“She destroyed my home!” Walden yelled, thundering closer. Spittle exploded out of his mouth.
Annie was suddenly happy Eva had an ax.
“She let my dogs loose and they’re missing! She refused to be invisible.”
“And well she should,” Bloom interrupted.
Annie’s heart warmed in her chest. Elves were so nice, even if they did talk a bit funny.
“She refused to do anything right!” Walden finished. “She was a jerk! A lazy, annoying, noisy jerk, and now we have no pets, no home, and no money! My mother had to get a job. An actual, real out-of-the-house-and-do-work job.”
Annie felt strange, like something inside her had been pulled too tightly and was about to snap. Why is Walden so evil? How can he possibly say that I’m the jerk?
Beside her Jamie twitched like a nervous bunny. “We need to get going.”
“I know,” she said. “I know … Move out of the way, Walden.”
Walden raised an eyebrow. “And who is going to make me?”
Eva growled. “Can I please just use my ax? Nobody ever lets me use my ax.”
“No,” Bloom answered, tightening his grip on her arm.
Annie couldn’t let Eva use her ax either. But they had to do something. She knew Walden. He’d never move. Not for her. He is a horrible, rotten rat of a boy—no offense to rats—and he hates me, Annie thought. Frustration took over, and for a second her whole body shook as she suddenly imagined a nice, calming field of flowers.
“You other twerps can go. I just want Annie so she can pay for what she did,” Walden insisted as he lunged toward her.
“No!” Bloom and Jamie shouted as Eva bellowed an unintelligible war cry.
But Annie barely heard them. A burst of purple light flew from her left fingers and slammed into Walden’s hands. The light blinded all of them for a moment. And when it dimmed, Walden’s hands had morphed into giant pink bouquets, with polka-dotted green stems where his fingers should be. Flower heads had replaced his fingernails.
Walden jumped backward, raising his flower-hands in front of him.
“Wh-what?” His face turned red. He shook a flower at Annie. “You did this! You—y-y-y-you f-f-freak! You crazy freak!”
Mouth wide open in shock, Annie stared at her hands. She had done that, hadn’t she? Without drawing? That purple light had come from her and turned Walden’s hands into flowers. How? But she didn’t have time to think about it. They had a sputtering Walden to deal with and a gnome to return, and she was suddenly so terribly tired. It was hard even to stand up.
“Get out of here, Walden,” Annie ordered. “Go back to your mother and never come here again. And please be nice to people from now on.”
He gawped at her but didn’t move.
For a moment, Annie thought her legs might be shaking.
“You don’t want the rest of you to turn into a flower, do you?” she threatened, eyebrow arching.
That did the trick. Walden turned and ran up the road. Well, it was more of a fast walk really. Like Eva, Walden wasn’t much of a runner.
They stood there in the dark night, watching him go. Finally, Eva broke the silence. She jumped around in a little circle, a dwarf version of a happy dance. “That was so cool! It was so freaking cool! Holy coolness, Annie. Didn’t know you had it in you. Wish you’d done it to the trolls, though. Way to hold out.”
Even Jamie was smiling. Annie blushed, suddenly embarrassed by all the attention. She was about to explain to them how she’d been imagining a flower field when something wicked howled in the distance. The sound echoed across the town, piercing their happiness.
“Do you still have the gnome?” Annie asked Jamie, an idea formulating in her head, an idea that involved not just breaking a rule, but committing an actual big-time crime.
Jamie pulled it out of his shirt just enough so that the others could see the red hat and two blue gnome eyes that seemed to be twinkling mischievously. Annie petted the gnome on the hat and Jamie tucked it back inside his shirt again, just as the howling continued. It sounded like a hundred hungry wolves, and it sounded much closer than it did before.
Annie turned to the others and said something she never imagined she would say in a million years, “Maybe we should steal a car.”
33
And So a Life of Crime Begins
“There has got to be a freaking car to steal around here somewhere,” Eva grumped as they walked past house after house and empty driveway after empty driveway. Everything felt abandoned and spooky, clouded by snow.
