Stealing Our Way Home Read online

  “Like who?” Dad leans forward and examines his face in the mirror. I wonder if his eyes look any different to him.

  “I don’t know. Anyone. A cop. Or just someone who recognizes us.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Dad opens the car door. “We can sit in the back if that makes you feel any better. Come on.”

  I watch as he gets out of the car and heads toward the front door of the restaurant. He stands there for a moment, holding it open, waiting for me. But I don’t move. Not yet. I realize suddenly that if I decide to get out of the car just now and follow him inside, I will never be able to undo that decision. There’s no turning back. It’s like jumping off a cliff and deciding halfway down you’ve changed your mind. Impossible. What if going in there with him is the wrong decision? And what if this one wrong decision leads to a whole other set of wrong decisions? What then?

  “Hey, buddy?” Dad lifts his chin, looking at me. “You coming, or what?”

  But maybe it’s not the wrong decision. Maybe it’s just going inside a Friendly’s restaurant, sliding into a red leather booth, and eating a meatloaf dinner with my dad.

  “Jack?” Dad’s voice is louder. He holds a hand out, palm up, a “what’s going on?” gesture.

  I take a deep, deep breath.

  And then I slide out of the car and follow him inside.

  “Stop pulling on your shirt,” Jack says at the bus stop. “You’re going to stretch it before you even get a chance to wear it.”

  I turn around, but not before sticking out my tongue at him. I don’t know what he’s so irritated about. Or why he’s been all worked up for the past few days. He came up behind me on Wednesday and ripped the newspaper right out of my hand. Right while I was reading it! I tried to get it back, but he just pushed me away and walked outside. He thinks because he’s older than me, he can do whatever he wants. Well, it’s getting annoying. It really is.

  I give the bottom of my new shirt another tug, just to let him know he’s not the boss of me, and hitch my new backpack along my shoulders. The backpacks were extra, something that Dad surprised us with after coming home two days ago with all the clothes that Jack and I picked out at Murphy’s. Packed inside were tons of new notebooks, packages of pens and pencils, calculators, and even a mini whiteboard with magnets on the back and a matching pen for my cubby.

  “Good, right?” Dad beamed as I threw my arms around him afterward. “Did I do okay?”

  I nodded and glanced over at Jack, who was sitting on the couch, scowling. Again.

  “Jack?” Dad asked. “You got everything you need in there? Anything I missed?”

  “Nope.” He stood up, slinging the backpack over his shoulder, and walked out of the room.

  I watched Dad watch him go. Dad’s jaw was tight, and his eyes were sad, which made my stomach twist around inside. I put my arms around his neck and held him close. You kept your promise, I wanted to say. Just like you said you would. You made everything better. It’s okay.

  Now, Jack’s face brightens a little as Shelby appears at the bus stop. She looks nice, dressed in a soft white skirt that comes to her knees, a short-sleeved denim shirt, and her pink boots. But except for the bag of sunflower seeds that she’s holding in one hand, she doesn’t have a single notebook or pencil anywhere on her. For a moment, I wonder if she’s going to school at all. Maybe she’s just here to wave us off.

  “Hey y’all.” Her boots crunch against the gravel, and her hair, which she’s pulled up high into a ponytail, looks like it’s been curled at the tips. “Day one of jail time, right?”

  Jack smiles, but just a little. “Depends on who you get for homeroom.”

  “Oh, I doubt it.” Shelby rolls her eyes and inserts a few seeds into her mouth. “They’re all the same.”

  Jack scuffs the toe of his new sneakers against the ground. “Where’s your books and stuff?”

  “Don’t have any yet.”

  “When are you going to get them?”

  “Don’t know,” Shelby says mysteriously. “I kinda like to take things as they come.”

  Jack gives her a look that says he doesn’t understand her answer either.

