“Were you afraid they’d say no?” Chris asked.
“Absolutely. But when school started, one of those boys sat next to me in class. He and I became really tight. The next summer, I practically lived at that farm.”
“There aren’t any farms by our house,” Chris said. “And anyway, I’m homeschooled.”
Thinking back to his own young self, Dan was pretty sure Chris had missed his point deliberately. Like Chris, he’d been undersized, socially awkward and virtually friendless.
Yet the only way he’d reaped the rewards of friendship was by risking rejection. He liked spending time with Chris, but the boy needed to be around other children.
“I’m sure Bart would want you to make new friends.” He nodded toward the boys playing tag in the field. “I bet they’d let you play.”
Chris shook his head. “They’d beat me up if Bart wasn’t with me.”
“Nobody’s going to beat you up,” Dan said. “You’re a likable kid.”
Chris bowed his head. “Arianne says I’m a nerd, and nobody likes a nerd.”
“Who’s Arianne?”
Chris continued to gaze down at his feet. “Nobody.”
Dan understood the boy’s reluctance to tell him about the girl. She sounded like a bully.
“Well, Arianne’s wrong,” Dan said, “because I like you a lot.”
Chris’s head rose. “Really?”
“Really.” Dan hopped down from the picnic table. “Ready to go?”
Shouts of laughter erupted from the field. “I caught you!” a boy wearing a red T-shirt yelled in a high-pitched voice. “Now you’re it.”
Chris looked longingly at the boys, then slowly got down from the picnic table. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
The boy obviously wasn’t ready to risk rejection in an attempt to make friends. It might be years before he felt comfortable doing that, if ever.
What he needed was some help, and Dan had a great idea that would give him a subtle shove in the right direction.
All he needed was Jill’s permission.
THE DOGS WERE BARKING again, the same way they had the other times Jill had swung by Dan’s house to pick up Chris.
She didn’t let on that the animals unnerved her, even though the rain that had begun to fall made it necessary for her to step inside. She ignored the hundred or so pounds of dog flesh vying for her attention and launched into her spiel.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” she said. “I stayed late to help Frank—he’s Annie’s dad—with paperwork. Then he insisted I have a kielbasa sandwich, which was delicious, by the way. And then, would you believe it, I had a flat tire Frank helped me change.”
“Hi, Jill.” Dan looked the opposite of annoyed, with a lazy smile on his lips that reached his eyes. He even looked good with a five-o’clock shadow and wearing a plain gray T-shirt.
“Hey, Dan.” She slowed herself down and returned his smile, genuinely glad to see him. “Is Chris ready to go?”
“You must not have gotten the message I left on your cell,” he said. “I just got back from walking him home.”
This marked the first time they’d been alone since the kayaking “lesson.” Fine with her. She could handle that. She thought.
“My phone’s dead. That’s why I didn’t call to let you know I’d be late.” She backed toward the door. The dogs had stopped barking, which plunged the house into silence broken only by the fall of the rain on the roof. “Sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” he said. “I’m actually glad we got our signals crossed. I need to talk to you about Chris.”
She stopped backing up and sighed. “He’s coming over here too much, isn’t he? I told him he didn’t have to visit those goats every night.”
“No, no. That’s not it.” He waved a hand. “Come in and sit down. We can discuss it.”
She hesitated, then replied, “Okay.”
He led her to the family room, dominated by a flat-screen TV mounted on one wall. His sofas, upholstered with a hearty beige fabric, formed a ninety-degree angle around a heavy square sofa table. Some basic floor lamps and a brown leather armchair completed the very masculine decorations.
“Would you like a beer?” he called from the kitchen, which was an extension of the family room.
“Nothing for me,” she said. “But you go ahead.”
She sat down on one of the sofas and was immediately flanked by his two dogs. They sat perfectly still, not crowding her or clamoring for attention. She tentatively stuck out a hand and stroked the first dog, then the second. Both of them practically moaned in pleasure.
“How’d you get to be so good with dogs?” Dan entered the room, holding a beer bottle.
“I’m not,” she said. “We moved a lot when I was growing up, so we never had pets. My mama said it wouldn’t be fair to them.”
“Could have fooled me.” He sat on the sofa catty-corner from her, stretching his long jean-clad legs in front of him. “You knew just what to do with those two. The way to get them to stop barking is to ignore them until they’re quiet.”
“Is that what you do?”
He laughed. “It’s what I should do. I’m excited to see Starsky and Hutch when I get home from work, too, so I don’t follow my own advice.”
Why that was endearing, Jill couldn’t say.
“Starsky and Hutch?” she asked. “Wasn’t that a movie?”
“And before that, a television show from the seventies,” he said. “I liked the movie so much a friend bought me the first season on DVD. Now I’ve got quite the collection of TV cop shows.”
Probably because he had a highly developed sense of justice, which could turn out to be a negative if his definition of right and wrong didn’t coincide with hers.
“So what has Chris done that you want to talk to me about?” she asked.
“It’s more what he hasn’t done,” Dan said. “It doesn’t seem like he’s made any friends his own age since he moved here.”
“He hasn’t,” Jill said sadly. “But then, he’s never had many friends.”
