The Astonishing Maybe Page 6

  “So”—the man turned back to us—“got another sandwich? I haven’t had anything to eat since Salt Lake City.”

  Roona looked at me, her mouth tightened into a hard line. Then she reached into the bag and pulled out a plastic baggie full of brownies.

  “Roona,” I said, startled.

  She opened the bag and pulled one out. “You can have this, if you want.”

  The smell of chocolate flowed into my nose, and my mouth started to water, even though I wasn’t really hungry.

  “Don’t,” I muttered. “Roona.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered as the man took the brownie and sat in his seat with a contented sigh as he bit into it. “They’re happy brownies. I hid some in the freezer, just in case.”

  The man stood up again so he could look at us over his seat. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You got someone meeting you in Vegas, then?” He took another bite. “I could, you know, stick with you until you get where you’re going. Make sure nothing happens to you.”

  Roona opened her mouth, but I beat her to it. “No thank you. We’ll be just fine.”

  “You’re sure? It wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “Very sure.”

  The man lifted his shoulder and sat again.

  I knew there was no way for a random old guy on the bus to ask a couple of kids to hang out with him in Las Vegas without coming off like a creeper.

  Maybe if we weren’t on a Greyhound bus and I wasn’t thinking so hard about being kidnapped, he’d look more like someone’s grandpa. But at the moment, the only way he could look creepier is if he was wearing a trench coat and hiding behind a tree.

  I could see well enough between our seats to watch him finish his brownie, then finally doze off with a smile on his face.

  I looked at Roona. Neither of us had eaten our sandwiches. I wrapped mine and put it back in her paper bag. Then I took hers when she didn’t take the hint and wrapped it, too. We were going to need those before midnight.

  “I had a friend in New Jersey who lived with his grandparents,” I said.

  Roona looked at me.

  “He didn’t know his mom, but he missed his dad real bad.” Cody was the only kid I knew who didn’t live with at least one of his parents. “I guess after his mom died, his dad had a really hard time.”

  “My dad isn’t dead.”

  “I know. But the point is that his grandparents took care of him so his dad could try to get better.” I wasn’t sure if that part was true. Maybe his dad was just off being an alcoholic or living on a park bench or something. Or begging kids on a Greyhound bus for sandwiches. But it sounded good. “He didn’t want to live with his grandparents, but at least he was safe.”

  “Good for him,” Roona said.

  “I’m saying, maybe Boise wouldn’t be so bad. If, you know, you don’t have a choice.”

  What I was worried about, but didn’t know how to bring up, was that there was some reason other than the air force that was keeping Roona’s father away. If he was stationed sixty miles away, it didn’t make any sense at all that he wouldn’t come to visit. Ever.

  Roona reached into her bag and pulled out a deck of playing cards. “Want to play Jacks?”

  I just stared at her until she put the cards away.

  “I’m sure his grandparents were awesome,” she said.

  I actually didn’t know. I wasn’t close enough to Cody for my parents to know his grandparents, which meant I’d never been to his house. “They were good enough,” I said.

  “Boise isn’t good enough.”

  “Why not?” The question left my mouth before I could stop it. I’d been taught all my life to mind my own business and not get involved in other people’s problems. Something about Roona made me a serious rule breaker.

  She brought out the Tookish part of me and made me wonder where exactly it had come from. Maybe my dad. He was an artist. Both of his parents and my mom’s dad died before I was born. Grandma Ellen was even less Tookish than Mom.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Roona said quietly. “At least not yet.”

  I sat back in my seat as the bus slowed and pulled into a truck stop. “It might help to talk about it.”

  “I know,” she said. “Just not yet.”

  * * *

  We made it the rest of the way to Las Vegas without any real problems. We didn’t have luggage, so we were able to walk away while the old man was waiting for his bags.

  Getting a cab was an entirely different thing.

  “Can we even take a taxi?” I asked. Every Stranger Danger message my mother had ever drilled into me was going off like a tornado warning in my head. “Are the drivers even allowed to take kids without parents?”

  “We’ll be fine.” She wrapped the blanket around her neck like a scarf again. “Trust me.”

  “Is twenty dollars enough? What are we supposed to do if twenty dollars isn’t enough?”

  “It’s enough.”

  I wondered how we were going to get back to the bus station, but didn’t bring that up. Roona walked directly to the first taxi cab she saw and opened the back door.

  “Roona,” I said. I was afraid that the taxi driver would take one look at us—a couple of kids without adult supervision—and call the police. But my only choices were to follow Roona or stand alone at the bus station while she went off in a cab without me. We were moving forward, like it or not. I got in behind her and closed the door.

  “Nellis Air Force Base, please,” she said.

  The driver looked at us through the rearview mirror, then turned, hooking one arm around the seat back behind him. “Are we waiting on someone?”

  She shook her head. “No thank you.”

  “Just you?”

  What was it about Roona that made lies just flow out of me like water? When she floundered, I said, “Our mom was supposed to meet the bus, but her car broke down.”

  “She works at the base,” Roona added, shooting me a look.

  The driver looked at us for another agonizing moment, then shook his head. “I can’t take a couple of kids.”