  Shelby looks over at me. “You see Mr. Thurber anywhere yet?” I shake my head no, pushing down a knot of annoyance. Ever since she came over to Nibs’ place for dinner, Shelby’s made it a point to ask me about Mr. Thurber every chance she gets. I know she’s just trying to be nice, but it feels weird too, like she already thinks she knows him or something. The truth is, Mom was the only person who really knew Mr. Thurber. Which means that he knew her too. Which also means that if something in his heron brain understands that she’s never coming back, maybe he won’t, either.

  No. I don’t want to think about it. I won’t.

  “Nibs told me sometimes they leave early,” Shelby offers. “You know, when they migrate south? Maybe that’s what happened.”

  I shake my head. Mr. Thurber would never leave this early. He doesn’t take off until midway through September, and sometimes it’s even later than that. And he’d never leave without saying good-bye. He always, always says good-bye.

  “You sure?” Shelby sucks in her cheeks and spits a sunflower seed. It sails across the road and disappears inside a clump of blue cornflowers.

  I nod. Definitely.

  Jack kicks a pebble into a clump of grass nearby. “Pippa thinks she and Mr. Thurber have a special connection. Some kind of Animal Planet thing where she can understand what he’s thinking.”

  I frown, glaring at my brother. It’s not like him to make fun of me. Especially in front of someone he’s trying to impress all the time.

  “Well, maybe she does,” Shelby says. “I knew a guy in Texas who could stare into a rattlesnake’s eyes until it stopped rattlin’ and slithered away in the other direction.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jack kicks at another rock.

  Shelby arches an eyebrow. “You don’t believe me?”

  Jack doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t have to. The expression on his face says it all.

  Thankfully, the bus lumbers around the corner just then, before things get really uncomfortable. But not before I catch Shelby slitting her eyes at Jack. I know just how she feels. It stinks having someone you thought was in your corner act the way Jack’s acting. I don’t know what the problem is, but ever since the Middlebury trip with Dad, he’s been acting weird.

  And I’m going to find out why.

  It’s been five days since Middlebury.

  Dad and I haven’t talked about it. Not once.

  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to. I have. Especially after the story in the newspaper came out two days later. I grabbed the pages right out of Pippa’s hands while she was reading it and walked out of the house. I had to sit down on the porch; my knees were buckling. Right on the back of the first page was a picture of Dad. It must’ve been taken from some kind of video camera in the corner of the bank. He was standing in front of the bank teller, and even though it was a little fuzzy, you could make out the Batman mask. You could see the collar of his dress shirt and the way his hair stuck out along the bottom of the mask.

  SUPERVILLAIN ROBS BANK IN MIDDLEBURY, the headline reads. The article that followed said everything I already knew—minus any information about me. I know it sounds terrible, but I practically bawled when I realized no one had seen me. That I was—at least as far as I could tell—still safe.

  I didn’t even hear Pippa come up behind me, not until she stuck her little notebook over my shoulder and practically gave me a heart attack.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I bellowed, smacking away her notebook without bothering to look at what she’d written. “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on people?” She looked stricken for a second, as if I had slapped her in the face, but I didn’t care.

  I took off, crushing the newspaper into a ball and throwing it into the garbage can by the mailbox. My bike was on the ground in front of the shed, and I snatched it up and started pe
daling down Lake Road like a crazy person. The skin on my face was hot and my fingertips tingled. I rode and rode until my legs felt like rubber and my chest hurt from pulling in air.

  And then, because there was nowhere else to go and nothing more I could do, I turned around and rode back home again.

  I want to ask Dad about the police, about how long it might take for them to look for us, what things they’ll dust for fingerprints, and how long they’ll keep looking before they start working on something else.

  And I want to ask him how much money he got, if it’s enough to pay off the mortgage and catch up on the bills and give him time to find a real job so we can put this behind us and forget it ever happened.

  But I can’t bring myself to ask him anything. I guess I’m scared. I don’t want to say the words out loud. If I hear them coming out of my mouth, the whole thing will have been real.

  It will have actually happened.

