Car Trouble

by Jeanne DuPrau

  “Albuquerque,” said Duff. “Bonnie’s aunt lives there.”

  “That Bonnie can sing,” said Jasper.

  “Yeah,” said Duff. “She’s not bad.”

  * * *

  After breakfast (granola for the human beings, dog food plus a few scoops of last night’s dinner for the dogs), they said their good-byes to Jasper and Star and loaded their things into the trunk of the car. Duff got into the driver’s seat. He started up the ignition. The engine made a sluggish, groaning sound: graaugh, graaugh. It paused. It made the sound again. A bolt of fear shot through Duff.

  “Engine’s just cold,” said Stu. “Try again.”

  He tried again. After a few more graaughs, the engine caught, to Duff’s extreme relief.

  Stu was clearly relieved, too. “Good going,” he said. “Sunlight Village is an interesting place to visit, but we probably don’t want to spend the summer here. Think of all the zucchini we’d have to eat.”

  Bonnie sat in the front passenger seat with Moony on her lap. He seemed to be over his stomach troubles. For the next two hours, he slept soundly, except for little spasms of dreaming, during which he made yippity noises and his paws twitched. Stu dozed in the backseat.

  The scenery on the way to Albuquerque was mostly desert, though there were some hazy mountains to the north. The sun blazed down. The inside of the car heated up, and opening the windows only made it windier, not cooler. By eleven o’clock, they all felt like wilted spinach. “We’ll stop and get something to drink,” Duff said. They had hooked up with the freeway again at a place called Tucumcari and were no longer out in the middle of nowhere. Duff pulled off at a likely-looking exit, and they found a gas station. Here they filled the car’s tank, and they all bought sodas from the vending machine.

  “Okay,” Duff said when they were back in the car. “Just an hour or so to Albuquerque.”

  He turned the key. Gra-a-aaugh, said the car’s engine, in an even more sluggish way than before. How could the engine still be cold in this heat? He turned the key again. This time the engine was silent. “Well,” he said in his most confident voice. “Good thing we’re at a gas station. Whatever’s wrong with it they can fix.”

  But they couldn’t, as it turned out. It was Saturday; the mechanic didn’t work on weekends. Stu opened the hood and poked around inside, but he couldn’t tell what was wrong, and besides, he said, it was too hot for working on engines. “What do we do, then?” said Duff.

  Stu shrugged. “I’ll think of something,” he said, but there was an unfamiliar note of doubt in his voice.

  Phone Call #5

  Saturday, June 29, 2:48 PM

  Rosalie: Hello?

  Burl: Hey, it’s us.

  Rosalie: Where are you?

  Burl: Albuquerque. Four seventy-eight Cactus Wren Way. But they aren’t here.

  Rosalie: They aren’t? How do you know?

  Burl: No Chevy outside. Also we rang the doorbell. No answer.

  Rosalie: They’ll show up. You just got ahead of them somehow. Sit in the car and wait.

  Burl: How long? It’s hot here.

  Rosalie: Don’t complain. Ten percent, remember. Call me again if they still aren’t there by tomorrow.

  Burl: Tomorrow? But what’re we gonna—

  [Click.]

  Chapter 13

  AUNT SHIRLEY TO THE RESCUE

  It was Bonnie who came up with the solution. “I’ll call my aunt. She’ll come and pick us up, and on Monday they can fix the car and she can drive Stu back to get it.” She made the call from a phone booth behind the Dumpster. It took her quite a while. Duff watched her pace back and forth as she talked and waved her hand in the air. Finally she hung up and walked back to them. “She’ll come,” she said. “She doesn’t love it, but she will.”

  For the next hour and a half, they sat on a tiny patch of grass over by the gas station restrooms, shaded by a scrawny bush, and tried not to expire from the heat. Duff’s thoughts swirled around in a limp, random way. Project Rapid Vortex, Bonnie’s singing voice, photovoltaics, french fries—they all bobbed up, but he didn’t have the energy to pursue any of them. His shirt was sticking to his back. Sweat dripped into his eyes.

