Mr. Hopper bolted into the room and grabbed the jar, wrenching Dallas’s hand out of it. “You little thief,” Mr. Hopper said.
Florida seized the jar from Mr. Hopper and smashed it on the floor, sending quarters and shards of glass spattering across the floor like hundreds of silver beetles.
The next day, Dallas and Florida were back at the Boxton Creek Home. Mr. Hopper told the Trepids that he and Mrs. Hopper had made a mistake; they weren’t ready for children.
If Florida had been older, she might have felt that Mr. Hopper was right, and that she was lucky to be away from the Hoppers. But she wasn’t older. She was five, and what she felt was that she and Dallas had been very bad and they would never be in a real family.
Now in her room at the Boxton Creek Home, Florida wondered why she had dreamed about the Hoppers. They were neither the first nor the last family that Dallas and Florida had been sent to, and they were certainly not the worst. As she drifted back to sleep, though, she was swallowed by another nightmare about the Hoppers.
Next door, Dallas heard Florida whimpering. He crept to his closet and lifted the cardboard flap covering a hole in the wall. “Florida? What’s the matter?”
Florida sat up and looked around. She slipped out of bed, tiptoed into her closet, and knelt beside the hole. “I was having a maggoty nightmare about those Hopper people,” she said.
“Don’t think about them,” Dallas said. “Erase them. Someday we’ll get on that freight train and ride out of town and we’ll be on our own, and we won’t have to put up with people like that. Someday we’ll live in a beautiful place, and …”
On he went like that, until Florida calmed down and curled up on the floor of her closet and fell asleep.
CHAPTER 5
THINKING CORNERS
Dallas had been showing one of the younger boys how to throw a tennis ball over the roof of the Boxton Creek Home. “You pull your arm back like this, see? And you have to aim high, and at the last minute snap your wrist like this, see?” The ball sailed upward, curving toward the roof, but veered suddenly, crashing into a window.
Now Dallas sat on a stool in the basement Thinking Corner. The first few minutes in the corner were the hardest, because he’d see that damp cement wall and the ghostly cobwebs and spiders, and he’d be reminded of a cellar that he and Florida had once been locked in.
He closed his eyes. Not going there, he told himself. Not going into that cellar. Going somewhere else. Going somewhere green and sunny. Going where there are trees and birds. And soon enough, he was there in his mind, in the place where trails wound through the woods, and where a boy could throw anything he wanted and it wouldn’t get him in trouble.
Two hours later, Mr. Trepid opened the basement door and called down to Dallas. “Out of there, boy. Got another reservation for that space.”
As Dallas climbed the steps, he saw Florida standing beside Mr. Trepid, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. “I was just running—I didn’t mean to stomp on those flowers,” she told Mr. Trepid. “And that hole in the wall—I was just trying to get a little air in that putrid room.”
“You just go down there and think about it,” Mr. Trepid said.
As Florida passed Dallas on the steps, she said, “My turn. Hope you kept the seat warm.”
Florida stomped across the basement room and kicked the wall and the stool.
“I heard that,” Mr. Trepid called from above. “You’ve just earned yourself an extra hour down there.”
Putrid man, Florida thought. Putrid basement. Putrid Thinking Corner.
She sat on the stool, her arms crossed. He can’t make me think if I don’t want to. She tried to make her mind a blank white canvas, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep the canvas blank. Splotches found their way on it, splotches which turned into images, which turned into people.
That morning, she had seen a woman pass by the Home. The woman was tall and large-boned, with frizzy, unruly hair. That’s a little bit like my hair, Florida had thought.
“Hey, Mom!” she had called.
The woman, startled, turned to Florida, who immediately ducked back in the doorway of the Home. Florida peeked around the door, watching the woman hurry away.
