by Dawne Knobbe
He buried his face in his hands in mock horror.
“Just joshin’,” she said.
Nate looked up and grinned. “Thank God.”
“It’ll be much more of a shock for Dad to see me au naturel. He’ll think he’s in the wrong room. What about your folks? Talked to them?”
“Last night, briefly.”
“And?”
“They were too choked up about me being alive to be mad. Yet.”
“Yet is definitely the operative word.”
“I told Dad about the hole in Solace. He said we could go get her. See if we can patch things up.”
“The kayak or your relationship?”
“Well, he wouldn’t want to waste words. One thing I do know, though; I’m not going back to New York! And I’ll let them know loud and clear.”
“Your dad’s not exactly the chatty type, huh?”
“No. But then, neither was I.” Nate scratched the back of his head where his curls used to catch the tag on his shirt. He liked turning his head freely without the pinch of pulling hair. “My parents might walk right by me too,” he said. “I hardly recognized myself last night when I looked in the mirror.”
“Nothing like the runaway school of hard knocks to change a person.”
“I don’t regret it. Not most of it. You ready to talk to your dad about his girlfriends and your mom and stuff now?”
Kat shrugged. “Maybe. The Goth rebellion shock treatment doesn’t seem to be working, but it’s a whole lot of fun. I wouldn’t mind just going to school here. Staying with my grandfather. I could avoid Dad’s whole cradle-snatching modus operandi.”
“Still a sore spot, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just because he’s not bringing his chick of the moment doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. He’ll get over my being shot and feeling like a bad parent, but in the meantime, I intend to milk it.”
Nate sat on the edge of the bed. “There’s always Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?”
“I read about a foster kid who snuck onto an airplane and spent the winter surfing in Hawaii. Didn’t get caught till he tried to sneak into Australia.”
Tiny dimples framed Kat’s mouth. He realized he was leaning closer. Would she let him kiss her?
“What about Rye?”
“Your grandfather and the Coast Guard have organized a search. Someone will find him.”
He heard voices in the hall.
“That’s my dad for sure,” Kat said, locking eyes with Nate.
“That’s my dad with him,” Nate said, picking up her hand and leaning closer. His lips were definitely within striking range. “Wanna give them something more to worry about?”
Read the first chapter from the next book in the series,
RUNAWAY FIRE
I rolled over on top of the sagging mattress as Joey pulled on my sleeve and let out one choked cough after another. “You okay?” I mumbled, sitting up to rub my stinging eyes. I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. It seemed too hot in the cabin after a cool September day. I tried to focus my sleep-muddied brain.
“What is it, you sick?” I asked.
“It’s real smoky, David.”
I stumbled to check the stove. Maybe the pipe was half closed. I felt for the lever. Eyes burning. Thunder in my ears. The orange flashes at the window finally registered. Not a reflection from the stove. Fire outside. I ran for the door and threw it open.
Fire was devouring the tops of the trees and descended on us like an angry hive. Smoke and embers swarmed, blinding and stinging.
I ran back inside the cabin. “Fire,” I croaked through my smoke-infested throat as I hauled Beagle to his feet.
“Shoes. Then out!” I hollered at both boys. “Head for the boat.”
There was only one thing I couldn’t leave behind. I bolted to the corner behind the door, grabbed Grampa’s guitar case, and sprinted after them.
We stumbled toward the shore by memory alone: eyes burning blind, hot wind lashing us with blistering embers, the stench of ashes like acid in my nostrils. I never knew that fire was so loud. It screamed and hissed, gnashing at our backs while tentacles of smoke strangled us. We weren’t the only ones running. A deer cut me off, plunging into the water as we dragged the rowboat across the sand.
Beagle jumped in, then Joey. I handed over the guitar case, pushed the boat off, and clambered aboard. Pulling hard at the oars, I finally got past the fallout area of embers and felt the temperature drop. The air became breathable—almost. I picked up the bailing bucket, scooped seawater, and dumped it on a few orange embers in the bottom of the stern. I passed the bucket up and the boys did the same in the bow. At least the boat hadn’t caught.
We were safe enough, for now, but homeless again.
Hour after hour the glow from the fire pulsed against the sky behind us as we drifted toward the mainland. I glanced down at Beagle and Joey sleeping curled against each other in the bottom of the boat, half covered by the moth-eaten sail. The engine had died an hour earlier, but I saw no point in waking them to rig it. There was no wind.
The water lay like a rusty sheet of iron. No waves disturbed the reflection of the eerie burning light. Even as the sun began to rise, when I closed my eyes, I could still see the glow. My clothes clung to me, damp and stinking like a smoldering log.
