Do You Know the Monkey Man? (8 page)

A
ndrew turned the music off as we started down the hill into Hill Valley. “You guys awake?” he asked. “We’re almost there.”

“We’re awake,” Angela said. She sat up a little straighter and stared out the window.

“So this is where you used to live,” I said. We passed a school, then a row of fast-food places and a park. “Looks like a nice town.”

No response.

I tapped Angela on the shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, her forehead pressed against the window. “It’s just weird to be back. Everything looks so different.”

“Tell me about it,” Andrew said. I have to say I was really impressed that he never once needed Angela to check the map the whole trip.

“Have you guys been to your father’s house before?” I asked.

Angela snorted. “We used to live there.”

“Oh.” She’d never told me her dad lived in her old house.

“Dad bought Mom out when we moved to Iowa,” Andrew explained.

We turned onto a nice tree-lined street. The houses were bigger than my house, but not huge. And not fancy. They were just regular nice houses. Bikes and scooters rested in front of several of them.

Andrew stopped in front of a tall white house with red trim. A large porch stretched across the whole front of the house. A red ball, a plastic shovel, and a little yellow dump truck lay in the front yard.

It had been three hours since we’d stopped at Pizza Hut, so I was pretty anxious to get out of the car and stretch, not to mention go to the bathroom. But Angela and Andrew took their sweet time getting out of the car. They both stared at the house as though they’d never seen it before.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, glancing over at the house. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“Our house is supposed to be blue,” Angela said, slamming her car door.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been here,” Andrew said. “I’m sure this isn’t the only thing that’s changed.”

The door to the house swung open and a little boy with curly blond hair toddled out onto the porch and grinned. A woman with matching curly hair followed close behind. She reminded me of a toy poodle, kind of small and nervous.

“Well, hello there.” She scooped up the little boy in her arms and clomped down the stairs to greet us. “You made it.” I noticed her smile was a little too big for her mouth.

“Hi, Noreen,” Andrew said. He had a pretty fake smile on his face, too.

Angela didn’t say anything.

Noreen carefully set the little boy down on the grass and he toddled over to me. “Baaah?” he said. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.

“Cameron wants you to play ball with him, Angela,” Noreen said to me.

What? Did she think I was Angela?

“She’s not Angela,” Angela spoke right up. “I am. This is my friend, Sam. Remember, I called last night and asked if she could come?”

Angela sort of sidestepped around Cameron, trying not to look at him. But I could tell she was checking him out through the corner of her eye.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Noreen said, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She came over and shook my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Sam.” I noticed I was the only one of the three of us that Noreen touched.

“Goodness, I should’ve known which one was Angela,” Noreen said. “It hasn’t been
that
long since we’ve seen you.”

But obviously it had been. Angela and I don’t look very much alike. No one who really knew us would ever mistake one for the other.

Angela grabbed my suitcase out of the trunk and handed it to me. “Where’s my father?” she asked.

Noreen blinked. “At the hospital.” She seemed surprised that Angela didn’t know. “He doesn’t get home until seven.”

“But I thought…never mind,” Angela said, shaking her head. She hoisted her suitcase up out of the trunk, then trudged up the front walk.

I knew exactly what she thought. She thought her father would’ve been here waiting for her.

As soon as we got inside, Andrew pulled out his cell phone and called their mom to let her know they’d arrived safely. I felt a little funny when he did that, like I should be calling my mom to let her know I’d arrived safely, too. But unless I wanted to get yelled at, there was no point in doing that.

When Andrew got off the phone, Noreen showed us all where we would be sleeping. Andrew got the couch in the basement. And Angela and I got a room with blue-and-white flowered wallpaper. There were two twin beds with matching white bedspreads, a night table, and a dresser. Other than that, the room was bare.

“We don’t even get my old room,” Angela grumbled once Noreen left. “We get the
guest
room. I suppose the kid has my old room.”

She marched across the hall and yanked open the door. But that room was obviously a computer room, not a little kid’s room.

Angela checked the next room. “Okay. I guess he’s got Andrew’s old room. That makes sense,” she said, her eyes taking in the sailboat wallpaper. “This is a boy’s room. But my room …”

She wandered back to the computer room, yet didn’t venture inside. It was like there was an electric wire stretched across the threshold. “This room used to be pink.” Now it had wood paneling.

Poor Angela. I could only imagine how she felt.

I jumped when the phone rang.

Angela and I were playing gin rummy in the guest room while we waited for her dad to get home from the hospital.

“I bet that’s my father calling to say he’s going to be late,” Angela said as she discarded a king of hearts.

