Survival Strategies of the Almost Brave

by Jen White

  Billie whispered, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  I nodded. “So do I. Let’s just wait until she gets back.”

  Billie made a face. “I need to go now.”

  I looked around the backseat. There was nothing, just some clothes and garment bags. Should she pee on the floor? But I couldn’t let her. Animals don’t sleep where they pee. And the Lavender Lady, even though she didn’t know it, was doing us a huge favor—we couldn’t pee in her car.

  But now the spell was broken. Reality was setting in. We’d have to leave our nest eventually, wouldn’t we? We had to call Julie. We couldn’t just ride with the Lavender Lady to her house and yell, Surprise!

  I had to find a phone.

  I poked my head up and peered out the window. We were parked at a hotel. The parking lot was nearly empty. I hesitated. Billie was jiggling her knee and holding herself.

  “Liberty!” Billie whispered.

  “I know.”

  I stole a sideways look at Orson. He had a jowly face that was covered in wrinkles, like a pug. Pug dogs were pretty cute, even though they weren’t nocturnal creatures. His eyes were closed and squished into their sockets. His hearing aid had fallen out of his ear and grazed his shoulder. I listened more closely. His snoring stopped. His chest sat unmoving. Was he breathing?

  I inched my face a little closer. He smelled like a fat, buttery pretzel, like the ones you buy at the mall.

  Billie pulled on the back of my shirt.

  I waved her away. Was he dead? A minute passed on the car clock. It said 8:05.

  Breathe.

  I had to do something.

  The belly under his plaid shirt stayed still. It creeped me out to think we were trapped in a car with someone who had just died, even if he did smell like something good to eat. I lifted my hand and, without thinking, reached out and poked him in the chest.

  He sat up and began coughing. The car rocked with each hacking cough, and something rattled in his lungs. It sounded awful.

  I ducked behind the rod of clothes and pulled Billie down with me.

  The coughing continued, and Billie whispered, “What did you do?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  She grimaced and pointed at a wet spot on the carpet.

  “What? Why…”

  “He scared it out of me,” she said, scooching out of the puddle and coming over onto my side. It already smelled like pee in the backseat. We had to get out of here. But I could hear the tap-tap-tap of the Lavender Lady’s shoes coming closer.

  It was time to do something.

  Survival Strategy #13:

  TAKE IT

  The car door opened.

  “That’s all settled. We’re room two-oh-two,” the Lavender Lady said, tossing her purse back through the rack of clothes so it perched on top of Billie’s stomach. She sat on top of me, her wet shorts seeping into mine.

  I shoved her over, our butts wedged next to each other on the floor. The clothes in plastic swirled around us. It was getting hot. I shoved the purse over into the wet spot, but then I stopped. I wrapped my fingers around the handle.

  Orson continued to cough.

  “What got you so up in arms?” asked the Lavender Lady. I heard rustling from the front of the car. “Here’s your water,” she said. “Orson. Water.”

  I heard gulping, and then the coughing stopped. She turned on the engine and slowly drove through the parking lot. I pulled the purse closer.

  Billie looked at me, questions in her eyes.

  My heart bumped.

  The smell of pee was stronger now—it filled my nose and hair and eyes. I blinked back the burn. The Lavender Lady would notice any second. But still, I could not let go of the purse.

  Billie’s stomach let out a gurgle.

  Mom had always said, “Billie does whatever you do. You are the example.” I knew that. Did she think I didn’t know that?

  Billie pushed the hair out of her eyes and shook her head back and forth, just a little. I guess her mind powers were working.

  A tingle ran up my back. I ignored it. What else could I do? The Lavender Lady was practically begging me to open her purse. How long had we sat back here with it? Billie and me, we had nothing.

  Somehow I knew that if I could talk to the Lavender Lady, really look into her eyes and tell her what had happened to us, she’d help in an instant. Give us every cent she had. Take us to California to find Julie. I stared at the black leather of the seat in front of Billie like I had X-ray eyes. Like I was telling her everything and she listened like there wasn’t anyone else in the world. She might even adopt us. I was sure she would. Just like that tiger I saw on the news that adopted piglets, four of them. They put little tiger-print sweaters on them and the tiger fed them and kept them warm, just like their real mom would have done if she had been alive.

