The Secret of Rover (13 page)

David glared at her back as she plunged yet again down one of the narrow canyons between the walls of cartons. But before long she heard him sigh and rise to his feet to join her search.

This time they looked for a very, very long while.
Eventually they had read and rejected every label at eye level. That left boxes they could only examine by crouching uncomfortably in the dust, or, worse, by climbing. “How are we going to unpack these drinks if they turn out to be up near the ceiling?” Katie demanded as she clung to the crevices in her cardboard wall, peering at a very high label.

David did not answer. Soon after, though, she heard him utter a muffled cry.

“What?” With the back of her hand, Katie wiped the sweat that poured down into her eyes. Her face was gritty with dust.

“I said,
got it
!” shouted David. He had long ago stopped worrying whether the driver would hear him.

David had found juice boxes. They were packed, as Katie had feared, at the very top of a towering wall of boxes. And they were obviously intended for very young children. Even their crate had cartoon characters all over it.

But by this time they would practically have drunk mouthwash. And as luck would have it, the position of the box turned out to be an advantage. “Geronimo!” called David, and shoved it to the floor. It was heavy with liquid and fell with a thud. The box's cardboard seams split on impact, and it took only a moment's work for Katie and David to rip it wide open, exposing the gaudy, cellophane-wrapped flats of juice within.

“Thank you, thank you!” cried Katie, tearing one open. With trembling, exhausted fingers she peeled the wrapper from one tiny straw and jabbed it into the box. Her exertions had left her so weak that she could barely pierce the foil. But as soon as she did so, she inhaled the contents in a single slurp. The juice was sweet and sticky and as hot as she was, but it was liquid and it was delicious.

She grabbed a second box. “You're torturing me,” said her brother bitterly, watching her.

“Just start filling your pockets,” she said, scuttling down the aisle to where they'd left the crackers. “But wait!”

“What now?”

“Let's just pick this stuff up,” said Katie. “Because he might stop. And if we leave it in the middle of the aisle, he'll freak the minute he opens the door, and then he'll find us.”

This was a good point. They filled their pockets to bulging with drinks and snacks and shoved aside the goods they'd unpacked as inconspicuously as possible.

Then they turned off their flashlights to save batteries, sat down in the aisle, and waited.

One o'clock became one thirty. One thirty became two o'clock.

David, unable to bear it, peed in the back left corner of the truck. The stench embarrassed him and added to their troubles. He waited for Katie to say something mean, but to his surprise she said nothing about it. She knew he'd
had no choice. Besides, if this continued for much longer, she would be in the same position.

David drained three juices boxes, practically in a single swallow.

Two o'clock became two thirty and two thirty became three, and still they rumbled forward.

“Kat,” said David eventually.

“Mmm.” Katie was leaning against a wall of boxes with her knees up and her arms tight around them. It was plain from her voice that she was growing drowsy.

“Kat, should we have some kind of plan? For Yonkers, I mean.”

“Plan?” Katie must be very drowsy indeed, not to perk up at that word. Usually she had a plan for everything. Katie was the kind of girl who diagrammed her homework.

“Yes, plan,” he said irritably. “Like, when this thing stops, how do we get out of here without being seen? And where do we go after that? What if there's no other truck? What if we're in the middle of nowhere?”

“We can't plan it, David,” she said. “Because of all that—of what you just said. We don't know enough. We have to take our chances—that's all. Now”—she broke off in a yawn—“now leave me alone. I'm really tired.”

And she rested her chin on her knees and closed her eyes.

But David stared into the dark. So they were both worried about Yonkers. Great! He could feel the road
rumbling beneath them, and that part was good. It was excellent to be covering so much ground. But eventually the truck would stop, and the back would open, and then all bets would be off.

He shifted uncomfortably. It was dark and very hot. But eventually, that rumbling road had the hypnotic effect that continuous motion always does, and like his sister, he slept.

“Back!”

They awoke with a start to the sound of a voice seemingly right beside their ears.

Both children sat bolt upright. Their truck had stopped moving and now it began inching backward, emitting a monotonous beep.

“Keep it comin',” the voice continued. “Back . . . back . . .”

It was still coal black inside the truck, but they did not need a light to know that wherever it was they had been heading, they had now arrived. Someone was maneuvering their driver into a parking space.

“Stop!” called whoever it was. “You're good!”

It was weird to be so close to this voice and yet so invisible to its owner. They were separated by only a thin
sheet of metal and could hear him as if he were right there.

“Hide!” Katie whispered. They had fallen asleep in the main center aisle of the truck. Now they hustled toward the back, struggling to hurry and be silent at the same time. David dove into the last row on the right and Katie slid in behind him. No sooner were they in position than the driver cut the motor and they heard the wheeze of the giant brakes locking the vehicle into place.

After so many hours with the roar of the motor filling their ears, the silence seemed deafening. To move anywhere on the rattling metal floor had just become impossible. Whether or not they had chosen the best spot to hide, they would now have to stay where they were.