I didn’t think it was Angela’s dad on the phone. I had a feeling it was my mom. It was almost five o’clock. Surely she would’ve gotten my note by now.

But apparently it wasn’t either my mom or Angela’s dad because nobody ever came to tell either of us we had a phone call. And within about ten minutes, Angela’s dad came home.

Angela flew down the stairs.

A guy who I assumed was her father stood at the foot of the stairs with a grocery bag of what smelled like roast chicken. He was taller than I’d pictured him. And very important looking with neatly combed dark hair, a plain white shirt, and a tie.

“Well, look who’s here,” he said with a stiff smile. He handed the bag to Noreen, then placed each arm awkwardly around Angela and Andrew without really hugging them. Couldn’t he see that Angela wanted a real hug? At least he didn’t hug Cameron, either. He just sort of ruffled the little boy’s hair and said, “Hey, big guy!”

“Dadadadadada!” squealed Cameron.

I guess Mr. Hunter wasn’t real big on hugging.

“This is my friend, Sam.” Angela introduced us.

“It’s nice to meet you, Sam.” He shook my hand and practically broke every bone in it, he had such a strong grip.

“Hi,” I said as though my hand wasn’t killing me at all. “Thanks for letting me come with Angela.”

“We’re glad you could come,” he said formally.

“Let’s go sit down before the dinner gets cold.” Noreen ushered everyone toward the kitchen and I massaged my sore hand.

I sat next to Angela. Andrew and Cameron sat across from us. Their dad and Noreen sat at opposite ends of the table. Noreen leaned over and turned on the classical music radio station.

Angela and her brother exchanged a look, but I didn’t know what it meant.

“Well.” Mr. Hunter glanced around the table at Andrew, Angela, and me. “What do you kids think you’ll want to do while you’re here?”

I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

“There are a lot of things to choose from,” Noreen said brightly. “There’s swimming, roller-skating, movies …”

“Are you planning to take some time off work while we’re here?” Angela asked casually as she passed her father the carton of mashed potatoes.

Mr. Hunter let out a nervous laugh. “Well, I wish I could. But I have patients. You know I can’t just leave them.”

“Of course not.” Angela kicked me under the table, then raised her right eyebrow pointedly.

I didn’t know what to say or do in response.

“I figured you’d both want to see all your old friends while you’re here,” Mr. Hunter said. He turned to Andrew. “I ran into what’s-his-name at the grocery store the other day.” He glanced over at Noreen. “What
is
his name?”

Noreen was tearing a roll apart for Cameron. “You mean the Slater boy? Brian?”

“That’s right. Brian. He’s working at Rainbow Foods now. I told him you were coming up this week, Andrew. He said he’d love to see you.”

“Cool,” Andrew replied, shoving a forkful of potatoes into his mouth. “I can show him my car.”

“And I’d be happy to drop you girls off anywhere you’d like to go,” Noreen said. “As long as you’re willing to plan around Cameron’s nap.”

Ha! I wondered whether she’d be willing to “drop us off” in front of 7430 Sheridan Avenue South in Richland?

Later, when Angela and I were getting ready for bed in the guest room, Angela said, “I don’t know why my dad even agreed to let us come up here if he isn’t going to spend any time with us.”

“Maybe it’s like he said. He thought you’d want to see your old friends,” I suggested.

Angela pulled her bed spread down. “I was in second grade when we moved away from here,” she said. “I don’t really have friends here anymore. Besides, I came to see him. Not my old friends.”

The phone rang and I stopped breathing. Someone picked it up on the first ring. I didn’t move for a full thirty seconds.

Then I relaxed. By then I figured if it was my mom, somebody would’ve called me.

“Well, if you don’t mind,” I said, crawling into bed. “I’d like to go to the bus station tomorrow. I want to see if there’s a bus to Richland and find out what time it leaves and what time it gets back.”

Angela plopped down on her bed. “You’re really going to go up there? By yourself?”

Was Angela really so surprised? “That’s why I came up here,” I said. “Well, that and to hang out with you. Do you want to come with me?”

Angela shrugged. “Maybe. It’s not like there’s anything better to do around here. We can walk to the bus station. It’s just a few blocks away. How much do you think a bus ticket would cost?”

Before I could answer, there was a knock at our door.

“Yeah?” Angela called.

Noreen opened the door and poked her head in. “Telephone for you, Sam,” she said, handing me a phone. She pinched her lips together in disapproval.

I gulped. Uh oh.

Noreen left, closing the door softly behind her. Angela gave me an I’m-glad-I’m-not-you look, then grabbed the headphones for her MP3 player and put them on.

