The driver stopped beside the boys and opened the door, but they did not board the bus. I couldn't hear what the boys said, but the door quickly closed again and the bus drove forward. I saw the boys watching me and wondered what they had told the driver.
I waved my arms over my head. The bus slowed but didn't come to a complete stop.
As it rolled up beside me, the driver shouted through an open window, “The next time you kids flag me down when you aren't going anywhere, I'm calling the cops!” Then he stepped on the gas and pulled away.
“Wait!” I shouted. I ran a few feet after it, but the bus kept going.
While I watched the rear of the bus grow smaller in the distance, I heard the three boys laughing hysterically as they loped off in the opposite direction.
I stood there with the sun beating down on me and wondered why some people are so mean. Those boys knew that if they hailed the bus but didn't get on, the driver would be unlikely to stop for me. I could see why the driver assumed I was with them; what I didn't understand was why the boys wanted to make me miss my ride. Was it because Snickers had foiled their attempt to rob me? Did causing trouble for me make them feel superior? Or was it simply that they were bored and unhappy and not smart enough to figure out better ways to use their time?
I sighed. There was no way I would wait here twenty-four hours for another bus to arrive. I didn't want to spend twenty-four more
seconds
in the same town with those delinquents. I really didn't want to go back to Myrtle's, either, even if I could find June. They lived in the wrong direction. I wanted to continue my journey. I wanted to find Starr.
“Looks as if we're going to do some walking again today,” I told Snickers. I went back in the gas station.
This time the man saw me enter, and he turned the radio down. “Miss the bus?” he asked.
“The driver didn't stop. He thought I was playing a trick and didn't really want to get on.”
“Were the Jenley boys out there again?”
“Three boys waved at the bus before it got to me, but when it pulled over, they didn't get on.”
“Yep. That would be Will Jenley's two boys and their cousin who's visiting from Alabama. They flag that bus down two, three times a week and then run off when the driver stops. I keep telling them, one of these days the driver's going to get fed up with their shenanigans and sic the law on them. Teach 'em a lesson.” He shook his head. “Not the brightest bulbs in the box, those Jenley boys.”
The one shelf in the glass counter held a few candy bars and other snack items for sale. There weren't any Twinkies, so I bought a Milky Way and a package of salted cashews. Then Snickers and I set off down the road together.
I glanced frequently over my shoulder, in case the three stooges decided to follow me, but I didn't see them again. Like most bullies, they disappeared as soon as there was a chance that they might get hurt themselves.
As I walked, I thought about what could have happened if Snickers hadn't come to my aid. I didn't think Zooman planned to hurt me, but he would have stolen all my money. He might have let me keep the backpack with my clothes in it, since he probably had no use for girl's clothes, but without any cash I'd have been in terrible trouble. I realized it wasn't smart to carry all of my money in one place.
As soon as I got away from town, and was certain nobody could see what I was doing, I stopped. I sat on the side of the road and opened my pack. First I poured some water in Snickers's bowl. The Milky Way was starting to melt, so I ate it. Then I folded some of the twenty-dollar bills into tight rectangles and put them in my shoes. When I slipped the shoes back on, I could feel the mounds of money under each foot's arch.
I wished I had a dog collar with a little container on it like rescue dogs wear in the mountains. If I had one of those, Snickers could carry some cash, too. I unsnapped the leash and put it in my backpack. Since Snickers stayed next to me, leashed or not, it didn't seem necessary to use it when no one else was near.
While Snickers finished slurping his water, I stuck some money in my jeans pockets. If anyone stole my backpack now, I'd still have enough funds to keep traveling. I'd still be able to find Starr.
With the cash distributed, we set off again. I never thought I'd be the kind of person who talks to her dog, but as we walked along, I found myself telling Snickers about my early memories of Starr.
“We used to lie on a blanket in the yard and watch for shooting stars,” I said. “That's when Grandma first sang âTwinkie, Twinkie, Little Star' to me, and I had a giggle fit and couldn't quit laughing.”
