The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys Read online

  “Charlie?” Mom said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m just going on a little trip, Mom.”

  “A trip? A trip where?”

  “Just someplace. I have to do something.”

  “What? What do you have to do?”

  “I really don’t want to say. I just . . . I want you to know I’m fine. I’m okay. I don’t want you to worry. I’ll call again when I can.”

  “Charlie,” she said more sternly, “this isn’t some kind of joke, is it? Because if it is—”

  “It’s not a joke,” I said.

  She was silent a long time. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  I was thinking about what to tell her when I heard a rustling out in the darkness of the yard and then a jingling. I froze. It hadn’t dawned on me the chain-link fence was there for a reason until a big black mastiff came loping out of the shadows, the metal tags hanging from its collar clinking. The dog—it was hard to call it a dog when it was as big as a small horse—walked up on the deck, gazing at me with its big black eyes. We were practically at eye level. A line of slobber hung from the corner of its mouth like a gooey rubber band. Its tail wasn’t wagging, which wasn’t a good sign. It took me a second to realize the dog had only three legs.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “Charlie?” Mom said, obviously detecting the worry in my voice. “Charlie, what is it?”

  “Uh, nothing, I just . . .”

  The mastiff took a few steps toward me.

  “G-Good boy,” I said. “Nice dog.”

  “What dog?” Mom said. “Charlie, answer me!”

  The mastiff jumped up and I screamed. It was a real whopper of a scream, long and high-pitched, like a woman in one of those slasher flicks. But the dog didn’t attack. It began to whine and lick my face, front paws on my shoulders as if we were going to dance, tail now wagging furiously. In the onslaught of affection, I dropped the phone, and it clacked against the deck. I heard my mother screaming hysterically.

  “Charlie!” she cried. “Charlie! Oh God, what’s happening? Oh God, oh God . . .”

  I was drowning in a shower of drool, and the dog’s breath was awful, like the inside of an outhouse. If you wanted to get a prisoner to talk, there was no need for any other form of torture. After only a few seconds, I would have given up all of our national secrets just for the promise of a hot bath. By the time I managed to get the dog down, I heard the screen door behind me open. I turned, and there was Jake, looking dazed. His long hair had fallen in front of his eyes.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “Charlie! Charlie!” came Mom’s tiny voice below.

  I reached for the phone, but the mastiff took it as a sign that I wanted to play, and he put his head between me and the phone. More slobbering ensued. Meanwhile, Jake snatched up the phone.

  “No!” I said. “Give me—”

  “Mrs. Hill?” he said. “This is Jake. Charlie’s fine. Only smoked pot once, and I don’t think he really inhaled much. Talk to you later.”

  I pushed the dog away and lunged for the phone, but it was too late; he’d already clicked off. I ripped the phone away and glared at him, but it was no good; it was like glaring at someone who’d just woken from a long nap. Still, I was so pissed that I was really going to let him have it, maybe even throw in a few swear words, but before I could, I heard a deep male voice yell from the living room.

  “Stay where you are! You’re under arrest!”

  That woke Jake up. He jerked upright like a wind-up soldier and then looked at me, mouthing the word cops. So this was it, I thought. Regardless of what I’d told Mom, it was all going to end before we’d even gotten started.

  But Jake wasn’t thinking about giving up. He bolted down the steps and headed for the fence.

  “Where’re you going?” I said.

  “Run!” he said.

  “We can’t—”

  “Run!”

  Beyond the reach of the light, he was nothing but a dark shape. I watched that shape leap up and over the fence like a gymnast who’d been doing it all his life. Heart pounding, I followed because I didn’t know what else to do. I had a little more trouble climbing the chain-link, and when I reached the top, the mastiff bit down on my backpack, tugging at me. Grr, grr, grr. It was a friendly growl, like it thought it was a game. I knew the mastiff would bring the cops outside soon, and, panicking, I swatted at the dog. This must have surprised him as much as it did me, because he let me go. With a great effort, I scaled the fence and stumbled over, falling, skinning my palms on a concrete sidewalk. Then I sprang up, running again.

  Down a strange dark street.

  Following Jake.

  For the second time that day, running from the cops and following Jake.

  If that wasn’t a sign I was supposed to stop hanging around him, I didn’t know what was.

  chapter nine

  Jake angled across one of the lawns onto a side street and disappeared around the corner. Dogs yipped at us from the safety of their fenced-in yards. A man and a woman were yelling at each other in their kitchen. I followed after Jake, huffing and puffing my way there, and nearly ran past him. The street lamp above us was out, and Jake was hiding behind a boxy motor home parked on the street. I could just barely make out the fringes of his blond hair and his jean jacket.

  I ducked in next to him, leaning against the cool metal, gasping for breath. He put a finger to his lips and cocked his head, listening. I didn’t hear anything except the barking dogs and the buzzing of a nearby electric box. The sweat on my face turned cold in the night breeze.

  “I don’t think they’re following us,” he whispered.

  “You know,” I said, breathing hard, “this running from the police thing is starting to get old.”

  “Really? And here I thought we were just starting to get good at it.”

  “What’re we going to do? We don’t have anywhere to stay.”

