Any Red-Blooded Girl (14 page)

Cal laughed. “If we knew where he was, would
we be lookin’ for ’im?” he asked with a condescending sneer.

I already knew I didn’t like this guy, but
now I had absolute proof.

“That’d be stupid,” Donny said.

Really? No duh. “I didn’t mean it like
that,
” I said defensively. “I just meant…well, what did he
say? Did he say where he was going?” The thought of Mick being
upset enough to run away made me ill.

“He got in a fight with Cy about a trip he
wanted to take you on,” Cal said, beaming a small flashlight around
in the dark, like he thought he might find Mick sleeping under a
pine tree or hiding behind a rock. “Right, Donny?”

“Yeah. Right.”

Me? Mick was fighting with his dad over me?
“I thought you said he was upset that we broke up,” I said,
confused. Because even though I knew Mick and I weren’t broken up,
I was still trying to figure out what the hell the Goofball Goons
were talking about.

Cal rolled his eyes, as if I was a retard.
“If he didn’t take you on the trip,
then
you’d break up.
That’s what he told Cy. And when Cy said no, Mick said he was
leaving and never coming back.”

“That’s right,” Donny said again.

Huh? Mick and I were going to break up if we
couldn’t go on some mysterious trip? At first I thought Cal was
wrong, that he’d misunderstood. But then I remembered Michoacán.
Mick had been fixated on the place since we saw the milkweed, since
he told me about the butterflies.

“We’ve gotta find him,” I blurted. “Where
have you guys looked so far?”

“Easy there,” Cal said. “We’re gonna find
’im—since we got you anyway.”

The Goofball Goons stopped on the side of the
road near a beat-up SUV. I couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, but
it looked like one of the vehicles from their family compound.

“We’re gonna drive around and look for ’im,”
Cal said, erasing any doubt about the origin of the vehicle. “You
comin’?”

I glanced back at Tupelo-9, certain my
parents would’ve had a total hissy if they knew I was out in the
middle of the night with two strange guys—and without their
permission. On the other hand, though, what if I was the only one
Mick would listen to? There was no guarantee anyone but me could
convince him to come home.

“Around Wild Acres, you mean?” I asked Cal.
“Then you’ll drop me back off after?” One thing I knew for sure was
that, to avoid being held prisoner until I turned eighteen, I had
to be back in my sleep pod before my parents woke up.

“Uh-huh,” Cal mumbled.

“Yep,” Donny confirmed.

What the hell. Mick needed me. And there was
no way I was getting any more sleep now anyway.

I leaned into the SUV. “Where should I sit?”
I asked, sliding into an empty spot on the stained backseat.

Cal grunted something unintelligible in my
direction, which I took as permission to sit wherever the hell I
damn well pleased.

“Are these for your business?” I asked,
surveying the Goofball Goons’ vehicle, which was crammed to
capacity with cardboard boxes.

“Huh?” Cal muttered, seemingly unable to
carry on a conversation and scour the dark corners of Wild Acres
for Mick at the same time.

“Your eBay business; Mick said you guys sell
antiques on the internet.”

“Oh, yeah. Our
eBay
business,” Cal
said with a chuckle. “Yeah, those are definitely for our
eBay
business. Right, Donny?”

Like a robot, Donny gurgled, “Umm-hmm,
eBay.”

I changed the subject. “Hey, can we check the
other side of the lake?” I asked, sensing I was onto something. I
mean, if I had to pick a specific spot Mick might have escaped to,
the secret fishing cove was definitely it.

“After we finish this loop, we’ll do the
whole lake,” Cal said flatly.

Good. Hunting for Mick on foot would’ve taken
all night, but in the SUV we were covering a lot of ground really
quickly. Somehow I just knew we’d find him soon, and I’d be able to
convince him that, despite whatever had happened between him and
his dad, he should go home and work things out. After all, he’d
given me the same advice when I was gearing up to knock Will’s
block off, so I owed him one.

Cal cruised along the dirt road in front of
the Clubhouse, periodically flashing his high beams at anything
that moved in the dark; meanwhile, Donny and I just stared
trance-like at, well, nothing. There was no sign of Mick
whatsoever.

And we were almost to the Wild Acres
entrance, when Cal suddenly floored the SUV and zoomed right out of
the campground.

