Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [51]
Wyatt started up the van and, with hardly a glance in the rearview mirror, screeched onto the highway. Jack reached over and grabbed the seat belt he’d yet to buckle, clicking it into place just as they barreled around a sharp corner.
“How long will it take us to get there?” Jack asked.
Wyatt seemed to be doing calculations in his head, which probably meant that he hadn’t really imagined himself traveling all the way to southern Maine tonight. “Route Three is up ahead. . . . That’s the fastest, I think.”
“I was trying to avoid the turnpike,” Jack said, as a way of making small talk. “That’s why I was taking Route One.”
“What — why? You think there’re roadblocks on the turnpike or something?”
“Well, actually, I was just —”
“Hey, man. I thought Sylvie was exaggerating. Just being melodramatic, as usual. But the Staties — they’re really looking for you?”
Jack nodded, not sure whether this information would change things or not. “Yeah, I guess I’ve been on the news a lot.”
“Cool,” said the kid, whose left leg started jangling like he was nervous. He bypassed the exit for Route 3, probably thinking it was too dangerous. Jack wished he’d kept his big mouth shut; what if Wyatt was too nervous to take him all the way to York, now that he knew he was a fugitive?
They passed through a fairly busy town, and Jack fought the urge to duck down in his seat; he didn’t want to scare Wyatt any more than he already had. They had just reached the town center when Wyatt’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “It’s Sylvie,” he said, and handed Jack his phone. “Talk to her.”
“Hello?” Jack said.
“Wyatt?”
“No, this is Jack.”
“Jack! You’re OK! And Wyatt must have found you!”
“Yeah. Thanks for sending him.”
“I kept thinking about you, all alone in the dark, trying to get to York. . . . Anyway, I just had to tell someone, and I knew Wyatt would agree to help you,” Sylvie said in a rush. “I hope you’re not mad.”
“Mad? Are you kidding?” said Jack. “You were awesome at the bookstore. And I really appreciate Wyatt’s help.”
Before hanging up, he promised Sylvie two things: one, that he’d find a way to call her when he finally saw Lydia, and two, he’d never ever tell anyone that she and Wyatt were involved in helping him. “If my father didn’t kill us, my uncle would,” she said. “Just say you hitched or something.”
Not long after Jack got off the phone with Sylvie, Wyatt started pummeling Jack with questions, each seeming a little weirder than the one before.
“How long have you been on your own?
“Where’s the coolest place you’ve stayed?
“What’s the grossest thing you had to eat?
“How did the cops learn about you?
“Where does your grandmother live?
“Is she loaded?”
It was this last question that seemed the strangest to Jack. Why would Wyatt think his grandmother was rich? Maybe he assumed that no one bothered to search for poor kids, or maybe he’d read too many books like The Boxcar Children or The Great Gilly Hopkins, where kids who’d been on their own ended up living with a rich relative. Jack wasn’t sure how to answer. His grandmother wasn’t filthy rich, but she lived in a big brick house in Cambridge, and she’d never worked — or at least, Jack had never known her to work. So Jack just mumbled something like, “Well, she is always offering to pay for lessons or take me on vacations,” and let it go at that. He didn’t bother adding that his mother would never have allowed his grandmother to pay for either.
“What I wouldn’t do for a little money — a little independence,” said Wyatt. “I’d live on the road like you, traipsing off to see wild elephants whenever I felt like it.”
So Sylvie had told him. But Wyatt didn’t seem to want to make fun of him.
Jack realized that getting trapped in the safe with Sylvie was probably one of the luckiest things that had happened to him that week. If he hadn’t met Sylvie,