“Yea, but it seems like Bart used to be enough for him.”
“Bart?” She almost groaned. “He told you about Bart?”
“He talks about him all the time. About Bart’s sister, too. I think it was really hard on him to leave them.”
Jill rubbed the bridge of her nose. This wasn’t good. She thought her brother had grown out of this particular quirk. “Did he mention Bart’s sister by name?”
“Sure.” Dan took a swig of beer. “Her name’s Lisa.”
Jill waited for Dan to make the connection, but he looked at her blankly. “Bart and Lisa Simpson,” she clarified.
He frowned, then set down his beer on the coffee table. “The cartoon family?”
“You got it.” She blew out a breath. “I don’t like him to watch the show, but I’m pretty sure he does when I’m not home. Do you know who Milhouse is?”
“Isn’t he Bart’s best friend?”
“Bart’s intelligent, nerdy best friend,” she clarified. “Milhouse isn’t popular with anyone except, well, Bart. I’m afraid Chris identifies with him.”
“Wow,” Dan said. “Why didn’t I figure that out?”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed Chris has a problem with lying,” she said. “With him spending so much time over here, I should have mentioned it.”
“I know he lied to Lindsey about Tinkerbell,” Dan said, “but I didn’t know it was a problem.”
She’d sat her brother down and expressed her disappointment after the Lindsey incident. As always, though, she was faced with an impossible dilemma. How could she get the point across that lying was wrong when they were living a lie?
She had a nearly overwhelming urge to ask Dan for advice. Her gut told her she could trust him. Her brain warned that her gut had been wrong before.
She’d been sure Ray Williams would accept her fervent belief that her brother, a proven liar, was telling the truth ab
out Arianne. Instead Ray had insisted he’d go straight to her father unless she changed her mind about absconding with Chris, forcing her to put the plan into motion early.
If she couldn’t trust Ray, whom she’d been dating for three months, how could she trust Dan, a man she’d known for a third of that time and who’d just professed a love for cop shows?
“Chris lies about a lot of things,” she said. “It started after his mother died. She was one of those women who made her child the center of the universe. Always taking him somewhere, throwing him parties, showering him with presents and love.”
“It must have been heartbreaking for him to lose her,” Dan said.
“It was,” Jill agreed. “Chris had just started second grade. Our father worked all the time, so after his wife died he hired babysitters and put Chris in after-school care.”
“Weren’t you living with them?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Growing up I lived with my mama and then I got my own apartment. I saw Chris whenever I could, but my place was about thirty minutes away and I was working a lot of hours myself.”
“Bartending?”
“No. I managed a bicycle shop that didn’t close until nine at night. Whenever I saw Chris, he’d tell these wild stories. Like about a monkey who played with him at recess. Or the bus driver who let him take the wheel.”
“Sounds like he was trying to get attention.”
“That’s what the school psychologist told my dad,” she said. “She said we shouldn’t let him get away with the lies, but at the same time we needed to show him how much we loved him.”
“Did that work?”
“For a while.” Until her father got remarried and unwittingly introduced a whole new problem into Chris’s life. Try as she might, Jill had never been able to convince her father that he’d married a bad person.
“Poor kid,” Dan said. “It must have been doubly hard on him when your father died.”
Jill’s heart clutched. Dan was such a good listener that she’d let down her guard. She’d even told him the truth about her last job! If he hadn’t mentioned her very-much-alive father, she might have blabbed even more.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was.”
“Is that when he started talking about Bart Simpson as though he were a real boy?”
“It was around then,” Jill said, although Chris had become imaginary friends with Bart soon after she’d spirited him away from Atlanta.
“Is Arianne a cartoon character, too?”
It felt as though someone had cut off Jill’s oxygen supply. She forced herself to breathe, to think and most of all not to react. “What do you know about Arianne?”
“I know she told Chris he was a loser,” Dan said.
She tried to hide her anxiety. “What else did Chris say about her?”
“That’s it. I take it she’s a real girl, then?”
Girl? Dan thought Arianne was a girl? Although why wouldn’t he? Adult women who disparaged and scared children were a rare breed, thankfully.
“Chris is too quick to listen to the negatives,” she said. “I’ve been trying to build up his self-confidence.”
“Friends his own age would help,” Dan said.
“Don’t I know it.” Jill had lain awake nights thinking about that very thing.
“Have you thought about sending him to Indigo Springs Elementary instead of homeschooling him?”
“He’s not ready for that yet.” Jill felt bad about misleading Dan regarding her true reasons, but it couldn’t be helped. “I signed him up for youth soccer last fall. He lasted one practice. Same thing with Boy Scouts. One meeting. Unfortunately he’s not the type of kid who makes friends easily.”
“He might if the other kids shared his interests.” Dan sat forward on the sofa, his forearms resting on his knees. “Have you thought about getting him involved in 4-H?”
“Can’t say that I have.” Jill had a fuzzy notion of what the organization stood for. “What is 4-H exactly?”
“It’s a youth organization sponsored by the department of agriculture. They do lots of things. Cooking, arts and crafts, horticulture. But the group here in Indigo Springs puts emphasis on working with animals. It’s right up Chris’s alley.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Jill said.
