“Hi,” I said, moving to sidle past her. She shifted quickly, though, just enough to stop me.
“I’m sorry, but is everything okay?” She was looking with wet, hungry eyes into my face, searching for clues.
There were a couple of ways to play this. I went with bravado.
“No,” I answered. Her eyebrows shot up and I saw her eyes glisten with excitement. She opened her mouth but I barreled on, not giving her a chance to talk. “Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet,” I said. “The coral reefs are dying. Species are going extinct at a terrifying rate. Honeybee colonies are collapsing. And have you heard about the deforestation of the Amazon?” All those National Geographic magazines that Rodeo made me read were paying off. I shook my head and took a suck of my slushy, which tasted even worse than I’d feared. “The world is a mess, ma’am. Everything is definitely not okay.”
The lady’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion. I moved to squeeze past her but she moved again, plainly trying to block me now. “No … No. I mean, are you okay?”
“Oh, me? I’m just peachy. Excuse me.”
She didn’t budge, though.
“Where are your parents, dear?”
I gritted my teeth. She was more persistent than most.
“My dad’s just up the road getting gas. He’ll be back in a minute.”
The woman frowned.
“This is a gas station. Why didn’t he just get gas here?”
Dang. The distracting flavor of chemical watermelon was throwing me off my game.
“He’s … a bargain shopper. It’s five cents a gallon cheaper at the next exit.”
“Then why did he leave you here?”
I clenched my jaw, then held up my cup.
“For the slushy,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“They don’t have slushies at the next gas station?”
The woman wasn’t letting go of this bone, and I was running out of lies. She clearly wasn’t going to let me leave, so I turned and headed the other way, toward the back of the store.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said. My armpits were hot and tingly. This was not going according to plan.
The bathroom was single occupant with a locking chain, thank goodness. I wouldn’t have put it past the lady to follow me right in and wait outside the stall.
I splashed some cold water on my face, then crept back to the door. Leaving the chain locked, I eased the door open and peeked through the crack.
The lady was up at the counter, standing next to a beefy guy with a shaved head who I assumed was her husband. She had her phone up to her ear, and I could just make out what she was saying.
“Yes, ma’am. All by herself. At night. And she’s been crying. I don’t know, maybe twelve or thirteen? No, ma’am. She gave me some story, but I can tell she’s lying. Yes, ma’am. Yes. I’ll keep her here until the officers arrive.”
My heart thumped. I clicked the door closed and leaned my forehead against it.
“Son of a biscuit,” I whispered.
Police, generally speaking, were not big fans of Rodeo’s and my lifestyle. Anytime cops started asking questions, they got suspicious real quick. They always seemed to think I was some sort of kidnapping victim or something. I’ll admit Rodeo does kinda look the part of an unhinged criminal at times, but that’s a real judging-a-book-by-its-cover situation. Sometimes it took hours for the police to let us go; one time, in Denver, it took two days, a call from my grandma, and a call to the sheriff in our old hometown before they finally believed Rodeo wasn’t a child abductor and let us go. And I didn’t think the fact that Rodeo had abandoned me at night was gonna be super helpful in us talking our way out of this one. I didn’t have a couple days to waste this time, either.
The watermelon slushy, never all that soothing in the best of circumstances, turned to sour nausea in my stomach.
I jumped back when there was a soft knocking on the bathroom door. Not even a knocking, really. More like a fingertip drumming.
Man. That lady wasn’t giving up.
“Occupied,” I said in my most don’t-mess-with-me voice.
The knocking came again, even softer. Like someone was trying to keep the knocking a secret.
It didn’t seem like the kind of knock the nosy lady would do.
I turned the knob and opened the door a sliver.
I didn’t see anyone there. Until I looked down.
It was the kid I’d seen earlier, but he was crouched down outside the door, looking up at me with big, serious brown eyes.
“I can help you escape,” he said.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“This is the, um, bathroom,” I whispered, not wanting the lady to notice me.
The kid frowned up at me. He was Latino, and he was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was cut in a tight-to-his-scalp buzz cut. He looked about my age.
“I know that,” the kid whispered back. He jerked his head toward the front of the store. “That lady called the cops on you.”
“Yeah. I heard.”
“You need help?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Not from them.”
“No,” the kid said with a shake of his head. “I mean because of them. You need to, like, escape?”
I realized then that he was crouching down so the lady couldn’t see him past all the shelves of snack food.
“Escape” sure seemed like an awful dramatic word.
But, hey, if the flip-flop fits …
“Yeah,” I said, crouching down so I could whisper to him rather than at him, “I guess so.”
The kid nodded.
“Okay. There’s a window in the men’s room.”
I just looked at him.
“Big enough to crawl out,” he clarified. “My mom’s in our car at the back of the parking lot. Just tell her Salvador sent you. I’ll meet you out there in a minute.”
I reached up and unlatched the chain, then eased the door open just wide and long enough to duck out and close it behind me.