  At last a big, blunt-nosed van, cherry red, pulled up at the station. It stopped, its huge door opened, and out stepped a small, wiry woman with white blond hair arranged sculpturally on her head. She wore ironed jeans, a pink silk blouse, and glittery earrings in the shape of hearts. Duff and Stu and Bonnie hauled themselves up off the ground and went to meet her. Bonnie gave her a peck on the cheek.

  “This is my aunt, Shirley Hopgood,” Bonnie said. “Also known as LaDonna Wildmoor.”

  An alias? thought Duff. She’s a criminal, too?

  “My pen name,” said the aunt. “I’m a writer.”

  Oh.

  “It’s great of you to come and get us,” said Stu.

  Shirley gave him a narrow-eyed look. “And you are?”

  “Stu Sturvich,” said Stu. “Volunteer driver for your lovely niece. On my way to pursue interests in California. Also”—he waved a hand at Duff—“Duff Pringle, computer genius.”

  “And how do you happen to know Bonnie?” Shirley asked, looking at Duff.

  Duff started to explain about his job in Silicon Valley, and his car that broke down, and how he’d met Carl and driven the Chevy to St. Louis, but long before he was finished Shirley nodded briskly and said, “I see, I see,” and told them to put their baggage in the car because she had things to do and couldn’t stand here talking in the blazing sun. “What is this?” she said when Bonnie lifted Moony’s carrying case into the back.

  “This is Moony,” Bonnie said. “My dog.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Aunt Shirley.

  When the van was loaded, they climbed in. Bonnie sat in the front, Duff and Stu sat in back, and Moony sat in his crate in the space behind them. Aunt Shirley drove at a good clip down the road, and even faster when they got to the highway. She would zoom up in back of a car, ride its rear bumper for a minute or so, as if threatening to drive right over it, and then ram her delicate foot down on the accelerator and pass the car in one great swoop. This made for a rather lurching ride for the passengers, who didn’t have a steering wheel to hold on to, but Aunt Shirley didn’t seem to notice. She was busy talking.

  “I don’t believe anyone would call me a critical person,” she said. “But I must say, Bonnie, that I am the tiniest bit annoyed with my sister. This is the fourth time this has happened. If she has to engage in illegal activities, why can’t she do it more intelligently?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bonnie.

  “I’m amazed you can tolerate it.”

  Bonnie shrugged.

  “Well, never mind. I don’t like to be negative. Let’s talk about you, dear. I haven’t seen you for quite a while. What are you up to?”

  “Oh, school, you know. And singing.”

  “Singing? In the school choir? How lovely. That’s interesting to me, dear, because in my latest work I have a musical theme, a soprano who falls in love with the orchestra director, a man who has vowed never to marry again after the tragic death of his first wife in a volcanic eruption.”

  “Actually, I don’t sing at school, I sing with my guitar,” said Bonnie. “I write my own songs.”

  “Oh, pop music? I see. Well, that’s lovely, too. I often mention a sweet popular tune in my writing, as a sort of background music. Do you know ‘Your Bluebell Eyes’? Or ‘Be Still, My Naughty Heart’?”

  “I write my own songs,” Bonnie said again. “I don’t know those.” She turned away and gazed out the window.

  Aunt Shirley, who was thundering up behind a VW, didn’t ask what kinds of songs Bonnie wrote. “I find that weaving a strand of music through my stories is deeply enhancing,” she said. “Though of course in the movies it’s much easier, you can have real music.” She passed the VW by swerving into the slow lane, causing Duff to crash sideways into Stu. “I’m confident that movi
es will be made of my books before long. The only obstacle is my agent, who simply will not push hard enough.”

  Listening to this conversation, Duff felt bad for Bonnie. She not only had a criminal for a mother but a conceited airhead for an aunt. He gazed at the back of Bonnie’s neck, trying to beam sympathy at her. He could see the backs of her ears and the little gold stems of her earrings. The label of her T-shirt was sticking up. He thought about reaching forward and tucking it back down. Would it be all right to do that? Would she be freaked out? Should he say something casual first, like, “Your label is sticking up, I’ll fix it for you”? Or should he just do it? After thinking about it this way for several minutes, he decided that because it was impossible to do it in any way that seemed natural, he’d better not.