As we plodded along the shoulder of the road, I tried to empty my mind of everything except memories. When people get hypnotized they sometimes remember events from long ago that they hadn't even known they could recall. I hoped that if I concentrated on scenes from my early years, new images might flood into my brain and give me some fresh clues about exactly where we had lived. It didn't happen, though. I only replayed the few events that I'd remembered all my life.
I soon ran out of my meager supply of family memories, so I told Snickers about Rita. “She got me a library card right away so I could read whatever I want,” I said. “She let me use her computer, and trusted me not to look at sleazy stuff. When we shopped for clothes, she let me pick out my own and told me I looked pretty. If I had stayed there, I was going to have tennis lessons.”
Snickers was a good listener.
“If I ever write my autobiography,” I told him, “I'll skip all the years between when Mama died and when I went to live with Rita. I'll only tell the good parts of my life. First I'll write about Mama and Grandma and Starr; then I'll write about Rita. Next I'll tell how I found you, and finally I'll report the happy ending where I'm reunited with Starr. After that, I'll be so busy having fun and doing everything with my twin sister and you that I won't have time to write more chapters in an autobiography.”
Snickers stopped walking. He looked around and whined.
“You can't be tired already,” I said.
Snickers looked up at the sky and gave a short, high bark.
I followed his gaze and realized that the sky had grown darker while I was absorbed in my thoughts. A bank of clouds filled the sky ahead, darker clouds than I had ever seen. They had an odd greenish tinge, the color of an old sea turtle.
I realized the temperature had dropped, too. Even though I'd been walking at a steady pace, I no longer felt warm.
“Is it going to rain?” I said. “Is that what you're telling me?”
Snickers whined again.
9
A
wind rustled across the road, and drops of rain spattered on my head and shoulders. Snickers poked my leg with his nose, as if urging me to hurry.
I know animals sometimes sense bad weather approaching before humans are aware of it. Maybe a severe storm was headed this way. I scanned the countryside around me for some place to take shelter. I saw rows of cornfields and, about fifty yards ahead, a big tree on the side of the road. Not too far beyond the tree, a ramshackle shed leaned sideways, as if trying its best to fall over. Probably it had once housed a tractor or plows or other farm equipment. Now it looked abandoned.
Even though its walls looked less than sturdy, the shed did have a roof, and right then Snickers and I needed a roof over our heads.
As I hurried toward the shed, the rain turned to hail. I ran, holding my arms over my head, as Snickers trotted beside me. A flash of lightning lit up the dark sky. Thunder followed the lightning. I wondered if Snickers had heard far-off thunder that my ears couldn't hear, and that's why he had barked.
Hail the size of gum balls pelted us, stinging my arms and the top of my head, as if the pieces had been shot from guns. Snickers yelped. By the time I reached the big tree, the ground was covered with round white ice balls, making it impossible to run. I tried to remember if you're supposed to stay under a tree during lightning, or get away from trees. I wasn't sure, but when I stood close to the tree trunk, most of the hail got deflected by the tree's branches before it could hit me or Snickers, so I stayed there. It seemed better to remain under the leafy canopy than to let huge hailstones pound us and risk turning an ankle or falling while we ran to the shed.
I knelt on the ground beside the tree trunk, with Snickers beside me. I took off the backpack. I put Snickers's muzzle on my legs, bent over him to protect his head, and held the backpack over my own head.
Some of the hailstones still hit us, but they were slowed by the leaves and did not strike with as much force as when we were out in the open.
The lightning and thunder continued. One huge lightning bolt zigzagged straight down, as if flung to earth by an angry god. Others bounced from cloud to cloud, seeking a place to penetrate. The wind increased. The earth vibrated. I could feel Snickers trembling.
“It's okay, boy,” I said, trying to convince myself as well as my dog. “It's only a thunderstorm.”
But was it? I had never experienced such a high wind before.