I slowly raised the phone to my ear, gripping it with both hands. “H-hello?” I said shakily.

“You are in big trouble, young lady!”

“Mom, I can explain—”

“Can you? Can you really? Well, start talking, Sam, because I’d love to hear how you ended up in Hill Valley, Minnesota, when I specifically told you you couldn’t go.”

What? She wanted me to tell her right now?

I gulped again. “Well,” I began in a small voice. “I-I can’t tell you right now. But I promise I’ll tell you when I get back to Clearwater—”

“That’s going to be sooner than you think,” Mom spat at me. “I already spoke with Angela’s stepmother. They’ll take you to the bus station tomorrow morning and you’re going to be on the eight-twenty bus to Cedar Rapids. I’ll have to leave work a few minutes early, but I’ll be in Cedar Rapids when you arrive at three forty-five.”

“Mom, no!” I couldn’t go home! Not yet! Not until I’d been to Richland.

“Don’t ‘Mom, no’ me. If it wasn’t so late, I’d drive up there and get you myself right now. Unfortunately it took a while to get a hold of Anne to find out where you were. I noticed your cell phone is conveniently turned off. Funny, Anne was under the impression you had permission to go to Minnesota. She was pretty surprised to find out otherwise.”

I couldn’t worry about what Angela’s mom thought of me right now. “Mom, you have to let me stay—” I begged. I never in a million years thought she’d make me go home.

“You’re not staying, Sam! You’re going to get on that bus in the morning and come home. And it’ll be a long time before you even think about going anywhere else.”

T
he first thing I noticed about the Hill Valley bus station the next morning was the smell. The whole place smelled like fried eggs. But even though I hadn’t eaten anything that morning, I didn’t feel at all hungry.

I shuffled along in line until it was my turn at the ticket counter. “One-way ticket to Cedar Rapids, Iowa,” I mumbled to the guy behind the counter. I handed him my mom’s debit card.

Angela and her dad waited for me over by the map of Minnesota. They both stared at that map as though it was the most interesting thing in the world.

The ticket guy handed me my mom’s card and my ticket. “Your bus is already here. Lane 1. But we won’t be boarding for another half an hour. Next?”

I picked up my ticket, then moped over to Angela and her dad.
It was over.
I was heading home with no more information than I’d come with. Plus I was going to see some major trouble when I got there. Probably more trouble than I’d ever seen before in my entire life.

Angela’s dad smiled uncomfortably. He checked his watch. “You don’t need me to wait around until the bus leaves, do you?” he asked. “I really should be getting in to the hospital.”

“Oh, no,” I said right away. Something about Angela’s dad made me want to stand at attention. “I have my ticket.” I held it up. “The bus is here. I’ll be fine.”

Angela’s dad looked relieved. “Okay, then,” he said, holding out his hand. “It was nice meeting you, Sam. I hope you have a nice ride back home.”

“Thanks,” I said as he about killed my hand again.

He started to walk away when Angela called out, “Wait! Don’t I get to say good-bye to Sam before we leave?”

He turned and glanced quizzically at his daughter. “We?”

“Well, yeah,” Angela’s voice dropped. “Aren’t you going to drop me off back at…your house before you go to the hospital?”

Her dad laughed. “Angela, the house is only a few blocks from here. I think you can walk.” Then he turned right back around and headed out to the parking lot like the busy, important man that he probably was.

I guess I didn’t think it was
that
big of a deal. Angela and I had talked about walking here by ourselves last night. But Angela was ticked. “It would serve him right if I got mugged walking back by myself,” she grumbled.

“In this town?” I cried. Hill Valley wasn’t any bigger than Clearwater.

“It happens,” Angela said.

There was no place to sit down in the bus station except at the breakfast counter. And it didn’t seem right to sit there if we weren’t going to eat anything. So we wandered outside.

It smelled even worse out here. Diesel fuel.

Another bus was just pulling in. It said Mall of America in the little screen above the driver. I knew the Mall of America was near Minneapolis. I wondered how far it was from Richland.

Angela leaned back against the brick building and sighed. “I ought to just hop on that bus and go to the Mall of America today,” she said.

I sighed. “Me, too. I’m already in trouble. What’s a little more?”

Angela looked at me. “I could do it if I wanted to. My dad gave me eighty bucks this morning. He told me to go to the mall and buy myself something nice. On him.” She snorted.

Whoa! Eighty bucks? “So, do it,” I said with a shrug.

“Go to the Mall of America?” Angela asked. “Without permission?”

