I heard the noise of voices in the background. The rest of his class must have come back in.
“But how could the crows leave the underworld?” Jeremy asked. “I thought that once something came it had to stay, even the animals.”
“Animals are different,” I said.
“Nuh-uh,” he said. “Animals die; I see them squashed in the street all the time.”
I heard the teacher’s voice telling the kids to settle down and take their seats. I didn’t have long to finish my story. “Have you ever seen a dead crow in the street?”
He paused for a moment, thinking. “No.”
“See? Crows are different.”
“But crows aren’t strong enough to carry a person.” He said this with worry, and I wondered if I was about to instill a lifelong phobia of crows into him.
“Well, not the normal crows from our world.”
“But you just said they were from our world.”
Crows, it seemed, were not going to work as an escape route from the underworld.
I heard the teacher standing very close to Jeremy. “Are you ready to join the class?”
“I’ll finish the story later,” I told him. “You’ve got to go.”
“I love you, Annika,” he said, because per Mom’s instructions we never say good-bye anymore.
“I love you too,” I said, but I think he’d already hung up.
Next I called my mom. There was no point putting it off any longer.
She picked up the phone on the first ring. “Are you already out of school?” Before I could answer she said, “I had a client fall through, so I’m at the grocery store. I’m picking up some frozen enchiladas for you to eat while we’re at the hospital with Jeremy. I thought you might enjoy a change since we’ve eaten organic for so long.”
“That’s great, Mom. Thanks.” I nearly added, “It’s probably better than the food they’ll serve me in prison.” But I didn’t.
“If you’d rather I cook you something without preservatives, though, I can do that. I can make something up and freeze it for you.”
“You don’t have to.”
She let out a gasp, and I heard the box rustle in her hands. “This says it has mono- and diglycerides. Those don’t sound healthy. You don’t want to eat this.”
“Yes, I do.”
There was a thunk like a box being thrown back into the freezer section, and her words came out choked with emotion. “No, I should be just as concerned with your health as I am with Jeremy’s. I’ll make you something nutritious.”
“Mom. It will be all right. You can’t catch cancer from eating enchiladas.”
She paused for too long. “I know. I just worry. I’ll find something else.”
I wanted to tell my mother everything. I wanted to curl up in her lap, the way I did when I was little, and let her fix everything. But I couldn’t. Not when she was nearly crying over enchiladas. She needed me to be the strong one now, the one that solved problems instead of creating new ones.
My feet weren’t on solid ground, but I would tread water as long as I could to keep her from noticing.
“School hasn’t ended yet,” I said. “I was calling to tell you our chemistry teacher gave us a one-day extension on our project—which we really need. If I’m not home when you get home, it means that Jeremy is at Gabe’s and I’m with Madison.”
She let out an unhappy sigh. “You ought to be spending time with your family. We need to be together right now—”
“I know. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I promise.”
She sighed again, but in the end agreed. We said our non-good-byes, then I hung up the phone and glanced around the trailer. I had to escape and make my way back to Madison. I just wasn’t sure how.
I took a few steps toward the living room. I could still see the back of the security guard out the front window of the trailer. A couple of times he’d glanced over his shoulder into the trailer to check on me, but right now he faced forward. Mr. Blasingame still sat on the couch, absorbed in his typing.
I stepped over to the window in the kitchen. It was completely sealed, with no way to open it. I walked to the window in the living room opposite the side where the guard stood. It had levers on either side and the words EMERGENCY EXIT printed on the bottom of the window frame. I could get out of this window if I could do it in a way that didn’t draw attention from the guard or Mr. Blasingame.
My mind raced, trying to formulate a plan. How long would it take the crew to reset the scene and go through it again? The clock on the microwave read 2:15. Maid Marion had to change out of her wet clothes and blow-dry her hair. I might have long enough.
I opened the door in the back of the room. A bedroom complete with dresser and closet stood in front of me. “I’m going to change out of this nun’s outfit,” I called to Mr. Blasingame. “So don’t come back here or let anyone else come back here, okay?”