  Outside, the landscape was filling up with houses. The closer they got to Albuquerque, the more trucks roared alongside them, huge trucks trailing gray smoke from their exhaust pipes. There were also a lot of old pickups and old jeeps and old panel trucks, also trailing smoke. “Look at all that,” Duff said. It made him grumpy. “How come those guys aren’t arrested for pollution? They’re messing up the atmosphere even worse than we did in the Chevy.”

  “Oh, gripe, gripe,” said Stu. “Mr. Pollution-Buster.” He reached over and tucked down the label at the back of Bonnie’s T-shirt. “Label’s sticking up,” he said. Duff felt hatred like a lake of boiling oil around his heart.

  Around four, they pulled into the driveway of a Spanish-style house with a neat green lawn and a pink potted geranium on either side of the front door. The automatic garage door yawned open, revealing a garage that already contained a car, a much smaller car than the cherry red van. A blue Toyota, Duff saw as they pulled in. He also noticed a battered black car parked across the street, which caught his attention because there were two men sitting in it—not starting up the car or getting out of it, just sitting there. He and Stu and Bonnie unloaded their bags, and as they did, the two men stared at them. Odd, Duff thought.

  They went into the house. Moony had to stay in the garage, inside his crate. “My decor is unsuitable for dogs,” Shirley said. “It’s pastel.” The door from the garage led into a very neat kitchen. A bowl of artificial daisies was exactly centered on a round table, and a row of spotless copper pots hung above the stove. From the kitchen, Duff could see into the living room, where the carpet was pale rose, the curtains were looped and fringed, and glass animals stood on spindly tables. This was the sort of house a large, tall person would have to move carefully in—or, even better, not go into at all.

  But here he was, and here he would be for one night at least, until he could come up with transportation for the next leg of the trip. If somehow he could make it to Los Angeles by tomorrow, then maybe he could get to San Jose the next day—the very day he was supposed to start work. How he would do this he didn’t know.

  Phone Call #6

  Saturday, June 29, 4:20 PM

  Rosalie: Yes.

  Rolf: Us. They just got here—Bonnie, two boys, and Shirley. In Shirley’s car.

  Rosalie: What? Shirley’s car?

  Rolf: Yeah. No Chevy.

  Rosalie: [Furious sputtering]

  Rolf: What should we do?

  Rosalie: Get in there! Ask Bonnie! Ask her where my car is! And ask her who those punks are she’s got with her, too.

  Rolf: Okay. Will do.

  Chapter 14

  CRASHING AND SAVING

  Aunt Shirley vanished into the back of the house, saying she had to get right to work, and Duff and Stu and Bonnie stayed in the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. Bonnie foraged in the refrigerator and came up with some fruit salad, some lettuce, some raisin bread, and some nonfat yogurt, and they made a small, unsatisfactory snack of that. No one talked much. Duff found himself staring at Bonnie’s hand, which was holding a piece of raisin bread. Her fingers were so slim and tender-looking he didn’t see how they could get those ferocious sounds out of the guitar. She wore rings on three of her fingers—silver rings with stones in them of different colors. He watched her hand carrying the bread up to her mouth and down again, up to her mouth and down, and then he watched her lips moving around as she chewed, until finally Bonnie said, “Do I have lettuce stuck in my teeth or what?”

  “No, no,” Duff said. “Sorry. I’m just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, I want to get to Los Angeles tomorrow. I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”

  “I don’t know either,” said Bonnie.

  “Or me,” said Stu. “I’ve gotta get to San Diego.”

  “Hitch,” said Bonnie.

  “I guess,” said Stu.

  “And you, too,” said Bonnie to Duff.

  Duff just nodded. Stu wiped the last of his bread around his plate, mopping up the yogurt. “I was wondering,” he said. “That car in the garage, the blue Toyota. Is that your aunt’s, too?”

  “Yeah, that’s her car from before she bought the SUV. I think she’s going to sell it.”

  “Is that right?” Stu inched his chair closer to the table and leaned toward Bonnie. “Do you think she’d sell it to me?”

  “I don’t know. You could ask her.”

  “I will do that,” said Stu. He drummed his fingers happily on the table.

  Duff said, “You have enough money to buy a car?”

