Runaways Read online

  It was late when Linda finally appeared. The black tank had long since crawled to a stop outside the cabin door, and Pixie had run out to meet it. Even though dinnertime had come and gone Stormy was still right there in the O’Donnells’ kitchen, looking hopeful. At last Dani decided somebody had to do something, so she began to peel some potatoes. She was starting on the second one when Linda finally walked slowly up the back steps and into the kitchen, looking—not angry exactly, but not happy either. Just tired and worried.

  “So what happened? What did they want?” Dani demanded immediately. “What did the Grabby Grablers want to see you about?”

  Linda put her purse down on the table and stood for a second or two with her back to Dani before she turned around slowly and said, “It seems the Grablers want to buy our ranch. They made an offer for all of it. The house and the land too.”

  Trying to control a surge of hope and excitement that for a moment almost swamped her voice, Dani said, “But why? I mean, why do they want to buy it? When we were trying to sell it before, they said it was worthless.” Dani remembered very well what the Grablers had said, which was that the O’Donnells’ land was worse than worthless because the upkeep and taxes would be more than what you could sell it for.

  Linda nodded. “I know. I don’t understand why they’ve changed their mind.” Sitting down at the table, she stared off into space for several seconds before she went on. “Brenda tried to make it sound as if they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, because they’d heard I might be losing my job. But I found that a little hard to believe.” She smiled ruefully. “However, it’s true that whatever their motivation was, there didn’t seem to be much of it. Judging by what they were offering, at least.”

  But at that point Dani wasn’t concerned about offers and motivations. The rising tide of hope was getting higher and higher. Putting down the half-peeled potato, she sat at the table opposite her mother. “Well, what I think,” she said, her voice a little jittery with excitement, “is that you ought to take it. I mean even if it’s not very much it’s got to be enough to pay off our debts and move us back to Sea Grove. It has to be that much, doesn’t it?”

  Out of the corner of her eye Dani noticed that Stormy had taken her place at the sink and was finishing the potato she’d been working on. A move which she should have questioned since Stormy often had bad luck with sharp objects. But her mind was elsewhere. “It has to be that much, doesn’t it?” she asked her mother again.

  Linda sighed. “That’s just it. It isn’t that much. What they’re offering is ridiculous, really. They’re willing to honor my lease to the Smithsons for five more months and pay me three hundred dollars besides, if they can buy the property immediately. Which means they’d get the house and all that land for just three hundred dollars of their own money.” She shook her head slowly. “It would pay off our debts, just barely, but with hardly anything left over. It’s really an unbelievably low offer.”

  “But we have to take it,” Dani wailed. “It’s probably the best chance we’ll ever have to get out of here. We have to take it.”

  But Linda only shook her head, and it was then that the premonition about something terrible happening began to come true. This time it turned out to be the worst argument that Dani and her mother had ever had. The argument went on and on, with both of them saying the same old things, only getting angrier and meaner than usual. After a while they were practically shouting at each other.

  At one point Dani yelled, “You just don’t care about what I want or what happens to me. You wouldn’t care if I just dried up and blew away, would you? Then you could just go on reading your mushy books and listening to your soap operas without anyone bugging you all the time. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  And then Linda said, “No that’s not true, Danielle O’Donnell, and you know it. You know I want to leave here too, but there’s no way we can do that when we have nowhere to go and no money to get there.”

  There was no telling how and when the argument might have ended except that just as the shouting was at its worst Stormy started yelling too. But what he was shouting was, “Ow, ow. I’m bleeding to death.”

  Of course Stormy wasn’t bleeding to death, but it was a pretty deep cut, and everything else came to a stop while Linda ran to get her first-aid things and then worked at getting the bleeding to stop. By the time she was finished with the bandaging, Stormy had stopped worrying about his finger and had started worrying about the potatoes. “Did I bleed on the potatoes?” he kept asking. “Can you eat bloody potatoes?”