  “We’ll wait here. Just for a few minutes. Make sure the cops aren’t coming.”

  “Where are we going to stay? I thought we were going to crash there for the night. We don’t have any—”

  “I don’t know, Charlie, okay!”

  I let it drop for the time being, figuring he’d let me in on some sort of plan when the time was right. My backpack felt as if it was filled with bricks. It was all the tomelike textbooks in there, and I thought about how silly it was, running from cops with a bunch of textbooks. When it was obvious the cops weren’t coming, Jake started walking. The moon was up high by now, and I had butterflies in my stomach, because I didn’t even know what time it was. It must have been late. Eventually, I couldn’t push the doubts away any longer, and I asked Jake again what we were going to do.

  He sighed. “I don’t know. How about get a hotel room?”

  “A hotel room?” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ve got money. We’ll stay the night, then maybe take a bus in the morning. Too late to do anything else tonight, don’t you think?”

  “Um yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get two beds.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I said.

  “Yeah, you were. I could tell. You were wondering if I was some kind of homo. Look, here’s a main road. There’s got to be one down here.”

  It wasn’t much of a main road, just two lanes with a couple of gas stations, a mini mart, a Denny’s, and there, a couple blocks down, a Motel 6. I tried to imagine walking inside the motel, arranging for a room, and then actually staying the night—without Mom or Rick or Dad or anybody else to chaperone. Just the two of us. I couldn’t see it. But then there we were, walking along the deserted street, our skin looking chalky in the moonlight, only the occasional car rumbling past. In moments we were at the hotel. It was two stories, maybe two dozen rooms, all with orange outside doors. Only about a third of the parking spots were full. The pool was covered and dark.

  Jake stopped at the sidewalk path to the motel o
ffice and looked at me. He didn’t say anything, but there was still a question on his face: You ready? I looked at the motel, feeling my heart pound a little harder, wondering just what the hell I was doing in Bend, Oregon, about to stay in a motel with a guy who’d once broken my Game Boy and still hadn’t apologized for it. Stranger things may have happened, but I couldn’t think of any at the moment.

  “You sure you have enough money?” I asked.

  “I’ve got more than enough,” he said.

  “But you don’t have to spend it. I’m sure you’ve got other stuff—”

  “I want to.”

  “Yeah, but on a motel room?” I said. “You could always buy stuff you want. It’s a lot of money.”

  Jake didn’t say anything for a minute. An old gray truck passed, kicking up dust and dirt. “What is it, Charlie?” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m getting the feeling maybe you don’t want to do this.”

  I heard the rattle of wheels across the street. I looked and saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart, emerging from the shadows behind the mini-mart. It was just coincidence, I guess, but it did get me thinking. Could that be me a little ways down the road? He was hairy enough that somebody might mistake him for Bigfoot, except Bigfoot didn’t wear clothes and this guy had on enough clothes to make it through an Alaskan winter. Of course, that might be how Bigfoot had eluded capture all these years. Maybe he had just put on some clothes and had started pushing a shopping cart.

  After the excitement of almost getting caught by the police for the second time, I was having second thoughts. My thinking was that I had pushed it as far as I could. I wanted to be some kind of James Dean rebel, wanted to be bold and deliver the drawing to Dad in person, travel across the country, have adventures, but I was realizing it just wasn’t me. It was like I’d fallen into a raging river, and I’d just let it carry me along for a while, but now I was on the shore. If I continued from here, it was by my own choice, and not because I was letting it happen.

  “I don’t want to be a party pooper,” I said.

  He snorted. “Party pooper? What are you, in fifth grade? Nobody talks like that. You want to go back? Just spit it out, if that’s what you want.” He pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lit it up with a little yellow lighter. He took a few puffs, blowing it out of the side of his mouth. “Come on, man, just say it.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Yeah what?”

  “Yeah, I want to go back.”

  He shook his head. “Unbelievable. Come on, live a little!”

  “I just . . . I’ve got to go home, Jake. This is just too crazy for me.”

  “Uh-huh. Let me ask you something. Are you happy right now?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

  “Sure, you guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You guess you’re happy.”

  “Right.”

  “Like, you’re not sure.”

  I snorted. “What are you, a fucking shrink?”

  My use of the f-word shocked both of us. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever said it out loud before. Even weirder, it felt good saying it.

  “Ah, profanity,” he said with a small smile. “Slowly, we make progress.”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “Don’t overdo it, now,” he said. “A little too much, and you might end up like me. A real loser.” He took another few drags of his cigarette, smiling a little, looking at me the way you might look at a science project that had come out the way you’d hoped. “Look, man,” he went on, “I’m not going to try to convince you anymore. I’m just saying you should trust your instincts. If you’re happy, go with it. Stop worrying so much. But if you still want to go home, then go. Call your mom or whatever. I’m sure she’ll come get you.”

  He didn’t sound condescending, like he was trying to make me feel bad for running home to mama. He sounded fed up.

  “She can take you home too,” I said.

  “Oh no,” he said. “I can’t go home.”

  “Huh? What do you mean, can’t?”

  “I can’t go back,” he said. “At least not right now. Not for a while.”

  “Why?”