It wasn’t easy to find a car to steal in Mount Desert. Wealthy summer residents owned most of the houses and brought their cars back with them to their real homes for the winter. Cars were important to people. It was how they got to the grocery store or the doctor’s or … well, wherever it was that adults always needed to go.
“How about there?” Eva pointed to a small green house with a crooked white porch that needed paint. A little red Subaru station wagon with a rusted-out bumper and a sticker that said GIVE PEAS A CHANCE sat in the middle of the driveway.
“No … That’s the school nurse’s. She’s super old. She can’t walk really well. She needs her car.” Jamie shook his head.
Eva rolled her eyes and threw her ax up in the air with one hand and caught it with the other.
“He’s just being nice, Eva.” Annie put her arm through Jamie’s as they trudged through the snow.
Her arm felt good and safe to him and made him almost forget how dangerous everything was.
Annie smiled. “It’s nice to be nice.”
“Oh … that’s brilliant.” Eva mimicked Annie’s voice, “It’s nice to be nice. I thought the Stopper was supposed to be smart.”
Annie stopped midstep. Jamie opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say. Annie pulled her arm away and sort of hugged herself, feelings hurt. He wanted to snatch her arm back and tuck it in his own. Instead he just stood there like a doofus.
“Eva!” Bloom scolded. He shook his head, apologizing. “I think Annie is brilliant. Jamie, too, and you’re just being a jerk because you’re scared. You always—”
“I am not scared!” Eva bellowed.
“—act like a troll when you’re scared,” Bloom finished.
“I do NOT act like a troll!” Eva’s ax moved into a menacing position. Bloom stood there, completely unafraid.
The howling in the woods increased. They all paused and scanned the direction it came from. All they could make out was trees and darkness.
“That sounds closer,” Annie whispered.
Jamie had an idea.
“Follow me … please …” He pulled in front of everyone and started running, feet kicking up the snow. The gnome bobbled up and down in his shirt. He checked to make sure the others were behind him and increased his pace, half running and half sliding down Sea Street, past the main entrance to the town office and then into the parking lot where the police cars were.
Three were parked in the lot. The others caught up to him. Eva took an extra bit of time and arrived panting.
“We can’t go to the police,” Bloom said. “Your father is one of them, sort of, and we have to protect the secret of Aurora and—”
“We’re not,” Jamie explained as they huddled by the street lamp. “We’re going to steal a police cruiser.”
Eva jumped straight up in the air, smacking her thigh with her hand. “Now you’re talking!”
“Shh … ,” Bloom urged her. “People will hear.”
Jamie smiled at her reaction, and Bloom nodded his agreement.
“Brilliant!” Bloom clapped him so hard on the back it made him cough.
The three white police cars with their blue lights and big tires beckoned. The writing on the doors read MOUNT DESERT POLICE. They were sort of spiffy looking.
Jamie rubbed his hands together. They just needed keys, and he knew exactly where to get them.
“I like the whole cop car thing, but couldn’t
we take a fire truck?” Eva asked, finally breaking the silence. “They have hoses and ladders and all those gauges and …”
“No.” Bloom glared at her. “What if there is a fire?”
“Well, what if there’s a crime?” she countered.
“There are three cars and one police officer,” Jamie explained. “But you always need all the fire trucks in case there’s a fire. It’s not the same with police cars.”
“I don’t know if that’s any better,” Annie murmured.
Eva threw her hands up in the air. “Stealing a car was your idea!”
Annie shivered in the cold. “I know … but … oh … The more I think about it, the more wrong it seems.”
They stared at one another for a moment. Jamie didn’t have a clue as to what was going on inside Annie’s head. She had been so brave a second ago.
In fact, they all were chilled to the bone. Jamie needed to get them somewhere warm. And they needed to get the gnome back to Aurora before other monsters came and killed everyone. A car was warm and fast. Fast was important. Lives were at stake.