  “But we have to get to the air force base,” Roona said.

  “Not in my cab, kiddo.” He settled back in his seat, like he was ready to wait us out as long as it took. Or maybe call a police officer. “Out you go.”

  I opened the door on my side and slid out. Roona waited, but not for very long. She sighed and left the cab, too.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked at the row of taxis parked in front of the station. There had to be a way to get one of them to take a couple of kids. “Can you make yourself cry?”

  “What?”

  I looked at her. “Cry. Can you cry?”

  She sniffed, blinked hard a few times, her mouth quivered—and then fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Wow,” I said. “Wow, okay. Come on.”

  I took her hand and walked toward the taxis. She shuddered behind me, gasping for a breath through tears that seemed suddenly more real than they should have been.

  I tipped my head and looked into the cabs until I found what I was looking for. “Come on,” I said. “Keep your head down.”

  I opened the back of the cab I’d picked and pushed her in. She slid all the way in, so she was behind the driver’s seat.

  “Hi,” I said as I slid in after her. The driver, a woman about the age of my grandma Ellen, stopped trying to look at Roona and focused on me instead. “Nellis Air Force Base, please.”

  She narrowed her eyes and adjusted her mirror, then turned halfway in her seat. She was about twice the size of my grandma Ellen, and twice as tough-looking. “Everything okay back there?”

  Roona’s breath hitched as she tried to rein it in and I said, “Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

  “Nellis, you said?”

  “Yes please.” I nudged Roona’s shin with my toe when she st
arted to lift her face. She buried it in her hands.

  “Everything okay back there?” the driver asked again.

  “Fine. It’s just—” I looked at Roona and suddenly ran out of the lie. It was just what?

  “The base?” the woman asked, as if she’d guessed something that I couldn’t even assemble into a lie.

  “Yes please.”

  “Someone’s waiting there for you?”

  “Our mom.”

  The woman looked at me for another second, then put her cab in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  I’d been to Atlantic City a few times, so I didn’t expect to be awestruck by Las Vegas. Even in the daytime, though, the downtown area around the bus station was something else.

  I craned my neck, looking at a long, covered boulevard with what looked like as many lights as there were in all of Atlantic City shoved under it. It had a zip line running along its length and I saw a nearly naked woman with a massive feathered headdress waiting to cross the street. “Whoa.”

  “She’s not a real showgirl,” the driver said. “You can pay five bucks to get a picture with her, though.”

  “Is this the Strip?” I asked.

  “No. It’s Fremont Street.” She looked back at me when we stopped at a red light. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “Our dad was … um … he was transferred here. We had to move. My sister’s not very happy about it.”

  “I can see that.”

  Roona opened her backpack again and pulled out a Ziploc bag full of …

  “Oh no,” I said.

  Roona opened the bag and whispered, “Give her one.”

  The heady scent of chocolate and caramel filled the cab. The driver lifted her chin and inhaled through her nose.

  I licked my bottom lip and then took one of the brownies. “Our grandma baked them. She’s a really good baker. Want one?”

  The driver hesitated, but only for a second. I held the bag closer to her and she reached into it.

  I should have stopped her. I actually pictured myself reaching out, grabbing the brownie—it had caramel and pecans on top and looked delicious—from the driver, rolling down my window, throwing it out.

  What would happen to birds if they ate Mrs. Mulroney’s brownies?

  The driver sunk her teeth into the rich chocolate before I could build up the nerve to say or do anything. Her eyes fluttered closed and she made a little noise in the back of her throat. “Holy God, that’s good.”

  Roona carefully zipped the bag up again, as if she was handling explosives instead of brownies. She looked at me and I shook my head. I whispered, “I can’t believe we just did that.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered back. “She made them on a good day, remember?”

  We were moving again, but the driver’s attention was only half on the road as she took a second bite. Great. We were probably going to be in an accident. “This is the best brownie I’ve ever eaten. Your grandma should sell these.”

  It smelled good, that was for sure. I inhaled deeply and actually felt better. Calmer. I watched the meter tick away at my last twenty dollars as we drove.

  When it reached $18.45 I asked, “Are we almost there?”

  The driver pointed one hand toward the road ahead. “Just there.”

  The meter read $19.96 when the driver stopped. Roona ran the gift card through the reader in the backseat and I crossed my fingers on both hands.

  It worked. Roona opened her bag and handed the driver another brownie. “For a tip,” she said.

  The driver hesitated, then took the brownie.

  * * *

  Nellis Air Force Base was like the building version of a T. rex. Massive. Scary. Man-eating. Roona fiddled with the edge of her blanket and looked up at the guard station.

  A soldier who was the T. rex version of a man watched us.

  “Okay,” she said, but she didn’t move except to wipe the back of her hand over her eyes. “Okay.”

  “Roona?”

  She looked at me. “What if he’s not here?”

  “You’re just thinking about that now?”

  “What if he doesn’t want to see me?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to be the one to push us into this. “We don’t have money to take a cab back to the bus station. We’re doing this.”

