, huh?"

  Katie frowned at the receiver. "What are you talking about? What did I finally find out about?"

  "That Tony used to be Shawnie's boyfriend in Copper Beach, but she dumped him. Hey, wait a minute. Did I spill something?"

  Katie was flabbergasted. "Oh, no. I knew all about that," she lied. "I've got to go now. My mom's calling. Bye."

  She felt like a zombie as she headed for her room. Tony had been the boyfriend Shawnie had mentioned the day she went to Bumpers with The Fabulous Five, and she had dumped him. So that was it. No wonder Tony didn't like her anymore, and it was also no wonder that he always put her down. He was still mad, and he was trying to turn everyone against her.

  "And I almost believed him," Katie whispered under her breath. "I almost let him convince me that I couldn't trust Shawnie when he was the one with the problem."

  Katie gathered up the blankets and the pillow that Shawnie had used the night before and put them in the chair beside her bedroom door. She would wait until her mother went to bed, and then she would take them down to the basement for Shawnie to use tonight and any other night she needed them. She would take some food down, too, and a flashlight and maybe her portable radio if Shawnie would promise to keep the volume turned down low.

  Poor Shawnie, she thought. Everyone is against her. I really am the only one she has to turn to. No matter what, I won't let her down.

  CHAPTER 17

  The next day, Sunday, was one of the most frantic days of Katie's entire life. Whenever Willie's back was turned, she raced to the basement loaded down with whatever supplies she could find to make Shawnie more comfortable. She took down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, a package of Oreo cookies, and once she spotted the picnic cooler stored on a shelf at the back of the basement, she sneaked down trays of ice. Then, when the ice was in the cooler, she hauled soda and a half carton of chocolate chip i
ce cream from the kitchen.

  Shawnie had been busy, too. She had rearranged the storage boxes in one corner of the basement into the shape of a small room, using a low box as a table beside her bedding. On the table were the flashlight and radio. She had even set up two folding lawn chairs that had been stored in the basement for the winter.

  "When you were younger, did you ever read the books about The Borrowers?" she asked Katie as the two sat in the lawn chairs pulling apart cookies and licking the frosting from the middle after Willie had gone out to an afternoon bridge game.

  "Do you mean those tiny little people who lived in some regular-size people's house and borrowed things to furnish their own teeny tiny rooms?"

  Shawnie nodded and laughed. "That's exactly how I feel, like one of The Borrowers. The only difference is that I'm regular size, too."

  Katie tried to laugh with her, but she couldn't. "Are you okay down here?" she asked. "I mean, it can't be very comfortable."

  "It's just perfect. You know, there are lots of ways to be comfortable, and this is definitely more comfortable than being at home."

  As Katie's sympathy for Shawnie grew, so did her admiration, and she was determined to make life in the basement as painless as she possibly could. While Willie was gone, she let Shawnie come upstairs to take a shower and wash her hair. Shawnie read the comics and the front-page story about her disappearance in the Sunday paper and was playing with Libber in the middle of the living room floor when Katie heard her mother's car pull into the driveway.

  "You'd better get downstairs," she cautioned Shawnie. "Mom's back."

  Shawnie scurried down the stairs, and Katie made a quick check to be sure everything was back to normal in the house before her mother came in. She wasn't able to go down to the basement again before bedtime, and she lay awake for a long time wondering if Shawnie was really as comfortable down there as she had said.

  She wasn't able to see Shawnie before she left for school the next morning either, and although Shawnie had been on her mind constantly all weekend, she was amazed at how many students were talking about her on the school ground.

  Alexis Duvall and Lisa Snow were the first to stop her. "Katie, did you hear about Shawnie Pendergast?" asked Alexis. "She ran away from home. Isn't that awful?"

  Katie nodded and kept on walking toward The Fabulous Five, who stood by the fence. She had wanted to mention to Alexis that maybe staying home would have been even worse for Shawnie than running away, but she hadn't. It wouldn't do any good. Nobody else really cared about Shawnie but her.

  "Did you ever talk to Dekeisha?" asked Jana as soon as Katie reached the group of friends.

  "Not really," said Katie. She didn't want to mention her conversation with Dekeisha about Tony.

  "What was that all about?" asked Melanie. "Does Dekeisha know where Shawnie is?"

  "No," said Jana. "At least we don't think so. Katie was going to ask her about Shawnie's friends from Copper Beach. Neither of us can remember ever seeing her going around with anyone."

  "Gee, me either," said Beth. "Whenever I noticed her, she was by herself until she got to be friends with Katie."

  "That doesn't mean she doesn't have friends," snapped Katie.

  "But if we knew who they were, we might know where she is," insisted Jana. "Especially since she went to Katie first."

  Christie, Melanie, and Beth all looked at Katie in surprise, so she told them about Shawnie's hiding in her room on Friday night and then promising to go home Saturday morning. As badly as she wanted to ask her best friends' help, she knew she had to keep it a secret where Shawnie was hiding now.

  "Maybe Mandy McDermott would know," said Christie. "She's in my social studies class and she went to Copper Beach. I'll ask her."

  When Katie went to her locker just before the bell, Tony was waiting for her. Even with all the excitement over Shawnie, he had been in her mind. At first she had simply been angry at him for deceiving her about Shawnie and making her think that there was something wrong with her new friend. But now she felt terribly sad because she had liked him so much and had been so convinced that he was special. Well, he isn't, she told herself firmly. He's nothing but a macho show-off.