Once I was crouched down next to him, Salvador reached out for my slushy.
“But first, give me that.”
“What? You’re making me pay for your help? With a slushy?”
“No,” he said like I was an idiot. “You haven’t paid for it.” He fished a wallet out of his back pocket and showed it to me. “I’ll buy it and meet you out there.”
“Oh. Right. Thanks.”
Salvador took the slushy from my hand and stood up, then strolled all casually toward the front of the store. I scurried bent over and ducked into the men’s room.
Sure enough, there was a little (but big enough) window over the sink. I generally wanted to spend as little time as possible in a men’s room, so I didn’t do any dawdling. I climbed up onto the sink, wrenched the window open as quietly as I could manage, and then wriggled through and swung myself down to the black asphalt below. I scraped my stomach pretty good on the way down, but considering that it was in fact my first time crawling out of a men’s bathroom window, I think I managed the operation pretty well, all in all.
I saw the car—the same one I’d noticed earlier—parked at the back of the parking lot. I ran through the evening gloom over to the driver’s-side door.
A woman looked out at me, wide-eyed. I smiled encouragingly and motioned for her to roll the window down. She did, about an inch, which I thought was fair since she’d just watched me shimmy through a bathroom window.
“Hi,” I said, a little breathless. “Salvador said I should come to you? And … hide in your car?” I thought it was probably smart to leave the police out of it at this point.
The woman’s face was kind but understandably uncertain.
“Hide? In my car?”
“Yes,” I said, and smiled again, even bigger. I pointed to the back seat, where I saw a couple of suitcases and duffel bags piled up. “Can I get in?”
She looked me up and down again and
didn’t make any move toward unlocking the car. I didn’t blame her, not one darned bit, but the clock was ticking.
I looked over my shoulder, scanning the highway and parking lot nervously. No sign of the nosy lady or the police. Yet.
“Please?” I said. Then I thought of what Rodeo would do with those magic eyes and that soul-deep kindness of his. I dropped the cheesy smile and looked right into her eyes, serious and honest. There was plenty of kindness there, plenty of warmth back behind her confusion. I saw it there in her eyes and shined it back at her with my own. “Please?”
Her face softened, just a bit.
“Is Salvador in trouble?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No, ma’am.” I looked back over my shoulder. “Look, I promise it’s nothing all that bad. But could we, like, talk about this once I’m in your car? Please?”
The woman’s frown tightened, but then I heard the clunk of the doors unlocking. I slid a duffel bag out of the way, jumped into the back seat, then closed the door and ducked down out of sight.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, like, a lot.”
She just shook her head.
“So … what are you hiding from?” Her words had a nice Spanish accent to them that made them sound prettier than normal words. I hated to follow up her pretty talking with the ugly truth of my own situation, but it didn’t seem like a time to be lying.
“Um … the police.”
Her head snapped back to me so fast I jumped.
“Excuse me?”
I got ready to try and explain, but at that moment Salvador came walking up and opened the door and plopped into the passenger seat.
There was a fierce back-and-forth between him and his mom in Spanish. She gasped and shook her head and spat something that sounded an awful lot like a Spanish curse word when Salvador mentioned the policía. She shot a couple quick questions at him, then he looked back at me.
“You’re not a thief or something, are you?”
“Nope.”
She asked me the next question.
“You’re not a runaway or anything illegal like that?”
“No.”
“So … what’s up, then?” she said. “Why are you hiding from the cops?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said. “My dad … forgot me, I guess. I mean, not on purpose, he thought I was on the bus, but … Oh, it doesn’t matter.” I wasn’t doing an awesome job of explaining myself, and I knew it. “Listen, he’ll be coming back for me. Any minute, maybe. And we’re not doing anything illegal at all, I promise, but we’re kind of on the move and in a hurry. It’s just, like, usually not great when the police start asking us questions, so I was hoping to kind of avoid that if possible. I know … that doesn’t really sound like it makes sense, does it?”
Salvador looked at me for a second, a sad sort of small smile on his face. He traded a look with his mom.
“No,” she said, her voice kinda quiet. “It makes sense.”
Salvador looked over at the back of the gas station. “Good news is they think you’re still in the bathroom. Bad news is the police are definitely on the way. And once they look in the bathroom, it’s only a matter of time before they come sniffing around out here.”
“I don’t want you guys getting tangled up in this,” I said.
Salvador’s mom looked back at me, and the kindness I’d seen at the back of her eyes was right up at the front now.
“It’s a little late for that,” she said, but she reached back and patted my knee with a warm hand when she said it, so I knew she was saying it honest, not saying it mean.
“My dad is coming back.” I stretched up and snuck a peek out the window. “He’s gonna be coming in the other direction, southbound,” I said, pointing. “The other off-ramp must be over there, across the bridge. If you take me over there and drop me off, I can just flag him down when he pulls off the highway. You can’t even see the ramp from this side of the highway, so it’s perfect.”
Salvador squinted across the highway.
