I dug the hole a foot deep. It took some trying to get through the tight, dry grass with a fork, but I did it. Then I used a serving spoon to shovel out the dirt. There is a good chance this spot will get water from our neighbor’s sprinklers, but you can never be sure. It’s hard enough to leave Plant behind, but thinking of her wilting and dying is something I don’t want to imagine. I can’t take her with me, because from what I can tell online, they might not let her ride on the bus. And I can’t leave a note saying Please water Plant. Last summer when I was gone, she sat on the kitchen table and almost died of neglect. Every day he walked right on by her without noticing her obvious thirst.
I placed her into the hole and pressed the old dirt around her waist. Then, water over the soil. It should hold her for a while. I kneel at her new spot in the world and try hard not to cry. Tell her all the cool things she will be able to see from this view. The mailman. Sanchez Lawn Service. Little kids riding bikes. That little girl in white sandals.
I toss the fork and spoon into our bushes to hide the evidence and wash my hands with the garden hose. The dirt under my fingernails won’t budge, but I’ll worry about that later. I have to take the next steps of my plan. First, I’ll ride the city bus for practice and then get a ticket for the real bus when the opportunity appears. In cop shows, as in life, you never know when you will have to make your move, so you must be ready. I begged Charlotte to take me to the Vikon El Bazaar, telling her I want another hat. She is game for this because she wants, what else, more shoes. Plus, I am planning to get a fake ID there with her help. I need one that says I am at least fourteen because that is the age you can ride a Greyhound bus by yourself. After I get the ID, it should be easy to pretend I am two years older, maybe even three if I apply the mascara just right.
The next step is telling my dad I am spending two nights with Charlotte so we can do plenty of girl stuff and suggesting wouldn’t he like time to go out with PBroom?
My plan is working.
I cross the cul-de-sac with my purse full of money, my duffel bag packed with my clothes, my real diary, and Harper Lee’s book. I tell myself it wasn’t a complete lie. It’s a soft one, like the ones he’s told my mother about love. The gentle, well-meaning kind of love. Because I wrote down my whole plan and knew Charlotte would never want to ride the bus on purpose, I had to do a small bad thing, a crime, really. I let all the air out of Finn’s tires so he would have to take Charlotte’s car to work. You should have seen the defeated car in front of his house.
And as long as I’d turned criminal, I decided to kidnap the potted plant those people kept putting out on their stump. I set it on Mrs. Dupree’s porch with a note. She will take care of it.
When we arrive at the bus stop, there is an old man with a brown shopping bag. He looks so hot I want to do something for him, but what is there to do? He has to get somewhere and so do I. It’s not as if I can turn on the wind. When the bus comes to a stop in front, he lets me and Charlotte get on first. I get a tiny thrill as I climb up the steps, scan the seats. Most of the passengers are traveling alone, faces turned toward the windows so you can’t see what’s in their eyes unless you stare at the grimy reflection, which no, I will not do today. I am not in the mood to talk to anyone except Charlotte. We need to be incognito. Incognito is one of my all-time favorite words because it can be a noun, adverb, or adjective. Mr. Smarty Pants someday-you-will-understand probably doesn’t even know this.
As soon as the bus starts rolling, I casually tell Charlotte about getting a fake ID.
“I figure it’s one thing Lisa won’t have,” I tell her.
“That is good. She won’t have that,” Charlotte says, and stares out the window.
On the ride back from the flea market, I stare at my brand-new fake ID. It’s a good thing I need a haircut. My long bangs cover a lot of my age. I am wearing my new mascara. And I didn’t smile at all, so I think I could even pass for fifteen.
Dad calls on my cell phone, and I try my best to sound relaxed and innocent of all my crimes.
“No. No. We’re having a great time. Just doing girl stuff, you know. Talking about bras and shoes.” I throw him off by adding just the right detail.
What do you know. Events change and my plan falls apart. There will be no getting out of Dodge, as they say. Gramps fell and broke his hip. He’s in the hospital. We’ll go down to Houston tomorrow to help Grandma.
He says to just come home from Charlotte’s this afternoon, please.
“Morning, kiddo,” Dad says. I am at the computer, trying to get a new bus schedule, and I might be busted.
I turn and see him watching me. He has his #1 Dad mug of coffee. Ha-ha! What a joke that is. Why it hasn’t broken in all our moves, I have no idea.
I’m caught. There’s no magic pulley system to hoist me up through the roof. The evidence is on the computer. I feel dizzy and sit carefully in the computer chair.
“Just sending an e-mail to Lisa. She’s still at camp,” I lie. It takes, because he just nods and takes a sip of coffee as I click out of the Internet.
“Better get your bag packed.”
My bag is already packed, just for another reason.
“Is Gramps okay?”
“He will be.”
“How long will we be there?”
“However long he needs, I guess.”