  It was just about then that Linda got very stubborn and insisted that there would be no more discussion about selling or moving until dinner was over. “Absolutely none at all,” she said. “Do you hear me, Dani?” It sounded like she really meant it, and it turned out she did, because when Dani tried to sneak in one more important point her mother put down what she was working on and said she was going to throw the dinner in the garbage and go lock herself in the bathroom if Dani didn’t shut up.

  Being told to shut up was something that Dani wasn’t used to, and it made her really angry. For a second she actually thought about saying, “Go ahead and do it.” But then she happened to look at Stormy. It was the horror-struck expression on Stormy’s face, along with the fact that by then she herself was pretty hungry too, that made her bite her tongue. But as soon as dinner was over and Stormy had gone back to the hotel the argument started up again.

  Linda was still sitting at the table finishing her cup of tea and Dani sat down too. Trying to keep her voice calm and reasonable, she said, “Anyway, you didn’t tell them no, for sure, did you?”

  Linda shook her head. “No, not exactly,” she said. “I said I’d need a while to think about it.”

  So there was still some hope. Keeping her voice as calm as possible, Dani said, “Okay, then just promise me one thing. Just promise me that you won’t tell them no, for sure, until we have time to talk about it some more.”

  But then Linda said she didn’t think she could wait very long to decide. “They really seem to be in a hurry,” she said. “When I reminded them that the ranch was leased to the Smithsons for almost five more months, they said that was all right but the sale had to go through right away or they wouldn’t be interested.”

  “That’s crazy,” Dani said. “If they’re in such a hurry to buy the house, why don’t they care if someone else has the right to go on living there for such a long time?”

  “That’s right,” Linda said. “It does seem strange. In fact it seems to me that there are just too many suspicious things about this whole offer.”

  That didn’t sound good. “But you won’t say no right away, will you?” Dani pleaded.

  Linda sighed and shook her head. “Dani,” she said. “I promised them I’d give them an answer by Thursday. And I’m afraid the answer will have to be no.”

  At that point Dani slapped both her hands down on the table and jumped up so fast her chair fell over backward. As it crashed to the floor she ran from the room, pausing only long enough to shout, “You’ll be sorry. If you make us stay here forever you’re really going to be sorry.”

  Chapter 22

  IT WAS THAT VERY night, the night of the big fight with her mother, that the feeling of certainty came back. It was then that the absolute certainty that she, Dani O’Donnell, was about to leave Rattler Springs returned with all the strength it had that day in April, in the old graveyard.

  Sitting cross-legged on her bed—much too hot and angry to even think of going to sleep—Dani thought for quite a while about the reasons she’d almost lost her determination. Part of it was Stormy’s fault, of course. His fault at first for insisting that he was going with her and then, after she’d gotten used to the idea and begun to depend on it, losing interest in the whole project. She didn’t know why Stormy had finked out, but it wasn’t hard to figure that Pixie’s arrival on the scene had something to do with it. Pixie and, of course, the Bl
ack Phantom.

  It really made Dani angry when she thought about Stormy turning into such a two-faced traitor after she had been his best, almost his only, friend for such a long time. And after all those hours of reading out loud, too, not to mention all those healthy meals. Of course she had to give Linda some of the credit for the meals, but if Dani hadn’t been letting the little pest hang around he wouldn’t have been there to be fed all that healthy stuff. And then, after all that, for him to throw her over for a lousy little liar and her expensive bicycle.

  And speaking of the little liar, Pixie herself was also to blame for Dani’s feelings of discouragement. No one but Pixie could have caused the hopeless feeling that happens when something terribly important is promised to you and then, at the last moment, snatched away. As when you were promised one hundred and seventy-five dollars for the running-away fund and then, at the last moment, discovered that all that money had been spent on one stupid bicycle.

  So losing that wonderful fierce certainty had been partly Stormy’s fault and partly Pixie’s—and, an even larger part, Linda’s. Like maybe Linda had guessed what Dani was planning to do and, instead of saying so, had tried to stop it by being pitiful.