I had always counted seconds in a thunderstorm to estimate how close the lightning was: one, one thousand; two, one thousand. I'd been told that each second that elapsed indicated one mile; if I could count two seconds between the lightning and the thunder, it meant the lightning was two miles away. The thunder now followed the lightning with no space between them. Flash,
boom!
Flash,
boom!
The storm was no longer somewhere in the distance. It was here, beside us, all around us. I buried my face in Snickers's fur and pressed myself against him.
The wind whipped through the tree above my head, stripping leaves from the branches. My ears popped the way they do if I ride downhill really fast on my bike.
The hail stopped as abruptly as it had started, perhaps blown away by the strong wind.
Crack!
A large branch snapped off the tree and fell onto the road.
Even with my backpack on my head and my palms pressed against my ears, the howling wind seemed to come from a boom box whose volume was on high.
Snap!
Another branch broke off, this one dropping to the ground beside me.
Snickers began to pant, his sides heaving and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. His drool soaked my pant leg.
The noise increased to a roar. I raised my head to look toward the bank of greenish clouds that I had seen earlier, and gasped.
A tornado!
Beyond the shed, a funnel cloud whirled its way from sky to earth. I couldn't tell how far away it was. Not far. The tornado came toward me across the cornfield, its long, narrow funnel dangling down, twisting like a snake held by its tail.
I had seen enough nature programs on television to know I could not outrun a tornado. Besides, the wind was now so strong that I knew I would not even be able to stand up, much less run. I leaned hard against the tree trunk, slipping one hand through Snickers's collar to keep him close and grasping one strap of my backpack with the other.
Maybe the tree would act as a shield, protecting us from the storm's fury. If it didn'tâif the tree was uprootedâI didn't think Snickers and I could survive.
The noise grew louder. It sounded as if a train track had been installed between two corn rows, and the train was rushing toward me at full speed.
The twister came closer.
Another branch snapped off, but this time instead of falling to the ground it flew across the road like a huge bird. I didn't watch to see where it finally landed because I heard a different noise, like fingernails scraping a chalkboard but magnified a thousand times. As I looked toward the noise, I saw the roof come off the old shed. A long, flat piece of rusty corrugated tin lifted up like a magic carpet and skimmed across the rows of corn, flattening them. It banged to the ground once, then rose again and continued its destructive journey.
Without the roof, the shed walls collapsed. If I had taken shelter there, the walls would have come down on Snickers and me. The center of the funnel swerved away from us after it hit the shed, but the edges swirled with such intensity that I felt as if Snickers and I were Dorothy and Toto in
The Wizard of Oz.
One hand curled around Snickers's collar so tightly that my fingers cramped, but I was afraid to let go. With my other hand, I opened my backpack. I planned to snap the leash on Snickers and tie the other end around my waist. Whatever happened to us in this tornado, I wanted to stay together.
Like a giant scoop, the wind lifted up big chunks of the shed walls and sent them sailing into the air.
Then the wind ripped my backpack right out of my hand. The strap simply pulled from my grasp and the backpack rose as if it had sprouted wings.
“No!” I screamed. I grabbed at it, but it was far beyond my reach. All I could do was watch my backpack disappear into the distance, along with pieces of the shed, tree branches, and other debris.
Snickers panicked when I screamed. He jerked so hard that I could not hold on to his collar. He ran from me, racing blindly into the storm as if he believed he could run away from this nightmare.
He did not get far.
The whirling wind chased him, and as I watched in horror, a big branch dropped from the dark sky above Snickers and struck him in the head. He went down.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I tried to crawl to him, keeping myself flat on the ground while I pulled my body forward with my forearms. If he had been killed, I would never forgive myself. Even though I had no control over the weather and could not have prevented a tornado, I had brought him to this desolate place. I had made him endure a horrible storm, with nowhere to take shelter. As frightening as it was to me, I could only imagine how scary it must be to a dog, who did not understand what was happening. Snickers knew
sit
and
stay
and
good dog
, but he did not know what
tornado
meant.