  But Billie and I were not piglets.

  I stared at where we sat curled in plastic and pee and thought maybe we were, just a little. The thought of really asking the Lavender Lady for help made me want to throw up. I couldn’t really trust her. Usually how people seemed and what they actually did were opposites. Look at what had happened this morning with Dad. What if the Lavender Lady was mad about Billie and me sneaking into her car and about Billie peeing all over it? For sure she would be angry about the pee. There was no way I would ask her for help. Not for real.

  The Lavender Lady hummed as the car bumped into a parking spot.

  “Okay, Orson, the map says we’re in building C. I’m going in first to open our room door and turn on the lights, and then I’ll come back and help you.”

  Orson mumbled.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  This was my chance. I grabbed her lavender studded purse and unzipped it—fast. Faster than I thought I could, and then I dumped everything onto the car floor. Receipts, hand sanitizer, some kind of medicine, tissues, her wallet(!), old lady lipstick, some breath mints, and that crumpled-up business card Cowboy had given her.

  Billie hunched over me and poked at the tin of breath mints with her skinny finger.

  I handed them to her.

  She flipped the lid open and dumped them all into her mouth.

  While she crunched on those, I unbuttoned the wallet. But then something made me stop. I had never stolen anything in my life, unless you counted the Ring Pop at the grocery store when I was four. (Which I did not, because Mom had marched me back to the store manager to return it and apologize.) But right now I wasn’t stealing. I was looking. There was nothing wrong with looking.

  Orson started to cough again.

  I yanked the wallet open. My heart fluttered, like a hummingbird was trapped inside. Out slipped the Lavender Lady’s driver’s license. On the top it said CALIFORNIA. She was from California! A straight ride to San Diego … maybe. Then: MYRNA ANN HALSTRONG. Born in 1940. Wow, she was really old. I stared at the weird picture with her eyes sort of crossed.

  Suddenly, the front door flew open. The voice of Myrna Ann Halstrong, aka the Lavender Lady, rang out.

  “That stupid clerk! I swear I told him I wanted a room on the bottom floor.” She cursed and slammed the door behind her. “Orson, people don’t listen anymore. Nobody listens.” She turned the car back on and squealed out of the parking space. “I’m going to give that guy a piece of my mind. I told him there was no way you could climb the stairs.” The car jerked forward as she sped back to the front of the hotel to yell at the person who manned the front desk.

  Hurry. Hurry.

  All I could think of was Billie and me being stranded here with nothing, not even a dollar to make a phone call. I jerked the money out of the wallet and shoved it into my pocket, the bills fat and heavy. Then Billie and I quietly scrambled to put everything back into her bag. Tissues. Lipstick. Sanitizer. I grabbed the empty mint tin under the seat and tossed that in, too. The Lavender Lady still ranted. She parked the car and stomped inside.

  Billie chomped on her mints, her cheeks full like
the chipmunks we saw at Zion National Park. Now the backseat smelled like pee and breath crystals. I zipped up the bag and set it on the little bump behind the armrest, between the rack of clothes. The money in my pocket poked me in the hip, like an outstretched finger saying Liberty is a criminal. Was there such a thing as kid jail?

  The lights in the parking lot flicked on. The sun had set and cast shadows across the pavement. The Lavender Lady still yelled at the guy at the desk and Orson fell back to sleep. I stretched up and pulled the money out of my pocket. It was damp with sweat, or maybe Billie’s pee.

  One. Two. Three. Four twenty-dollar bills sat safely in my hand.

  Eighty dollars. How many Twinkies could that buy? No matter how bad I felt about stealing, looking at the wad of money, I knew I would never give it back. Instinct had kicked in.

  I turned to Billie. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  Survival Strategy #14:

  BEWARE OF “SKIP TO MY LOU”

  When Billie and me moved into Dad’s camper, I realized he didn’t have a TV. Sometimes campers had TVs and stuff, but his didn’t. There was a computer, but it was for his work. And I really missed my animal shows. Having a dad was way better than watching any old TV show, though. Still, it was an adjustment. I didn’t complain because he had to like us.

