She didn’t like Chicago.
She never felt warm, no matter how many blankets she asked for at night. She missed sunshine. The ocean. Her short-sleeve dresses. And her father.
It’s only for a few weeks, Annie-bear, her mom told her when they’d first arrived. Just till I can get back on my feet.
But even at the age of almost-four, it was easy enough to tell when her mom was lying to her. Which had been happening a lot lately. And then she overheard her mom and Miss Mare talking about how they could stay as long as they liked, forever, if they wanted. Forever?
Forever was the longest time. It was the end of a rainbow, or the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Everything unreachable, unimaginable.
That was when she decided she would run away. She had her father’s phone number written on a scrap of paper pinned inside her backpack, from when she would take it with her to school back in California. All she had to do was take her backpack, walk to the payphone she’d seen outside the Dominick’s supermarket and call him collect. If she told him how much she hated it here, he’d come get her right away.
She decided to sneak out early the next morning. Everyone was still asleep, and she grabbed her backpack and tiptoed around her mother, walked carefully down the steps and out the front door.
Only, she had forgotten that you always needed to wear a coat in Chicago. It was snowing outside, and she couldn’t remember exactly which way to turn to get to the Dominick’s. Still, that didn’t stop her. She did eeny, meeny, miney, moe and then turned the direction her finger told her, down the street.
She walked for a few blocks, and felt certain she was supposed to turn somewhere, so she did eeny, meeny, miney, moe again. But then it was snowing harder. Nothing looked familiar anymore. (But maybe that was because of the snow?) Had she turned the wrong way? Maybe she should go back and try again tomorrow? But which way was back again? Now she wasn’t sure.
The sidewalks were suddenly slippery; she slid and crashed onto her bottom. And then she began to cry. She wanted to go home. To her dad’s house in Pasadena, to her bedroom with the Strawberry Shortcake wallpaper. Her parents had let her choose the wallpaper right after she’d turned three. It wasn’t fair they’d let her pick the wallpaper and then told her about a divorce and made her move out a month after they’d put it up on the walls. The thought of Strawberry Shortcake still there in her room without her made her cry even harder.
“There you are.” A boy’s voice startled her, and she looked up. Miss Mare’s son was a few years older than her and hadn’t been very nice to her since they arrived. This was the first time he’d even spoken to her.
“Did you follow me?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and tried to scowl. But then she shivered from sitting in the cold, cold snow.
Will took off his coat and handed it to her. “Put this on or you’ll catch a cold.”
Did sitting in the snow make you catch a cold? She didn’t know if that was true. She’d had lots of colds in California and had never once seen snow before now. But she was freezing, so she listened and put on his coat.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?” Will asked.
“Running away.” It suddenly felt like a stupid plan and she started to cry again. Even if she got to the payphone and called him, maybe her dad wouldn’t come for her. Maybe divorce meant he didn’t come when she called him anymore. Maybe that’s why her mom had brought her out here to begin with.
Will nodded and held out his hand so she could use it to pull herself up. “I hate it here too,” he said.
“Why?” she asked him. “You live here.” She couldn’t imagine hating your own home. She wanted to go home right now more than anything.
“My mom is sad all the time and my dad scares me,” he said softly.
“Why would your dad scare you?”
He shrugged. “He pretends to be nice. But then when he thinks no one’s watching him, he’s actually mean.”
Annie wasn’t quite sure what Will meant by that but she didn’t ask him to explain more. “I miss my dad,” she told him instead. “He’s not scary at all. You could run away with me.”
Will shook his head. “Kids can’t run away. It’s not safe.”
“Are there kidnappers here?” They had been warned about this at school in California. Strange men who might offer you candy if you got into their van. But she hadn’t ever seen anything like that in Pasadena. It felt like a story. Something in a book. But then, so did snow.
“There’s kidnappers everywhere.” Will spoke with such authority, she believed him. “So you can’t run away, okay?” He stopped talking for a minute and stared at her. Then he said, “But we can be friends while you’re here if you want. We can hate it here together.”
She nodded, accepting that solution for now. Because it seemed like maybe hating something with a friend was much better than hating something alone.
Then he showed her how to walk on the sidewalk when it was slippery. Short steps, like a penguin.
He held on to her arm, and they were penguins together as they slowly walked back to his house. And she didn’t fall again.