Allie Jo
Tara is a runaway!
If only Dad hadn’t come onto the veranda looking for me. I couldn’t sleep at all last night thinking about Tara. Why was she running away? I concocted all sorts of stories about her, but only one made sense: she had a cruel stepmother.
This would explain why she had no bathing suit and no extra clothes. The stepmother wouldn’t buy her any, of course; she bought stuff only for her own daughters. I simmered in my bed, thinking about poor Tara, doing all the work and being treated like a servant. No wonder she ran away.
I gobbled down my pancakes this morning and made lots of noise during my inspections, but Tara didn’t show up. I daydreamed through all my chores, through my babysitting job, and all the way through supper.
I ate everything on my plate, including the onions, and cleared the table. “I’m going to sit on the veranda,” I call out.
Dad flicked me with a dish towel. “Don’t stay out so late tonight, okay?”
But it’s not Tara I find outside; it’s Chase. He’s sitting on the concrete pad, his feet stirring in the water. I did the brass by myself today, since he was with his dad.
“Hi,” I say.
He startles, or at least it seems like he does. “Hey,” he says.
A lizard scurries away from me. “What are you doing?”
“Looking at the moon. It was full yesterday.”
I gaze up and see that the moon is a fingernail short of being full.
“Did you ever see Teen Wolf?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t like scary movies.”
“It’s not scary! It’s about this guy who plays basketball and becomes a werewolf.”
I pinch up my face. “Knock, knock,” I say, dropping beside him.
He plays along. “Who’s there?”
“Werewolf.”
“Werewolf who?”
“Shut up and comb your face.”
He groans. “Har, har.”
I plunk my feet into the water. It sends a chill right up my spine.
Chase notices my shiver and laughs. “My dad says that people in Florida have thin blood. That’s why you get cold so easily.”
I’ve heard that too. “I wonder if that’s true.”
He shrugs his shoulders and lies back on the dock. Crickets and frogs bleat in harmony. Chase raises his left arm. “Big Dipper.”
I point. “Little Dipper.” I lie down.
“Moon.”
“That’s not a star!”
“I know,” he says. We stare at the night sky for a minute. Then he goes, “I asked your mom about that secret panel.”
I’m not worried. Mom doesn’t like guests going in there, something about insurance. It’ll be different after Chase has passed his probation. “What’d she say?”
“She said it went up to the nanny quarters?”
I take a deep breath and make my eyes huge when I look at him. “Didn’t she tell you?”
“Tell me what?” He bolts upright.
I sit up too. “I don’t know if I should be telling you this.”
“Oh, man! You have to!” He gawks at me.
I look around and hunch down. All I need is a flashlight to hold up under my chin. “The staircase goes up to the nanny quarters—that’s where the nannies stayed with all the rich people’s kids. There was one nanny, sixteen; she was an indentured servant from Ireland and her master liked her better than his wife.” That part’s true, according to legend. Now for the part I like best, the part I made up. I lean in close and say in a hoarse voice, “The wife bricked her in while she slept.”
“No!” Chase says. His whole face lights up.
“Yes!” I say. “And sometimes, late at night, you can hear her clawing to get out.”
“No way!” But he wants to believe; he halfway believes—I can tell.
He lies back down with a smile on his face. The arm with the cast on it lies across his stomach. It reminds me that his mom won’t be able to sign it; it reminds me of something else too.
“Um,” I say, “I sort of accidentally told Sophie about your mom.”
He turns his head on the ground to look at me. “What’d you say?”
“That she was gone.” I don’t want to admit that I said disappeared too. Anyway, she has to come back; she’s his mother.
Chase pushes himself up and slumps, his feet still in the water. “If I tell you something, you can’t tell anyone.”
I swallow and raise my eyebrows. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“My mom ran away.” He stares at me, waiting for a response.
“What?”
“When I was really little, my mom took off.” His voice cracks. “She left us.”
My heart drops to my stomach when he says that. It’s not so much his words as it is hearing his voice crack. I wish I could put a cast on his heart.