When Lightning Strikes

by Jenny Carroll

  "Because I'm the only one who knew which bus you'd be coming in on," I said.

  "How'd you know that?"

  I gave him a bored look. He said, in a very sarcastic way, "You dreamed I'd be on the eleven-fifteen from Indianapolis?"

  "Hey. Nobody said my dreams were interesting."

  "Well, so what was all that about back there? You said they were waiting for me. Who's they?"

  "Bunch of undercover cops posted in the bus station, waiting for you. They must have suspected that was how you'd try to get here. By bus, I mean. I had to create a diversion."

  His blue eyes grew wide. "You started that fire?"

  "Yeah." We were almost to the street. I put my arm out and stopped him. "Look, we have to talk. Where can we go around here where we can … you know, blend?"

  "I don't want to talk to you," he said. He sounded like he meant it, too.

  "Yeah, well, you're going to. Somebody has to get you out of this mess."

  "And you think you're going to do it?" he asked with a sneer.

  "Like it or not, Junior," I said, "I'm all you've got."

  That earned me an eye-roll. Well, it was progress, anyway.

  We ended up going where everybody goes when they don't know where else to go.

  That's right: the mall.

  The mall in Paoli, Indiana, is no Mall of America, let me tell you. It was two stories, all right, but there were only about twenty stores, and the food court consisted of a Pizza Hut and an Orange Julius. Still, beggars can't be choosers. And since it was lunchtime, at least we weren't the only kids around. Apparently, the sole place in Paoli where it was possible to get a pitcher and a pie was the Pizza Hut in the mall, so the place was jammed with high school kids, trying to squeeze a meal into the fifty minutes they had before they had to get back to campus.

  I told Sean to try to sit up tall in his seat. I was hoping he could pass, maybe, for a scrawny freshman.

  And that I could pass for a loser who'd date a freshman.

  "Whoa," I said, as I watched him attack his pizza. "Slow down. What, is that the first thing you've eaten all day?"

  "Two days," he said, with his mouth full.

  "What is wrong with you? You didn't think to steal any money from your dad before you took off?"

  He said, chugging down a few swallows of Pepsi, "A credit card."

  "Oh, a credit card. Smart. It's easy to buy stuff at McDonald's with a credit card."

  "I just needed the bus ticket from Chicago," he said defensively.

  "Oh, right." So that was how the cops knew he'd be there. "But no food."

  "I forgot about food," he said. "Besides." He gave me this look. I can't really describe it. I guess it was the kind of look you would call reproachful. "I was too worried about my mom to eat."

  I'll admit it. I fell for it. I got all weepy for him, and kicked myself for like the hundredth time.

  Then I saw the size of the bite he took out of his last piece of pizza.

  "Oh, cut the crap," I said. "I said I was sorry."

  "No, you didn't."

  "I didn't?" I blinked at him. "Okay, well, I'm sorry. That's why I'm here. I want to help you."

  Sean shoved his empty plate at me. "Help me to another pizza," he said. "This time, no vegetables."

  I sat there and watched him down a second individual pizza. I was only having a soda. I can't eat Pizza Hut. Not because it's gross or anything. I'm sure it's very good. Only we've never been allowed to eat pizza from anywhere but our own restaurants. Both my parents treat it like this huge betrayal if you even think about Little Caesar's, or Dominos, or whatever. It was a pie from Mastriani's, or nothing.

  So I was having nothing. It's not easy, having parents in the restaurant business.

  "So," I said, when Sean seemed well enough into the second pie for conversation. "What, exactly, were you planning on doing when you got here?"

  He looked at me darkly. "What do you think?"

  "Busting your mother out of jail? Oh, sure. Good plan."

  His dark look turned into a glower. "You did it," he pointed out, and there was admiration in his voice. Grudging, but there just the same. "With the fire in the bus station. I could do something like that."

  "Oh, yeah. And all the guards would come rushing outside, and leave all the jail cells open, and you could just sneak in and grab your mom and go."

  "Well," he said. "I didn't say I actually had a plan. Yet. But I'll come up with something. I always do."

  "Well," I said. "I think I have one."

  He just looked at me. "One what?"

  "A plan."

