Dicey could barely see the words and prices. Food smells filled the diner, and she was out of the rain. It was warm and bright. The words on the menu swam before her eyes. She looked at their rescuer.
He sat with James beside him. He had dark curly hair and a black mustache and black eyebrows that moved up and down or wrinkled as if they had a life all their own.
“Who’d believe this?” he asked, meeting Dicey’s eyes. “I ask you.”
The waitress put his coffee down before him and gave each child a tall glass of milk. “Y’want straws?”
Dicey shook her head and grabbed for the glass. They drank, in large gulps at first, and then, when their stomachs had welcomed the first eager swallows, more slowly. All four glasses were empty when the children put them down.
“What can I getcha?” the waitress asked.
Windy looked at them. They had forgotten the menus. He grinned. “Four hamburgers. No, make that eight. Four large orders of fries. That’s all for now, but we’ll probably have dessert. Do you have any apple pie?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me a piece of pie now, please,” he said. “And save four pieces for the kids.”
She shuffled away, writing on her order pad. “Is that okay?” Windy asked Dicey. “We can change it if it’s not okay. It wouldn’t be any trouble. But I thought maybe it would be hard for you to decide, and the little one doesn’t look old enough to read yet.”
“I can too,” Sammy said.
“Apologies for insulting you,” Windy said, and his eyebrows waggled, as if they were laughing.
“I wanted hamburgers,” Sammy said. “Anyway. And french fries. That’s what I wanted.”
“Ah,” Windy said. “And what is your name?”
Sammy looked at Dicey. She nodded.
“Sammy,” he said.
“How old are you?”
“Six. How old are you?”
“Twenty-one. Really very old.”
Dicey remembered her manners. It was easier to remember manners with milk in her stomach and food on the way. “I’m Dicey and this is Maybeth and that’s James.” She answered the question in his eyes before he asked it: “I’m thirteen, Maybeth is nine, James is ten.”
His dark eyes studied her. “I once ran away, when I was James’s age,” he said. He told them a long story about running away one morning when he was afraid to go to school because he was short and skinny and somebody was waiting there to beat him up. In the middle of the story their food was set before them. Dicey stopped listening. Windy could eat and talk at the same time. But the Tillermans ate in absolute silence, in huge bites, barely tasting what they chewed before they swallowed it. They all had apple pie for dessert. Throughout the meal, Windy’s voice blew over them, smooth and steady. It didn’t matter what he was saying.
Windy paid the bill and left a dollar on the table for the waitress. Dicey, warmed from within, tried to thank him, but he shrugged it off. He took them back to the Green, saying he wished he could stop the rain because he, for one, had had enough of it and he suspected they had too. He led them across the Green to the long dormitory building. There, the hallways were narrow and brown, like tunnels. They climbed up four flights of stairs, twisting past closed doors. Finally, Windy threw open a door and ushered them into a room.
It was a mess. Ashtrays overflowed with cigarette ashes and butts. A newspaper had been left scattered on the floor around one armchair. Books were piled on the three desks and on the low table before the sofa and along the mantelpiece. Beer cans lay around a wastebasket that was so full it looked as if it wanted to erupt like a volcano and spew trash all over the room. It was warm and messy and comfortable, and filled with yellow light. Outside, dark rain fell. But they were inside.
Windy went through a door and turned on a light in the next room. Dicey caught a glimpse of bunk beds and dressers. He returned with an armload of clothing, mostly T-shirts and sweatshirts. “The bathroom’s through that door.” He pointed to the door beside the one they’d entered through. “Go get off your wet clothes and put some of these on. I guess you might want to go to the bathroom too.”
“I do,” Sammy said, so definitely that Dicey smiled.
“Meanwhile, I’ll see if anyone’s around.”
When they had gone to the bathroom, they covered themselves with Windy’s dry shirts, which, if none too fresh, were dry and warm. They hung their own clothes on the towel racks to dry. Dicey washed out all of their underwear, using the cake of soap on the sink. They returned to the living room. Windy waited there and another young man was with him.
“Stewart,” Windy said, “let me introduce my findlings.” He remembered all of their names and ages. “This is Stewart, my roommate,” he said.
Stewart smoked on his pipe and looked at them. He was tall, taller than Windy, and skinny like Windy. He had blond hair, so pale it was almost white, hanging fine and straight down to his ears. He had a strong, square jaw and a mustache as blond as the hair on his head. His eyes, as he looked at the Tillermans, might have been gray or blue, Dicey couldn’t decide which. It was as if his eyes changed back and forth between gray and blue, but she wasn’t sure if that was possible.
“What’s going on?” he asked Windy.
“I found them, as I said. Dicey first, and then the others. They need a place to sleep and it’s raining cats and dogs, and mice and pterodactyls, and God knows what else out there—so I thought to myself, why not here with us?”
Stewart smiled quietly. “Why not indeed? I’ll come in with you and they can have my bunks.”
James grinned at Dicey. Real beds.
Stewart took them into his room. He cleared books and papers off the top bunk, and James climbed up onto it. Sammy and Maybeth lay down on opposite ends of the bottom bunk. Dicey thought they looked like two little dolls in a dollhouse, lying there. James was half-asleep before she turned out the light and closed the door behind her.