“No,” I laughed. “Go to the mall here and buy yourself something nice.”

“Oh. Right.” Angela nodded knowingly. Then she raised her eyebrow at me. “You don’t think I’d do it, do you?”

“Do what?”

“Get on that bus and go to the Mall of America.”

Uh, no. There was no way Angela would do that. She was the responsible one. I was the crazy one.

Angela shrugged. “Why don’t you go in there,” she tilted her head toward the bus station, “and see if you can find out how to get where you want to go in Richland from the Mall of America.”

My eyes about popped out of my head when she said that.

“What?” Angela said with a shrug. “I thought that was why you came up here. You wanted to go see if this guy in Richland is your dad and find out whether he has your sister.” I saw a mischievous look in Angela’s eyes that I’d never seen there before.

“Well, I do, but …” But what? There was no one here to make sure I got on the right bus. And like I’d just told Angela, I was already in a heap of trouble. What was a little more? Especially if I found my dad and my sister.

So we hurried back inside to talk to the guy at the ticket counter. It turned out the Mall of America bus just went to the Mall of America. But we could catch a city bus there that would take us over to Penn Avenue. We’d stay on the city bus until we got to 74th Street. Then we’d walk three blocks to Sheridan Avenue and we’d be there. Piece of cake.

Angela and I looked at each other and grinned.

“What do you think?” Angela asked.

“Let’s do it!” I said.

I half-expected the ticket guy to refuse to let me change my ticket without a parent’s permission. But there hadn’t been a parent standing there when I’d bought the ticket in the first place. So no problem. I changed my one-way ticket to Cedar Rapids to a round-trip ticket to the Mall of America. And Angela bought another round-trip ticket to the Mall of America. We’d arrive at eleven-thirty and get back at nine o’clock tonight.

“My dad’s going to kill me when we get back,” Angela said with a huge smile on her face.

“And my mom’s going to kill me,” I said. But for some reason, that didn’t really bother me at the moment.

As the bus to Cedar Rapids pulled away without me, I picked up my cell phone and dialed the hospital where my mom worked. “Hi, this is Samantha Wright,” I said when the receptionist picked up the phone. “I’m Suzanne Sperling’s daughter. Could you please tell her not to pick me up in Cedar Rapids? Tell her I’m not on the bus.”

“Anything else, Samantha?” the woman asked in a bored voice.

“No, that’ll do it,” I said. Then I snapped my cell phone closed and hit the power button.

“The bus to Mall of America is now boarding in lane 3,” a voice came over the intercom.

Angela and I looked at each other and giggled. I didn’t know about Angela, but I felt like a wild animal escaping from the zoo. Giddy with excitement, we grabbed hands, ran outside, and climbed onto the bus.

The bus stopped in every piddly town between Hill Valley and the Mall of America. In fact, some of the places we stopped were so small I could hardly believe they really were towns. All the starting and stopping—plus the bus fumes and the perfume of the lady in front of us—made my stomach feel queasy.

Angela nudged me. “You don’t look so good, Sam. Are you okay?”

“I think I’m bus sick,” I moaned, clutching my stomach.

“Open the window.”

“Are you kidding?” I cried. “That would totally mess up my hair.”

“Hey, better to have messy hair than smell like puke,” Angela said.

She had a point. I cracked the window and a cool blast of fresh air hit me right in the nose. Every time a wave of nausea came over me, I stuck my nose in the crack of open window and inhaled deep breaths of fresh air until I felt better. When we reached the outskirts of the Twin Cities there was enough traffic around us that the air outside the bus probably wasn’t much fresher than the air inside the bus. But I did manage to make it all the way to the Mall of America without throwing up.

Wow! Angela and I knew the mall would be big, but we had no idea it was
this
big. All we could do was stare at it in awe. You have to understand, for two girls from Iowa, the Mall of America was mind-boggling. More than five hundred stores under one roof?

The bus let us out on the lowest level of a big parking ramp. The guy I talked to at the Hill Valley bus station said we’d be able to see where the city buses picked up when we got off the Hill Valley bus. And sure enough, there they were across the parking lot. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to go over there and get on the next bus. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face whatever I might find at 7430 Sheridan Avenue South.

But Angela was already halfway across the parking ramp. She turned when she realized I wasn’t with her. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t you want to do this?”

I blinked. “Of course I do,” I said, hurrying to catch up with her. This was why I was here.

We went down the line checking for the Penn Avenue bus. “This is it,” Angela said, stopping in front of a big white bus.

The door opened and we climbed on. “Are you going to Penn Avenue?” Angela asked the bus driver.

