Outside Beauty (19 page)

I held my breath and glugged down the mixture, including the ground coffee. Oh, man. Oh—man—oh—man—oh—man. Once you breathed, it tasted wickedly awful. I ate my last cracker. Maddie was eating her cheese, meticulously tearing off one string at a time.

She leaned on me. “Can we buy a house?” she asked.

“For three thousand dollars, we can't even buy a barn,” Marilyn said. “Plus, you don't have your money, so we don't even have three thousand.”

“I hope Mr. Bronson croaks,” Lakey said.

“Stop saying that,” Marilyn scolded.

“Really?” Maddie pulled at my hair. “Really we can't buy a house?” I hardly dared to breathe. She was pulling my hair! Only my Maddie pulled my hair. I was ready to let her pull it all out if she needed to. But she gave it one last tug and looked directly at me. “
Really
we can't?” she asked again.

“Really,” I said. I was silent for a moment. Then I said, “I hope they don't tell Mom that we're missing. It'll only make her worried.”

“I was thinking about that,” Marilyn said. “But we had no choice. If we're going to be together, we had to leave.”

Nebraska was so flat, we sang Bruce Springsteen's “Badlands,” except we changed the words to match the terrain:
Flatlands, you gotta live it every day, let the broken hearts stand, as the price you've gotta pay.

When we finished the chorus, we fell apart because nobody knew the words. Instead, we kept singing the chorus over and over. Boy, did we sound bad. Suddenly, Maddie was laughing hysterically. That made me laugh, and then Marilyn and Lakey started laughing.

By the time we crossed the border into Burlington, Colorado, around noon, Marilyn and I were
practically drunk on coffee. We resorted to our store of memorized songs, singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” at the top of our lungs and “Puff the Magic Dragon” for about an hour. Then we got lost for another hour trying to avoid the midday traffic heading to Denver.

“Where did they put Interstate 70?” Marilyn kept saying. Then she decided to take Interstate 25 because 70 seemed to have disappeared.
Then
we found a rinky-dink highway and headed west.

Once I knew we were going in the right direction toward Larry's cabin, I studied Marilyn's profile carefully from the backseat for signs of fatigue. It was late afternoon by now, and she'd been driving for twelve straight hours, with only short gas station breaks to stretch her legs. “Why don't we find another motel, Mare? You've got to be exhausted by now.”

But she just glanced at me in the rearview mirror and smiled over at Lakey. “Really, I feel fine. In fact, I'm really wired now that I know we're so close. Let's just keep going, okay? I promise you guys I'll stop if I get too tired.” And we were all so anxious to get there, we didn't argue any further.

When we at last reached Montezuma, Colorado, around dinnertime, Lakey cried out, “This is it! We're
in the right town. I know exactly how to get to the cabin.”

“How are we going to get
into
the cabin?” Maddie asked out of the blue. Nobody spoke at first. How had we not considered that?

“We'll have to figure that out when we get there,” I finally said. “We may have to break a window, but we can pay Larry back later.”

“Do we have enough money for a window?” Maddie asked.

“Yes,” I said. “We could buy a lot of windows.”

“Hmm,” Lakey said. “I don't know
exactly
how to get there from here, but I know how to get there once we find his road. The road is called Mountain View. And his cabin is above an Indian reservation.”

Marilyn stopped for gas. We'd been using full-service stations so far, but I guess the thought of paying for broken windows got her worried about money again, so we filled up the tank by ourselves. All four of us got out and stared at the whatever it was called—the big thing that held the gas hose.

“How do we make it go?” Maddie said.

“It can't be too complicated,” Marilyn said. “I mean, even stupid people can do it, so I'm sure we can.”

I opened the little door on our gas tank and unscrewed the cap.

Marilyn put the hose in, but nothing happened. Finally, the man who worked there came out. “Can I help you young ladies?”

“We need gas,” Marilyn said crisply.

“You got money? You have to pay first.”

“We do? Okay, here's five dollars.” She reached into her purse, trying to hide the contents from the man. “By the way, do you know where Mountain View Road is?”

