Running Out of Time (15 page)

“I'm sorry,” Jessie muttered. “I'm so sorry.” She huddled by the door. Maybe things would be different—maybe she could figure out how to escape, maybe she could get help from someone else—if only she didn't feel so muddleheaded and allover achy. But even her throat hurt. It took all Jessie's strength to keep from wailing like a little baby.

Outside, two robins chirped on the windowsill. Their cheery song seemed to mock Jessie.

“Oh, shut up,” she whimpered.

The robins flew away. Then, seconds later, they were back, chirping again.

In spite of herself, Jessie raised her head and stared out the window at the robins. The window. Just because Mr. Neeley had locked the door, that didn't mean he'd locked the window. And it had opened the night before, when she poured out the water. She was two stories up, but maybe, maybe—

Stiffly, Jessie pulled herself to her feet and walked over to the window. The robins disappeared again. Jessie looked down. There was a bush far below. Even if she jumped into the bush, she'd probably break her legs. Especially since her legs felt half broken anyway. But wait—about five or six feet below her window, a brick ledge ran all the way around the building. If she could climb down to the ledge, maybe she could jump from there. Couldn't she?

Jessie debated. The ledge was only one brick wide. And it was awfully far down. What if she fell trying to get to the ledge?

She looked back at the locked door. What other choice did
she have? Was she going to stay here and wait for Mr. Neeley to come back and kill her? She had to try to climb out the window.

If only she could get the window open.

Hands shaking, Jessie fumbled with the window latch. At first, it seemed jammed, but it had been hard to open the night before, too. Jessie jerked on it with all her strength. “Please, please,” she muttered.

And then, with a click that seemed much too loud, the latch gave way and the window slid open.

Jessie stopped for a moment, afraid that Mr. Neeley—wherever he was—might have heard the latch click. She listened for footsteps outside her room, but all she could hear were the stupid robins chirping out of sight and, more distantly, the sounds of lots of cars. She should go fast, though, no matter how terrible she felt. Any minute now, Mr. Neeley might decide to check on her again.

Jessie went back to the bed and sat down to pull on her muddy boots. Her hands shook so, she could barely tie the laces. How did she think she could climb down a wall?

Don't think things like that, she sternly told herself. You have to do it.

Jessie strapped her pack around her waist and stepped gingerly back to the window. It took her three tries to pull herself up onto the windowsill. Then she crouched, half in, half out, looking down.

“You have to,” she whispered to herself. “For Katie. For the others. So Mr. Neeley doesn't kill you.”

Awkwardly, she turned and eased her right leg down, feeling for the ledge with her toe. But she knew without looking
that the ledge was much lower. She'd have to climb down and stretch both legs toward the ledge. She'd only be able to hold on with her fingers.

Jessie shifted positions, hesitating. Her left leg began to tremble under her weight. The longer she waited, the harder it would be. Still, she paused, almost in tears.

“I can't. God, help me,” she breathed. Praying was better than crying. She hoped God really did exist outside Clifton. But what did she think He was going to do—pick her up and place her safely on the ground?

Then Jessie thought of pretending this was just another dare at home.

“Oh, Andrew, of course I'm not scared,” she whispered, unconvincingly. But it was enough to get her to swing her left leg down.

“See?” she said.

She eased her body lower, lower, lower. And then her right foot struck the ledge. In a second, she was standing on it.

Jessie smiled. Even if she fell now, she probably wouldn't get hurt. Not too badly. The metal frame of the window cut into her hands, so she moved her right hand down, clutching the edge of a brick one row below. She moved her left hand down, too, and didn't fall.

“This is easy,” she murmured to her pretend audience. “I could climb down the whole wall this way.”

She moved her right hand down two rows, and the pack shifted against her waist. She lost her balance and started to fall. She grabbed wildly at empty air, then struck something with her left hand. The ledge. She held tight, and gripped the bricks with her right hand, too. Now she was hanging from the ledge.

Jessie grimaced over her shoulder at her pretend audience.

“Okay, it's not easy. But it worked.”