  And if it actually happened, that means I was there. Even if Dad and I are the only two people who know it.

  It’s hard to know how to feel about all of it. I’m so angry at Dad. But I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this badly for him either. Take the night we came home from Middlebury and found Nibs sitting on our couch in the dark. Pippa was asleep next to her, so she kept her voice down, but even her whispers were loud.

  “Why has your electricity been turned off, Sam?” she asked. “And the water, too. Did you know they’re both off?”

  “Jack.” Dad nodded at me. “Take your sister upstairs, all right? Hit the sack. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I got Pippa tucked into bed, but I didn’t go into my room. I sat on the stairs and listened. I didn’t know about the water yet, but I wasn’t surprised. Not really. Not with the way things were going. I’m not normally an eavesdropper, but there was no way I could sleep with everything that had just happened. My whole body felt like one big power line, twitching and buzzing with electricity. I wanted to hear what Dad was going to tell Nibs. How he was going to explain it to her.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Nibs said softly. “And I don’t mean to interfere with your personal business. Really I don’t. But I’m worried about you, Sam. And the children. Pippa couldn’t even brush her teeth tonight because the water’s been shut off. Did you know that? There’s no food in the refrigerator, and when I—”

  Dad cut her off. “It’s been a tough few months. Things have piled up, and I’ve gotten behind, obviously. But I just got a good chunk of money from the job in Middlebury. I can pay everything off now, so we’ll be fine. Really. I appreciate your concern, Nibs, but you don’t have to worry. I’m on it, okay? I really am.”

  And he was on it. When he came home the next day with groceries and all those new clothes from Murphy’s, plus extra supplies for school, it felt good. It really did. And when the electricity and the water went back on, and I saw Dad mailing in mortgage payments to the bank, it felt even better. Like maybe the whole thing had sort of been worth it. That maybe it wasn’t as bad as I’d made it out to be.

  The night before school started, Dad went out and bought a whole bunch of steaks and grilled them up as a thank-you dinner for Nibs. She was thrilled. Actually, tickled was the word she kept using. “Well, this is completely unnecessary, but I’m tickled for you, Sam. Just tickled.”

  It was nice to see her happy, especially after she’d been so worried about us, and even nicer to see Dad standing up a little straighter and lifting his chin as she smiled. As if he’d been able to do something right, finally.

  Even if he’d had to rob a bank to do it.

  Miss Rhonda Rhodes, my new teacher, is not pretty at all. She has short, scraggly blonde hair, a big mole on her cheek, and crooked teeth. I can’t tell how old she is, but her brown skirt, baggy blue shirt, and soft white sneakers remind me of Grandma Kendall. To top it all off, she smells like Ritz crackers and old-lady perfume.

  It’s going to be a long year.

  But there are other things to worry about right now aside from Miss Rhonda Rhodes. Like Molly and Susan, who are practically tripping over each other to get to my desk.

  “Hey, Pippa,” Molly says. “Didn’t you see me waving at you in homeroom?” Molly has thick blonde hair and six freckles on her face. Every time I look at them, I think about connecting the dots. If I did, it would make a perfect box around her eyes, nose, and chin. Now I nod, staring at her belt, which is blue with little pink fish embroidered on it.

  “And me, too?” Susan asks. Susan is the shortest girl in our class. Her hands are half the size of mine, and she still buys her shoes in the children’s department.

  I nod at Susan’s question too and press my lips together.

  Susan and Molly exchange a worried glance. “But you’re not talking to us anymore?” Molly asks. “Like, at all?” Her face is squished up. She sounds hurt. Maybe even a little annoyed.

  I don’t want to pull out my notebook. I know the looks they’ll give one another if I do, even though it’s the only way right now that I could say I’d love to talk to them, but that I can’t because all my words are trapped inside and I don’t know how to get them out.

  “My mom says we have to give her time,” Susan half whispers, as if I’m not sitting right there and can’t hear her. “You know, ’cause of everything that happened.”