“Yep, it's that road right over there.”

“We just came from that direction,” I said. “We're a little confused because we don't have much experience.” Marilyn shot me the evil stink eye to shut me up.

A few minutes later we were gassed up and heading down Mountain View Road on our way to our new life as runaways. It was almost too easy. Once we reached Larry's cabin, we'd be made in the shade. There were no addresses anywhere, but there was only one house on Mountain View as far as we could see. “I recognize the trees in the yard,” Lakey said excitedly. Maddie, Lakey, and I screamed as Marilyn pulled in the driveway.

We got out and peered into one of the windows in front. All we could see inside was murky dimness. I looked at Lakey. “Is this it?”

“It looks like it might be,” she said.

“What do you mean, it looks like it might be?” I said.

“It looks like it might be,” she said again.

“All right. Let's figure out how to get in.”

We tried the front door, just in case, but of course it was locked. We found a screwdriver in the trunk of the car, but we couldn't figure out what to do with it. Marilyn pried at the lock, but nothing happened. We tried the back door and every window.

“We might need to break a window after all,” Marilyn said. “We should have brought goggles or something. What if the glass goes flying?”

We decided that Marilyn should break in because she was the oldest and probably also the strongest. “There's a bunch of fallen branches,” I said, pointing to the ground. I handed one to Marilyn. She tried swinging it and shook her head.

“It isn't exactly right,” she said.

So I found another one. It was nearly twice as thick as the last one and certainly appeared to be the perfect branch for breaking a window. But Marilyn
tried swinging it and said it was too heavy for her to swing it hard enough.

We went through three more branches before Marilyn found the perfect window-bashing branch.

She put on three sweatshirts plus another three over her head, so if the glass went flying, it wouldn't cut her. I guided her to the window and she lifted the branch. I held her hands and showed her where she should hit. Then Maddie, Lakey, and I stepped back.

“Okay,” I called out.

She swung—a direct hit! We all screamed. The glass cracked but didn't break. We all groaned. “One more time in the same place,” I encouraged her. She hit the window again, and glass fell inside, a few shards flying toward her. Boy, she would be good with a piñata. Maddie, Lakey, and I cheered. Marilyn peeled off all the sweatshirts on her head and looked with satisfaction at the window. Using the branch, she pushed in the last of the glass. Then we all stood still and stared at one another.

“I'll go first,” Lakey finally offered.

We hoisted her up and she jumped inside. She looked out the window at us. “It's the wrong one.”

“The wrong what?” Maddie, Marilyn, and I said at the same time.

“The wrong house.”

“The wrong house? Are you sure?” Marilyn asked.

“Yes.”

I said accusingly, “I thought you said it looked like Larry's house.”

“It does look like Larry's house,” Lakey replied defensively. “But it's not.”

She climbed back out. “Well, we need to leave some money for the broken window,” I said. “How much does a window cost?”

Nobody knew. “Let's just leave a hundred,” Marilyn said. “That's twenty-five dollars each, but Maddie doesn't have her money, so it's thirty-three apiece.”

We took out our money and gave some to Marilyn. She leaned into the window and dropped the money inside.

“Now what?” Lakey said.

Marilyn said, “We'll have to stay at a motel until we can decide what to do.” She looked at Lakey. “Unless you still think you can find his house.”

“It's around here somewhere. I remember we had
to drive a long way to get to it for the wedding. Maybe we should take the road up farther.”

We got back in the car, throwing our branch into the passenger side with Lakey. After we'd gone a little way, I said, “Well, does it look familiar?”

Marilyn snapped, “Stop pressuring her, she's trying.”

“I'm not pressuring her, I'm just trying to figure out where this cabin is.”

“All right, let's just drive a little more and see,” Marilyn said.

We followed the road until the odometer said we'd gone one and a half miles. Lakey called out, “There it is! I think that's it!”

So we got out, and Lakey studied the cabin.

“Why did you say, ‘I
think
that's it'?” I asked.