  Like that day she’d cried about losing her job, for instance. Dani had felt that those tears were definitely unfair. And the other things that Linda had been doing to make Dani feel guilty weren’t fair either. But she wasn’t going to feel guilty anymore. All that guilty stuff had ended when Linda decided to turn down the Grablers’ offer and threw away the best chance she and Dani would ever have to get back home. She would never, Dani told herself, forgive her mother for that. In fact she probably would never speak to her mother, ever again.

  Picking up her pillow, Dani punched it hard, and the punch felt strong and certain, and the next morning she woke up feeling the same way. Hard and strong, and certain that she was going to run away very soon. Maybe Stormy and Pixie would be going too and maybe they wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter a bit one way or the other. Dani O’Donnell was definitely going to leave Rattler Springs for good and always, before that very week was over.

  Getting out the beat-up old envelope from the back of her underwear drawer, Dani counted the money in the running-away fund. There was now, with the addition of the three dollars and eighteen cents left over from the cafe lunch, a total of forty dollars and twenty-five cents. Which would probably be just about enough for one person to get all the way to Sea Grove, if the one person didn’t spend much on anything else. Like food, for instance. Dani smiled grimly. All right, she’d go without food. Unlike some other people she knew, she didn’t consider stuffing her face the most important thing in life. Being careful to keep her jaw at a firmly determined angle, Dani got dressed and went to the kitchen to have breakfast.

  It was late, but to Dani’s surprise Linda was still there, rinsing out a coffee cup at the sink. No sign of Stormy, though, which was another surprise. Right at first, when Linda said good morning, Dani just nodded, keeping her jaw set, even after she noticed the big platter of apple pancakes, her favorite breakfast. But after a moment she began to reconsider her decision to never speak to her mother again.

  Not that she was any less angry. And certainly not that the apple pancakes made any difference. It was just that it suddenly occurred to her that, right at the moment, any sort of out-of-the-ordinary behavior might not be a good idea. For instance, anything that might make a certain person feel that she had to be especially watchful for the next few days.

  So Dani forced herself to smile a little the next time her mother looked at her and then, just before Linda left the house, she even went so far as to mention that the apple pancakes were very good. Linda said, “I’m so glad,” in a surprised tone of voice and, as she left for work, she patted Dani on the shoulder. At the door she stopped once to say that she was going to try to get home from the bookshop a little early, and another time to ask, “Where do you suppose Stormy is? I made enough pancakes for him.”

  Dani shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “I noticed.”

  Linda went out then, and a few minutes later Dani left too, on her way to the bus stop. Of course no bus ever arrived in Rattler Springs that early in the morning, and there were no buses at all on Wednesdays, but that didn’t matter. All she was planning to do at the moment was to check the most recent bus schedule, and perhaps ask Rosie Arlen, the post office/bus station operator, a few important questions. Questions like what time the Thursday bus usually got into Rattler Springs and, just in case Pixie or Stormy might be going too, at what age a person had to start paying the full adult fare.

  Mrs. Arlen, sometimes known as Nosey Rosie, had sold bus tickets as well as stamps for as long as Dani could remember. She was a large, round woman with several double chins and eyebrows that were plucked out and penciled in. Everybody said she knew everything about everybody in Rattler Springs, and what she didn’t know she was determined to find out one way or another. But Dani wasn’t too worried. Nosey Rosie could be pretty sneaky, all right, but so could Dani O’Donnell.

  She began by looking around the post office. At the public notices and wanted posters and things like that, as if she were just killing time without having anything particular in mind. She looked at the bus schedule notice too, but she knew better than to take what it said as the final word. She’d lived in Rattler Springs long enough to know that buses seldom arrived there on time. When she finally strolled over to the counter the first thing she asked was whether the Thursday bus from Las Vegas had been getting in on time recently.

