All Good Children - Catherine Austen [89]
We show our ids at the gates. The guard barely glances at us before he hands them back and nods us through. We’re outside the city at last, and the reality of this journey hits me like a cold shower. I’m chilled and sweaty and scared to death.
“You want me to wait for you and take you back home?” the driver asks.
“No, thanks,” I tell him.
“I don’t have any calls to go to. I could wait,” he says.
“Thanks, but we don’t know how long we’re going to be.”
I don’t like being dropped off outside the walls in the dark. I wish we were carrying weapons instead of luggage. I wish the taxi would take us straight to the car, but Mom doesn’t want the driver to know where we’re going or who we’re meeting in case Dr. Richmond tracks us down.
We unload our luggage outside the carpark fence. Abdal takes his payment and looks around in confusion.
“You should go,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “Good luck, architect.”
We watch him drive away.
“Seven thirty,” Mom says. “We’re late.”
Live music and laughter rise from the carpark. Dallas runs toward it so fast I think he’s leaving us, but he stops at a recycling bin just outside the fence. He stands under a streetlight in Mr. Lavigne’s suit and black woolen coat, his hair feathery blond, his face bent to his screen. He looks so much like my father I can barely breathe. He turns to us with a smile and holds up a finger, telling us he’ll be a moment. Mom takes a sharp breath and looks away.
I look down at the black bin and shiver. Fear crawls along my spine. Over the usual notice of pickup times and fines and acceptable deposits, someone has written the word, WITHSTAND.
Dallas fiddles with his RIG, scratches inside his ears while he reads, fiddles some more, removes his storage chip, then drops the RIG in the recycling bin.
“Everything okay?” I ask when he returns.
He moves away from Ally. “My dad says I can’t go to Dallas because I have to finish school. He says I need to come home because something’s wrong with my patch.”
“That’s it?”
“Coach Emery says we should hustle.”
“Hustle?”
“His exact word was ‘Run.’”
I glance at the garbage can containing Dallas’s RIG.
I expect police cars and helicopters to swarm in on it.
“Go!” Mom shouts.
It’s a five-minute hustle down the road to the car. Our baggage is heavier than it looks. I drop the tent four times.
Everyone thinks I’m a recall for taking it, but no one says a word, not even Ally. We have our jackets unzipped and our mitts in our pockets by the time we arrive. “Thank god,” Mom mutters.
Churchill sits on a lawn chair beside the only car on the road. A lantern and thermos wait at his feet. His butt is perched on the edge of the seat and his head rests on the back bar. He could be sleeping. He wears a black ski cap pulled down over his eyes. He has tattoos up and down his neck and rings in his ears and nose. Not what I expected. I thought he’d be like his mom, all chipper and zesty. He looks like he spends most of life lying down.
The car is shiny like it’s just been washed, but it’s hideous— huge, old and fat, like a giant toad on wheels.
“We had a car like this when I was a kid,” Mom says.
Churchill lifts his head a smidgeon, pushes back his cap, smiles. His teeth are not what you’d call white. “You the people with the apartment?” He holds the lantern up, looks at each of us, settles the light on me. “Nice hair,” he says, which is more of a compliment to his mother than to me. He nods a few times, then slowly removes his ass from the lawn chair.
He’s my height, I’m pleased to see. He holds out his hand for me to shake, pumps mine a few times before pulling back and shaking Dallas’s. “Thank you, sir, for making this trade. You will not be disappointed with this car. Here’s your bill of sale and permit, which I believe are under your wife’s name. Registration and insurance are in the driver’s visor.”
He turns to Mom. “You couldn