“What’re you doing?” I panicked. “Go back! I
can’t be out here!” Weren’t these idiots listening to me before? I
had limits. Clear, obvious limits.

The Goofball Goons just laughed. Apparently
they still didn’t get it. “I
said
I’m not allowed to leave
the campground. You’re gonna have to take me back before you
go…wherever it is you’re going.”

“We don’t
have
to do anything,” Cal
said menacingly.

“That’s right,” Donny muttered.

“Okay,
please
take me back,” I tried.
Maybe they just wanted me to suck up or beg or something.

“Wow, relax,” Cal said. “You wanna help us
bring Mick home, don’t you?”

“Yeah…I…well,” I stammered. “Where are we
going then? Do you know where he is?”

Cal sighed and Donny imitated him. “We’ve got
an idea,” Cal finally revealed. “A cabin in the mountains, where we
usually go every year for a family vacation. It’s an hour or so
from here.”

“How did he get
there?
” I asked,
skeptical. I mean, the more I thought about it, the less anything
these morons said was making any sense. Plus, if Mick wanted to run
away, shouldn’t he have at least asked me to go along?

“Probably hitchhiked,” Donny said, his first
original thought, as far as I could tell.

“We always do that,” Cal explained. “We’ve
hitchhiked from Alaska to Arizona. Ain’t that right, Donny?”

“Yup.”

Okay,
that
was definitely a lie. I’m
pretty sure you can’t hitchhike from Alaska to
anywhere
—unless you catch a boat, or a plane, or a spaceship
somewhere along the way. But for the sake of the Goofball Goons’
egos, I decided to let the nonsense slide.

“So what’s this cabin like?” I asked,
changing the subject yet again. Who knew, maybe there was a
legitimate reason Mick would have gone there.

“Nothin’ special,” Cal downplayed. “Just wood
and stone and mortar. Mick was born there.”

“Huh?” I managed to say. Mick was born in a
cabin in the mountains? That was quite unusual. And he hadn’t even
said a word about it to me. For half a second, I heard my mother’s
critical voice in my head, warning me that I didn’t know enough
about Mick to even date him, let alone decide he was the love of my
life.

“Not a one of us was born in a hospital,” Cal
went on, like it was a badge of honor. “Not me, Donny, Penny,
Helen, Abby, Sean, Mick, Jo-Jo, Kat. Not even the older generation
neither. We was all born on the road.”

You
were
all born on the road, I
wanted to say. But I let that slide too. I mean, I had bigger
things to worry about than grammar, like: If I married Mick and we
had kids, would
they
have to be born on the road? Was this
anti-hospital thing a Donovan family code I’d have to abide by if I
wanted to be Mick’s wife someday? Somehow I doubted Mick would
enforce any such rules against my will, since all signs indicated
he was more the spoil-Flora-like-she’s-a-princess type.

As we whizzed along toward the middle of
nowhere, I started to get drowsy again. So I tilted my head toward
the window and rested it on an empty cardboard box. I must admit,
the lack of pillows on this trip was getting downright alarming. It
was the one thing I was looking forward to about returning to
Punxsutawney: my own squishy, saggy bed.

Sixteen

“WE’VE got a problem,” Cal said right off,
before I’d even had a chance to
un
goo my eyes. From the
looks of the Goofball Goons, they’d caught some pretty sweet z’s
too.

“We’ve still got fifteen miles to the cabin,
and we’re about outta gas,” Cal continued. “And I ain’t got no
money on me.”

I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or
Donny.

“Whatcha wanna do?” Donny asked.

Cal pointed at me, which I probably wasn’t
supposed to see. “Eh, Flora. Got any money?” he asked, like we were
good ol’ pals.

“No.”

“None?”

“None.”

“I’m hungry,” Donny complained.

Well, this was turning into quite the
adventure. We were stranded with no money, no food, and
almost
no gas. “Can you call someone?” I suggested. I mean,
Mr. Tightwad had confiscated
my
electronics back in
Punxsutawney, but surely these young entrepreneurs had cell
phones.

“Not unless we wanna get Mick in even more
trouble,” Cal said with a snort. “If you ever wanna see him again,
we’ve gotta solve this on our own.”

“Okay, what’s the plan then?” I asked,
dumbfounded.

Again, Donny moaned, “I’m hungry.”