“There’s more. My boss runs the program. Hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of mentioning this to Stanley. They have meetings twice a month starting in September and running through May.”
Some of Jill’s enthusiasm waned. She couldn’t promise that she and Chris would even be in Indigo Springs come September. “It figures they wouldn’t be active in the summer.”
“I didn’t say that.” Dan’s blue eyes shone. “Most of the members of the group are going to Hersheypark this coming Sunday. Stanley said Chris is welcome to come along.”
Hersheypark was an amusement park located ninety minutes away in a town Jill had always wanted to visit. She’d heard the streetlights were shaped like Hershey kisses and that the place smelled like the chocolate plant that lent the town its name.
“I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “Chris isn’t the most daring kid around. I can’t imagine he’d ride any of the roller coasters.”
“One of the reasons Stanley picked Hersheypark is it includes admission to an adjacent zoo,” Dan said. “Chris would like that.”
“Probably,” Jill said, “but you know how shy he can be. He might be miserable on a trip with a bunch of strangers.”
“Then you and I can go with him,” Dan said. “Counting Stanley, that’ll be three people he knows.”
“Three adults,” she clarified.
“Three adults who can encourage him to get to know the other kids,” Dan said. “What do you say? Can you get the day off?”
Although Jill was scheduled to guide a white water trip on Sunday, finding a substitute on a weekend was usually not a problem. If she couldn’t get the entire night off from the Blue Haven, Chuck Dudza almost certainly wouldn’t have a problem with her arriving a little late.
“I’m pretty sure I can,” she said.
“Great!” Dan said. “It’s a date.”
A date? What had Jill done? In her eagerness to ease things over for her brother, had she agreed to spend the day with a man she should avoid?
She should backtrack. She should tell him she doubted she’d be able to take the time off work after all. She should…
“Together we’ll make sure your brother has a good time.” He grinned at her, and she felt stupid. And ungrateful.
Since they’d gone kayaking, Dan hadn’t done a single thing to make her think he didn’t respect her wishes.
Why, they were alone in his house and he was talking about her brother.
She stood up.
“It sounds like the rain is letting up,” she said. “I should get going before it starts up again.”
“Okay,” he said. No argument. Just okay.
Her imagination was really running away with her.
Dan was proving repeatedly that he was a nice guy. As long as she was careful not to reveal too much about herself or her past, there was no reason they couldn’t be friends.
THE WOODEN TRACK ROSE from the ground at Hersheypark, its crazy curves and plunges making it hard to figure out the path of the roller coaster train that was navigating its insane twists.
“Ready to ride the Wildcat, Chris?” Dan asked. With his Ohio State cap slung low over his eyes, dark shorts that ended a few inches shy of his knees and a distressed-graphic T-shirt screen-printed with the image of an eagle, he looked young and vigorous.
“No. Nuh-uh. No way.” Chris had barely strayed from Jill’s side since they’d boarded the charter bus that morning in Indigo Springs, first sitting next to her, then keeping within a few feet of her at the amusement park’s zoo. Now he edged even closer.
The rest of the dozen or so children in their group, who ranged in age from ten to twelve, hurried to get in line, laug
hing and pointing at the impressive wooden structure. Stanley Kownacki and the three other chaperones followed, not as quickly but just as eagerly.
Stanley had talked up the Wildcat on the bus ride, claiming it reached speeds of up to forty-five miles per hour and was the most thrilling of the park’s eleven coasters. Since most of the children didn’t meet the minimum height requirements for three of the coasters, Jill thought he’d tailored his comments for the audience.
Still, the Wildcat looked impressively daunting. Chris certainly seemed to think so.
“Are you sure you don’t want to try it, honey?” Jill wished she had the magic words to help her brother conquer his fear. “It might be fun.”
Chris stared down at the ground, saying nothing.
Jill shot Dan a resigned look. That morning while they’d visited mountain lions, black bears and gray wolves in the eleven-acre walk-through zoo, she’d quietly reiterated her concerns that Chris would be too timid to try many of the rides.
“He might surprise you,” Dan had said.
She’d wanted to believe that. Unfortunately, she doubted Chris was about to spring any bombshells on her.
“Jill, have you seen Brittany Waverly?” Dan asked, a non sequitur if she’d ever heard one.
Brittany was the only girl on the trip and the sole child besides Chris who wasn’t a 4-H member. Brittany’s mother, one of the chaperones, had brought her along, to the obvious horror of her older brother Timmy.
Jill indicated the line, where the adorable young girl was craning her neck and bouncing on her toes while the boys ignored her. She was maybe nine, but at about four foot three or four she was almost the same height as Chris. If the two of them were any shorter, they wouldn’t meet the minimum height requirements for the ride. “She’s over there with the rest of the kids.”
Almost as if she knew they were talking about her, Brittany looked over at them. Jill noticed Dan give the girl a slight nod. Brittany immediately broke off from the group, skipping across the pavement on her pink tennis shoes, her blond ponytails flying.
“C’mon, Chris.” Her high-pitched, little-girl voice sounded breathless. “I saved you a place in line.”
That Runaway Summer Page 10
