Searching for Candlestick Park

Anywhere but here

My mind galloped, trying to make plans. I knew I couldn’t just run away. It’s no good to run
away
from something. You have to run
to
something, or somewhere, or someone. But where could I go?

While I packed a few clothes and as much food as I could carry, I went over my plan. I would go to Candlestick Park and find Dad. There were still three weeks of baseball season left; I could get to San Francisco in three weeks, even if I had to walk the whole way
.

OTHER PUFFIN BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

Cracker Jackson
         Betsy Byars

Earthquake Terror
         Peg Kehret

Gentle Ben
         Walt Morey

The Midnight Fox
         Betsy Byars

My Side of the Mountain
         Jean Craighead George

Nightmare Mountain
         Peg Kehret

Winter Camp
         Kirkpatrick Hill

Special thanks to:

Erin Karp,
my authority on bicycle routes
;

Govind Karki,
for the personal tour of San Francisco;
and to

Pete and Molly,
for demonstrating cat behavior
.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FORTEEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I
opened my eyes to darkness.

Mama’s voice was low, and her hand shook my shoulder. “Spencer. Wake up!”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s two in the morning,” Mama said.

I stuck my head under the pillow but Mama yanked the pillow right off again.

“Why are you waking me up at two o’clock in the morning?”

“You have to get up, Spencer. We’re moving.”

“Moving! Where are we going?”

“We’ll stay at May’s until we find a place. Hurry and pack your things.” She dropped some paper bags on my bed.

“I’ll pack in the morning,” I said.

“You’ll pack now. We need to be out of here before morning.”

I sat up and looked around. In the light that leaked from the kitchen, I saw cardboard boxes and brown paper bags lining the hallway. Mama was serious. We really were moving out in the middle of the night.

“How come?” I asked.

“I don’t have the rent money,” Mama said. “I still owe for last month, and now it’s due again. And they’re coming tomorrow morning to repossess the car. We need to get moved before they take it.”

Our being short of money wouldn’t make headlines; Mama and I are
always
short of money. Mama’s a waitress at Little Joe’s, where most of the customers are not big tippers. We had a car taken back once before, and twice our electricity was shut off, but this was the first time we ever had to move because we couldn’t pay the rent.

“As soon as I get a job, I’ll pay part of the rent,” I said. I was nearly thirteen, and I had my application in at three grocery stores. Sometimes kids are paid to retrieve shopping carts from around the parking lot and return them to the store. Ten cents a cart.

“We can’t wait for you to grow up and find work. We’re leaving here tonight.”

“What about the furniture?” I asked.

“It isn’t ours. Never has been. We rented this place already furnished; you know that.”

I put on jeans and a T-shirt, and started stuffing the rest of my clothes in the paper bags. I could hear Mama in the kitchen, packing up her pans and the yellow dishes that used to belong to her mother.

Aunt May lived in the south end of Seattle. We lived in the north end, fifteen miles away. I was pretty sure I couldn’t take the bus back here to school. I would have to go to school with my ten-year-old twin cousins, Buzz and Cissy, a prospect which did not thrill me.

Buzz and Cissy won’t win any gold medals in the brains department and they scream and yell a lot, which gets on my nerves. Aunt May doesn’t seem to mind, probably because she screams and yells a lot, too. I don’t know if Buzz and Cissy’s father screamed and yelled. He and Aunt May got divorced before the twins were born, and I don’t remember him.

“When you’re done in there, load your bags in the car,” Mama said.

I picked up a sack of clothes and went out the kitchen door. The car was parked on the driveway that runs alongside the house; the back seat was already full of boxes. When I opened the trunk, the neighbor’s Doberman, Bosso, started to bark.

“Hey, Bosso,” I whispered. “It’s only me.” Bosso looks and sounds fierce but he knows me and always wags his stumpy tail when I talk to him through the fence.

An hour after Mama woke me up, everything was packed and loaded into the car. While Mama took
milk and eggs out of the refrigerator, I looked for Foxey.

I couldn’t find him. I went through the house, looking under the beds and behind the furniture, in all the places he’s ever hidden. No Foxey.

I always make sure he’s in at night; usually he sleeps on my bed. He must have slipped out when Mama started loading the car.

I went into the backyard.

“Here, Foxey,” I called. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

“Quiet!” Mama said. “Do you want to wake up the whole neighborhood?”

“I can’t find Foxey.”

Mama put her bag of food in the car. “Let’s go,” she said.

“We can’t leave without Foxey,” I said. “I’ll go out behind the garage and call him.” My mouth felt dry. What if Foxey didn’t come? I started toward the old garage that sits at the back of the property.

Mama rolled down her window. “Get in the car. We’re leaving.”

I knew Mama meant business about going right away. But I couldn’t move out and leave Foxey behind. I just couldn’t!

Foxey was a tiny kitten when I got him, three years ago. He has reddish brown fur and a bushy tail. I spent a long time choosing exactly the right name.

No matter what went wrong in my life, and there
had been plenty in the last couple of years, I could always count on Foxey to be glad to see me. When I had the flu, he jumped on my bed and purred. When I got a
D
in science because I refused to cut up a dead rat in class, Mama yelled and said I would never amount to a hill of beans, but Foxey jumped in my lap and kneaded his claws in and out, and I knew he would love me if I got all
D
s.

Every night I saved part of my dinner for him and he rubbed against my legs while I put it in his dish.

“You go on,” I told Mama. “I’ll stay until I find Foxey and then I’ll take the bus to Aunt May’s.”

“We can’t stay any longer because of that cat,” Mama said. “May is waiting up to let us in and it’s already later than I told her it would be.”

I made one last desperate try. “Here, Foxey,” I called. “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Mama started the engine. “Get in this car,” she said. “Now.”

I knew that tone of voice. I got in.

“If you make me leave Foxey behind,” I said, “I’ll never forgive you. He won’t know why I’m not here to take care of him. He’ll starve to death.”

“No, he won’t. He’s a good mouser.”

“You could have told me sooner,” I said. “I would have shut Foxey in the bathroom while we loaded the car.”

“I had other things to worry about besides that fool
cat.” She backed out of the driveway. “You probably couldn’t keep a cat at May’s house anyway. Cissy has a lot of allergies.”

The truth is, Mama never liked Foxey much. She only let me keep him after I begged and cried and swore I’d always take care of him myself. I did, too. I fed him and combed him every day. Each month, I spent part of my lawn-mowing money on a new catnip mouse, the good kind from the pet store. Foxey loved his catnip mice.

I had bought him a cat collar, too, the stretchy kind that he could get out of if it ever got caught on something. I attached an identification tag with our phone number on it in case he ever got lost. That number won’t help now, I realized. We don’t live here anymore.