  "Aw, Jesus," he said, and reached for his Pepsi.

  "Hey," I said. "Don't swear."

  He looked at me very sarcastically. "You do it."

  "I do not. And, besides, I'm sixteen."

  He rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, that makes you an adult, I guess. Do you even have a driver's license?"

  I fiddled with my straw. He had me there. I had my learner's permit, of course, but I had sort of accidentally flunked my first try at the driving test. It wasn't my fault, of course. Something weird seems to happen when I get behind a wheel. It all goes back to that speed thing. If no one else is on the road, why should you only go thirty-five?

  "Not yet," I said. "But I'm working on it."

  "Jesus." Sean flopped his eighty-pound body against the back of the booth. "Look, you are not exactly trustworthy, you know? You busted me once already, remember?"

  "That was a mistake," I said. "I said I was sorry. I bought you pizza. I told you I have a plan to make things right again. What more do you want?"

  "What more do I want?" Sean leaned forward so that the cheerleaders at the next table wouldn't overhear him. "What I want is for things to go back the way they were before you came along and severely messed them up."

  "Oh, yeah? Well, no offense, Sean, but I don't think things were exactly swell before. I mean, what's going to happen when one of your teachers, or your friends' moms, or your Boy Scout leader, goes to the grocery store and sees your face on the back of a milk carton, huh? Are you and your mom going to pick up and run every time someone recognizes you? Are the two of you going to keep running until you're eighteen? Is that the plan?"

  Sean eyed me angrily from beneath the brim of his baseball cap. "What else are we supposed to do?" he demanded. "You don't know … My dad, he's got friends. That's why the judge ruled the way he did. My dad got his friends to put the squeeze on the guy. He knew exactly what kind of guy my dad is. But he awarded him custody anyway. My mom didn't have a chance. So, yeah, we'll keep running. No one can help us."

  "You're wrong," I said. "I can."

  Sean leaned forward and said, very deliberately, "You … can't … even … drive."

  "I know that. But I can help you. Listen to me. My best friend's dad is a lawyer, a good one. Once, when I was over at their house, I heard him talking about this case where a kid sued to be emancipated—"

  "This," Sean said, shoving his empty plate away, "is bullshit. I don't know why I'm even listening to you."

  "Because I'm all you've got. Now, listen—"

  "No," Sean said, shaking his head. "Don't you get it? I've heard about you."

  I blinked at him. "What are you talking about?"

  "I saw on the news how they've got you up at that place, that military base."

  "Yeah? So?"

  "You're so stupid," Sean said. "You don't know anything. I bet you don't even know why they got you there. Do you?"

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "Sure, I do. They're doing some experiments on me. You know, to figure out how it is I know where people like you are. That's all."

  "That isn't all. They've got you lookin' for people, don't they?"

  I thought about those photos, all those middle-aged men it had seemed so important to the colonel for me to look at.

  "May be …"

  "So, don't you get it? You're not helping anybody. You don't know who those guys were.
Some of those people they want you to find might be on the run for a reason, like me and my mom. Some of them might actually be innocent. And you're servin' 'em up to the cops like big old plates of chocolate-glazed donuts."

  I don't like to hear the police disparaged, especially by someone so young. After all, the police provide a vital service for our society, for little pay and even less glory. I said, my voice sounding lame even to my own ears, "I am sure that if someone is wanted by the U.S. Government, he must be guilty of something. . . ."

  But the truth was, he wasn't saying anything I hadn't already thought of myself. For some reason, he reminded me of my dream. Marco. Polo. Marco. Polo. So many people, so many voices.

  And I couldn't reach a single one of them.

  Sean's face was white beneath his freckles. "What about The Fugitive, huh? He hadn't done anything. It was that one-armed man. For all you know, one of those people they want you to find for them might be just like Harrison Ford in that movie. And you're Tommy Lee Jones." He shook his head disgustedly. "You really are a nark, you know that?"

  Nark? Me? I wanted to wring the little twerp's neck. I was totally regretting having come after him like this.

  Marco.

  "Nark's not even the word for it," he said. "You know what you are? A dolphin."

  I gaped at him. Was he kidding? Dolphins were friendly, intelligent animals. If he was trying to insult me, he'd have to try a little harder.