Jessie kicked out from the wall with her feet, and let go of the ledge. She landed in the bush, which was prickly and scratched her face and hands.

“Ouch,” she said softly. “But—thank you, God.”

Jessie looked back up at the window she had climbed out of. She half expected to see Mr. Neeley's face peering down. But there was only the curtain blowing out.

She'd escaped. She was safe!

Jessie sat up and hugged her knees. Tears came to her eyes again, but they were happy ones. She grinned, realizing she really hadn't thought she could escape. But she had.

J
essie struggled to stand up, and her grin faded. Her head throbbed and her legs ached worse than ever. She remembered how Mr. Neeley had told Mr. Clifton that “sensors” knew when Jessie left Clifton, and someone had followed her all the way to Waverly. What if Clifton's men were just letting her escape again to see where she would go?

Jessie thought about how the Keysers' cat, Abigail, always played with mice when she caught them. She'd bat a mouse around in her paws, then set it free. Just as the mouse began to scurry away, Abigail pounced again. By the end, the mouse was so battered and terrified, dying was probably a relief.

Jessie couldn't let that happen to her. She had to outsmart Clifton's men. But how? And she still had to find someone to help Katie and the other children. But who? Ma had said Mr. Neeley would call a board of health and a news conference.
Could Jessie call them herself? What were they? How could Jessie call them if she didn't have the number? And what if they turned out to be like Mr. Neeley—just pretending to help?

Jessie's mind felt scrambled with all the questions. Her legs trembled—maybe from climbing down the wall, maybe from being scared. There was too much she didn't know. She could hear cars zooming nearby, and the buildings around her loomed taller than trees. Indianapolis had made her feel small the night before, when she thought Mr. Neeley was on her side. Now that she was scared of him, too, what was she going to do? Whom could she trust?

It was all so confusing, Jessie felt like sitting down and bawling for her ma and pa, like a child even younger than Katie. Then she remembered something Pa said whenever Nathan or Bartholomew tried to eat a whole slice of bread in one gulp: “You bite off more than you can chew, ‘course you're going to choke. One bite at a time. And that goes for thinking things, too, not just food.”

So. What was the first thing Jessie needed to do? She glanced back at Mr. Neeley's building. As long as she stood right outside, he could easily find her when he discovered her missing. She had to get as far away as she could.

Slowly, because her legs hurt so much, Jessie began walking. She dodged behind buildings and turned as many corners as possible, so Mr. Neeley and anyone else looking for her would have a hard time following her path. At first, she thought she'd be trapped in Mr. Neeley's apartment complex forever, because all the buildings looked the same and she couldn't tell if she was getting anywhere or just
going in circles, passing the same buildings over and over again. Then she reached a big street where the buildings were all different and cars zipped by in rows of six or eight. Could Jessie get one of them to stop and take her far away from Mr. Neeley? If she did, could she trust whoever stopped for her?

Jessie's legs shook more and more with each step. When she stumbled on a twig and half fell, half sat down, she decided to stay there. Just for a minute. The ground was hard as stone, but Jessie didn't care.

“You don't need to sit way over there,” someone said. “I don't bite.”

Startled, Jessie looked around for the source of the voice. She'd been too tired to notice before: An old woman sat on a bench in what looked to be a three-sided glass house, only about two feet away.

“Really,” the old woman said, “you don't have to wait on the sidewalk. There's room in here. That's what the bus company built these for, you know.”

Jessie stood up, because the woman seemed to expect her to. Cautiously, she went over and sat beside the woman.

“You don't normally ride this bus, do you?” the woman asked.

“No,” Jessie said, hoping that was the right answer.

“I didn't think so. I tell you, the nine o'clock is always late. Always. That's why my daughter refuses to ride the bus. ‘Not dependable,' she says. But I say, no car's that dependable either. Breaks down when you least expect it—”

Jessie saw that this woman was as big a talker as Mrs. Green back in Clifton. Everyone said Mrs. Green would talk
to a stick if no one else was around. Jessie wondered how long she was supposed to sit listening.