  "Good morning, Your Honor," Tony said sarcastically.

  "Morning," she muttered.

  "Don't forget that march for hunger is this Saturday and that we still have a lot of work to do on it," he went on. "We need to have sign-up sheets in the cafeteria again, and a few posters around town wouldn't hurt either."

  The sarcasm was gone from his voice, but so was the twinkle that usually showed in his eyes when he talked to her. It was obvious to Katie that he was as upset with her as she was with him.

  "Okay," she said tersely. "I'll see you at lunch." Jerking open her locker, she got out her books, slammed it shut, and left him standing there.

  She had taken only a few steps down the hall when she stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. Tony was still standing beside her locker solemnly watching her walk away. She bit her lower lip and tried to decide what to do. A small worry was beginning to burrow into her mind the way Libber sometimes burrowed into her lap. Libber would poke and nudge until she fit the contours perfectly, and then she would settle down, taking complete possession of Katie's lap so that she was almost impossible to dislodge. Katie knew she would have trouble dislodging this troublesome thought, too, unless she faced it head-on. After all, she reasoned, there was a strong possibility that she was the one being unfair this time. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Even if it was true that Shawnie had dumped Tony back in Copper Beach Elementary, that didn't automatically mean that it was all his fault.

  She turned around slowly, meaning to return to her locker and to Tony, but she had waited too long. He was gone.

  The morning did not get better. Christie stopped her in the hall way while classes were passing between first and second period.

  "I talked to Mandy," said Christie, "and you won't believe what she said."

  "What?" asked Katie.

  "She said that Shawnie doesn't have many friends at all. She said it was because Shawnie is a spoiled brat and she uses people to get what she wants."

  Anger flashed in Katie's brain. "What did Shawnie ever do to Mandy?" she snapped. Then, seeing that her outburst had caused students to stop in the hall and stare at her, she thanked Christie and went on to her class. Still, she couldn't help wondering why everybody was picking on Shawnie.

  At lunchtime Katie shared the sign-up table in the cafeteria with Tony. She wanted so badly to talk to him, to ask him what had really happened between him and Shawnie, but she didn't know how. He practically ignored her, busily shuffling the sign-up sheets whenever she looked at him.

  I don't care, she told herself stubbornly. I don't want to talk to a macho, show-off jerk anyway.

  The instant that thought had formed in her mind, she knew it wasn't true. He was macho, and he did like to show off. But he wasn't a jerk. She was the jerk for hanging up on him. She couldn't blame him for being angry. Over and over she practiced mentally what to say to him, but every time she thought she had the speech just right, more students came up to sign the lists. Finally lunch period was over, and Tony left the cafeteria without a word.

  Katie avoided Bumpers after school and went straight home. Willie was hard at work at her computer, so after a fast hello to her mother, Katie slipped downstairs to check on Shawnie.

  "Hi," Shawnie said brightly. "Did I miss anything major at school today?"

  "No," Katie assured her. "Just the same old stuff."

  "I got lucky," Shawnie bragged. "I heard your mom make a phone call to set up an interview and then go out, so I got to go upstairs and watch soap operas for almost two hours."

  "That's good," Katie said halfheartedly. She knew that she should be glad that Shawnie hadn't been stuck in the dark basement all day without even a bathroom, but she felt depressed instead. Shawnie seemed incredibly happy, living in a dark basement and laughing ov
er each report of her parents' misery. Nothing else was going right for Katie, either, and as badly as she hated to admit it even to herself, it was all because of Shawnie. No matter how hard she tried not to doubt Shawnie's word, things were beginning to stack up against her. Who really was telling the truth, anyway? Shawnie? Or Tony and Mandy and even Mr. and Mrs. Pendergast?

  "I stopped by the Burger Barn and got you a hamburger and fries," said Katie after a while, pulling the bag of food out of her backpack. "I'll try to come back down before I go to bed, but I can't promise."

  "Sure," said Shawnie. "I understand."

  Katie dreaded hearing the evening news broadcast. She even considered asking her mother if they could skip watching it just this once. Still, she couldn't help wondering if the Pendergasts would be on again tonight. Surely they would be since Shawnie still hadn't gone home. She frowned, thinking about how unfair it was to Shawnie's parents not to know that she was okay.

  When Marge Whitworth's grim face appeared on the screen a little while later, Katie knew her prediction had been right.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, the parents of missing thirteen-year-old Shawnie Pendergast are here with me again to appeal once more to their missing daughter to come home."

  Katie squirmed in her chair as the now-familiar pair came into focus.

  "Shawnie," Mr. Pendergast began, "if you can hear my voice, please believe me when I say that your mother and I continue to worry about your safety. Further, we have decided to permit you to join the march for hunger this Saturday instead of keeping the other plans we had made, and we will donate the one-thousand-dollar reward money to the march if you will only come home."

  "The march?" Katie whispered to herself. It was too incredible to be true. Had Shawnie really run away from home just because her parents had made other plans and wouldn't let her join the march for hunger? She had to find out right now. She jumped up from the kitchen table, and raced for the basement door.

  CHAPTER 18

  "Shawnie!" Katie shouted, throwing open the basement door and flipping on the light. She heard her mother gasp behind her, but she didn't care. "Shawnie, where are you? I have to talk to you."