  After Dad picked us up in San Diego, he said we were headed to Arches National Park in Utah so he could get some pictures of all the rock formations called arches. I was really excited to see them. I had an information pamphlet in my notebook—it was about chipmunks, prairie dogs, tortoises, coyotes, and mule deer who lived there. I had really wanted to see a mule deer.

  That first night in the camper we parked at a rest stop and slept inside. The sleeping bag was hot. And for a second, it was so quiet and dark that I felt like maybe we were floating somewhere in outer space. In the middle of the night, Billie fell off her bed and landed right on top of me. So I let her stay next to me, because really her bed was too small and high. When she fell, Dad didn’t even wake up. He just slept and slept.

  “Tell me a story, Liberty,” whispered Billie. Because even though she had a brand-new koala, I could tell she really missed San Diego, and our condo, and George and Martha, and Mom. And maybe so did I, but I didn’t want to let Billie know that.

  “Once upon a time, there was a sea turtle floating through the ocean all by her lonesome.”

  Billie nodded.

  “And she had a secret. She was going to have baby turtles. But she needed to find a special place where she could hide her eggs so they could grow up happy and strong.”

  Billie closed her eyes.

  “She went to the shore and buried them in the sand…”

  And just that fast, Billie was asleep again. I could tell by her longish breathing and how her mouth fell open a tiny bit. And for a second I almost woke her back up, because I didn’t like feeling alone in the camper. Right then, I missed Mom more, now that we weren’t in the condo. My heart felt all dehydrated with the missing of everything: Mom, and our condo, and Antonio, and my school, and even Julie. What could I do to fill it up again?

  I climbed up onto Billie’s bed and reached around in the covers for the flashlight Dad gave her in case she got scared. It was tucked in between the wall and the mattress. Then I covered myself under Billie’s old baby blanket and turned on the light so I could read my notebook with the lists of everything I knew. Sometimes it’s the only thing that makes me feel better.

  The next morning, in the daylight, I finally saw where we had spent the night: an empty campground surrounded by bushes that looked like long, bony fingers crawling up from the ground.

  Sitting outside at the picnic table, Dad pulled out some truck stop cinnamon rolls and apples he had bought yesterday for breakfast. He handed us each an apple. “What’s more amazing than a talking llama?” he asked.

  Billie and I looked at each other, because how did Dad know we liked jokes?

  Finally, Billie said, “I don’t know.”

  “A spelling bee.”

  Dad laughed. It was a pretty good one.

  And Billie said, “What do you call a grizzly bear stuck in the rain?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A drizzly bear.”

  “That’s funny,” Dad said. And then he took a huge bite of his apple.

  And that missing feeling slowly inched over, leaving space in my heart for something new. And for a second, there in the sun, I felt almost happy.

  After we ate our cinnamon rolls, Dad showed us where we could brush our teeth but said we couldn’t take a shower inside the camper until we got to a campsite with hookups for water. Then we drove again for hours and hours with nothing to look at but desert. And it was getting sort of boring. And just when I thought I would pop with doing-nothingness, Dad said, “Maybe we should take a detour.”

  And then we drove through a place called Zion National Park, which was maybe the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I didn’t know some mountains were orange like a sunset and could reach so high that it hurt my neck to stare up at them.

  Dad stopped for lunch near a stream so we could eat bagels, and he showed us how to skip rocks. Billie was actually really good at it—better than me. My stomach felt heavy when Dad smiled and patted her back after her rock skipped four times before a fish jumped up and swallowed it.

  I should be able to skip a rock better than her.

  But when I saw Billie’s face all golden, I felt guilty. And Mom’s words were in my head reminding me, like always, that I was the oldest. That I was supposed to take care of her. And if Billie was happy, then I decided that I could be, too.

  “Did you see that, Liberty?” she asked.

  I nodded and meant it when I said, “Good job, Billie. You’re way better than me.”

