Zip (11 page)

The chef had nearly reached her. He was six feet away…then five…

“Come on!” Lyssa bellowed again, squeezing the horse’s flanks. The horse trotted forward three feet, then stopped again

The chef hurled the spoon. It spun through the air toward Lyssa but fell short—smacking right into the horse’s flank

The horse reared high into the air, kicking its front legs wildly. Lyssa threw her arms around its neck, losing her grip on Zip’s handlebars. The scooter tumbled to the ground

“No!” Lyssa shouted. But it was too late. The horse darted forward and Lyssa buried her face in its mane as they tore out of the parking lot and down the highway

Wind stung Lyssa’s cheeks and she bounced up and down on the horse’s back as it galloped out of the parking lot. After just a few seconds, her legs were aching and her butt was sore. At least the highway was mostly empty of cars. Thank goodness for that, Lyssa thought, because she didn’t know how to steer a horse. She tugged on its mane a little, but all that did was make it speed up. After a few minutes Lyssa’s whole backside started to feel numb and her fingers hurt from gripping the horse’s mane so tightly

Once the diner was little more than a dot in the distance, Lyssa tried to get the horse to slow down. She pulled on its mane and shouted
STOP
into its ears and patted its
rump with her hand. For a while the horse didn’t seem to understand what Lyssa wanted it to do. It trotted backward, then ran around in a circle, then reared—up up up—on its hind legs. Lyssa gasped and threw her arms around its neck, and only then did it thud to the ground and start walking slowly forward.

For the first time in what felt like hours, Lyssa allowed herself to breathe. She was safe…for now

She thought about everything that had happened in the last hour. One thing seemed bigger than everything else: Michael had called the cops. He thought she had been kidnapped. Guilt crept into Lyssa’s chest. He must be really worried. Or scared. She thought of his face looking pale and frightened and wondered if she was doing the right thing

She thought of Zip too, lying abandoned in the diner parking lot, and her stomach turned over. She couldn’t go back for it yet. There was too much danger of being spotted by the chef or by someone who had seen the emergency broadcast. The best thing she could do, she decided, would be to ride a little ways and find a place to hide out until it got dark. Then she would return and retrieve Zip. Hopefully, she’d be able to find her way out of town. There was no sign of the bus, and Lyssa doubted she’d ever catch up to it

She was starting to get the hang of sitting in such an awkward position. She tightened her arms around the horse’s neck. She thought about the cowgirls back at the diner and smiled, thinking she must look like she was a cowgirl now, too. She even had the hat

She adjusted the brim of her cowboy hat and had started humming under her breath, trying to think of an Athena song about riding horses, when the sound of a motor startled her. Lyssa glanced over her shoulder. A black shape was speeding down the highway toward her. At first Lyssa thought the little dot was just a bike, but then blue and red lights flickered to life and a siren started blaring
Police.
Lyssa whipped back around and dug her heels into the horse’s flanks.

“Go!” she shouted. The horse stopped walking completely and looked over its shoulder at Lyssa, as though it was expecting her to give it an apple. Lyssa fumbled in her backpack, looking for a granola bar. Since when did you have to bribe a horse to move?

Before she could retrieve a granola bar, the siren grew louder and a motorcycle whizzed up next to Lyssa. Her face was reflected in the officer’s mirrored helmet

The policewoman pulled off her helmet and climbed off the motorcycle. She fixed Lyssa with a hard look, raising one eyebrow

“We got a call about a stolen horse,” she said. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Um,” Lyssa stalled, frantically racking her brain for some kind of excuse as the policewoman’s eyes flicked deliberately down to the horse Lyssa was riding, which was currently pawing the ground unconcernedly. “Um…okay, there was this man, right? And he stole this lady’s purse back at the diner. So I jumped on this horse and tore after him and—”

“Save it.” The policewoman held up her hand. “Listen to me, little lady. I’m going to leave my motorcycle here and ride with you back to the station. Then you can give your parents a call and we’ll all have a little chat, okay?”

The policewoman climbed onto the horse behind her. She nudged the horse with her knee and made a soft clicking noise and the horse started forward at exactly the right speed. Lyssa felt her face burn with embarrassment. The policewoman made it look so easy. This horse must’ve thought Lyssa was
crazy
.