  “Oh my, no,” Mrs. Arlen said. “Not recently. They’re supposed to be here between five and six in the afternoon but in this kind of weather they usually have to stop along the road to keep from overheating. Lately they’ve been getting in pretty much any time from five to midnight.”

  “Oh,” Dani said. “I was just wondering.” She started to leave then, or pretended to, before she turned back and asked, “Do nine-year-olds have to pay the full adult fare?”

  Mrs. Arlen narrowed her eyes and said, “No, my dear, nine-year-olds don’t pay adult fare.” She leaned forward then and, arching her penciled-in eyebrows, she added, “But we both know you’re a bit older than that. Don’t we, missy?”

  Dani thought about asking if she also knew that people with fat faces oughtn’t to wear skinny eyebrows, but she didn’t. Instead she only unclenched her teeth enough to say she knew she was too old for a children’s ticket but that she was just asking for a friend. She left then and headed back toward the cabin, but as she was going past the Grand Hotel she ran into another of Rattler Springs’ charming residents, Ronnie Grabler.

  Ronnie, who had been leaning against one of the posts that held up the Grablers’ private awning, stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk and put out an arm to block her path.

  “So?” Dani said, giving him her coldest stare. “What do you want?”

  Ronnie’s grin was just as sinister as always. “Guess you heard the news already,” he said.

  “What news is that?” Dani asked.

  “The news that my folks are going to buy your mother’s ranch.”

  “Is that what you heard?” Dani asked. And then, to her own surprise and shock, she heard herself adding, “What I heard was that your folks’ offer was ridiculous and my mom’s going to turn it down.”

  “Oh yeah?” Ronnie’s pudgy face twisted into a bulldog snarl. “And what I heard was that if your mom does that, my folks are going to raise the rent on a certain old cabin.” He chuckled evilly. “I mean, you folks can’t expect to live in a famous place like that for peanuts. So what I heard is my folks are going to raise that there rent a whole lot. That’s what I heard.”

  “Is that so?” Dani could feel a hot, red tide of anger oozing across her face. “Sounds like a Grabler trick, all right. Folks don’t call you guys the Grabby Grablers for nothing.” It wasn’t a very smart thing to say. She knew that Ronnie didn’t mind hitting girls, because she’d seen h
im do it. So in the split second it took him to figure out just how angry he ought to be, she ducked under his arm and ran.

  Chapter 23

  DANI RAN, AND A moment later she began to hear a clomping noise, as Ronnie came out of his trance and came after her. The heavy thud of boots was beginning to gain on her as she reached the entrance to the General Store and, on a sudden impulse, darted inside. It wasn’t a well-thought-out move. The store, after all, was Grabler property and if anybody was there they’d probably be on Ronnie’s side. But halfway down the aisle that separated hardware from groceries Dani suddenly knew where she was headed—behind the lunchroom counter, through the kitchen and out through the service door. The back door that opened directly onto the truck alley, and the path that led to the cabin. And then, unless a Grabler or one of their employees stopped her, she’d be safely home.

  For once her luck held. No one the least bit dangerous was in the store. No one at all except for one plump, middle-aged clerk, way up on a ladder arranging things on a high shelf. Dani had time for a quick glimpse of a startled face way up above the grocery shelves as she dashed down the aisle, ducked under the lunch counter and darted into the kitchen. But it was there that her plan fell apart. The service door was locked.

  Dani jerked frantically at the locked door as the sound of Ronnie’s voice yelling questions at the clerk, and then the thud of his boots, got closer and louder. Definitely locked. She glanced around desperately, thinking, “Key? Key? No key. Another way out? Yes.” She ran again then, across the kitchen to an alcove that opened into a short, dark hallway, and at its end some narrow wooden stairs that led up to another even darker hall. Dani had run up the stairs and was feeling her way, her eyes not yet adjusted to the lack of light, when suddenly something grabbed her from behind and jerked her backward, gasping and struggling, through a doorway.