  “Well, depending what she wants for it,” said Stu. “Even if it took all I had, it would be okay. Once I get to San Diego, I can stay with my buddy till I get a job. Think I could go out and take a look at that car?”

  Bonnie shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “I’d just like to know what kind of shape it’s in, you know, just check it out. This way?” Stu opened a door that led from the kitchen to the garage and went through it. Duff heard the clack of a latch and the skreek of the car’s hood being raised.

  He was now alone with Bonnie. Here was his chance to say something that would get her attention, but what that was he didn’t know, because all the words he had ever learned in his life deserted him the moment Stu left the room. Bonnie was wiping off the table with a sponge. He watched her hand move back and forth. He thought of saying, “You have a nice hand,” but didn’t. He thought of saying something about her singing, but what?

  And then he thought, Am I going to be like this forever? A slave to shyness? Tortured by fear? No. He couldn’t stand it. He refused. A dizzy, reckless feeling flared up in him. He opened his mouth, willing to risk the worst. And—magically, it seemed—words came. “Your singing last night,” he said. “It was pretty great.”

  Bonnie stopped, with the bread wrapper in one hand and the yogurt carton in the other. “Really? You thought so?”

  “I did,” said Duff. Now that he’d spoken, he found he could keep going. “You’ve got…” He searched for the right word. “You’ve got passion in your voice.”

  Bonnie smiled, a crooked little embarrassed smile. “Wow,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Metallic tapping noises came from the garage. Duff thought about what to say next. “How’d you get into singing?” he asked after a moment.

  Bonnie stuffed the bread wrapper into the yogurt carton and sat down at the table again. “It was because of my mom, in a way. Practically the only good thing she ever did for me. Mainly she goes back and forth between ignoring me and then paying a lot of attention to me because she feels guilty for ignoring me. In her paying-attention phase, she gives me presents. Most of them I hate. But when I was twelve she gave me this guitar that she got from a pawn shop, and I taught myself to play it.”

  “That’s kind of like me,” Duff said. “This kid I knew in fifth grade, his parents gave him a new computer and he gave me his old one. I learned it on my own.”

  Bonnie smiled. “And so you got passionate about computing, right?”

  “Well, yeah, I did. That’s how I am, I get intense about things. A few things. When I was a little kid, it was space aliens, and then computers, and just o
n this trip I’ve gotten kind of fascinated by, you know, other kinds of energy like french fry oil and that solar electricity, and then—” He stopped. He’d been about to go right on and say how the next thing he’d gotten passionate about was her. Yipes. He’d shut his mouth just in time.

  “And then what?” said Bonnie, but he didn’t have to answer that question, because the doorbell rang.

  From the rear of the house Aunt Shirley called, “Somebody! Please! I’m trying to concentrate!”

  Bonnie got up, and Duff followed, curious. When she opened the door, he recognized the two men outside as the ones who’d been sitting in the car across the street. Bonnie obviously recognized them, too.

  “What are you guys doing here?” she said.

  “Your mom sent us,” said one of the men. He was short and muscular, with a jowly face like a bulldog’s. “She’s worried about you. Wants to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine,” said Bonnie. She didn’t ask them in.

  “And she was wondering who you’re traveling with,” said the other man. He was younger and skinnier. He had a fuzz of blond hair on a head shaped kind of like a light bulb.

  “Two guys I met,” said Bonnie. “They’ve been great to me.” She stepped back. “Tell her everything is fine, Rolf.” She started to close the door.

  “One more thing,” said Burl, the bulldog guy. “Where’s her car?”

  “Oh, the car.” Bonnie told them where it was and said she’d be picking it up on Monday.

  “Your mom wants it back,” said Burl.

  “Why? It’s not like she’s going to be needing it.”

  “She wants it safe in her driveway. She was very clear about that.” Both Rolf and Burl nodded.

  Bonnie shrugged. “Okay. I don’t need it. You pick it up, then. You can pay for the repairs and take it home. I don’t care.”

  Big smiles broke across both guys’ faces. Talking at the same time, they said, “Fine, great, glad you’re okay, kiddo, see you later,” and then they turned around and headed across the street to their little black car.