She thought she would go back and sleep on the floor in that room, but Windy said she should take the sofa in the living room for her bed. He brought a pillow and blanket from his own room. “What do I need those for?” Dicey asked. “You keep them. I’ll be fine.”
Windy passed her the armload of linen. “Go ahead. Live it up. I can do without for one night.”
“You can do without,” Stewart said. “Listen, he took them off the bed where I’m going to sleep. And if you really don’t want them, I’d be glad to have them.” Dicey passed them over.
“Can we talk a little before you go to sleep, Dicey?” Windy asked. “Are you too tired?”
Dicey was so comfortable that she would have been glad to talk all night. She didn’t want to go to sleep, because then she wouldn’t be able to enjoy being comfortable. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer any questions. She was too brain-tired to be as careful as she ought.
They all sat down. Dicey sat alone in the middle of the sofa, and the young men took two arm chairs.
Stewart started. “Windy says you’re not lost.”
“No. I know where we are.”
“A fundamentalist,” Windy said to Stewart. His eyebrows moved. He asked Dicey, “What about your family? Do they know where you are?”
Dicey shook her head. “But that doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?” Windy asked. Dicey didn’t answer that.
“Are you in trouble?” Windy asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dicey said. “I hope not.”
“Okay,” Windy said. He leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands. His eyebrows were temporarily still. “What will you tell us? We’d like to help if we can. Do you believe that?”
“Yeah,” Dicey said. “Yeah, I do.” She thought. “I mean, you already did, didn’t you?”
“How about your parents?” Stewart asked. He was resting his head against the back of the chair, looking at her.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t lie to him. She could lie to anyone and make it good, if she had to—s
he’d certainly discovered that. But she didn’t want to, not to him or to Windy. She wasn’t going to lie to them, she decided.
“We don’t have parents. We’re on our own,” she said. Stewart’s eyes did not change, but waited, quiet as water.
“Wait a minute,” Dicey said. “Let me think a minute, okay?” He nodded. “We come from Provincetown, in Massachusetts. On the Cape.” He nodded his head, just a little. She heard Windy swallow back a question. “My father walked out on us when I was about seven. Just before Sammy was born. We were okay until lately, when things happened wrong. My mother lost her job. And things. So she told us we were going to Bridgeport, where she has an aunt, and we all packed into our car.”
Stewart held her eyes with his.
“We were in Peewauket and she left us to wait in the car while she went into a big mall. But she didn’t come out, and we couldn’t find her. So I decided that we should go ahead to Bridgeport and hope she’ll meet us there.”
Stewart asked, “How long did you wait for her?”
“All day and all night,” Dicey said. “We waited in the car. She didn’t come back. I’m hoping . . . I don’t know. The only place I know she might be is Bridgeport.”
“What if she isn’t there?” ’ Windy asked.
“There’s this aunt Cilla,” Dicey explained.
“Do you know her?” Stewart asked.
“No. But she sends us cards every Christmas.”
“You didn’t ask anyone for help?” Stewart asked. “The police?”
Dicey shook her head firmly. “I don’t know for sure what they would do. They might send us to a foster home. Or split us up. I don’t know what Momma—she didn’t say anything, she just disappeared . . . I have no idea what happened. No idea. I couldn’t risk telling the police. And that’s all true,” Dicey said.
“How long ago was this?” Windy asked.
“In June. Maybe two weeks, maybe three.”
“And you’ve been walking from Peewauket all this time?”
“We stayed at a park once. The little kids can’t go very fast.”
“Is that all you want to tell?” Windy asked.
“Please,” Dicey answered.
He nodded his head and his eyebrows arched as he smiled at her. “Then I say we get some sleep. What do you say, Stew?”
“Just thinking about all that walking makes me tired,” Stewart said.
“You okay here, Dicey?” Windy asked.
Dicey nodded. She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake in telling them.
Windy turned off the lights and Dicey stretched out on the sofa. She didn’t even hear the door close behind them.
CHAPTER 8
Dicey opened her eyes to the gray ceiling of the living room. She opened her ears to city noises floating in on warm air that came through the open windows. She sat up, alarmed at finding herself alone. Then the events of the night before came back to her, and she relaxed, stretched, bounced on the sofa and smiled to herself. She went to the window and looked out.
The rain had been swept away with the darkness. Everything on the green below sparkled in the early morning air. It even smelled fresh outside.
Dicey remembered that in the bathroom she had seen a stall shower. She went in quietly. She folded up their clothes hanging on the rack, except for her own, and put them in a pile on the sofa. Then she went back and turned on the hot water, so it would be hot when she had gone to the bathroom. When she was ready, she stripped off Windy’s T-shirt and stepped into the warm water, pulling the curtain closed behind her. The warm water beat down on her back and her chest and her hips and her arms. She revolved slowly, her eyes closed, like a wind-up toy that was running down. She had forgotten just how it felt to take a bath or a shower. It felt gentle and warm, like somebody’s arms around you.
Dicey took a cake of soap and washed herself, head to foot, hair and ears, toes and fingers, face, torso. The soap slid onto the floor. She bent over to pick it up and the water tattooed on her fanny.