  "You know what the government used to do?" Sean was on a roll. "They used to train dolphins to swim up to boats and tap them with their noses. Then, when World War I started, they strapped bombs to the dolphins' backs, and made them swim up to enemy boats and touch them with their noses. But this time when they did it, what do you think happened? The bombs went off, and the enemy ships—and the dolphins—were blown to smithereens. Oh, sure, everybody says, 'Think how many people would have been killed by that boat, if it hadn't been blown up. The dolphin gave its life for a worthy cause.' But I bet the dolphin didn't feel that way. The dolphin didn't start the war. The dolphin had nothing to do with it."

  He narrowed his eyes at me. "Do you know what, Jess?" he said. "You're the dolphin now. And it's just a matter of time before they blow you up."

  I narrowed my eyes right back at him, but I had to admit, the story about the dolphins gave me the chills.

  Polo.

  "I'm no dolphin," I said. I was beginning to regret having found Sean Patrick O'Hanahan. And I definitely regretted having bought him two individual pizzas and a large Pepsi.

  Unfortunately, though, the more I thought about it, sitting there in the restaurant, with the Paoli High cheerleaders giggling in the next booth, and the mall Muzac playing softly around us, the more I realized that was exactly what I was … or rather, what I'd almost let myself become. I'll be right back. That's what I'd said in the note I'd left that morning. Had I really meant that? Had I really meant to come back?

  Or had I actually meant hasta la vista, baby, this tuna is dolphin-free?

  Marco.

  "Look," I said to Sean. "We aren't here to discuss my problems. We're here to discuss yours."

  He eyed me. "Fine," he said. "What am I supposed to do?"

  "In the first place," I said, "stop using your dad's credit card. Here." I dug around in my pocket, then pushed what was left of my dad's hundred dollars at him. "Take this. Then we're going to get you into a cab."

  "A cab?"

  "Yeah, a cab. You can't go back to the bus station, and we've got to get you out of Paoli. I want you to go to my school—" I'd reached into my backpack and brought out a pen. I was scrawling the address of Ernest Pyle High School on a Pizza Hut napkin. "Ask for Mr. Goodhart. Tell him I sent you. He'll help you. Tell him he needs to call Ruth's dad, Mr. Abramowitz. Here, I'm writing it down for you. Quit grabbing my hand, I'm writing it down for you."

  But Sean kept on pawing at my hand. I didn't know what the kid wanted. The pen? What did he want the pen for?

  "Cool it, would you?" I said, looking up at him. "I'm writing as fast as I can."

  But then I got a look at his face. He wasn't even looking at me. He was looking just past me, at the door to the restaurant.

  I turned around, just in time to make eye contact with Colonel Jenkins. When he saw me, his big hands balled up into fists, and I was reminded, inexplicably, of Coach Albright.

  And that wasn't all. Marching behind him was a whole pack of meaty-fisted guys in army fatigues and crew cuts, who just happened to be armed.

  Polo.

  "Shit," I said.

  The colonel nodded at me. "There she is," he said.

  Sean may only have been twelve, but he sure wasn't stupid. He whispered, "Run!"

  And even though he was only twelve, that sounded like pretty good advice to me.

  C H A P T E R

  16

  Colonel Jenkins and his men were blocking the doorway, but that was okay. There was a side door that had the word Exit over it. We dove through it, and found ourselves right in front of JCPenney.

  "Wait," I said to Sean as he was preparing to flee. I had had the presence of mind to hang on to the napkin I'd written on. I reached out and grabbed him by his shirt collar, then shoved the napkin in the front pocket of his jeans. He looked a little surprised.

  "Now go," I said, and shoved him.

  We split up. We didn't discuss it or anything. It just happened. Sean took off toward the Photo Hut. I headed for the escalators.

  Back when I'd first started having to defend Douglas at school, and I hadn't known too much about fighting, my dad had taken me aside and given me a few pointers. One of the best pieces of advice he gave me—besides showing me how to hit—was that if I ever found myself in a situation where I was outnumbered, the best thing to do was run. And, specifically, run downhill. Never, my father said, go uphill—or stairs, or whatever—during a chase. Because if you go up, and the people after you block the only way down, you have no way of getting out—except by jumping.