“—oh, there it is. Almost on time, for once.” The woman pointed up the street.

Jessie saw a big vehicle stopped about a half mile away, with people stepping in and out. The “bus” was kind of like the school vehicles Jessie had seen back at Clifton, the ones she'd thought were limousines.

“Well,” the woman said. “Since you're not a regular, let me ask you this: Do you have exact fare? They'll give you change if they have to, but the drivers don't like it…. Say, aren't you a little young not to be in school right now?”

Jessie was saved from answering because the vehicle pulled alongside the three-sided house. The woman got up. Jessie wasn't sure what to do.

“Hurry,” the woman said. “Tony's driving—he doesn't wait.”

“Where's the, uh, bus go?” Jessie asked.

“Downtown, of course. They all go downtown, and you have to get a transfer to go anywhere else in the city…. Aren't you coming?”

Jessie hesitated. Could this bus be some sort of trap? Could Clifton's men have known she would walk to this intersection? Or could the bus be an easy way to get far away from Mr. Neeley's building?

Jessie's legs ached so much, she decided to take her chances. She followed the woman onto the bus.

“I'm Mrs. Tyndale, by the way,” the woman said when Jessie settled into a seat beside her. “Would you believe I'm sixty-five? My daughter swears I don't look a day over forty,
but you know how daughters can be—flattering you even when you know it's a lie. She's just jealous because lots of times, people think we're sisters. That's what she gets for spending all those hours out in the sun when she was a teenager, lathered in baby oil—”

Jessie listened only enough to be polite. She wanted to think about what she was going to do when she got downtown, but the bus was even noisier than the bread truck had been, and it made her head ache even worse than before. The bus sped forward and stopped, sped forward and stopped, over and over again. The jerky rocking motion made Jessie dizzy. She closed her eyes.

“You tired?” Mrs. Tyndale asked. “Bet you stayed up too late watching TV. That's what my grandkids always do—”

Jessie wished Mrs. Tyndale would be quiet. Then, even on the jerky, noisy bus, maybe Jessie could go to sleep. That was what she suddenly wanted more than anything else in the world. But no—Jessie forced her eyes open. She had to get help for Katie and the other sick children. Jessie might be out of danger, but the other children weren't. She looked Mrs. Tyndale over carefully, taking in the woman's frizzy white hair, her wrinkles, and her odd, stretchy-looking green pants and top. Could Mrs. Tyndale help? She didn't look like she knew anything about medicine, but maybe, maybe—

“Mrs. Tyndale?” Jessie said as politely as she could. Her throat was dry and raspy, and she realized she hadn't had anything to drink since the KFC restaurant the night before. She swallowed painfully. “Could you tell me how to find a phone number for someplace?”

Mrs. Tyndale looked puzzled.

“The phone number for what? Isn't it in the phone book? Or directory assistance?”

“What's that?”

Mrs. Tyndale frowned. “Don't they teach you kids anything in school nowadays?” She began to talk about dialing O—or maybe another number that would be in the phone book or on a pay phone. Jessie didn't entirely understand, even though Mrs. Tyndale seemed to be recounting every single time she'd called directory assistance: “And one time when I was at the mall, I had to call my husband because he was late picking me up, and I couldn't remember his work number—it just fell straight out of my head—”

Jessie waited patiently for Mrs. Tyndale to finish. Outside the bus's windows, the buildings got even taller. Jessie realized the bus had reached downtown now, where almost all the buildings were skyscrapers. Many of the people who had packed the bus's seats and aisles were getting off. A knot of panic tightened in Jessie's stomach. How much longer would it be before Mrs. Tyndale left? And there was so much Jessie still didn't know…. Desperately, Jessie interrupted the old woman, even though she would have been spanked in Clifton for such behavior.

“Can you tell me what a news conference is?”

Mrs. Tyndale blinked. “Where did you grow up, child, not to know that?” Fortunately, she didn't wait for an answer. “It's kind of refreshing, though—most kids your age know more about that kind of stuff than my generation does—”

“So what is a news conference?” Jessie asked.