“It looks the way I remember.” She walked around the house as we all followed. Then she spotted something and walked toward the backyard. “This is definitely it,” she said.

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because I touched that tree over there and made a wish.

I walked over to where she was standing.

I turned to Marilyn for a verdict.

“All right,” she said. “But this is the last window I'm going to break. I can't be breaking every window we come across.”

Rewrapped in all the sweatshirts, Marilyn slammed our branch against one of the side windows. Lakey crawled into the window, chanting “This is it” the whole time. After she got inside, she triumphantly repeated, “This is it! I told you I recognized it. I'll open the door for you.”

We went around to the front door, and she let us in. It was a lovely cabin, with flowered curtains. I couldn't imagine Larry with flowered curtains. His new wife must have hung them up.

“I told you I knew where it was,” Lakey said.

The phone started ringing, and we all froze. “It's my dad,” Lakey said. “I can just feel it.”

“Don't answer!” Marilyn said. We all stood around staring at the phone until it finally stopped ringing.

We couldn't find a can opener in the cabin. And we couldn't get the mayonnaise jar open. So we ate crackers, sardines, and oranges. The crackers seemed as good as any cracker anywhere, anytime. “Who doesn't have a can opener in their house?” I said.

“It's a cabin, not a house,” Lakey said.

“Well, we need to buy a can opener,” I said. “Shall we all drive back to town together, or should someone stay here?”

“We should all go together!” Maddie cried out. “I don't want to separate!”

“Don't worry, nobody's going to leave you,” I said.

Marilyn said, “I think we've had enough stress for one day.”

The phone rang again, and we stayed perfectly still, as if whoever was on the line would know we were there if we moved.

Larry had a VCR and a shelf of movies. We let Maddie pick the movie, and she chose
Alien
. “Are you sure?” I said. “It's scary.”

“Yes, I like alien movies.”

“Maddie, you're going to be scared later,” I said.

“Pluhthegeeeease,” she said. “Pluhthegeeeease.”

“Okay,” Marilyn said.

We watched the movie, eating our crackers like popcorn. We pulled blankets off of the beds and all sat together on the floor.

Maddie clung to me during the scary parts, and Lakey clung to Marilyn. When the movie ended, Maddie said, “I'm scared. I think we should go to a motel.”

“That would cost money. We can stay here for free,” Marilyn said.

Maddie said, “Pluhthegeeeease. Pluhthegeeease.”

I could tell Marilyn was considering it, but in the end she said, “No, we need to save our money.”

Maddie clung to me in bed, and every so often she would say, “Did you hear that?”

“I didn't hear anything,” I kept saying.

Finally, she went to sleep and Marilyn and Lakey went to sleep, and I was awake alone. Even though hours had passed since I drank my last cup of coffee, I still felt hyper. All of a sudden I heard noises that I hadn't noticed before. The wind made a
woooo
sound, and something seemed to be scurrying outside. I could hear every little thing through the broken window. We needed to get that fixed first thing tomorrow. We were out here in the middle of nowhere. I got up and went into the kitchen and found a big knife. Then I put it under the bed where I was sleeping. I would have put it under the pillow, but I didn't want to accidentally cut my head off. Wow, I was surprised that coffee was legal.

Finally, I couldn't keep myself up, even with the strange noises I kept hearing. I fell asleep and dreamed that Mr. Bronson had discovered us. Then I heard Maddie calling, “Shelby. Shelby.” And I was awake.

“What?” I said. It was still dark out.

“I need to go to the bathroom. Will you come with me?”

“Sure.” I didn't tell her that I was scared too. But I grabbed the knife.

“What's that for?” Maddie said.

“In case I need to protect us.”

“Okay, that's what I thought.”

Walking through the hallway with my knife, I knew that I would do anything to keep my Maddie from getting hurt. It was just one door down the hall, but you never knew what might happen.

Then we got back in bed and Maddie said, “Will you stay up until I fall back to sleep?”

“Okay,” I said. “Maddie?”

“What?”

“Are you okay?”