“Oh, shut up. I’ve got an idea,” Cal said.
There’s a Garett’s Department Store just up the road, and we’ve got
something in the back we can return.”

How convenient. The Goofball Goons just so
happened to have something valuable stashed in their dilapidated
vehicle that might save the day. Yipee. Honestly, whatever would
get us closer to Mick—and back to Wild Acres ASAP—was fine by
me.

I glanced out the window, wondering how far
we were from civilization. The narrow country road we traveling
along was surrounded by trees, mountains, and maybe some wildlife.
Other than that,
we
were the main attraction.

“What time is it?” I asked. “Is this store
even open?”

“It’s almost eight. They’ll be open,” Cal
said, sounding irritated I’d even opened my mouth.

So for the next few agonizing minutes, I sat
silent in the backseat and prayed that the miniscule amount of gas
we had left would at least get us to Garett’s Department Store. I
mean, how stupid were these guys anyway, driving into the middle of
nowhere with an almost-empty tank?
Please
. I didn’t even
have a license, and I knew better than to pull a dumb-ass move like
that.

I was starting to doubt Garett’s Department
Store even existed, when we finally rounded the corner from
desolate wilderness to semi-civilization.

“We’re here,” Cal said, swinging the behemoth
into the lot and killing the engine. “It’s the black and white box
in the back. The Blu-ray player.”

Okay…was he talking to me? I pretended to be
deaf.

“Eh, Flora, didja hear me? Black and white
box,” he said again.

Why the hell was he telling
me
which
box it was? It was
their
Blu-ray player or whatever.

“Huh?” I said, hoping that if I played dumb,
they’d get impatient and deal with it themselves.

Or not.

“Hey, dodo brain. Cal told ya to get the
box,” Donny chimed in. “What’s the holdup?”

“I…um…”

“We ain’t got all day,” Cal said. “Get the
damn thing out of the back, bring it in the store, get a refund,
and bring us the cash. Got it?”

“I…uh, um…guess,” I stammered. I mean, the
way he’d presented the idea didn’t really leave me much room to
argue. If the morons had thought about it for half a second,
though, or even asked my opinion, they might have reconsidered
sending a sixteen-year-old returns-virgin to do their dirty
work.

I stomped my way to the rear of the SUV,
flipped open the little trunk doohickey, and forcefully tugged the
black and white box out from under a bunch of other cardboard. And
who would’ve thought a Blu-ray player could be so heavy anyway? I
mean, the stupid, bulky thing was already giving me a backache by
the time I lugged it unevenly through the automatic sliding
doors.

Now what? Returns, returns, returns. I swear
to God, if the returns desk had been staring me any closer in the
face, it would have bitten me for sure. I walked the empty
rope-maze like a zombie, until I came face-to-face with the returns
clerk.

“Can I help you?” the cute old grandma behind
the counter asked.

Could she help me? I doubted it. Not unless
she could get the Goofball Goons to disappear off the face of the
planet, my runaway boyfriend to come home, and my parents to cut me
a little slack once in a while.

“Um, yeah… I need to return this,” I said,
dropping the box on the counter with a little thud.

Grandma smiled, like she knew how dopey and
inexperienced I really was. Then she asked, “Do you have a receipt,
honey?”

“No…uh…I don’t,” I admitted.

See,
this
was why the Goofball Goons
should have done the job themselves. Maybe
they
had the
all-important proof of purchase.

Grandma frowned. “Well, is there anything
wrong with this, dear?” she asked, spinning the box around to check
for damage.

“No. I don’t think so,” I said. “My parents
just, uh, got another one, so they want a refund.”

I’m not exactly sure what made me drag Mr.
Tightwad and the Mental Hygienist into the mix, except that the
real story was just way too complicated to explain.

The returns clerk shook her head, like it was
doubtful I’d get my hands on any cash in
this
lifetime. “You
just wait here,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do. I have to talk
to my manager.” Through a heavy mirrored door, she disappeared.

Great, now
the manager
was involved,
which gave me the urge to bolt. I mean, nothing good could come of
such a complication, I was sure.

Still, for an eon or so, I stood there
waiting like a nervous beggar for whatever handout the Garett’s
folks were willing to toss my way. I’d even resorted to drumming my
fingers on the counter and humming to myself for amusement, when
Grandma finally emerged from the golden door.