Overnight (13 page)

She held the chocolate heart to Bumpo’s mouth. At first, she thought he wouldn’t eat it. His pink tongue lolled and licked the chocolate heart absently.

“Come on, boy! Please!”

Bumpo sighed, licked the candy again, then took it between his teeth as if to please her. The mothball crunched in his teeth. He gulped it down and immediately started to cough. An awful hacking sound from deep in his throat.

Martha stood. “It’s okay, boy,” she told him.

She spun on her heel and ran downstairs to the family room.

“What are you doing down here?” asked Topher.

“I went down to get some juice, and I found Bumpo. I think he’s sick.”

Topher used the remote to snap off the television. He stood and followed Martha up the stairs.

“Dude! What happened?” He pointed to the puddle. “What did he barf up?”

Together, they inspected it. “I think that’s chocolate,” said Martha. “One of our friends was feeding him chocolate hearts earlier tonight. Leticia Watkins.”

Bumpo stared at Topher and whined slightly. Then gave a giant, shuddering, teeth-baring yawn. Topher dropped on all fours to check Bumpo.

“It smells like something else,” he said. He sat up on his heels and propped open Bumpo’s eye to inspect, as if he were a veterinarian. “Poor ole guy. Poor ole Bumpo. Getting long in the tooth, as they say.” Topher scratched and rubbed Bumpo, who whined and panted. “You want some water, boy?”

“And I want something to drink, too.” She could stretch out her time with Topher a little longer. And maybe if she explained about the lady to him first, he would be so excited to break this news to the police that she would not get in as much trouble.

“Let me take care of the dog first.” Topher filled the water bowl and set it in front of Bumpo, who began to slurp it down greedily.

“Poor Bumpo,” she said. “Probably Leticia didn’t know any better.”

“There’s lemonade and Cranapple and diet sodas. Or I’ll microwave you some Ovaltine, if you want. That’s what I’m gonna have,” said Topher, moving to open a cupboard. “I should have known you’d be bopping around—Martha, right? Little Grasshopper! You’ve been jumping out of my sight all night. All the other kids are sleeping?”

“Yeah. The other kids.” She leaned against the counter. When Topher said kids, did he think Martha was a kid, too? She wondered if Topher thought she was cute. She wondered if she could get him to believe she was, even if he didn’t think so now.

“I’d like Ovaltine, too,” she said, since it would take the longest to make.

“Coming up.” Topher pulled down two mugs and the Ovaltine. He dropped three spoonfuls into each mug and filled them both with milk and placed them in the microwave. While he set the timer, Martha looked at Bumpo’s throw-up. She could not tell if the mothball was in it, so maybe it was still in Bumpo. Would he still be sick tomorrow? He didn’t look too bad. Definitely not bad enough to get Leticia in trouble.

She cleared her throat. “I’ve been trying to get a reading on Gray,” she told Topher. “In my family, a lot of us have ESP.”

“Is that right?”

Martha thought she saw Topher smirk. It made her feel extra small and freckly. Quickly, she added, “Some people don’t believe in it. I don’t even know if I do, either, but I guess I’m getting worried about Gray.”

Topher’s face turned serious. “At school, we’re studying all that stuff in the class I’m taking. Psychology. Pretty strange. I wish I didn’t know as much as I do. About human nature and all.”

“Wow. You must be really smart,” said Martha.

“No, not…I mean, I get by.” Topher rubbed his eyes. “My grades would be way better if I studied, put some effort in.”

“Me, too,” Martha agreed.

“Tell you a secret,” Topher said. “You look like the type who can handle a secret, and it’ll be news by tomorrow, anyway.”

“What?”

“They think Gray got picked up. Abducted, you know?”

“Abducted.” Martha took a breath. The shame of the secret flooded through her.

“Mmm-hmm.” Topher nodded. “No signs of forced entry or struggle. But there’s no sign of her, either. A kid who runs off gets sighted along the way. Cops have got nothing. So far, at least.”

“Gosh,” she said. “That’s scary.”

“She might have even let him in, is what they’re thinking.”

“Into the house?”

“Yep.” Suddenly, Topher jogged a couple of steps to the back door and checked the lock. He returned, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry. Paranoid. But it’s wild to think, how you can buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and you can lock the doors, set the alarms, buy the big dog, everything, and still some kind of evil might find its way into your house. You’re never safe enough, you know? It’s never zero risk. Freaks me out.”