Now in the basement Thinking Corner, Florida saw that woman again in her mind, and she thought, Well, she could have been my mother. And that reminded her of the man she’d seen with Mr. Trepid the night before, in the alley behind the Home. The man’s back was to her, but he stood in a sort of loose-limbed way, his feet splayed out, his arms swinging at his sides. For some reason, his standing like that reminded her of Dallas. She almost called out, Hey, Dad! but then the man had turned, and she saw his matted hair, and there was something about him that frightened her. She was glad she hadn’t called out to him. My father wouldn’t look like that! she thought.
Now she opened her eyes and saw a spider scurrying down the wall. She hopped off her seat, picked up the stool, and hurled it against the wall, smashing the spider.
The basement door opened. Mr. Trepid said, “I heard that. Keep that up and you’re going to be down there all day.”
CHAPTER 6
THE OPPORTUNITY
Mrs. Trepid had ahold of Florida’s arm and was pulling her down the hall.
“I wasn’t doing anything, honest,” Florida said. “Where are you taking me?”
Mr. Trepid dragged Dallas in through the back door.
“I was just digging up some worms,” Dallas protested. “And are you accidentally squeezing my arm?”
Mr. and Mrs. Trepid ushered Florida and Dallas into their office and closed the door.
“Don’t sit down. You’re a mess,” Mrs. Trepid said.
“I wasn’t going to sit anywhere anyway,” Florida said.
“Take off those I’ve Been Bad shirts, and put on these clean ones,” Mr. Trepid ordered.
“What for?” Florida asked. “You said we had to wear these scratchy smelly putrid things for the rest of the week.”
“Take them off,” Mr. Trepid repeated. “You two are going somewhere.”
Florida flashed Dallas a look. They’d heard this before. Too many times.
“No we’re not,” Florida said. “We’re going to be here until we die.”
Mrs. Trepid sank into a chair. “I certainly hope not,” she said. “I certainly pray that is not the case.”
Mr. Trepid said, “We have an opportunity for you, a splendid opportunity.” He looked at his wife. “Don’t we, Mrs. T.? Don’t we have a splendid opportunity for these two young people?”
“We’re not going to any more of those foster places,” Florida said. “If that’s what you’ve got in mind, you can just forget it.”
Dallas touched Florida’s elbow. “Well, we might, if it was the right place, you know, like a mansion or something.”
As Mr. Trepid smiled a slow smile, the light sparkled off his gold front tooth. “This is a grand opportunity.”
“I suppose you could consider it a temporary—very temporary—foster arrangement,” Mrs. Trepid said.
“Not going,” Florida said. “That last place you sent us had more fleas than a mangy dog, and a zillion snakes—”
“Not quite a zillion,” Dallas said.
“A hundred zillion,” Florida said. “And lizards, and that guy—that guy was crazy. That guy was a lunatic.”
Mrs. Trepid winced. “Perhaps that last placement was ill advised—”
“But this is a traveling opportunity!” Mr. Trepid interrupted. His tongue slithered over his golden tooth.
Florida and Dallas exchanged a glance.
“What sort of traveling are you talking about?” Dallas asked.
Florida whispered to him, “Don’t trust ’em. Don’t fall for it. They’re probably sending us to Siberia.”
Mrs. Trepid opened a folder on her desk. “Let’s see,” she said, pulling out a pamphlet. “There’s a river trip across the state to the Rutabago River—”
Florida leaned
toward the desk. “Huh,” she said.
Mrs. Trepid pulled another pamphlet from her folder. “And let’s see, there’s also a little trip to Kangadoon—”
Dallas strained to see the pamphlet. “You mean the Kangadoon way out in the ocean, that Kangadoon?” In his mind, he had already propelled himself there. He was splashing in the ocean; he was running through the hills.
Mr. Trepid handed the Rutabago pamphlet to Florida and the Kangadoon one to Dallas. “We have a very, very nice and respectable couple—”
“Don’t trust ’em,” Florida whispered. “Remember that last ‘very, very nice couple’ with the snakes?”
Dallas saw himself climbing a tall, tall tree in Kangadoon and perching on a branch high above the hills. He had a spyglass and was surveying the ocean, on the lookout for pirates.