  After that, Dad pulled his camera gear out of the back of the camper and set it on a picnic bench. We sat and watched him go through bags, take out lenses, switch cameras. I didn’t know what to do. Were we supposed to go with him? Stay there? He hadn’t said.

  Billie hugged Koala.

  Dad threw his backpack over his shoulder and glanced at the sun and then at us. “Come on. The light is going.”

  We followed him up the trail.

  The cliffs stretched like they scraped the sky. I had to run-walk to keep up with him. Billie had to run-run. She had on her flip-flops and kept tripping. I grabbed her hand to steady her. “I’ll go first. Just watch my feet and step where I step,” I said.

  Pretty soon, Dad started to talk. Out loud. Not really to us; more like to the sky.

  He talked about the last time he had been there. How he had almost stepped on a rattlesnake sitting fat and happy, sunning itself in the middle of the trail. And how we should be noisy when hiking so we could give animals time to move out of our way.

  Then Dad started whistling “Skip to My Lou.”

  And I stopped, right there, next to the twisted, gnarled tree that stretched over our path. I stopped because I remembered that whistle. I didn’t even know I knew it before. But standing there, listening to my dad, my gone-forever-but-now-he’s-back dad, whistle “Skip to My Lou,” I knew I had heard it before.

  I wondered what else was buried deep inside my brain. What else was going to come up when I didn’t even know? What would happen if it all came rushing out?

  Survival Strategy #15:

  TRUST INSTINCT

  Sneaking out of the Lavender Lady’s car was easier than I thought it would be. I watched her through the glass hotel doors from my hiding spot in the backseat. She banged her fist on the desk like it was a gavel and she was the judge on one of those divorce court shows Mom never liked me to watch. And Orson? Well, you know, he couldn’t hear a thing.

  The clock said 8:34. I opened the back door and slunk out, Billie right behind me and the money tucked safely in my pocket. I pushed the door closed carefully with a tiny click. We crept past the entrance of the hotel and into the shadows between
two bushes. Compared to the car, outside felt cool and refreshing, so much better than sweaty, recycled pee air.

  I couldn’t hold it any longer. My bladder was going to burst. I pulled my shorts down and crouched. “Don’t look,” I said.

  “Ewwww. That’s gross,” said Billie when pee hit dried leaves.

  I pulled up my shorts. “Not as gross as peeing in your pants.”

  She looked embarrassed but didn’t say anything. There was still a huge wet spot on the back of her shorts. She stepped closer into the bushes, scratching her thighs.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “I can’t help it. Dried pee makes me itch.”

  We ducked toward the bushes farther away from the parking lot lights and the entrance to the hotel.

  Just for a second, I turned around and stared at the car where Orson sat sleeping. Had he stopped breathing again? Did he need someone to poke him back into life? The hotel door creaked open and the Lavender Lady came out, her face transformed into a smile. I had spent so much time sitting behind her; it took me a minute to get used to seeing her from the front. She looked like an old half-bitten apple, baking on the asphalt, all shrunken and wrinkled.

  She opened the car door. “Orson, we hit the jackpot. You should see the room upgrade we got. Orson. Upgrade!”

  The only response she got was Orson’s hacking cough again. Good. He was still breathing.

  For a minute, I felt sad to leave. But animals on the run don’t have time for sadness—they don’t feel a thing. I pulled Billie around the corner, ready to face whatever happened next, just the two of us.

  Survival Strategy #16:

  IF IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR A SEA TURTLE, IT MIGHT BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU

  Do you know how a green sea turtle has her babies? She climbs up to shore, digs a hole, lays her eggs, covers them up with sand, and then she goes back to the sea—without ever looking back.

  The baby turtles are all alone for two whole months, snuggled up, getting warm in the sand and spending their days growing, until they finally hatch. Then they have to hurry back to the water so they can survive. On top of that, they have to watch out for other animals like seagulls and crabs waiting in the dark to eat them. Baby sea turtles don’t have their moms to tell them where to go or what to do. But they have instinct. Sea turtles just know what to do to survive.