Martha suddenly felt dizzy. She slid onto one of the counter stools. “Me, too.”

The timer binged. Topher took the mugs out of the microwave and handed one to Martha. “Careful. Hot.”

She took the mug. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” Topher yawned. “Not much sleep going on in this house tonight. There’s a night patrol, but the real deal starts at the crack of dawn. Then they’re gonna start a helicopter search.”

“Helicopters!” Nobody ever paid this much attention to Mouse before.

“But know what? I have this hunch a phone call will come in, and it’ll be somebody who saw something and then we’ll sniff out a clue. There’s always a clue. There’s always one person who remembers something. I mean, if she was taken. Somebody sees something, right? A car, a creepy dude…well, not to scare you.”

Martha raised her mug to hide her face. “I’m not scared.” In her mind, she saw the lady again, her glittering eyes and yanked-back smile, wrapped in that feather coat.

She would tell the secret as soon as she was finished with her drink. Even though she was definitely getting in trouble for it. Helicopters were serious. She took another tiny sip of Ovaltine.

Bumpo shuddered and whined. His tail thumped the floor and his eyebrows knit as he looked at Martha and then Topher reproachfully.

Martha shook her head. “I told Leticia a million times not to give Bumpo chocolate.”

Upstairs, something was going on. Was that Zoë’s voice? And now footsteps were running up and down the hall, and people were speaking, moving with new energy. Mrs. Donnelley suddenly called down, loud and demanding. “Topher? Is Martha Van Riet downstairs? We need her upstairs. Now!”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s down here. We’ll be right up.” Topher made a face. “Guess they discovered your escape hatch, prisoner. Back to the pen, huh?”

Martha shrugged her shoulders. She could not seem to find enough air to breathe. Her secret was out. Zoë had beaten her to it. Zoë, of course, who always had to win everything.

“Now!” Mrs. Donnelley’s voice cried. “In the study!”

Martha was sick from the secret, anyway. Relieved, even, that it no longer belonged to her. She set her mug on the counter.

“I’m ready,” she said. “I’m finished.”

“Yep.” Topher knelt down to give Bumpo one last pat. “All right, doggy, okay, ole boy,” he said. “You’re gonna be okay. Jeez, Bumpo. I wonder what got into you?”

S
HE PRESSED HER HEAD
against the car window and watched the broken white lines on the road. They moved so fast, white black white black white black. Sometimes she saw the white and the black separated and sometimes she saw the blur, depending on how she watched.

She wondered where they were going.

What was out in the movable dark? Past her house and her friends’ houses on the roads close by and past Knightworthy Avenue and past Fielding Academy.

“You can drop me off here,” she said.

Now they were getting onto a ramp. Now they were on the highway.

“You can drop me off here,” she said again.

Gray felt too-scared again. She was crying softly, hoping that something better would happen to her. Hoping that her parents would pull up out of nowhere or that the car would get a flat tire or that she would wake up from this terrible dream.

She wondered what happened to girls when they got kidnapped by kidnappers who hadn’t planned on taking them.

Because wasn’t she getting kidnapped, even if it was an accident?

Katrina was singing a soft song along with the radio. Drew was talking to himself under his breath. They were not real grown-ups, Gray thought. They had the bodies of grown-ups but inside they were fragile and see-through to their strange kid selves. None of their rules were right or fixed or understandable.

“Are you going to drop me off anywhere?” she asked again.

“Just calm down and let me think,” Drew snapped.

She was not going to get the answer she needed. Maybe she was asking the wrong question. She wished she could think of something wise and calm that would lead the way to a wise, calm decision. All she was good at, though, was crying.

Crying was the best that she could do.

She started to cry. Loud. Her hands pounded on the window. Her breath and fingers marked the glass. “Let me out! Let me out!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Drew barked. He glanced up at her through the rearview. His eyes drilled into her. “Stop being such a girl!”

Now she was really crying, and it was too hard to stop. Crying might be the best that she could do, and she could cry pretty well. She could cry great.

In the front seat, Katrina started to whimper, copycatting Gray, the way Robby had this morning.

“Shut up, both of you!” Drew yelled. The heel of his hand hit the steering wheel. “I can’t concentrate!”

