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“I'm getting us a ride to Florida,” Pia said. “You heard what he said. He's going south.”

Danya rolled her lower lip between her teeth. This was a bad, bad, bad idea.

“Come on, Pia, let's just walk. The highway can't be much farther.”

“Yeah, maybe, and what are we going to do then? You think we can walk all the way to Florida? We nearly collapsed just trying to make it out of Kentucky!”

Danya pressed her lips together. Her cousin had a point there. Sancho tugged on his reins again, letting out an approving “neigh.”

“Fine,” she hissed. With one more glance at the gas station, she tugged Sancho's ear. Sancho trotted forward and nudged the back of the truck. Danya slid off his back while Pia wiggled the ear of corn in front of his nose. Drooling a little, Sancho scrambled into the flatbed.

He was a teensy bit too short to make it all the way. Danya slid off his back and nudged his bottom with her shoulder.

“Hurry, Pia!” Danya climbed into the flatbed and hid Sancho between two stacks of wooden crates, then coaxed him down so he was lying flat against the truck bed. Then she gathered up husks of corn from the overturned crate and piled them on top of Sancho. “If that driver sees us, we're done for.”

Together the girls covered as much of Sancho with husks of corn as they could. The corn was slippery, though, and it shifted and fell into piles around Sancho, not doing much to keep him hidden. Sancho barely noticed. He chomped down on one ear after another, chewing noisily while the girls worked around him.

“
You
could be more helpful,” Danya muttered. Sancho gave her a horsey smile. There were corn kernels stuck between all of his teeth.

“Maybe people will think he's a scarecrow,” Pia said. Danya squinted at Sancho and tilted her head.

“I don't think so.”

“He's back!” Pia whispered. Danya whirled around. The driver sauntered toward them, his attention fixed on a lottery ticket he was holding in one hand and trying to scratch with his thumbnail. He whistled a little while he walked.

“Duck!” Danya hissed as the farmer made his way across the parking lot. Pia and Danya pressed themselves as flat as they could against the truck bed floor. Sancho shook out his mane, causing the corn stacked around him to roll off the sides of his back.

Pia threw an arm around his neck and tried to push him back down. “Come on, horsey,” she muttered under her breath.

The whistling came closer. Danya froze as the driver's-side door creaked open, then slammed shut. She eased into a crouch. She had just noticed that the gate at the back of the truck was still unlatched; if they didn't close it, they might simply go tumbling out of the truck, like the crate of corn had. She crawled forward, reaching for the rusty latch.

“Snap, we're going to start moving!” Pia said. Danya chanced a look behind her and saw that her fearless best friend's eyes were wide and nervous. She wrapped one hand around the latch and tried to close it, but it was stuck, rusted into place. The engine started and the truck rumbled beneath them. Giving up, Danya scooted away from the truck's edge. The toe of her sneaker caught against a crate of corn.

“Snap!” Pia called. “Watch out!”

Danya turned and accidentally nudged the crate out of place. It toppled over, causing a corn avalanche. The corn rolled into her backpack, knocking it into the road and dumping clothes, shoes, and the sandwich bag holding all of her money
everywhere
.

“No!” Danya shouted. The truck rumbled away with them, leaving her clothes and money behind. Sancho whinnied and pawed at the floor of the truck bed. Digging was a nervous habit of his.

Pia grabbed hold of Danya's shoulder and pulled her away from the edge of the truck.

“Don't worry. I got this,” she said. Before Danya could say a word, Pia jumped out of the back of the truck, tucking into a roll just before she hit the road. Danya's heart leapt into her throat. She clutched the nearest crate of vegetables so tightly her fingers hurt. A teenager riding past on a bike slowed and let out a low whistle.

“Nice!” he called. Pia ignored him. She darted toward the backpack and scooped up all of Danya's things, then sprinted toward the truck. Her fingers brushed the flapping back gate, but then the truck sped up—pulling just out of her reach.

“Be careful!” Danya shouted. She stood and peered over the towering vegetable crates, hoping there'd be a stop sign or a traffic light just ahead—anything to slow them down so Pia could climb back inside. But all she saw was a long, gray stretch of road—they were headed to the highway. An all-too-familiar sense of helplessness filled Danya's chest as she watched Pia run, knowing there was nothing she could do to help her.

Pia seemed to notice she wouldn't make it to the truck in time at the same moment Danya did. But instead of speeding up, she stopped running completely.