“Yeah. We could probably make it that far.”
“What do you mean?”
Salvador shook his head.
“Our car. It, uh … It’s not running so good. That’s why we’re parked here. We barely made it off the highway and into this parking lot.”
I took a closer look around the back seat and noticed for the first time the balled-up laundry, the food wrappers, the pillow squished against the far door.
“How long have you been here?”
He shrugged.
“Just since this morning.”
This morning? They’d been living in this crappy parking lot for a whole day?
“What are you waiting for?”
Salvador grabbed a cell phone off the center console and held it up.
“We’re waiting for my tía to call us back.”
“When my dad gets back, we can help you!” I said excitedly. “We can give you money to fix your car! I promise!”
Salvador’s face closed up.
“Did we ask for help?” he said, his voice suddenly cold.
“Well, no, but…”
“This car isn’t fixable, but we got plenty of money for bus tickets,” he said. “I bought your slushy, remember? We just need to get in touch with my aunt so we know what city to go to and she knows to pick us up. I never said we needed your help. We’re the ones helping you.”
His voice was low, but hard. I’d stepped in it, and I knew it.
His mom’s hand went from my knee to his. She gave him a raised-eyebrow look.
“Easy, mijo,” she said. Then she said something to him in Spanish, something tender but firm. He nodded and looked away.
“No, you’re totally right,” I said. “I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me. You, like, totally saved my butt in there.” I opened my door a crack. “Okay, I can make a run for it. Across the overpass. Thanks again, so much, for—”
“No,” Salvador’s mom interrupted me with a shake of her head. “Close the door. You’d have to run straight across the parking lot. There’s no trees or nothing. We’ll get you over there.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I know we don’t have to,” she said. “But we’re going to. End of story. I’m not going to sit here and watch a girl get grabbed by some cops.”
I looked at Salvador. He shrugged and smiled a little.
“No use arguing with her,” he said. “Trust me. Oh, and here’s this.” He handed me the slushy over the seat. “I took a sip, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can have all you want.”
“No. I mean that I’m sorry that I took a sip. It’s disgusting.” I saw the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
I took the cup from his hand and flashed him a quick grin.
“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”
Salvador’s mom turned the key and the car cranked to life, more or less. Mostly less. There was some grinding and a wisp of smoke from under the hood and a sharp stink that smelled an awful lot like something burning. But the engine did rattle up to a stubborn rumbling grumble and stay there, which I guess sometimes is all that counts.
“Get down,” Salvador reminded me, and I ducked down back under the window as the car stumbled into motion and we rolled out of the parking lot.
The drive was short, but we never really got up to what you’d call cruising speed. There was a fair amount of shuddering and jerking and quite a bit more grinding and the burning smell got significantly stronger. By the time we’d limped over the overpass and clunked down the other side to the off-ramp, I was feeling pretty bad for the car and thinking we’d really asked way too much from it. It was probably only a quarter mile from start to finish but, shoot, when a horse has only got three legs, I think you really ought to just let it hang out in the barn.
I heard the crunch of gravel as we pulled off the road. There was a fina
l screech from under the hood and a more substantial poof of white smoke when Salvador’s mom dropped it into neutral and killed the engine (and, for the record, I don’t think the phrase “killed the engine” has ever been more appropriately applied).
“What did you say was wrong with this car?” I asked, peeking up to check our location.
Salvador shook his head.
“Everything, man. ’Bout a hundred miles back a shop hooked us up and did what they could, but even that dude wouldn’t guarantee we’d make it to the state line. Said there’s so many things wrong with this old piece of junk that fixing it all would cost more than it’s worth.” He reached forward and petted the dusty dashboard. “But, hey, she’s gotten us around for years. I’m gonna hate leaving her behind.” He sighed, his fingers still tracing little paths on the dash. “Stupid, I know,” he said, shooting me a look and rolling his eyes.
“No. I totally get it.”
Salvador gave me a shy little smile. He peered up the highway off-ramp. Pairs of headlights came and went on the highway beyond.
“What kind of car does your dad drive?” his mom asked. “Could be hard to know it’s him in the dark.”
“Nah,” I said with a snort. “I’ll know it’s him. We’re driving a—”
But my Yager description was cut off by Salvador’s mom’s quick gasp and hissed curse: “Policía!”
I followed her pointing finger and saw the police cruiser pulling off the highway on the other side of the bridge, exiting toward the gas station we’d just left. It would be only a matter of minutes now before they found the bathroom empty and came looking for me.
“All right,” I said, cracking the door. “Y’all can head back over there. I’ll hide in the ditch here and wait for my dad. Thank you so much again for everything.”
Salvador spoke some words to his mom in Spanish and she said some back, shaking her head emphatically.
“Stay here,” she said to me. “I wouldn’t want someone leaving my Salvador in a ditch by the side of the road, and I’m not doing that with you.”
“And we’re not going back over there as long as the cops are there, either,” Salvador added under his breath.
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise Page 8