  But I had Sean to think about. Seriously. Thanks to me, there were armed men chasing us, for Christ's sake. I was not going to let them get hold of a little twelve-year-old kid, a kid who'd only gotten involved in this in the first place through my own fault.

  So I knew that I was going to have to let myself get caught in the end … but, in the meantime, I had to make this chase last as long as possible, in order to give Sean a solid chance at escaping. I was going to have to create another diversion. . . .

  And so I headed for those escalators.

  And, by God, they followed me right up them.

  It was still lunchtime so, except for the food court, the mall wasn't that crowded. But what few people there were I managed to weave around pretty good. The soldiers chasing after me weren't quite so nimble: I heard people screaming as they tried to get out of the way, and things like a vending cart called the Earring Tree, which I whizzed by with no problem, crashed to the floor as the soldiers stumbled into it.

  I knew better than to dive into any stores in my efforts to ditch these guys. They'd just corner me there. I kept to the main corridor, which had plenty of stuff to dodge around—a big fountain, cookie vendors, and, best of all, a giant traveling diorama, featuring life-size robotic dinosaurs, meant to teach kids and their parents about prehistoric earth.

  I am not kidding. Well, okay, maybe about the life-size part. The tallest dinosaur was only about twenty feet tall, and that was the T. Rex. But they were all crowded into this hundred-foot space, jammed in there with fake ferns and palm trees and jungly-type stuff. Weird jungle sounds, like shrieking monkeys and birds, played over these speakers designed to look like rocks. There was even, in one area, a volcano from which actual fake lava was spewing—or made to look like it was spewing, anyway.

  I looked behind me. My pursuers had untangled themselves from the mess by the Earring Tree, and were now gaining on me. I glanced to my side, over the balustrade that looked out across the main floor, a story below me.
I saw Sean dodging past Baskin-Robbins, Colonel Jenkins close at his heels.

  "Hey," I yelled.

  Heads everywhere whipped around as people turned to stare at me, including Colonel Jenkins.

  "Here I am!" I shouted. "Your new dolphin! Come and get me!"

  Colonel Jenkins, as I had hoped, stopped chasing Sean and headed for the escalator.

  I, of course, headed for the dinosaur diorama.

  I hurdled across the velvet rope separating the display from the rest of the mall, followed closely by a half dozen of Colonel Jenkins's men. As my sneakered feet sank into the brown foamy stuff they'd sprayed on the mall floor to look like dirt, I was assaulted by the sound of jungle drums—apparently the makers of the diorama were unaware that dinosaurs predated man (and drums) by several hundred thousand years. There was a lonely wail, which sounded mysteriously like a peacock to me. Then a roar—distinctly lion—and steam sprayed from the T. Rex's nostrils, two dozen feet above my head.

  I dodged behind a couple of velociraptors, who were feasting on the bloody carcass of a saber-toothed tiger. No good. Jenkins's men were on my heels. I decided to really screw with them, and leapt into the shallow water they'd set up to look like a lake, out of which both the fake volcano and the head of a brachiosaurus reared. I sank into the artificially blue water, the water hitting me about mid-shin, soaking my sneakers and the bottoms of my jeans.

  Then I started wading.

  Jenkins's men, apparently thinking that catching me was not exactly worth getting their feet wet, halted on the rim of the artificial lake.

  Okay, so I knew they were going to catch me eventually. I mean, come on. Even if I got out of the mall, where was I going to go? Home?

  Not.

  But I didn't have to make it easy on them. So, when I saw them elbow each other and split up to opposite sides of the lake, ready to catch me wherever I tried to come ashore, I did the only thing I could think of:

  I climbed the volcano.

  Okay, my sneakers were kind of squelchy. And okay, the volcano wasn't all that sturdy, and groaned beneath my weight. But hey, I had to do something.

  And when I reached the top of the volcano, it was just in time for it to start spewing again. I stood up there—some fifteen feet in the air—and looked down at everyone, as all around me steam hissed out, and the lava, made of scarlet plastic with a bunch of little lights inside it, started to glow. The diorama's bogus sound track made a noise like the earth splitting, and then a thunderous rumble shook the so-called lake.