Mr. Trepid continued: “And this very, very nice and respectable couple are looking for some strapping strong young people—”
“To do what?” Florida said. “Be their slaves? Hose down their hogs? Clean out their snake pits?”
Mr. Trepid folded his hands, as if in prayer. “This very, very nice and respectable couple are looking for two young people to accompany them to the Rutabago River and to Kangadoon, now, during your summer vacation.”
Dallas, up in his imaginary tree in Kangadoon, had spotted a ship far out on the ocean. Pirates!
“However,” Mrs. Trepid said, “they’re not going together. They need one person to go to the Rutabago, and one to go to Kangadoon.”
“You mean we’d be split up?” Florida said. “You can’t do that. We’re not splitting up. We’re never splitting up.”
“It’s only for three months,” Mrs. Trepid said. To her husband, she added, “Unfortunately.”
Dallas blinked himself back to Mr. and Mrs. Trepid’s office. “Do we get to meet these pirates first?” he asked.
“What pirates?” Mrs. Trepid said. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“The people,” Florida said. “Do we get to meet ’em and see if they’re a couple of lunatics or what?”
Mrs. Trepid smiled. “But of course. Mr. T.?” she said.
Mr. Trepid scuttled out of the office and returned minutes later with a white-haired couple.
“Allow me to introduce Mr. Tiller Morey and his wife, Sairy,” he said.
Dallas stared at the man, whose left eye looked a bit droopy. Maybe he’d worn a patch there.
Florida looked at Dallas. “A couple of lunatics,” she whispered. “A couple of old lunatics.”
CHAPTER 7
DOUBTS
Dallas and Florida crawled into their closets and lifted the cardboard covering the hole in the wall.
“What did you think of those lunatics?” Florida whispered.
“They seemed okay,” Dallas said. “Better than the usual sort. They smiled a lot.”
“Yeah, well those Hoppers and Cranbeps and Burgertons and those creepy Dreep people all smiled, too, until they got a dose of us.”
Dallas was thinking about the trip to Kangadoon. He saw himself on the island in the ocean, making a campfire. The waves were lapping in the distance.
“What if these old lunatics are like that last pair?” Florida said. “That slimeball slave driver and his twitchy wife—”
“Maybe these two are different,” Dallas said.
“Doubt it. Maybe we should just get on that night train like we planned.”
“What about money?” Dallas said. “We need a little money.”
“We’re never getting any money,” Florida said. “If we wait until money falls into our laps, we’re going to be here forever.”
“You look at your pamphlet?” Dallas asked. “How does that Rutabago River look?”
“Like paradise,” she said. “It’s probably fake. What’s that Kangadoon look like?”
“Double paradise.”
“What’s the catch?” Florida said. “What do you think is the real story behind these old people saying they’re going to take us on these trips?”
“They’re not that old, and maybe there isn’t any catch,” Dallas said.
“And maybe there is,” Florida said. “I hate it here, but I hate it worse going to these crazy people’s houses and getting yelled at and scolded and told that we are loud and messy and stupid—”
“I know it,” Dallas said. “But maybe—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you always say ‘but maybe,’ and it’s never any better, and usually it’s worse, and I’m sick of it. I vote for the freight train.”
“Let’s just look at those pamphlets one more time and think about it tonight,” Dallas said. “Okay?”
Later, as Florida lay in bed listening to the wail of the freight train passing through Boxton, she thought about the old lunatics and about going down a river in a boat. She wanted to be in that boat on that river, but she wanted to be there with Dallas, not with the old man. She hated the thought of being separated from Dallas. She felt that the only reason they’d survived this long without turning into cowardly wimps or juvenile delinquents was because they’d had each other.
In the room next door, Dallas counted the wails of the train. He saw himself in Kangadoon, wading barefoot along the shore. The sky was blue, the water was blue, the sun beamed down. Footprints on the sand! He whirled around, drew his sword.
CHAPTER 8
HANSEL AND GRETEL
Dallas and Florida were squashed in between Tiller and Sairy Morey on the front seat of their old truck, bouncing along on the road out of town.
