WHEN VIOLET AND the others got home, wet haired and smelling like chlorine, I filled them in on my conversation with Anna.
“So she’s not going to tell your parents?” Ty asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think she kind of understood.”
He raised one eyebrow. “That’s pretty cool.” He unpacked a bag of wet towels and started hanging them over the van’s open doors.
“I bet she tells,” Violet said darkly. “Adults always stick together. Doesn’t matter who’s right or what the deal is, they have each other’s backs.”
I knew what she meant, but I didn’t think Anna was like that.
Ty pulled Saffron’s swim goggles from the bag and dangled them from one finger. “So what are we going to do? Violet, you think we should go in the morning?”
Saffron grabbed her goggles from him. “Go where?”
Violet shrugged. “Not like anything’s changed.”
“So, yeah then?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She looked at me. “Where are they?”
“Mom and Curtis? I haven’t seen them.”
“I’m hungry,” Saffron said. “So’s Whisper. And we want a Buzzy the Bee story, Ty.”
I stuck my head in the back of the van, rummaging through the supplies in search of easy snacks. “Want an apple?” I grabbed two and handed them one each. “There you go.”
Saffron took the apple and bit into it. She was shivering, and Whisper’s lips had a blue tinge. Wet hair and a cool breeze were a bad combination. “Why don’t you go in the tent?” I said. “It’ll be warmer.”
“Can Ty come too? And tell us a Buzzy story?”
Ty nodded. “In a minute, okay? You go ahead and get warm, and I’ll come in a minute.”
When the girls were zipped inside, Violet beckoned for me to come closer to her and Ty. She lowered her voice, speaking in a whisper. “Look, there’s a problem, Wolf.”
“I’ve got a couple hundred bucks,” Ty said. “And Vi’s got a bit too. But it’s not enough for all of us.”
My heart sank. “You’re going without us.”
Violet looked at me, one side of her mouth pulled down in an apologetic kind of grimace. “I don’t know what else to do. Maybe when we get there, if my grandmother will listen, we can get her to talk to Curtis and Mom. I mean, if you keep heading east, you guys will probably be in Nelson in a week or so anyway. Right? Maybe you can stay there, and Mom and Curtis can do the rest of the trip without us.”
I looked at her, trying to feel angry but just feeling stuck and hopeless. Trapped. “What about Vancouver?” I said.
“What about it?” Violet said.
“What would it cost? What if we all went back to Vancouver?”
“What good would that do?”
I shrugged. “We’d be out of here. Maybe we could find someone to help Whisper.”
“Yeah.” She looked at the tent, and I followed her gaze. “She really doesn’t talk, does she? Not at all.”
“Not a word since we left home,” I said. “I mean, she’s never said much, but at least she used to talk to us.”
Violet pushed her hair back with both hands, leaving spiky, damp locks sticking out every which way. She hadn’t put her usual makeup back on after swimming, and I thought she looked much nicer without all the black stuff around her eyes. “Where would we stay?” she said. She turned to Ty. “You have friends in Vancouver.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, but their place is kind of a dive. It wouldn’t be cool for the twins to be there.” He sucked the ring in his lower lip. “It’s not that kind of place. Not kid friendly.”
“Eva and Mary?” I suggested. “If we just showed up, they wouldn’t turn us away. And I bet they’d understand about Whisper. Maybe they’d even help us find someone who could help her.”
Violet shook her head. “Eva is Jade’s oldest friend. She’d have us back with her in a heartbeat.”
There was a long silence. Finally, I spoke. “What if just you and Whisper went?” I said slowly. “If you took her to Nelson, to her grandmother’s? Is there enough money for two tickets?”
She stared at me. “What, you’re gonna stay here and explain that to our parents? They’ll freak.”
“I know, I know. I mean, it’s not like I want to.” I had a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball. “Um…I know it’d mean leaving Ty. But maybe he could hitchhike to Nelson and meet you there.”
Violet made a face. “I guess. But me, traveling with Whisper? What if she flips out?”
“So, you deal with it,” I said. “Do you even have an address or a phone number for your grandmother?”
She pulled out her phone. “It’s down to, like, 3 percent. Maybe I should walk to the Starbucks and use their Wi-Fi and charge it while I’m there.”
The tent zipper slid open, and Saffron’s head poked out. “Come on, Ty! You said one minute.”
“Okay, okay.” Ty yawned widely and rubbed his hands over the dark stubble on his head. “I’m coming.”
“Can we have chocolate?” she asked.
“I don’t have chocolate,” Ty said, heading to the tent. “But I have something better. I have…Buzzy the Bee!”
She giggled. “Wolf, can we have chocolate?”
“I don’t have any either.”
“Curtis does,” she said. “In the glove box. He hides it.”
“Really?” I raised my eyebrows, unconvinced, but I ducked past the towels hanging on the passenger-side door and flipped open the glove box. Maps, Kleenex, vehicle registration papers—and, sure enough, a king-size Caramilk bar and a box of Smarties.
I laughed out loud. Curtis and Jade were always talking about how unhealthy and addictive and basically evil sugar was, and it turned out he had a secret stash. I picked up the Smarties, figuring I could swipe a few for the twins without him noticing.
And there, at the bottom of the glove box, was a stack of twenty-dollar bills.
I backed away slowly. “Violet,” I whispered. “Look.”
She looked at the box of Smarties in my hand and snorted. “Hypocrite. He’s totally a sugar addict since he quit smoking. I don’t know why he bothers trying to hide it.”
I ignored her and pointed at the money in the glove box. “Not that. This. How much money do you and Ty have?”
She stared at the pile of bills. “He’s got two hundred and fifty—something like that,” she said slowly. “And I’ve got eighty.”
“So we’re only short by a hundred bucks. Less than that.” I pulled out the twenties and counted them. “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…What’s that? Fifteen times twenty?”
“Three hundred dollars,” Violet said.
We stared at each other. I could feel my heart thumping, and I had that weird electrical tingling shooting down my arms—that bumped-funny-bone feeling. I took a deep breath and counted off five bills and slid the rest back into the glove box.
Violet nodded slowly. “We’ll pay it back,” she said.
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
So it wasn’t really stealing.