  I glance up at Susan. I’ve always liked her. She’s funny and she doesn’t let the rude things other kids have said about being so small get her down. But right now, I want to punch her in the arm. Hard.

  “All right everyone!” Miss Rhodes claps her hands. “Please take a seat. We need to get started!”

  Molly catches my gaze and looks away quickly, grabbing Susan’s arm. “Come on,” she says. “Sit with me over here.”

  I watch them go, unable to look away as they settle themselves in a pair of desks against the wall. Maybe I should try the notebook with them. Would they laugh? Think I’m too weird to stay friends with? Could I make it through the whole year without friends?

  “All right, class,” Miss Rhodes begins. “I’d like to start with the letter I mailed each of you at the beginning of the summer. Let’s see a show of hands please. How many of you got that in the mail?”

  A forest of hands appears, including mine, which I raise very slowly.

  “And the book?” Miss Rhodes continues, arching an eyebrow. “Tito the Warrior?”

  Another sea of hands.

  “Wonderful!” Miss Rhodes claps her hands again. She has a high-pitched, scratchy voice. “Then I’d like everyone to get out the list of facts I asked you to make while reading your book.” There is a flurry of movement as students reach down for folders and notebooks and place them on their desks. I don’t move.

  Miss Rhodes flicks her eyes over the class, pauses on me, and then moves on. “Who would like to start?”

  Molly raises her hand. “When they were born, Spartan babies were inspected for any kind of physical problems,” she reads from her notebook. “If the baby was sick, he was abandoned on a hillside, where he was left to die.”

  There is a murmur throughout the class, followed by nodding, knowing heads.

  “That’s exactly right, Molly.” Miss Rhodes’ voice has turned grave. “The Spartan culture was very, very strict. Any kind of weakness was not tolerated. And even if the babies did pass the first physical inspection, there were other challenges ahead. Would anyone like to comment on that?”

  George Hayward, in the front row, raises his hand. “Yeah, they were still strict with the toddlers,” he says, glancing at his notes. “They ignored them when they cried. And they taught the kids not to be afraid of the dark or of being alone. Like, if they could conquer those two things, they could pretty much do anything.”

  “Very good, George,” Miss Rhodes says. “Now who can tell me what happened to the Spartan children when they reached the age of five?”

  More hands.

  I slink down farther and farther in my seat, preten
ding not to notice as Miss Rhodes glances at me and then looks away again. Gabby Richards informs the class that five-year-old Spartan children were taken away from their parents and sent to live in a gigantic house with other kids, where their military training began. Kayla Stevens tells everyone that Spartan military training was some of the most brutal ever recorded, and it included things like being whipped in public and going without food or warm clothing for long periods of time.

  “Very, very good,” Miss Rhodes says, surveying the class a final time. “Now after hearing all that, it might be hard to imagine why the Spartans treated children so harshly. It’s because they wanted them to become brave, courageous soldiers. After overcoming so many challenges in their youth, heading into battle was nothing to these guys. And this leads me to our first class project. As we continue to study Tito the Warrior and Spartan culture, I want each of you to think about someone you might describe as a modern-day Spartan. They don’t need to have endured the kind of childhood that Spartan kids did, of course, but they must have overcome some kind of difficulty that has made them into the brave, courageous person they are today. It can be a man, a woman, or even someone your own age. You are going to write a paper about this person and then present it to the class. We are also going to have a little ceremony on the day the papers are delivered, and you are encouraged to invite the person you wrote about to attend. We’ll have a small reception afterward, with cake and punch. How does that sound?”

  There is a combination of gasps and groans, clapping, and slumping against the desks.

  I am one of the slumpers.

  When the bell rings, Miss Rhodes calls my name. “Pippa? Will you come here please?”

  I walk toward her slowly, wondering whether or not she saw me hiding from her. Or if I am going to have to use my notebook.

  She smiles warmly at me as I approach and pats the chair next to her desk. “Have a seat.”