The teenager on the bike circled back around. He zoomed past, and Pia's eyes followed him like a cat tracking its prey. She pulled Danya's bag over her shoulder and started to run. As soon as she caught up with the boy on the bicycle, she grabbed his arm and pulled herself onto his handlebars.

“Go!” Pia shouted. The boy looked shocked, but he didn't let that slow him down. He stood on his pedals and sped up until they were directly behind the truck.

“Grab on!” Pia shouted. She tossed the backpack at Danya and it hit her square in the chest, knocking her back into Sancho, who whinnied and kicked at the corn with his hind legs. Pia held tight to the other strap. She and the boy on the bike were pulled forward quickly, causing the bike to swerve beneath them.

“Reel me in, Snap!” Pia yelled. Danya nodded and pulled the backpack to her chest. Even sitting, she was dragged forward by Pia's weight, all the way to the edge of the truck bed. Sancho scooted up and chomped down on the seat of her pants to hold her steady.

“Thanks, buddy,” Danya said. She yanked the backpack, pulling Pia all the way up to the edge of the flatbed. The boy on the bike peddled furiously as Pia grabbed onto the gate at the back of the truck, which was flapping back and forth in the wind, and pulled herself inside. For a second she didn't move, clearly exhausted.

“You okay?” Danya asked as Pia sat up. Pia answered with a wide smile that showed off the gap in her teeth.

“Never been better!” She leaned back, easily popping the ear of corn from the door latch so she could pull the back gate shut. “Thanks!” she shouted after the teenager on the bike. Then she laughed and flopped back onto the corn, her eyes wide and glistening with excitement. “That was
awesome
!”

Danya exhaled. Her arms shook from exhaustion and nerves, but she threw them around Pia's neck anyway.

“Don't do that again,” she said, giving Pia a tight squeeze before punching her playfully on the arm. “You could have gotten hurt!”

Pia grinned wickedly. “Got your stuff, didn't I?”

Danya shook her head. The distant glow of the Louisville lights looked like tiny stars pulled down to the horizon. Though she knew it was impossible, Danya imagined she could see her neighborhood. She even picked one of the tiny lights and pretended it was her house. She pictured her mother singing along with the radio in the kitchen and her dad putting away the extra cheese from the market. But as the truck rumbled down the highway, the lights grew dimmer, then disappeared altogether.

They were on their way.

CHAPTER FIVE

Heavy Metal Turtle and the Ghost Hunters

T
he next morning,
sun crept up over the distant hills, casting dusty strips of gold over the pages of Danya's open book. She'd been trying to write a letter to her mom and dad, explaining why she'd run away, but she couldn't get her words down the way she wanted to. She'd picked up the book for a short break, but now she was to the part where Ferdinand and Dapple confronted the cow bandits. The scene was so tense she could hardly tear her eyes away.

The truck was parked in front of an old motel. Turtle, the driver, had checked in the night before to get some sleep.

Danya knew the truck driver's name was Turtle because he talked to himself—a
lot
. The night before, he'd left the windows of his truck open while he drove, and he blasted heavy metal music and made drumming noises by blowing air through his lips. Most of the time his music was so loud it was impossible to hear anything else, but whenever there was a break, his voice drifted through the cracked back window right above Danya's and Pia's heads.

“The Turtle's burning out,” he'd said. “Better find a place to crash . . .”

Even after they'd stopped for the night, Danya hadn't been able to doze off. It was a warm night, and Sancho's body heat made the truck bed cozy for sleeping, but she couldn't lie still. The whole time Pia and Sancho snored under the stars, she kept turning her plan over and over in her head and double-checking the map to make sure they were headed in the right direction. As she watched the sky above grow lighter, she tried to figure out what time it was back home. Had her parents woken up yet? Did they know she was missing?

Danya finally forced herself to put her map aside, lie down, and squeeze her eyes shut, but then she found herself remembering how sometimes her mom slipped into her room before going to bed to plant a kiss on her forehead. If she'd done that last night, both her parents would already know she was gone. They could have called the cops. Or maybe they'd found the missing map book and somehow figured out where Danya was going. They could be on the highway right now, looking for her.

That thought made it completely impossible for Danya to sleep, so she'd pulled the Ferdinand and Dapple book out of her snoring cousin's back pocket and had begun to read. She only glanced up when she heard Turtle throw open the door of his motel room the next morning and stumble to the truck. She crawled over to the side of the flatbed and peered through the wooden slats to watch him. Turtle's long, black hair stuck up from under his ball cap, and Danya was pretty sure his kilt was on backward.