“Where exactly are you taking us?” Florida asked.
“Ruby Holler,” Tiller said. He turned to her when he answered, and she saw that he had a pleasant, tanned face, and deep blue eyes. His hair was very white and short, sticking up in places at the back of his head. Up close like this, he didn’t look as old as Florida had first thought, but she wasn’t going to trust his pleasant face.
“And where exactly is Ruby Holler?” Florida said.
Sairy answered, tapping Florida’s arm as she did so. “Down the road a piece, and then down another road back into the hills.” Sairy’s hand, Florida noticed, was a little wrinkly, but the skin was soft. Florida wasn’t going to be fooled by soft-looking skin.
Florida whispered to Dallas, “Those creepy Dreeps lived up in the hills. Hope it’s not the same hills.”
Dallas cringed, then closed his eyes and tried to picture other hills, rolling ones, green ones.
“How come you’re not going with each other on your trips?’” Florida asked Sairy.
But it was Tiller who answered. “Now there’s a good question,” he said, glancing at Sairy.
He sounded a little grumpy, Florida thought. He was probably going to be the first one to yell at them.
Sairy chattered all the way to Ruby Holler. “Look at that there road rabbit,” she said, and, “Over there’s where we found a stray lamb,” and on like that she went, while Tiller kept his mouth shut and his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Definitely something bugging him, Florida thought.
As they pulled onto a narrow dirt road, Sairy said, “You are now entering Ruby Holler, the one and only Ruby Holler! Your lives are never going to be the same—”
“You don’t have to exaggerate,” Tiller said.
Florida and Dallas stared out the window at the winding road ahead and at the tall leafy trees flanking the road and at the stretches of wild grass with blue and red and yellow flowers blooming in thick clumps.
“See over there?” Sairy said. “Bear bush. And over there, tickle-violets.”
When they got out of the truck, Florida pulled Dallas aside. “I think these two are a little bit off their rockers,” she said.
“Look at this place!” Dallas said. “You ever seen anything so amazing? All these trees? All these hills? Is that a creek over there?”
“Dallas, don’t you go falling for sweet talk and trees and creeks. We’ve got to be ready to flee for the hills
and catch that train, you hear?”
“I hope you don’t mind the sleeping arrangements,” Sairy said, as they stepped onto the front porch.
“Where are you putting us?” Florida asked. “In the hog pen?”
“The hog pen?” Tiller said. “I’m afraid we don’t have a cockamamie hog pen. I suppose we could build you one though, if you wanted.”
“You got a snake pit?”
“A snake pit?” Tiller said. “You hankering after a slimy snake pit?”
“No,” Florida said.
“Don’t mind that sagging porch,” Sairy said, leading the way inside. “And our place is kind of small, I know.” She paused to smooth a quilt covering a chair. “You’ll be upstairs.”
“In the attic?” Florida said. “You got a dusty cobwebby attic up there?”
Sairy motioned to the wooden ladder. “It’s a loft. See? Up there—it’s kind of open to everything down below. I hope you don’t mind. All our kids slept up there together. I’m sorry we don’t have separate rooms for you.”
Florida and Dallas scrambled up the ladder into the light, airy loft. Windows overlooked the trees outside and the deep blue mountains beyond. There were four beds in the room, each covered with a brightly colored quilt: hundreds of patches of red and orange and yellow and brilliant green stitched together.
Dallas gazed out at the trees. It’s like a treehouse up here. A treehouse with beds.
“Up here? Is this where you mean?” Florida called down to Sairy. “In this big huge place? Or is there a cupboard? You going to put us in a cupboard?”
“I thought you might sleep in those beds. Well, not all of them. Two of them. I hope that’s okay,” Sairy said. “I hope you’ll be comfortable up there.”
Dallas sank onto one soft bed. “Florida, this is like floating on a cloud. Try one.”
Florida stretched out on another bed. “Probably has bugs in it,” she said, jumping up again. “What’s the catch? Are they going to fatten us up like Hansel and Gretel and stick us in the oven?”