Denver, Colorado.

Days since Mom left: 29.

Distance from Salt Lake City, Utah: 539.23 miles.

 

Chapter Three

 

Dad was waiting in the parking lot. I climbed into the truck and unwrapped a taco, filling my mouth with cheese and shell.

"You could wait until we get home," Dad said. "We could set the table, even."

"I'm hungry," I said, talking through a mouthful of taco to illustrate my point. "And that trailer is not a home."

Dad sighed, but he didn't argue.

As we pulled into the RV park in Sheridan, rain splattered across the windshield. I'd downed all three of my tacos. Dad backed the truck into our spot so the bumper reached under the trailer hitch. Despite what I'd said to Dad, walking up to the trailer still made me feel like it was time to relax—the same way I felt when I came home from school.

No apartment I'd ever lived in with Mom had ever been as saturated with the musty smell of disintegrating upholstery, old crumbs, and fast-food grease. The grime lining the window ledges and smashed into the poo-brown carpet was dark enough to predate dinosaurs. The upholstery sported images of bright flowers in teal and orange and avocado green—colors that hadn't been cool since the seventies and were probably questionable then. Besides, the entire trailer was barely the size of the living room in my last apartment with Mom.

When Dad first picked me up, all my instincts told me to at least buy some sterile wipes at the 7-Eleven. But if Dad wanted to live in this hamster box, let him. I didn't want him to get too used to having me around. Mom was always burning incense in our apartment, and I wished I had some now, but I'd left all that stuff at Grandma's when Dad picked me up. I'd barely had room to bring two weeks' worth of clothes. Other luxuries had been out of the question. Mom hadn't left me enough money to keep paying rent, so I'd stashed the rest of our belongings in boxes in Grandma's basement. I left the furniture behind in the apartment. It was all thrift-store stuff anyway.

Dad slept on the bed at the back, which had cabinets both above and beneath it. We shared the closet, which was about two feet wide and five feet tall. Most of Dad's clothes had gotten stuffed into brown paper bags and chucked into the storage compartments on the outside of the trailer to make room for me. As it was, we were going to have to do laundry in the RV park coin-ops.

I walked along the bench next to the tiny table to climb onto my bed above the hitch. When Dad picked me up, he'd given me that bed like he was doing me a favor. "I have to get into the cabinets by the other bed all the time," he'd said. "I thought you might like to have your own space." But my own space was a three-foot-high slot, barely the size of a twin mattress. At home I'd slept on a queen.

Dad dropped the bag of food onto the table and flipped open a fold-out chair so he wouldn't have to squeeze onto one of the benches beneath my bed. As he rustled out the remaining tacos the smell of hot sauce wafted up to me, making me want to pinch my nose.

"I can't believe you make me live in this thing," I said. "I'm fifteen, and I don't even have a door to close."

"Which means you can't keep boys behind it," Dad said. "It's all part of my brilliant plan."

"But you're a man. It's indecent."

"It's not indecent," Dad said. "You're my daughter."

"For, like, a week."

"No. You've always been my daughter. And you don't need a door. You have a curtain."

I snorted and then swung the curtain closed on him, the metal rings screeching against the bar. Since he could still hear my every breath, it didn't really make a difference.

"Whatever," I said through the curtain. "I should at least have a door to slam when you say crap like that."

"You can go slam the truck door if it makes you feel better."

"Maybe I will."

I thought I might have heard Dad chuckle, but I didn't open the curtain to be sure. I knew I sounded like a brat, but whatever.

I moved over and pulled open the curtains on the front window. Outside, rain coursed down the glass in little streams. I could see trees blowing a few feet away, the leaves obscured by the layers of water.

"I was doing fine at Grandma's, you know," I said. "If I was still there, Mom could find me faster."

"Grandma didn't think she could handle you."

In the three weeks I stayed with Grandma I'd done all her dishes and cooked for her six times. "It's not like I'm so hard to live with," I said.

"I know. I guess I wore her out enough for both of us."

I'd heard Grandma say over the phone to Dad that she didn't want to deal with having "another teenager under her roof," as if I were a particularly nasty breed of dog, the kind she'd had once and sworn never to keep again.

"Were you really that bad?" I pulled the curtains open a couple of inches, peering at him.

He met my eyes. "I don't know. I had a couple of girlfriends she didn't like. And I didn't go to college, which for her was about the end of the world."

"You also married a woman she didn't like."

"Did your Grandma tell you that?"

"Not out loud. But she doesn't like it when Mom takes off and I stay with her."

"Grandma says your mom does that to you a lot."

"It's not like she does it to me. I don't mind her going out of town."

"Does she usually tell you where she's going?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sometimes, anyway." I breathed in deep, trying to loosen up. Everything I said made Mom sound bad, when that wasn't how it was. "Grandma doesn't always like you so much either."

Dad laughed. "Is that so?"

I pushed the curtains aside more. "Yeah, sometimes she's mad at Mom, but other times she tells me that it's her responsibility to look after me, since her son won't do it." I waved my finger in the air the way Grandma did when she got really worked up.

Dad laughed again. "That sounds like her."

"I guess that responsibility stops after three weeks."

"Go easy on her. She's sixty-eight years old."

"But so what if she doesn't like stuff you did? Why take it out on me?"

"I haven't exactly been a model adult, either. I've disappointed her. She's old and tired. I think she just doesn't want to be a parent anymore."