  She finally started to move. The guard held a hand the size of a baseball glove out to stop us. We both froze where we were. Anyone would. The guard was twice as big as my dad and glared at us like we were the enemy.

  “How can I help you?” His voice didn’t match his size. It was soft and kind.

  When Roona didn’t answer right away, I elbowed her. She jumped a little and said, “I’m looking for my dad.”

  The guard raised his eyebrows. “Is he stationed here?”

  “Yes, sir. His name is Curtis Mulroney.”

  “Is he expecting you?” Roona nodded, and I hoped my nerves didn’t show on my face. “Was that a cab that dropped you off?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Alone?” The guard looked around like maybe a grown-up might materialize somewhere. Roona pulled her pack off her back and dug into it, then pulled out the letter. She handed it over.

  The guard didn’t open it. He read the envelope and then looked like someone had punched him. The color went out of his face. He looked at us for another minute, then went back in his booth.

  When he came back he held two water bottles. He handed one to me and one to Roona. I opened mine right away and drank from it. Roona just held hers.

  “What’s your name?” the guard asked her.

  “Roona Mulroney.”

  They both looked at me and I said, “Um. Gideon Quinton.”

  “Roona, your dad isn’t stationed here.”

  “Yes he is. Look at the envelope. He sent that last week. He’s here. I want to see him, please.”

  “Do you kids live in Las Vegas?”

  Roona clamped her mouth shut, but I was already shaking my head. I stopped. The guard looked down his nose at us, then said, “Stay right there.”

  He went back into his little room and picked up a telephone. He watched us through the window while he talked and I swear, his eyes glued me right there to the sidewalk where I stood. I couldn’t have run if I wanted to. Or if I had somewhere to go. Nellis Air Force Base is in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t matter that we had no money for a cab back to the bus station, there weren’t any cabs anywhere near here.

  “He’s calling my dad.” Roona wrapped her arms around her body, and even though it was so hot I felt like I might melt into the ground under my feet, she looked cold. “Right?”

  “Maybe,” I said. It was the best I could do.

  The guard hung up the phone and just stood in his little shack, staring at us for a minute, before he came back out.

  “Is he coming?” Roona asked. “I want to see my dad.”

  The guard’s mouth flattened and he held his head like he was being careful not to nod it or shake it. “We’re just going to wait here for a few minutes.”

  Roona rubbed the edge of her blanket. “But he’s coming.”

  The guard looked over his shoulder, at the buildings behind him. A big black car came toward us and his whole body relaxed. “Here she is.”

  “She?” Roona said.

  The car drove up to the closed gate and the guard left us to go open it. It pulled up in front of us and the driver cut the engine, then opened the door.

  A woman got out. She was dressed in a dark blue uniform. She was old, although not quite as old as Miss Oberman, and she had a kind face. Something tight inside me relaxed as soon as she looked at us.

  “My name is Christine Farley,” she said. She didn’t come too close, didn’t try to touch either of us. Just waited.

  “I’m Roona Mulroney. I just want to see my dad. Curtis Mulroney. He’s here. I know he’s here.”

  �
��He’s here,” Mrs. Farley agreed.

  “I want him.” Roona’s voice cracked and tears ran down her face. I didn’t remember taking her hand, but I was holding it anyway.

  “Roona,” Mrs. Farley said. “Where’s your mother?”

  “At home. She’s … she’s sick. We need my dad.”

  “Where is home?”

  “I want my dad.” Roona’s voice started to rise.

  “Logandale,” I said. “We live in Logandale.”

  Mrs. Farley nodded slowly. “You’ve come a long way. Are you Roona’s brother?”

  I shook my head. I was in so much trouble. I couldn’t even imagine how much trouble.

  The woman took a breath and after she released it said, “Roona, your father is here, but he’s not in the air force.”

  “Yes he is.”

  “We need to call your mother.” She looked at me. “And yours.”

  Roona pulled her hand out of mine and took the blanket from around her neck. “Why can’t I see my dad? I want to see my dad.”

  Mrs. Farley rubbed her hand over her mouth and looked at the guard, then back at us. “Your father is an inmate at the Nellis Federal Prison Camp.”

  Roona froze. “Prison?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not true. You’re lying. I have a letter. He’s in the air force.” Roona pulled the letter out of her backpack. “You’re moving him to Moriah and now you won’t let me see him. Why won’t you let me see him?”

  “May I?” Mrs. Farley asked. Roona thrust the letter at her. She looked at the envelope, then pointed to the return address. “Here. Nellis FPC. Federal Prison Camp. And this is his inmate number. I’m sorry, Roona.”

  Mrs. Farley and the guard looked at each other and I had the sudden idea that neither of them spent much time dealing with children. The scales tipped and I was suddenly less afraid of my parents than I was of being sixty miles away from them, standing alone with Roona in front of an air-force-base-slash-prison. I was only four years old the time my mom left me at the gas station, but I suddenly remembered what it felt like sitting alone in the sheriff’s office eating that Happy Meal.

  I felt alone then, and I felt alone now. And just like then, I wanted the one person I knew could make this better.

  I cleared my throat and said, “I want to call my mom.”

  Roona looked at me and her face crumbled.