• • •

The early summer air was chilly and smelled like dew and fresh-cut grass, and the only sound came when Turtle switched on his radio. The station blared a program called
Ghost Hunters
, about chasing spirits in haunted hotels and old graveyards. It was turned up so loud that, even with the wind rushing past them as they rode down the highway, Danya could hear almost every word, which was annoying when she was trying to pay attention to her book. She burrowed down in a pile of corn to stay warm and tried to tune
Ghost Hunters
out.

After riding all through the night in Turtle's truck, Danya felt like she kind of knew him. For instance, she knew he was a farmer (why else would he have all this corn?), and she imagined the name on his license plate—
_SANDY
—was his wife. They probably even ran the vegetable farm together. Danya pictured Turtle and Sandy walking around in kilts and combat boots, playing heavy metal music for their rows and rows of vegetables. It was probably like a secret ingredient that made the vegetables taste better or something. She pulled out her lucky purple gel pen and wrote in her notebook about magical vegetables fed on heavy metal. Maybe she could write a story about it someday.

Danya also knew Turtle was
really
superstitious—not only had he bought a lottery ticket, but he kept
three
rabbit's feet for good luck. And this morning, after pulling out of the hotel parking lot, a black cat ran out in front of his car, and it made him so nervous he slammed on the brakes, causing a huge pile of corn to topple and roll over Danya's legs.

As the sun rose higher, Danya turned page after page of her book, finding herself so drawn into Ferdinand's adventures that she hardly had time to worry about her parents or the cops or any of the other dozens and dozens of things that could go wrong on this trip. At one point Sancho snuggled up next to her, staring so intently at the words that Danya was sure he was trying to read, too. But then he let out a snore that rustled the pages, and she realized he'd just dozed off again. She scratched him under the chin as she tried to find her place again.

It wasn't until hours later, when an ear of corn flew across the truck bed and knocked the book out of her hand, that Danya looked up again.

“Jeez, Snap, do you go into a coma when you read or something?” Pia yawned and scratched her head with an ear of corn. Her short, wiry curls stuck up all over. Sancho kicked at the air, like he was dreaming of running.

“Sorry,” Danya said. “Didn't know you were awake.”

“I've been calling your name for like five minutes,” Pia muttered. “We aren't on the interstate anymore, you know.”

Danya blinked and looked around. Pia was right—they weren't on the interstate anymore. Turtle was driving down an old, dirt road, surrounded by miles and miles of farmland and short, prickly trees with no leaves.

“Uh-oh.” All of Danya's worries and anxieties from the night before fluttered back to life in her gut. What was she doing
reading
at a time like this? She should have been paying attention!

Danya pulled herself up to her knees and studied the passing landscape, but the flat, spindly trees and golden fields looked like a thousand other places. She knew they were headed in the right direction, as long as they stayed on the interstate—according to her map you could take Interstate 65 all the way from Kentucky to Florida—but now they could be anywhere. This was a disaster! There was no telling how far off course they'd gone.

“We need to come up with a plan,” Danya said, shaking Sancho awake. Sancho grunted, blinking. “Maybe we could sneak out of the truck the next time Turtle stops and hitchhike back to the highway and—”

The staticky sound of her walkie-talkie buzzed from inside Danya's backpack, interrupting her. Sancho nudged her bag with his nose.

“Danya . . . Da . . . mija, we're . . .”

“Mom?” Danya grabbed her backpack and dug through her clothes for the walkie-talkie. She'd thought they were too far away to get any reception, but the sound of her mom's voice buzzed in and out, proving her wrong.

“Danya . . . where are . . . honey? . . .”

Danya found the walkie-talkie, but before she could hit the talk button, Sancho rested his head on her knee, and a cold, hard knot formed in her gut. Her mom and dad had betrayed her by lying about her grandmother. And now that they knew she was missing, it was going to be that much harder to get to Florida in time to save Sancho before the ownership paperwork transfer went through. Danya stared down at the walkie-talkie defiantly. Why should she answer?

Just as suddenly as it came, the anger dissolved. Danya pictured her mom waking them up for breakfast. Maritza must've found the pillows hidden beneath Danya's blanket and realized she and Pia were missing. Her mom and dad must be so worried about her.

Luckily Danya didn't have to figure out what to say to them right now. The only sound that came from the walkie-talkie was static.

“Do you hear that?” Pia asked, narrowing her eyes.

“What? The static?” Danya lifted the walkie-talkie, but Pia shook her head.

“The radio. Listen.”