“We will just borrow the car,” he announced. “We will bring it back. Plus, we aren’t stealing from a person. We’re taking it from the whole town. That’s who the police cars belong to: the whole town, all the taxpayers. And surely this qualifies as an emergency. The police cars are there to keep the town safe in case of emergency. So, we’re really using it for that reason. That’s not so wrong. Is it, Annie?”
“Brilliant!” Bloom said again.
“He likes that word,” Eva grumped.
“It’s a better word than ‘freaking,’ ” Bloom said in an exasperated voice.
They all settled into silence, waiting for Annie’s decision. Eva tossed her ax back and forth between her hands, sighing impatiently. Jamie stared at his footprints in the snow, and Bloom just stood there, eyes closed, face tilted toward the sky.
Finally, Annie gave a tiny nod, and once she did, Jamie set off to get the keys. As he hurried, Jamie worried he’d mess this up. And he didn’t really want to because if he did, he’d go to jail. A jail for children. They had those. And he wasn’t the sort of boy who wanted jail in his future. He wanted Aurora in his future.
There was just one entrance to the Mount Desert police station. The front door was right by the dispatcher’s office, which was where Jamie’s father worked the night shift. Jamie thought of his father, passed out on the lawn. He obviously wasn’t working tonight. Good.
Creeping forward and hiding alongside a bush, Jamie peeked through the window into the dispatch office. Marie was working. He liked Marie. She had a pit bull that could pretend to be shot and then come back to life. Marie would always scowl at Jamie’s father whenever she saw him. She also would sneak Jamie treats, pieces of crystallized ginger mostly. His mouth watered just thinking about it.
The problem with Marie was that she didn’t fall asleep at work, not even on the night shift, not even when she was working with Frostie, which is what she called Officer Frost. The other problem was that all the keys to the police cruisers dangled from a hook board on the far wall behind her huge black swiveling chair.
“I can do this,” Jamie whispered, teeth chattering.
Not only would a car get them to Aurora much more safely, it would also warm up Annie, and since her skin was turning blue, that seemed like a pretty big priority. Jamie glanced back at his friends. Bloom and Eva hunkered down by the cruisers. Bloom gave him a thumbs-up sign. Eva was trying to pick the lock on the door. Jamie had to hurry up and just do it.
He ran forward at a crouch, bounded up the stairs past the window, and smooshed his body against the white siding between the police station door and the window. Jamie pried open the door just enough to slide his thin body through, grabbed the handle, and closed it gently behind him.
He breathed in and held his breath.
He flattened himself against the wall, staring at a corkboard publicizing town meetings and harbor committees. He was in the short corridor before the locked door to the dispatch office. The dispatcher had to buzz people through to the rest of the police station.
The door was not an option.
However, Jamie spied the open countertop. The counter always reminded Jamie of a ticket booth. It was there so that dispatchers could give out overnight parking permits to people heading out to Swan’s Island or Islesboro on the ferry. The space was big enough for him to climb over into the dispatch office, but he had to do it without Marie seeing him.
He breathed out.
He could do this. He had to.
Turning around, Jamie carefully peeked over the countertop. Marie was sitting in her chair, staring at the computer, completely bored. Her hand was moving the mouse around and occasionally clicking. She probably was playing a video game. The room smelled of spaghetti sauce, the kind from a can. Jamie breathed the aroma in and stared at the keys on the wall behind Marie’s head. They were dangling there, waiting for him. If only he could be invisible.
A sudden beeping startled Jamie so much that he jumped backward. It was the microwave in the back room. Marie hopped up out of the chair and trotted to the back room to retrieve her dinner. He didn’t have much time before she’d be back.
Now! Jamie thought. He boosted himself up and over the counter, shimmying through the small opening, and then landed gracefully on the gray carpeting of the dispatch office. He bounded two steps across the room, snatched the keys, and bounced over the counter again.
The door of the microwave closed. Marie’s footsteps sounded across the carpet. The chair squeaked as she sat back down. Jamie pressed himself against the wall beneath the counter and crawled to the front door.