It stank in the rear of the truck and the smell reminded Katie of all that had happened the night before. By now she needed a bathroom too.

They could hear the driver call, “Which way to the dock?”

“Around to the right,” replied the man on the ground. And then they heard the driver get out and walk away. There was nothing to do but wait until he came back.

In the meantime, they were surrounded by a terrifying number and variety of voices. Men and a few women, too, were calling out to one another and on either side they could hear the noisy panting of other great trucks idling. The fumes of diesel oil were nauseating.

Katie and David dared not speak to each other, but separately they concentrated on these sounds and smells, searching with their ears and noses for information about where they might be. In the distant background they seemed to hear car doors slamming and occasionally the piercing voices of children. Beneath it all was the roar of a highway, very close by. From the sound of things, they were at some kind of roadside rest stop and had taken their place in a long row of trucks.

Then—too abruptly—they heard their own driver's voice once again, and very nearby. He had returned. They heard him fumble with the latch on the truck's rear doors and slip the bolt loose.

So this was it. Quickly David switched on his flashlight and shined it at his watch. It was 3:35 in the morning. They had been locked in this truck for more than four hours. Dark and smelly and uncomfortable though the truck was, it had become their refuge, and now they were about to leave it. The metal wall that had shielded them from wondering eyes and strangers' hands was about to be thrown open.

It was a moment of great, great danger.

Click
. The latch released and the doors at the rear of the truck swung open. Though it was still night, the rest stop was brightly lit and the great lamps instantly chased the
sheltering darkness from the narrow rows of boxes where David and Katie were hiding.

With a clatter, the ramp dropped from the truck to the pavement below. Heavy, booted feet climbed up and in. They heard the driver unstrap the dolly from the wall and lower it, rattling, to the floor. They heard the rustling of papers, as if he had paused to flip through a clipboard.

The driver of their truck was getting ready to unload.

David and Katie were tense with attention and thinking fast, and they both came rapidly to the same conclusions: The driver was in the truck, and that was bad. On the other hand, he appeared to be alone, and that was good. Only one man stood between them and safety. When they got past him, they would be in the clear.

All they needed was about thirty seconds. That's how long it would take for them to escape. But for those thirty seconds, they needed this man to go away.

And to go away now, thought Katie, whose mind was turning like a motor. Because in about one more minute, she thought, he'll figure out what he's here to get. Any minute now he'll start looking for the boxes he needs. With any luck, they won't be in the back row, where we are. With any luck, he won't find the mess we made with the crackers and the drinks. With any luck, he won't notice it
stinks
in here—no way, she thought with despair, no way he won't notice
that
.

Hurry, thought David, whose mind was running through the same course as his sister's. Let's load up that dolly and roll it away. And dude,
don't breathe
.

Smack
. The unseen man slapped his clipboard down on top of a box. “Hokay,” he muttered, and they heard him stretching. “
Ho
-kay.” Slowly, ponderously, he ambled down the center aisle toward the back of the truck.

No
. David and Katie tried to flatten themselves into their corner. There were long pauses between each of the man's steps. Katie feared that her heart would pound its way out of her chest.

“Whoa!” In the middle of the truck, the man abruptly stopped short. “What the—”

He had found the broken box of snacks! Now he would certainly search the truck. David shot an agonized look at Katie.

“What the heck is this?” They could hear the man stoop to examine the broken bits of box and the scattered crackers. “Somebody been in here?” Purposefully now, he strode toward the back of the truck, inspecting every aisle for additional damage. “Dang!” he cried, finding the broken carton of drinks.

Closer the man came, and ever closer. Now he was only one aisle away from where David and Katie crouched tightly in the very back of the truck. Now they could hear the indignant huffing of his breath. They braced themselves for his face around the corner, his cry of astonishment.

But it did not come.

Instead—from the other side of the very last wall of boxes that separated him from them—they heard him snort in sudden disgust.

“Whew!” exclaimed the man. “Stinks in here! Stinks like all
heck
!”

Abruptly, he turned on his heel and strode back toward the open door of the truck. They heard him push past the dolly, stomp down the ramp, pivot, and head straight for his cab.

Their ears told them what happened next, as clearly as if they had seen it with their eyes. They heard the door of the cab opening, the man hopping in, and the door slamming shut.

They did not wait to hear his angry voice on the phone.

In less time than it would have taken to say it, David and Katie leaped to their feet and streaked down the truck's center aisle. They paused for a split second at the ramp and then, knowing it would rattle, jumped from the back to the ground. It was farther than they'd thought, and David tumbled when he landed, slightly twisting his ankle.

But no twisted ankle on earth could have stopped him at that moment. David took a quick, wild look around him. The King Foods truck had parked in a row of big rigs that were lined up alongside one another like the keys on a piano, with narrow aisles between them. Now David headed down the nearest of these aisles, slipping
between their own truck and the enormous vehicle next to it.