It felt like they’d been riding for a long time when a low, orange-brick building came into view. There were bars on all the windows and a line of white-and-blue cop cars parked just outside. In front of the parking lot was a big white sign that read
Gopher Flats Police Station
.

Lyssa clenched her eyes shut—she didn’t want to look
at the horrible building for any longer than she had to. Maybe the policewoman hadn’t recognized her from the emergency broadcast yet, but it was only a matter of time. Once she got into the police station, someone was sure to figure out who she was with those photographs of her flashing across the television every few minutes

She couldn’t believe she’d stolen a horse and gotten all the way to Oregon only to be picked up by the cops. The memory of Michael’s face yesterday—bright red and furious—popped into her head and she shivered. If he was that angry when she’d gone off on her own in their own neighborhood, how mad was he going to be when he got a call from a police station in another state? The thought made Lyssa feel like someone was playing jump rope inside her stomach

The policewoman stopped the horse right in front of the station’s bright blue doors and slid off easily

“All right, young lady,” she said, pulling Lyssa off the horse. “Let’s go.”

Lyssa followed the policewoman through the doors and into the station. The furniture inside was made of old, cracked plastic that might have been blue a long time ago but was now gray. The fluorescent overhead lights flickered on and off every few seconds. It felt like being inside a giant bug zapper lamp—and Lyssa was the moth

The policewoman marched her into the front room and pointed to a chair next to an open office

“I need to call a cowgirl about a horse,” she explained. “You wait here. When I’m finished, you, me, and your parents are going to have a little powwow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lyssa muttered. She slid onto the empty chair, shivering at the feel of the cold plastic on her legs. But as soon the policewoman disappeared into her office, Lyssa sat up a little taller, searching the station for a way to escape

Her heart sank. There were police officers everywhere. Two of them were engaged in an important-looking conversation around a water cooler near the front doors. Another officer sat behind a heavy metal desk just a few feet away. He was eating a sandwich and reading the paper. Pinned up behind him was a large black-and-white photo of an eleven-year-old girl with straight blond hair
Her photo.
Lyssa swallowed. She hunched down in her seat and pulled her hat down low over her head. Maybe if no one got a good look at her face, they wouldn’t know who she was.

One thing was clear: Lyssa needed her mom’s help
now
. She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering how she had surfed on a cutting board in the diner’s kitchen. She had no doubt that was part of her mom’s magic. It had to be.

“Come on, Mom,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s me. I need you.”

But all she heard was the distant crackle of the police scanner and the squeak of someone shifting in their chair. Lyssa eased her eyes back open

“You’ll never make it out of here,” said a voice to her left

Lyssa turned, tugging nervously at the brim of her cowboy hat

A girl sat down in the chair next to hers. Her hair was two completely different colors—one side was bubble-gum pink and the other was bleached blond. It covered her face like two thick curtains, parted in the middle, so that all Lyssa could see was her nose and the corners of her beady gray eyes. The girl rocked back and forth, causing the plastic seat to squeak beneath her weight. When she leaned forward, Lyssa read the spiky black word scrawled across her T-shirt:
Cannibal
.

Lyssa shifted her eyes back down to the backpack in her lap. Fear crawled up her legs and arms, leaving little goose bumps along her skin. She couldn’t believe her mom was going to fail her now, leaving her here alone with some creeper. What could the girl be in here for? Was it possible that she was
actually
a cannibal? Maybe the police hauled her out of school for biting people. The thought made Lyssa want to crawl under her seat and hide, but she couldn’t do that—she had to look tough or the girl would
know she could be pushed around. Lyssa had heard that if you had something to trade with criminals, you could convince them not to hurt you. But all she had was a backpack filled with granola bars, and $13.

Lyssa glanced up again. Not only were the girl’s beady gray eyes still looking right at Lyssa, but there were two white balls in her lap and someone had drawn eyes on them with a Sharpie. They were staring at Lyssa too. The girl’s hands were bunched near her mouth and she chewed on the ends of her fingers. Lyssa caught sight of one of her fingernails: it was jagged, cracked, and bloody

That gave her an idea—maybe she
did
have something she could trade with the cannibal girl. Yanking her backpack open, she started digging around inside, finally pulling out a pack of Band-Aids that had been hidden in the bottom of her backpack for months. The Band-Aids were clear and designed to look like tiny tattoos of hearts and swords.