“Marie!”
He heard the hearty rah-rah voice belonging to Officer Frost. It was a raspy, sort of soccer-player kind of voice. “Toss me the keys to the Charger.”
Jamie froze.
“What for?” Marie asked.
“I’m going to cruise around.”
No. No. No. No … Jamie closed his eyes. He’d taken the keys to the Charger. It was the smallest cruiser. It seemed like it would be the easiest to drive. Marie and Officer Frost would see them missing. They’d come looking and they’d find him … And they’d send him to jail, or worse, they would send him back home to his father and grandmother.
Please. Please. Please. He begged silently, opening his eyes. The fluorescent light that hung from the ceiling had a hundred tiny dead bugs trapped inside it.
“Frostie. What are you thinking? Police Women of Kennebec County is on in five minutes,” dispatcher Marie said. “Plus, it’s snowing.”
Officer Frost said a swear word. Another chair squeaked as he sat down. “Turn it on!”
Marie harrumphed. Once she’d told Jamie she thought Officer Frost was too bossy. Marie did not like to be bossed.
The television was turned on, and Jamie crawled toward the police station door, sliding it open enough to slip through again. Then, sticking to the bushes he ran down the granite steps and into the parking lot. The others met him by the cruiser.
“Did you get it?” Bloom asked.
Jamie didn’t answer. His heart was beating so fast he thought it might break through his ribs.
“He didn’t. I told you he was too much of a goody-goody. Pay up,” Eva grumped.
Annie looked embarrassed for him, but Jamie smiled slowly and pulled the keys out from his pocket, dangling them in front of Eva’s face.
“Ha!” Bloom yelped and then immediately whispered, “Pay up.”
“Stop yelling. They’ll hear us.” Eva pulled a candy bar out of her coat pocket and handed it to the elf, who promptly broke it into four pieces and gave them each a share.
Annie nibbled hers and said to Jamie, “You drive, okay? I’ll hold the gnome?”
Jamie hesitated. “Okay.”
They climbed into the police car. Annie and Jamie went up front. Bloom and Eva clambered into the back. A wire cage divided the front seat fr
om the rear passengers. It was meant to separate the officers from the criminals they were taking to jail. In between Jamie and Annie were all sorts of radio and computer equipment. Behind them, mounted to the metal bracket beneath the wire separator was a high-powered rifle.
“This car is so freaking cool,” Eva whispered. “I totally want one.”
Bloom groaned. Annie latched her seat belt. Then after a moment’s hesitation, she reached over and latched Jamie’s seat belt as well. His hands were shaking so much. He gave her a curious half smile.
“Just, um … helping,” she explained.
Before he could respond, Eva leaned forward, rattling the cage with her fingers. “Start the car and let’s go.”
“Yes … Right … Um …” Jamie fumbled about with the keys. He attempted to stick them into the heating vent.
“Jamie?” Annie asked.
“Okay … Right … Yep. Sorry!” He stuck the keys into the steering wheel, honking the horn, which caused Eva to start saying naughty dwarf words. Annie unbuckled her seat belt, while keeping an eye on the police station. Marie and Officer Frost didn’t turn their heads from the TV set.
Jamie threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know how to drive.”
His face was a despondent mess.
“Well, yeah, obviously,” Eva snorted.
Annie opened her door. “Let me.”
He got out of the cruiser as well, and they met in the front. The wind blew snow all about their faces. Jamie squinted through it to have a good look at Annie. “Do you know how?”
She handed him the gnome. “Nope. But I’ve played video games. One of my foster moms was completely into video games. Okay … Keep this safe and buckle up. We can do this, Jamie, I promise. I promise we can.”
She hopped into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind her.
Jamie swallowed hard and tucked the gnome back inside of his shirt. He plopped down in the car’s passenger seat, buckling his seat belt.
“I should drive,” Eva grumbled. “Dwarfs are good at mechanical things.”
“That’s not the same as driving,” Bloom countered as Annie started the engine.