Pia crawled over the corn-strewn truck bed, accidentally kicking an ear of corn onto Sancho. Sancho caught the corn in his mouth and chomped down, spraying kernels everywhere. Pia leaned in close to the truck's open back window, and Danya followed her. Static punctuated Turtle's
Ghost Hunters
show, as though it was flowing from the walkie-talkie to the radio. Turtle swore and smacked the dashboard with one hand, and when that didn't work, he fiddled with his channels, trying to find a new station.

Danya stared at the walkie-talkie. “You think
I
did that?” Danya asked.

Pia nodded. “You must've tapped into his radio somehow.” She bit down on her lower lip, showing off the space where her missing tooth should have been. “What if . . . what if we used the walkie-talkies to
convince
this guy to get back on the interstate?”

“You think we could get him to take us all the way to Florida?”

Pia ran her tongue over the space left by her missing tooth. “I don't think I can stand the smell of corn for that much longer. But I bet he'd take us to the next big city.” Pia pulled Danya's bag onto her lap and dug out the atlas. She traced their path across the map with one finger. “Like . . . Nashville, maybe? We can hitch another ride when we get there.”

Nashville . . . Danya's parents would never expect her to get all the way to Tennessee in just one night. If she and Pia could convince Turtle to take them there, not only would they be closer to Florida, but they'd have that much more time before her parents caught up with them.

Danya's mind started cycling. “What if we pretend there's been an emergency? We'll say there's this giant earthquake and all the survivors have been transported to Nashville.”

“Or!” Pia interrupted. “We could pretend to be a
ghost
.”

Danya frowned. “That's lame, Pia,” she said. “Remember when you tried to convince my mom to take us to the movies by telling her aliens crash-landed at the theater? Grown-ups never believe weird stories like that.”

“No, it's perfect!” Pia grabbed Danya's hand and squeezed, a big grin on her face. “He's been listening to that stupid
Ghost Hunter
show all morning. We'll pretend to be the ghost of Western Joe!”

“Who's Western Joe?”

“I just made him up,” Pia said, shrugging. “But he needs the farmer to go on a secret mission to . . . the Grand Ole Opry House.”

Danya inhaled, trying to control her mounting frustration. Pia did this all the time—she always thought things were more exciting when they had some sort of ridiculous plan. Usually Danya thought it was fun, but this was serious. She needed Pia to be more reasonable. “What's the Grand Ole Opry House?”

“It's this place in Nashville. My mom has a postcard of it on the fridge at home. Don't worry. It looks cool. And there were lots of people in the postcard, so it'll be easy to get another ride.”

“But . . .” Danya started, but before she could finish her sentence, Pia grabbed the walkie-talkie from her hand and pushed the talk button.

“Helllooooo!” she moaned in a voice so spooky that even Sancho looked up from his corn. “This is the ghost of Western Joe. . . .”

The sound of her voice echoed inside the truck, shocking the farmer so much that he swerved into the opposite lane and the entire truck jolted. Pia and Danya slid sideways into Sancho.

“Pia,” Danya hissed, covering the walkie-talkie with one hand so Turtle wouldn't hear her. “What are you doing?”

“I have a plan!” Pia whispered. Then, into the walkie-talkie, “Right, this is Western Joe. I'm a ghost from the . . . um . . . great beyond and I need you to . . . to run an errand.”

Sancho nudged the walkie-talkie with his nose and let out a soft, breathy snort that echoed inside the truck's cabin.

“What the devil . . . ?” Turtle muttered, spinning the radio dial frantically. Danya wrapped an arm around Sancho's neck and pulled him away from the walkie-talkie.

“Or else there will be DIRE CONSEQUENCES!” Pia trumpeted.

Danya's heart pounded in her throat. Pia was going to get them caught. She didn't sound like a ghost
at all
.

“Pia. Give me the walkie-talkie,” Danya said, letting go of Sancho and holding out a hand.

Pia frowned. “But I'm just getting started. . . .”

“No, really. Come
on
.” Danya tried to remember everything she knew about Turtle. He had a wife named Sandy who he ran a vegetable farm with, and they played heavy metal music for broccoli, and . . .

No, no! Danya forced the image from her mind. She'd just made that up. All she really knew about Turtle was that he liked listening to
Ghost Hunters
and he had a rabbit's foot on his key chain.

Something snapped into place.

Grudgingly, Pia handed over the walkie-talkie. Danya pressed the talk button.

“I am the ghost of luck and fate,” she moaned, trying to replicate Pia's spooky ghost voice. “You called me forth with your . . . your rabbit's foot.”