Katrina sniffled and hid her face.

“I can’t help it!” Gray screamed. “I can’t help it!”

In the next moment, the wheels screeched and the car skidded to the side, guttering into the shoulder of the road, nearly hitting the guardrail, and stopped. Drew slammed open the door.

“Get out!” he yelled.

“Here?” she choked.

“Right here. Here is where you’re getting dropped.”

“But there’s nothing out here.”

“It’s the end of the road for you,” said Drew.

With numb, icy fingers, Gray unhooked her seat belt buckle. Drew hunched over, shoving himself and the seat forward so that Gray could climb out of the car. “But where am I?” she gasped as she stood in the highway. Her breath was convulsing, tearing through her.

“Figure it out yourself, Gray Rosenfeld. I’ve had enough of dealing with you!” She had to jump out of the way to avoid Drew slamming the car door shut on her.

Outside, stunned, she blinked at her own reflection in the window glass.

There I am same old me.

“Gray!” Katrina yelled. She had unrolled her window and was leaning up and out of it. The wind spiked up the hair around her head like an angry cat. “Get back in the car, Gray! It’s too dangerous! Please!” Saying Gray’s name out loud seemed to have jolted Katrina from her usual dream state.

Now Katrina held out her hand. “We’ll take you to a gas station. It’s not safe to be out on the side of the road.”

Not safe in the car, not safe on the road. It was a choice between bad ideas. Gray’s feet chose for her. Stumbling, she backed off, then turned away from the car and ran headlong into the night.

Behind her, Katrina was yelling Gray’s name, on and on, like a siren.

Gray did not turn around. She listened to the sound of her name but still she did not turn. Not even once. She ran until she knew she was far away enough that even if she had looked, she would not be able to see Drew and Katrina again.

Cars whizzed past her and she kept running. Nobody slowed down. Maybe nobody saw her. Her arms and legs chopped and swung, her lungs were fiery with pain, and she could not feel her face from cold. But she trusted herself, and from out of nowhere a wild joy burst through her. Health joy and life joy and escaping joy and running joy and rescuing herself joy.

“Little girl! Little girl! What are you doing?” The car had come out of nowhere to slow down next to her, its automatic window rolling down in one smooth swipe to reveal an older man, maybe around the same age as her dad, who was leaning halfway across the front passenger seat to talk to her. She glanced at him without breaking pace.

“Kid, are you crazy? Do you want to get yourself killed?”

He looks nice too but I don’t know this man he might be Safe or not I don’t know.

She looked away, waved him on. Too dangerous.

The man muttered something, and then sped ahead of her. She kept running. She could feel herself smile from deep inside, although her face was sore and hurt from crying, although she was freezing, and she wondered if this was her chip-scrap of hope, of bravery, the place inside her that knew maybe things were not going to turn out as bad as they had started.

What was Safety anyhow, but trust in the road she was running on? What was Safety anyhow, but trust in herself? She would run until she saw an exit for a gas station. She would not stop until it was okay to stop.

I know where I am even if I don’t right this second I know where I am I’m right here.

On the other side of the guardrail, the woods lay thick and deep. If she had to, she could always jump over the rail, off the road, away from cars, if cars meant danger. She listened to her breath and the slap of her sneakers. She listened to the Safety that had come alive inside her, doing its best to figure things out.

Everything was going to turn out okay. She was making sure of it, she was watching out for herself, she was under her own protection. Even before the noise of the police siren grew deafening and the blunt blue light parted her from the darkness. Even before the squad car pulled close and stopped when she stopped and opened its door to fish her out of the night. Even before, Gray knew that the worst horror of the night was over, the worst of the night lived only in her memory now. And she had escaped it, she had survived it, she was on her way home.

I was born in 1970 in my mother’s hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of three children, and spent my early childhood as a “military brat,” moving between bases in North Carolina, California, Panama, and Rhode Island. I returned to Pennsylvania for high school, and then attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a bachelor of arts and sciences degree in 1993, I eagerly answered a “help wanted” ad in the
New York Times
and an “apartment rentals” ad in the
Village Voice
. That same week, I secured both my first job and my first apartment. I began working for Macmillan Children’s Books as an editorial assistant; living two blocks away from the office ensured that I didn’t get lost on my commute.