“Here,” Lyssa said, handing the box of Band-Aids to the cannibal. “For your fingers. They’re pretty torn up.”

The cannibal hesitated for a second, then leaned forward and took the Band-Aids. She gave Lyssa a shy smile

“Thanks,” she said, and then gestured to the plastic eyeballs in her lap. “Stress balls,” she explained. “I’m supposed to squeeze them so I don’t bite my nails. But it doesn’t really work.”

She wiggled her fingers in front of Lyssa. The nails were bitten down past the skin. Lyssa nodded, trying not to cringe

“Is that why your T-shirt says
Cannibal
?” she asked.

“What?” The girl glanced down at her shirt, looking confused. “Oh. No, Cannibal is the name of my band. I’m a drummer.”

“Oh,” Lyssa said, perking up a bit. Maybe the girl was a criminal, but she couldn’t be
too
terrible if she was a musician. At least she wasn’t an
actual
cannibal. “So, um. What are you in here for?”

“In here?” The cannibal leaned back and laughed, shaking her head. Her stress balls nearly tumbled to the floor. “My dad’s one of the detectives. I’m just waiting for him to get off work so he can drive me to soccer.”

Lyssa let out her breath. “I was worried you were a…” She stopped herself from saying
criminal
. After all, Lyssa was the one who had stolen a horse and run away from home and lied to the ticket taker in Seattle.

The cannibal girl leaned forward in her chair, dropping her voice to a whisper. “See that gumball machine over there?”

She pointed to an old-fashioned gumball machine in the corner of the station. It was red and standing on a wrought-iron pedestal. All of the gumballs inside were bright blue.

“Evidence,”
the cannibal hissed. “In a poison case. My dad told me all about it.”

Lyssa didn’t know whether to believe it, but she decided in that instant that she liked the cannibal girl. She reminded Lyssa of the performers back in the Texas Talent Show. There’d been this juggler—Marty—who’d had multicolored hair and little juggling balls just like this girl’s.

Lyssa leaned forward in her seat, helping the girl unpeel the Band-Aids and wrap them around her bloody nails. When they were done, the cannibal girl wiggled her fingers in front of Lyssa. It looked like she had tiny heart and sword tattoos on all of her fingertips.

“This
is
better,” she said. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Lyssa said. She thought about how she was always sucking and biting on the tips of her hair. She knew how hard it was to break a bad habit. Maybe she could stick some Band-Aids on her braids? “I started chewing my hair once my mom got sick, but after she died…”

Lyssa stopped short. She’d just said that her mom died. She’d never said that out loud before. Not
ever
. It felt strange, like accidentally saying a curse word or telling a secret. She bit down on her tongue, hard, wishing she could swallow the words that just escaped from her lips. Instead, she hummed a little, hoping the music would wipe the memory of those words from her head.

Cannibal girl raised her eyebrows. “So, what’re you in here for?” she asked. She hadn’t seemed to notice Lyssa’s slip

“Oh,” Lyssa said. “Um. Well, I robbed a bank. With a squirt gun.”

The cannibal girl giggled. “Really?”

“Yeah. And it’s not just any squirt gun, either. It’s a CIA prototype, and now this station is holding it as evidence.”

“Oh, okay. Bank robber.” She nodded. “So you couldn’t be that girl, right?” She pointed to the poster on the far wall and Lyssa felt her blood turn cold. Cannibal girl recognized her!

“That’s not me,” Lyssa said quickly. “No, you see, I dyed my hair to look like the runaway…what’s her name, Liza? I knew the police were after me—I had robbed that bank after all—so I decided to take on her identity. See, I figured if the police thought I was just a runaway, they would go easy on me.”

Lyssa felt her story becoming more and more real. She leaned forward in her seat, lowering her voice like she was sharing a secret

“The truth is…I have the money buried in a coffee can out in the middle of the desert. If you help me escape, I can cut you in…”