Chasing the Skip (3 page)

“So this kid. What’s he looking at?”

Dad started the truck. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said. “You just ride along and it’ll be over before you know it.”

The reporter questions were failing me. Then again, lots of people didn’t want to talk to the press. Sometimes you had to find the right angle to get people to talk. “So my own dad doesn’t care about my safety?”

Dad laughed. “You’re good at this, you know.”

“At what?”

“Asking sneaky questions to get what you want. You might be good at my job.”

“Does that mean I can help you?”

“Oh, no. If I thought I couldn’t keep you safe, I wouldn’t take you with me. But that doesn’t mean you’re my new trainee.”

It was worth the try. “So if you didn’t think you could keep me safe, what would you do with me, then?”

“I’d figure something out.”

“Yeah, well, like you said, it’s only for a few more days. Mom will be back soon.”

Dad sighed like he wanted to say something else bad about Mom, but he didn’t.

After Dad dropped me off at the library, I got a code to use the library computer, but I didn’t even touch my school website. The homeschool system was actually pretty cool—the assignments were all straight out of textbooks, so students could work them out on paper ahead of time and then fill out the online forms to send them in to be graded. Maybe if they’d offered journalism, I would have paid more attention to it, but of course they only had boring subjects like English and history and math.

I logged on to one of the public computers and pulled up my e-mail, jittering my knee up and down, up and down.

No new messages. Granted, it had only been yesterday that I last checked, but still. Jamie hadn’t sent me one single e-mail since I’d left town. I knew he preferred texting, but it wasn’t my fault Mom didn’t pay the cell bill before she left. We’d just switched carriers, so I didn’t know the password to go in and pay it myself.

It had only been a week since my phone got turned off, but a week was a long time for Jamie to ignore me. He could have bothered to write me an e-mail just this once. I’d already sent him several. I knew I shouldn’t sound too needy, but sometimes weird things happened to e-mails—they got swallowed by cyberspace or whatever. Maybe he thought
I
was the one not e-mailing
him
.

Jamie Boy
, I wrote.

Still haven’t heard from you. Such a shame, since I’m off having fabulous adventures with my bounty hunter dad. Check the blog for details. E-mail me and I’ll tell you all the stuff that doesn’t go into the blog.

Ricki

I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide if I should sign the e-mail “Erica.” Jamie always called me by my full name, ever since someone heard our names and thought I was Jamie and he was Ricky. In the end I left it. I liked Ricki better anyway.

What I really needed was a way Jamie could call me. I reached into my pocket, finding Dad’s business card. Robert Maxwell. Bail Bond Enforcement. The card had his number on it, and an address for a P.O. box in Denver. He’d given me the card in case I needed to call him from the library or something. He’d just passed it across the seat like he was handing it to a client. He didn’t ask why I didn’t already have his phone number. He’d given it to me over the phone six times in the last year, but I’d lived fifteen years without it, so I never wrote it down. I was glad Dad didn’t call me on that now.

I opened up a new e-mail, typed in the phone number and a quick message, and then sent it to my contacts list. If Dad wasn’t going to take me back to my friends, I could at least give them a way to call me. Anna would call, even if no one else did.

I leaned back, tipping my chair onto its hind legs, and pulled up my blog. Ms. Nielson said that you didn’t have to work for a newspaper to be a journalist—people who blog report on what’s happening around them. She said some of the most important journalism happened that way. Even in places like the Middle East, protests and political movements spread online through social media more than they did through the formal press. Even the journalists at the top newspapers read blogs to keep up on what was happening in the world. I didn’t need good grades or anything to be a blogger. The blog I had now was for practice—when I got older I’d do a real one. I’d have lots of time to get good at it, and then when I had to support myself I could be one of those people making a living off their online writing.

I’d put pressure on this entry, though. It had to be fun and exciting so that Jamie and Anna would leave comments to find out more. That would be tough to do with unbiased details.

I’ve been with My Father, the Bounty Hunter, for a week now, though I just rode along with him for the first time today, like I was his partner. Big Mike has several partners, but Dad just has me. He usually takes small jobs, but now he’s taking on a big one, probably because he has me along to help.

I tapped my nails on the keyboard. Objectivity had abandoned me today. Dad wasn’t treating me anything like a partner. Better get back to the facts. I opened my notebook to find some of the lists of details I’d made.

Dad’s glove compartment is full of tools—binoculars, a Maglite, spare handcuffs, and a length of chain. He keeps his guns in the utility boxes on the sides of his pickup.

I hadn’t actually seen the guns, but Dad said they were there.

His clipboard, phone, and GPS are Velcroed to the dash for quick access while he drives. We haven’t gotten in any car chases yet. I’ll take detailed notes when we do.

Did real journalists have a hard time making the truth sound exciting? The real story wasn’t in the contents of Dad’s truck; it was with the people he picked up. I paused, figuring out how to refer to Alison without putting in her name. I figured I could get Dad in trouble for that.

Instead I described Dad’s arrest, calling Alison “the skip” and paying special attention to the part where he backed her against the door frame and yelled, “You’re under arrest!”

When I was finished, I ran a search for
Ethan Frome
. I’d only been in the homeschool program a week, and I already had a book report past due. I scanned through a few summaries of the book before clicking over to the
New York Times
to read about the peace negotiations between Palestine and Israel.

When the computer logged me off for going overtime, I let the chair legs fall back to the floor with a thud. I’d been here over an hour. Time to go meet Dad.

Denver, Colorado.

Days since Mom left: 29.

Distance from Salt Lake City, Utah: 539.23 miles.

3

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. 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?” I asked.

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.