“Okay.” He put one leg over his knee, and I noticed he wore two different socks, both tan, but different shades of tan. Clearly, he wasn’t the most observant man. I could use that to my advantage.
I shut the bedroom door, then called Madison while I riffled through Steve’s dresser. I had to find some clothes I could fit into.
“Hey, Madison.”
“Thank goodness you phoned. We need to leave for Nevada. Where are you?”
I found a light blue T-shirt and threw it on the bed. “I’m being held captive in Steve Raleigh’s trailer.”
“No, seriously, where are you?”
“I am serious. Steve recognized me in the middle of a scene, was overcome with surprise—or maybe karma—and ended up pushing Maid Marion into a fishpond. Then the snake got loose and frightened the horse, and there was a lot of screaming—mostly by the director but also some by the cast members—and so Steve told these security guards to put me in his trailer, and that’s where I am. I think he’s going to call the police after he’s finished reshooting the scene.”
“The police?” Madison’s voice came out in nearly a whisper. “Have you called your parents?”
Steve had jeans in his drawers, but I knew none of them would fit me. After all, he was over six feet tall. Maybe I could find some sweatpants.
“I’m going to switch clothes, climb out of the window, and take one of the horses. Then I’ll ride to town and find you.”
There was a long pause. “Are you crazy?”
I took off my wimple and flung it on the bed. “Don’t ask me that question. You might not like the answer.”
Madison let out an aggravated breath. “Annika, you couldn’t navigate your way through Burbank with MapQuest and a van. You’d never make it on a horse.”
I flung open one of Steve’s drawers with too much force, and it nearly came all the way out of the dresser. “It’s better than staying here and waiting for the police to pick me up. What have I got to lose?”
“Movement in a lot of your body if the horse throws you. Just start walking toward Burbank, and I’ll pick you up with the van.”
I opened the last drawer. I had to find something. I pulled out a pair of Bermuda shorts. They would have to do. “I’ll call when I get past the front guard. Don’t park anywhere too close to the studio. You can’t let them see you.”
I hung up the phone, unzipped my nun’s outfit, and stepped out of it. Then I slipped on the T-shirt and pulled Steve’s shorts on. They slid off my hips. I looked around for something to use as a belt. In his closet, I found an assortment of shoes. I took the laces out of one of them, wound it through two of the belt loops, and pulled them tightly together. Lastly I put my cell phone and Jeremy’s picture into the pocket in Steve’s shorts. I didn’t bother checking the window in Steve’s bedroom to see if it opened. Even if it did, it would lead to the front where the security guard stood.
Holding the nun’s uniform, I stepped back into the living room. How was I going to get rid of Mr. Blasingame so I could get out of the window?
I walked over and stood in front of him. “Um, I’d like to go over some more lines. If it’s too noisy for you in here, though, you can go back to the bedroom to work. It’sreally quiet back there.”
“Here’s the thing,” he said as though we’d been in the middle of a completely different conversation. “I don’t know what to do with Maid Marion. It’s always the same story. She gets captured, and Robin rescues her. I just can’t write that one more time.”
“Oh.” I looked at the costume in my hands and then the throw pillows on the couch. The security guard hadn’t turned around to check on me for some time, but I couldn’t count on him to keep ignoring me. While I talked, I stuffed the wimple onto a pillow. “Well, could you write something completely different, like, say, fling Maid Marion into a fishpond?”
“What good would that do?” Mr. Blasingame looked up from his computer, but didn’t seem to think it odd that I was turning a pillow into a proxy nun.
I shrugged. “It would give me, as a viewer, a lot of satisfaction to see her sitting in the middle of a fishpond.”
The corners of Mr. Blasingame’s lips tilted up, and he leaned back into his couch. “It might give me some satisfaction too, but I doubt I could stretch that out to a forty-four-minute plot line.”
“Could you kill her off?”
“She’s got a contract, but . . .” He leaned forward, typing again. “Maybe we think she’s died but really she’s got amnesia—” Almost immediately he put his finger on the delete button. “No. They couldn’t cure amnesia in the Middle Ages. I’d write myself into a corner. What else have you got?”