"That doesn't seem like a choice a parent can make, but I guess some people do anyway." I knew that one would get him, since he'd given the same lecture to Alison this afternoon.

Dad looked down at the table. "Your mom shouldn't have done that to you, but I guess you understand parenting better than she does."

I balled my fists. He'd totally missed the point. "If you think she's such a bad parent, where have you been?"

Dad looked up at me, eyes wide. "Jeez, Ricki. I'm so sorry."

I didn't know how to respond to that. I shouldn't have brought it up. I knew now that Dad wasn't some noble guy off saving the world. But a part of me still hoped there was something else to the story. Maybe he was secretly a criminal, and only Mom knew. Maybe he was just making all this bounty-hunting stuff look normal so I wouldn't know he was working for some secret government agency.

Anything but what I figured the truth must be: that he just hadn't cared about me. The more we talked about it, the more likely I was to hear that truth. Better to avoid it.

"Grandma wouldn't have had to keep me for long. Mom always comes back." I looked up at the wall at the head of my bed where I'd tacked a picture of Mom and me, and the note I'd found when I came home to our apartment from school for the last time. Off to California, it said. Take the bus to Grandma's. I'll pick you up soon. I knew that Mom had been talking to a guy, one she met on one of those dumb dating sites. She probably went to visit him. I just hadn't thought she'd be gone so long. Just last month I'd read an article about a woman who'd been dating online and disappeared. They found her body in a Dumpster.

I tried every day not to think about that.

I should have let the subject drop then, but for some reason I couldn't help picking at it like an itchy scab. "Must be a real bummer for you to be stuck with me all of a sudden," I said.

Dad smiled at me. "Not at all. I'm happy to have you along. I just wish it was under better circumstances."

"Yeah, well, I guess it can't be helped."

"Seriously. I'm glad you're here. It gives us a chance to really get to know each other."

That was the truth. Dad didn't even have a TV in his trailer—just his audiobooks. No good distractions to turn my brain off.

Dad looked at me like he expected me to say that I was happy to be with him as well, so I changed the subject. "So this Ian guy. What was his last name? Something to do with Shakespeare?"

"Burnham. Like the woods in Macbeth."

"That's the one with the witches, right?"

Dad grinned. "Ah. She is cultured after all."

"'Double, double toil and trouble.' We had to recite that poem for Halloween in the sixth grade."

"Nice to hear they're still teaching the classics."

"Even if I don't know what that wood is?"

"We can work on that. What's your favorite book?"

I squinted up at the ceiling. Didn't have far to look, since it was barely two feet above my face. "I don't like to read books."

"What?" I could see Dad peering at me over the bunk ledge. That was clearly the wrong answer.

"I don't," I said.

"How can that be? What was the last book you read?"

"I read part of Ethan Frome." That wasn't a lie. I read those summaries online.

"That's for school. I mean before that."

"Well, we read The Catcher in the Rye. That was for class too, but I guess it was okay."

"What'd you like about it?"

"I liked the way the kid had nowhere to go so he just wandered around making observations about the people he saw." I kind of wanted to be like him, with my lists and my blog. Just not the crazy part.

"See? So you do like to read."

"Well, I didn't hate the book, but it's not as if I read it for fun."

"Sounds like your mom. I couldn't get her to pick up anything thicker than an issue of Cosmo."

I rolled over onto my elbows. "Not everything short is shallow. I read the news."

"Like, the newspaper?"

"No. I get my news online."

"So you read about movie stars and things?"

My hands itched toward my pillow—the only immediate throwable object. I scrunched it up instead. "No," I said. "That's soft news. I read the real stuff . About bombings and kidnappings and things. But I'm behind, since Grandma's Internet connection didn't work that well."

Dad looked impressed. "You read about politics?"

"Sure. I can name all the members of the president's cabinet. Can you?"

Dad laughed. "I sure can't. Good for you."

I could name them when I wasn't put on the spot. If Dad actually asked me to, I'd probably forget one. "Anyway," I said. "This Ian guy. What'd he do?"

Dad cleared his throat. "Jumped bail. Just like the rest of them."

"But why was he arrested in the first place?"

"Doesn't matter. Cal needs him in court, so I'm going to bring him back. Why don't you get your books out of the truck? Don't think I didn't notice that you still have work to do."

Dad gave me one of those looks that meant the conversation was over. It took all my self-control not to stick my tongue out at him. That would be a totally third-grade move, not really good for convincing him I could deal with hearing about skips.

"I mean it," he said. "Go."

I groaned but flipped my legs over the side of the bed and hopped down beside him, nearly whacking my hip on the edge of his folding chair.

If Jamie was here, he'd know what to say to get around Dad. He was really good at talking people into things. He'd find some excuse for us to get out of here. Maybe he could steal his cousin's motorcycle and drive to get me. Then I could ride behind him and breathe him in.

I ran through the rain and hopped up into the cab with my books. The sun had disappeared behind thick clouds. It'd be setting soon anyway. If I went back into the trailer, Dad would see me working and know that he'd won. But if I stayed here, he'd wonder where I'd gone and then maybe come out here to check up on me. And I'd be sitting here doing my work like a good girl, and he'd feel sorry.

But I didn't start my homework. Instead I spread my notebook across my lap, writing in the dim light.

Ian Burnham is seventeen, I wrote. And he's already gotten arrested and jumped bail. I wondered where we'd find him and what he'd be like. Having someone close to my age around had to be an improvement over being alone with Dad—even if he was a skip.