She took one last slow turn under the water that turned into five last slow turns. Then she turned both handles off and stepped out.
As she rubbed herself dry and dressed, she thought: I can do anything. Anything. We’re going to be all right. It’s all going to be all right.
She squeezed some toothpaste onto her finger and brushed her teeth. Her teeth squeaked and her mouth tasted minty. She grinned at herself in the mirror and ran her fingers through her damp hair.
She opened wide the door of the bathroom and saw, not only her brothers and sister, sleep still in their dazed eyes, but also wild-haired Windy, and Stewart. Maybeth came to take Dicey’s hand.
Dicey asked Windy if they could all have showers. She turned on the water for Maybeth and returned to the living room.
“So. What’s next?” Windy was asking. Stewart had sat down in the same chair he occupied the last night. He looked around, but didn’t speak. His face looked fuzzy and confused, not quite awake. Windy answered himself:
“Breakfast is next. And then we have to see about getting these kids to Bridgeport.”
“Really?” Dicey asked.
“Really,” Windy said. “Stew has a car and it’s only—an hour from here? You’ll do it, won’t you, Stew?”
The gray-blue eyes rested on Dicey. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock class.”
“Then after the class,” Windy said.
“Okay. Sure. Do you mind waiting?” Stewart asked Dicey.
Dicey shook her head at his foolishness. “Do you know how long it would take us to walk it? Three days. Maybe four. I’d be a jerk to mind waiting a couple of hours,” she said.
“And you’re not a jerk,” Windy said. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down at her.
“Nope,” Dicey said. Maybe she should have been more polite, but she felt too happy for that. “Other things. Bossy. And I lie and I fight, but I’m not a jerk.”
Windy looked amused. He exchanged a glance with Stewart.
The little children paraded in and out of the bathroom, putting their clothes on in their bedroom. At last, everybody was dressed.
“Can you lend me some cash?” Windy asked. “Stewart?”
“I’ve got a twenty,” Stewart said. He went into his bedroom.
The living room was filled with warm air and sunlight from the windows. The Tillermans were all fresh and clean and not starving. They would have breakfast. They would get a ride to Bridgeport.
It was almost over.
Stewart stood in the doorway of his room. Dicey looked at him and smiled, but he did not smile back at her. He waited there, silent, and looked over the small group of people standing between the sofa and the fireplace. His eyes were gray now, a distant wintry gray. “I can’t find it,” he said. He looked at Windy over the heads of the children.
“You sure?” Windy asked. “It’s not like you to keep good track of your money.” His eyebrows made dark arches over his eyes.
“I’m sure this time,” Stewart said, still not looking at the children. “I just cashed the check yesterday and put the money in my wallet. I didn’t spend any. My wallet was in the top drawer.”
Despite the warmth of the day and the brightness of the room, Dicey felt a chill spread out from her stomach and everything grew shades darker, as if a big black cloud had just covered the sun. She looked at Sammy.
Sammy shook his head decisively.
James’s eyes were on the floor and his hands were clenched in his pockets. “James,” Dicey said.
“Whyn’cha ask Sammy,” James said. His eyes were hot and angry.
“Sammy said he didn’t,” Dicey answered. She held on to her temper.
“Then neither did I,” James said.
Dicey looked at Stewart, who still stood in the doorway to his room where the little kids had slept last night. He looked back at her and she was ashamed.
“Give it to me, James,” she said quietly.
James pulled one hand out of his
pocket and opened it wide. A crumpled bill fell to the floor. “Get it yourself.”
Dicey exploded. “I told you we don’t steal and you just go ahead and do it. And then you try to lie to me about it. I could kill you, James. You hear me? You’re so smart, but you can’t even figure out—” She was so angry the words got jammed up in her throat. “Look what you’ve done!”
James stood with his head bowed. Silence filled the room, a cold silence.
The crumpled bill lay there on the floor. Dicey couldn’t look at the faces of the young men.
“You’ve ruined everything,” she said. She strode to the window and looked out, pounding with her fist on the windowsill. She tried to find something to say to James that would make him fall down onto the floor, that would knock him over and hurt him.
Finally James spoke. “You didn’t yell at Sammy, you didn’t say you wished he was dead.”
“Sammy’s six!” Dicey turned around. “And Sammy didn’t take money, he took food. And Sammy didn’t take it from someone who’d helped us. Even you can see the difference.”
“He”—James kept his eyes on the floor but he jerked his head toward Stewart—“doesn’t need the money like we do. He’s got sweaters and guitars.”
“So what!” Dicey hissed. “And who are you to say, anyhow? All I asked you was to do what I say, only that—and now—”
Maybeth went to James and looked up at him for a minute. Then she took hold of the hand he had out of his pocket.
“You’re a thief,” Dicey spat the words at James. His hazel eyes flicked up to hers. “You steal.”
“Big deal,” James answered, from deep within his own anger. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Okay.” Dicey matched anger to anger. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. But until we get to Aunt Cilla’s you will do exactly what I say to do—or I’ll leave you behind. Do you understand?” James nodded. “Then we better get out of here.”