I stuck the pillow between the back of the couch and the top cushion so it looked like my head was resting on the couch. “You could make her go insane. Maybe she could feel like Death was talking to her.”
“No, too creepy. She’d lose all audience appeal.”
I ignored the implications of that comment and laid my habit on the couch. From outside the trailer it would hopefully look like I was sitting there.
Mr. Blasingame typed for another minute, then stopped. “There needs to be something else. Something bigger.”
I walked over to the emergency exit window, pulled the blinds all the way up, and looked out as though checking the weather. “She could die, end up in the underworld, and Robin Hood has to save her.
He
could probably figure out a way to do it.”
Mr. Blasingame looked up from his keyboard so intently, I was positive he would ask me what I was doing. Instead he said, “That’s already been done before.”
“When?”
“
Hercules.
Disney. Every kid in the viewing audience has seen that movie. Shakespeare I could steal from, but not Disney.”
“Hercules had an advantage the rest of us don’t,” I said and couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. “Hewas immortal. My brother and I are stuck down there with nothing but a flock of crows to help us.”
Mr. Blasingame didn’t answer, just went back to his typing with a thoughtful look. It struck me that even my bizarre statement didn’t faze him. Perhaps I wasn’t going crazy after all. Perhaps I was just becoming a writer.
The clock read 2:28. I couldn’t waste more time on trying to get Mr. Blasingame to move.
I undid the latch to the window on one side and then the next. I eased the pane sideways so it wouldn’t crash to the ground. I had been prepared with an explanation of why I dressed the pillows in my nun costume—I needed someone to read my lines to—and I could perhaps say I’d taken the window out because I wanted fresh air, but I had no reasonable justification for crawling out of the trailer. I had to hope he didn’t notice. Once I had the window out, I gently lowered it onto the trailer floor. Against the carpet, it didn’t make a sound.
I took one last look at Mr. Blasingame to make sure he was still engrossed in his work, then as quietly as I could, I heaved myself out of the window. I landed on the ground with a thump. I didn’t wait to see if he noticed my departure and was about to look out the window to see what I was doing.
The trailers were lined up next to each other, not touching but close enough to make a good screen from everything on the front side. Now I just had to stay behind them until I could make a run for it. I hurried toward the front end of Steve’s trailer, trying to be as quiet as possible. I listened for the voice of the security guard.
I didn’t hear it, but I did hear shouting come from inside of the trailer. Steve’s voice. He’d come back.
Chapter
10
I peered around the edge of the Winnebago. The space between the trailers was clear right now, but I could hear footsteps thundering out of Steve’s door and his voice shouting, “She can’t be far. Drop to the ground and look for her feet.”
Which meant in a moment they would see how very close I was. I did the only thing I could think of. I ran to the next trailer’s back end, jumped on the fender, and shimmied up the ladder. Once I had reached the top of the trailer, I lay on my stomach, hoping no one would think to look up.
The warmth of the sun-baked roof pressed into my arms, legs, and face, along with tiny pieces of debris that bit into my skin. I lay there, willing myself to be one with the Winnebago.
I didn’t dare lift my head to look, but voices rang out below me. Crew-cut said, “I don’t see anything. How long ago did Jim say she’d left?”
“A couple minutes,” Steve said. “She couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“I’ll call the other guards. We’ll fan out and find her.” A set of footsteps jogged away.
I listened for the sound of Steve’s voice or his footsteps. I didn’t hear anything, perhaps because the sound of my breath, coming in frantic spurts, was so loud.
Then I heard footsteps on the roof. I looked up and saw Steve, still dressed as Robin Hood, standing on the top of his trailer. He walked slowly over to the gap separating us. I got to my hands and knees, unsure which direction to go or what to do. I felt like a sprinter waiting for the gun to go off, only I didn’t know which way to run.
He put his hands on his hips. “I thought you said you wanted to talk to me for two minutes.”