He was an old guy with dark skin, glasses, and clumps of white hair that looked like pieces of cotton stuck to the sides of his head. He didn’t answer out loud, just nodded once.

We dropped our money in the slot, then found a seat in the middle of the bus. We weren’t even moving yet, but already I felt bus sick. I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts and leaned my head back against my seat.

“So, what’s the plan?” Angela crossed one leg over the other. “We’ll just go up to that house, ring the bell, and see what happens?”

“Pretty much.”

“What if nobody answers the door?”

“I don’t know.”

As the bus started out across the Mall of America parking lot, my stomach heaved.

“Okay, what if someone does answer the door?” Angela persisted. “What then?”

“I don’t know!” I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I just wanted to rest my head against the hard seat and think. Because believe me, those questions and more were swirling around in my head.

I was starting to have some major doubts about this whole thing. Let’s get real. Running off to Minnesota without my mom’s permission? Getting on the Mall of America bus instead of the Cedar Rapids bus? Taking another bus across town to a total stranger’s house?

What was I thinking?

I turned to the window. There was so much traffic here. So many cars, so many horns. So many buildings. So many people. And here we were, two girls alone in a big city. We could get hit by a car or something up here and no one would ever know because no one even knew we were here. Unlike Clearwater or Hill Valley, there were real dangers in a place like Minneapolis.

But then I thought back to that voice on the answering machine and my hairs stood on end once more. That was my dad’s voice on that machine. I was sure of it. And I was pretty sure my sister was still alive.

I had come a long way to find out the truth. So when I saw the sign for 74th Street, I reached up and pulled the cord above the window. A bell rang and the bus slowed.

Was I ready for this?

By the time the bus finally stopped, we were up to 72nd Street.

“We’re going to have to walk back a couple blocks, then cut over to Sheridan Avenue,” Angela said.

“I know.” I didn’t care. I needed the few extra minutes to calm myself down.

Angela peered at me. “Are you okay?” she asked as cars whizzed past on the street.

I shrugged. “I’m scared,” I said in a small voice.

Angela took my hand. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “But remember, you’re a half-full kind of person. Whatever happens, you should be able to handle it.”

It occurred to me that this was all just a big adventure to Angela. She was away from home. Away from her dad. She didn’t know whether I was right about my dad living at 7430 Sheridan Avenue South and my sister possibly living there, too. But she was willing to come along and find out.

Me, I was pretty sure I was right. But what if I was wrong?

We crossed the street, then started up 74th Street. The houses around here were small and sad looking. There were no flowers out front. Just lots of scraggly bushes, an occasional big, ugly pine tree, and patches of dead grass. A couple of the houses had cracked windows. Many of them needed paint. Did my dad
really
live around here? Or had he up until a few days ago?

There was a cemetery up ahead. I hated cemeteries. Why would anyone want to live so close to a cemetery?

“I don’t think this street goes all the way through,” Angela said. “Should we turn here and see if we can get to Sheridan Avenue going this way?”

“Okay,” I said. So we made one turn, then another. Finally we came to Sheridan Avenue. Sweat dribbled down my back. My stomach felt funny again.

At least the houses looked a little better along here. They were still small, but they looked more like our little house back in Clearwater. The grass even seemed greener down here and a few houses had flowers out front.

“It shouldn’t be much farther,” Angela said. “What’s the number again?”

“7430.”

There were only two houses on this side of the street, then a playground and what looked like an elementary school. But across the street there was 7418…7424. And then 7430.

I stopped. It was just an ordinary brown house with a big picture window and two tiny bedroom windows. A huge tree towered over it.

“You sure this is it?” Angela asked.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

Angela grabbed my arm. “Well, let’s go ring the bell and see what happens.”

I don’t know how I even made it across the street. You know how when you stare at something too hard, the whole image sort of melts apart? That’s what was happening to me. Plus my arms and legs were so tingly that I didn’t think I could walk. But somehow I found myself standing at the front door.

“Go ahead. Ring the bell,” Angela said.

My heart raced. My stomach lurched. I was in serious danger of throwing up. But I stuck out a shaky finger and pressed the button. I heard the bell ring inside the house and a dog came running to the door.

That was unexpected!

“Someone lives here,” Angela said.

“Someone with a dog,” I added.

The dog scratched at the door and barked at us. But no one yelled at him to stop and no one came to the door.

A fuzzy memory popped into my head. My mom and dad arguing.

“Come on, Suzanne. It’s just a dog.”

“I don’t want a dog. Dogs are too much responsibility.”

Angela lifted the top on the black mailbox beside the front door.