What was Grampa’s crazy old saying about a red sky? He used to have a line for everything. I could hear his crackly voice in my head.
“Pay attention to the warning signs, Sonny,” he’d say, then boom: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.”
“Red sky, red sky!” his crazy parrot would screech from her perch by the open window, then fluff up her feathers and flap. Why that bird never flew away was beyond me, with all the ranting Grampa did. Sometimes I wanted to fly right out that window myself.
“Birds of a feather stick together,” Grampa would say, petting that mangy old bird.
“Stick, stick, stick,” the bird would squawk, followed by, “Warning, warning, warning.”
“Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning,” I muttered, hoping if I said it out loud it would quit haunting me. A shiver zipped up my back. I tried to shake it off.
As the sun came up, the red glow faded and a wind rolled off the mainland, pushing our boat back toward the islands. I reached down and gave Joey a shove.
“Up and at ’em, boys.”
Joey sat up, rubbing his eyes. I could tell my little brother didn’t know where he was. “We’re drifting,” I said. “We need the sail.”
“Can we head back now, David?” Joey asked. “I bet they got the fire out.”
“There’s no going back,” I said, and his boney, eleven-year-old shoulders sagged. “I saw the fire come right down the hill. Our cabin is toast for sure.”
“Couldn’t we build another one?” He wasn’t able to keep the note of pleading from his voice.
“We can’t hide out there forever,” I said. “We never could.”
Beagle yawned and stretched beside Joey. “We’re not going home?”
“Home?” I reached for the sail. “That cabin, that island was only home for the summer, guys. It wasn’t reality.”
“But what about all our stuff?” Beagle asked.
“Most of it was crap. Anyway, it’s all ashes now.”
Beagle pouted. “I liked my crap.”
“Yeah, me too, and I could use my crappy sweater right now,” Joey said, frowning at me like it was my fault.
“I saved your crappy hides. Just be happy we didn’t all end up like grilled hot dogs,” I said. Beagle glanced toward the island. “When I grow up, I’m gonna save all my money and buy a house over there.” He squinted hard, but we were too far from Galiano for the island to look like anything but a gray smoky blur.
“I’m gonna make it my forever home,” he continued.
“Cool,” Joey said. “I’ll come live with you. We can go crabbing and fishing every day.”
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I couldn’t help smiling. “Me too,” I said. “Only I’ll buy the land next door and build my own house. Then I won’t have to take care of you guys forever. But right now we need to rig that sail or we’ll end up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
When we grow up, I thought, hammering the rudder into place. Maybe I should say if we grow up. Somehow, I’d become an adult to my brother and his pal. Only, at seventeen, I didn’t feel grown up. I wasn’t always sure I could take care of myself—or even wanted to. Yet Joey and Beagle were counting on me like I was their dad or something. I needed to keep them safe. I needed to keep them fed. And I’d sworn to myself that they’d never land back in foster care as long as I could help it.
The summer had been easy enough. Just one long camping trip on the island: away from the city, away from the police and social workers, and away from druggies and boozers. Away from the memories of our old life: when we’d actually had a mother and, for most of it, a father who cared about Joey and me.
Beagle hadn’t had a life before foster care. He thought his crappy foster mother was pretty okay. Now, even I knew she wasn’t so bad. She was half brainless on something most of the time, but at least she left him alone. He could always dig out something to eat, even if it was only stale cereal, and he didn’t mind being locked in the basement as long as the TV worked.
It was at that house that Joey and Beagle met after we got tossed into the system. By the time I’d ditched the group home where they’d dumped me, Joey and Beagle were crazy-glued together. There was no leaving him behind.
Fire. That had been the excuse in my head for grabbing them and running. What if their drugged-up foster mother left them locked in the basement and there was a fire? Kind of a joke, now; they’d just come pretty damn close to dying by fire with me in charge.
A part of me had wanted life on the island to go on forever, even though I knew it wasn’t realistic. It was easy to pretend because the boys felt that way too. We took care of ourselves and kept to ourselves. There was never next week or next month, just a series of tomorrows. Who needed to plan beyond tomorrow?
Just then the sail filled and we glided forward. As the city grew in front of us, I could hear its angry buzz swarming as though to swallow us whole. Another shiver twisted my spine. How the hell was I going to keep Joey and Beagle away from the city vermin? Where were we gonna sleep? How was I going to feed all of us? My charges might be small, but they had appetites like grown lions. And who was I kidding? I wasn’t street smart. Hell, I wasn’t sure I was smart, period.