Here I am, traveling a highway, the same one I thought I should be taking to my aunt’s house. I would have been halfway there by now. The first thing we were going to do was investigate the truth about Harper Lee’s life. Research was at the top of my list. Aunt Mariah would know how to do this. But no, I am not getting an adventure. In Dad’s car, the windows are rolled up, the AC is on full blast, and the radio is on some talk station featuring a host bent on making listeners as angry as him. I let my iPod wires hang by my side, have my feet up on the dash, slink down into the seat. It’s a march toward sadness. There’s no thrill waiting at the end.
I get bored of my music, even Finn’s two songs, and pick up To Kill a Mockingbird. I beg Atticus to tell me something new and wise. If this was not such a special book, I would mark sentences with my yellow highlighter. I’m waiting for the day this feels like my own copy, like it was given only to me. Then I can call her Nelle like her friends do. Her biography says Nelle is Ellen spelled backward, which is her grandmother’s name. You have to wonder if her mother expected her to be the opposite of her own mother.
Somewhere along the way I fell asleep, and now I wake to the sound of our car driving on gravel. I rub my eyes and look out the window. It’s a Dairy Queen, which Dad knows is one of my favorites. Of all the things Garland lacks, at least it has a Dairy Queen. I slide my flip-flops on and get out of the car.
“This. This makes you happy, huh?” Dad asks.
“Why? What?”
“That’s the biggest smile I’ve seen on you for a while.” Well, they do have the BeltBuster and now that I’m here, I realize how much I need a cheeseburger.
We sit in a booth near the window, a tiny white vase with a lonely flower is all there is for decoration. The table has a red-and-white-checked vinyl tablecloth of the kind you might take to a picnic. Dad goes to the men’s room, and I look around the place, spying only a few people. There’s a family at one table: a mom, dad, and two toddlers who won’t sit down. They have ice cream dripping down their chins, and their mother reaches over, catches one by the arm, and wipes it clean away.
It’s noon. After church, people start coming in, ordering their cheeseburgers and Dilly Bars. Unlike me, they will go home to lie out in the sun or watch movies. They will have simple, uncomplicated Sundays, and I am so jealous of this I could spit. I will have hospital food, Grandma fussing over my hair, wishing her hands could be folding laundry or sewing or chopping. Now that I think about it, Mrs. Dupree was happiest when she was busy cutting apples. And my mother busied her hands making paper birds. Maybe this is the kind of old woman advice they give in Good Housekeeping magazine. I could write an article. Three ways to keep your hands moving. When I am ancient and seventy, I can tell you this, my hands will be busy writing.
Dad brings our food, spreads it out across the red-and-white tablecloth.
“You’ve been having a nice time with Charlotte. And helping Mrs. Dupree so much. And reading a lot, too. I should get you something special for being so good,” he says.
I am not good. I was trying to make out with a guy and beat it out of town. And of course, my fingerprints are all over the stolen plant on Mrs. Dupree’s porch.
“You didn’t tell me about your date with Miss Broom,” I say to change the subject.
“Do you genuinely want to know?”
“Yes. Spill.”
“Spill? I thought Finn was guiding you on the better use of language.”
Who cares what Finn’s choice of words would be? But my mind does an instant search of my brain. Tell. Reveal. Impart. Inform. Divulge. Communicate.
I will be the only seventh-grade walking synonym dictionary. Maybe someday there will be a job for this.
“Disclose all.”
“There you are. It was nice. She is funny. Kind.”
“Did you kiss?” I ask. He smiles.
Then, after a moment, “No, we did not.”
“How come?”
“We’ve only gone out for lunch between our classes.”
“Did you open the door for her at the restaurant?”
“So I’m being interviewed,” he says.
“Sorry.”
“Okay, Inspector Nelson. I opened the door for her at the restaurant. We sat in a red booth. When we came out, I think there was a bird chirping in the tree. Perhaps a blue jay. Perhaps an indigenous Garland brown bird. Yes, that’s what it was. Her perfume smelled flowery. I wore the striped gray shirt you gave me, which looked quite good. Not too much cologne, as you have advised me on many occasions. She wore jeans and a brown shirt with these little gold buttons around the neck. It matched her earrings, I think. I think it did. And she enjoys old, black-and-white movies and the same kind of music I do.”
“Well, she’s the only one,” I say.
He must like her. He’s told me this much only once before, and it was about that awful Deirdre.
“Oh, and we made another date,” he says. “A date date.”
“Don’t take her to the movies.”
“Why not the movies?”
“If it’s sappy, she’ll be embarrassed; and if it’s an action-adventure, you’ll be embarrassed. Dinner is best.”
“You’re an authority, eh?”
“I’m observant. And don’t wear that shirt you got for a dollar.” If shirts had a popularity contest, this shirt would be booed off the stage. It is that awful. Still, every time he puts it on, he thinks he’s a genius because he paid only a dollar for it. Well, you get what you pay for.
“Thanks for the tip,” he says.
He could invite her to dinner, and I could make them King Ranch Casserole. Then again, maybe not. It didn’t work for Charlotte and Christopher. Sometimes ingredients don’t go together the way you planned and you end up walking through Garland in a little black dress by yourself.