  He kicked at the curb. “Well, see, it’s about the money. There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I might have . . . well, I might have stole it.”

  “Stole it!” I said, even though I’d kind of thought he might have taken it from someone. “Well, you’ll just give it back.”

  “It’s not that easy,” he said. “See, my foster mom, she’s kind of a slut—”

  “Jake!”

  “Well, sorry, but it’s true. When my foster dad’s out driving his truck, she’s always sleeping with somebody. Like, every night almost. And I kind of stole it from one of her boyfriends. Right out of his pants, before I left for school today.”

  “I don’t understand why—”

  “And he’s a drug dealer. Kind of big one, really. And he has guns. Lots of them.”

  I fell silent, digesting what he’d said. “Well, it wasn’t a lot of money, just a couple hundred—”

  “Yeah, I kind of lied about that, too. I’ve got over five thousand.”

  It was like I’d just found myself in some kind of gangster movie, but I didn’t know my lines. This sort of thing didn’t happen to somebody sixteen years old, at least not somebody like me, somebody who would probably break into a cold sweat if he even stole a paper clip. Five thousand dollars. From a drug dealer. Drug dealers killed people for that sort of thing. If I’d been in a daze since leaving Rexton, this was like the smelling salts that brought me back to reality.

  “Oh God,” I said. “Oh God, oh God.” Now I sounded like my mother, which made me feel even worse.

  “Hey, man,” he said, “you don’t look so good.”

  “I think I’m going to throw up. I can’t believe you did that! Is it really that much?”

  He pulled the wad of bills out of his front pocket. When he flipped through them, I saw that there were a few twenties on top, but mostly it was hundreds. The world felt like it was tilting. I sat down on the curb. The concrete felt cold through my jeans, and then I felt cold all over. The homeless man was a couple of blocks away now, but I could still hear the rattle of his cart. Now I didn’t see him as a possible future. I actually wanted to be him. At least he probably didn’t have to worry about getting iced by some drug dealer.

  “You’ve got to give it back,” I said.

  “Man, I can’t,” he said. “If I give back the money, how am I supposed to get around?”

  “You don’t! You go home!”

  He shook his head. “You’re not getting it. If I go home, he’ll kill me. Put me in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Not if you give back the money!”

  Jake sat down on the curb next to me, crossing his legs so that his knees touched the road. He took a long drag on his cigarette, then let it out slowly. The pockmarks on his cheeks, filled with shadows, gave him leopardlike skin. “Look,” he said, “I’m not giving it back. It’s my starting-over money.”

  “Your what?”

  “My starting-over money,” he said. A rusted-out VW bug rumbled past, the loud engine making it impossible to talk. When it was gone, Jake took a few more puffs on the cigarette. He was trying to look cool, but there was something in his eyes that made him seem just like a scared little kid. “I can’t go back to that life,” he said quietly. “I can’t. I’m going to do something great, and I need some money to do it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got some ideas.”

  “Well, like what?”

  “Just some stuff. You know, some things I’ve been playing around with.” He looked at me. “I didn’t tell you this before, but there’s somebody I want to see too. He lives in Cheyenne, and it’s really not that far from Denver. I thought we could go see him after, you know, we see your dad. He said he�
��d help me get going, you know, get my feet off the ground. He’s also my uncle.”

  “Your uncle?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “My dad’s brother. They didn’t get along. Bruce—that’s my dad’s brother—he’s really successful. He owns all kinds of businesses. He told me if I ever showed up on his doorstep when I was all grown, he’d help me get set up. Told me at the big family reunion deal we did one summer way back. It was like the only time I saw him.”

  I wanted to say, because your dad ran off? But I remembered how he had reacted when I’d mentioned his father before. “He’d get you set up doing what?”

  Jake shrugged. “Who cares? It’ll be better than hanging around Rexton, that’s for sure.” He sighed. “Here’s what I’ll do. If you come with me, I promise I’ll send the money back after we see Uncle Bruce. I bet I can even get Uncle Bruce to spot me whatever I spent so far, so my foster mom’s boyfriend will get the whole five thousand. If he gets everything back, you won’t have anything to worry about.”

  “You think he’d do that? Give you the money?”

  “Probably. Sure.” He must have seen the look on my face, because he went on. “Look, I don’t know him that well. Just met him like that one time, really. But he was very nice. I got the feeling he cared about what happened to me. Like he knew my parents were shit heads.”

  “Jake!”

  “Well, it’s true. They’re big-time shit heads and everybody knows it.”

  “Yeah, well, you still shouldn’t say it.”

  “Why not?” he said, and I could see the challenge on his face. “I see my mom maybe a couple times a year, and she’s so baked she usually doesn’t remember me. And Dad . . .” I thought I was finally going to learn what was going on with his dad, but he just shook his head. “And my foster parents, they’re dickwads too. I can’t go back, Charlie. I’m going to see Uncle Bruce. I was just waiting for my chance. It was just luck that I ended up with the money on the same day you were going to get pounded by Leo. And then when I saw that portrait, I thought, Hey, why not both of us go. Two birds with one stone, you know.” He laughed. “The Water Balloon Boys on one last great getaway.”