The Echo Park Castaways, page 6
At the bottom of the page were directions for getting there on public transportation. It was a long, complicated list of steps, involving almost two and a half hours of switching from buses to trains and back, sometimes walking a few miles between stations. It was so much worse than I’d imagined.
I squeezed my eyes shut, already exhausted. I’d planned to spend the day finishing up my science fair project. Instead, I’d be chasing down my useless foster siblings.
They couldn’t have much of a head start, I told myself. The first step on the map was taking the 92 bus downtown. That stop was a few blocks away, and at this hour on a Saturday, the buses wouldn’t be running frequently. If I hurried, I might be able to catch up before they boarded one.
Determined, I grabbed my wallet and hurried back to the front door.
QUENTIN
We are on a bus. Mommy and me never take buses, because they are breeding grounds for germs, but Loud Boy says this is the fastest way to get to Torrance, so I sit next to him and try very hard not to touch anything. I did not have a pass for the bus, but Loud Boy explained to the man that I had lost it, and the man did not look happy but he let us on.
We had only gone one block when the bus suddenly stopped and the quiet girl climbed on. This made Loud Boy upset. He yelled at her in words I could not understand, but she did not say anything, instead she came and sat down next to us.
I like Quiet Girl because she is the quietest person I have ever met.
“Sheesh, she’s still wearing pajamas!” Loud Boy says, sitting down again. “Nevaeh is going to kill me!” He gives her an angry look and says, “I should take you home right now!”
Quiet Girl does not say anything; she just stares at us. My heart is going thump thump because we are already on the bus and I do not want to go back to the house that is not home.
The girl says something to Loud Boy, and they talk for a minute, then he shakes his head and throws his hands up, nearly hitting me. “Okay, fine! Mara wants to help, dude. And she says if we take her back, she’ll wake up Mrs. K and tell her everything.”
Mrs. K is the one who looks sad all the time and does not seem to care that a smile is a curve that sets a lot of things straight. Mommy and me practice smiling in the mirror and she says that my smile makes her heart grow three sizes, just like the Grinch, who was also not very nice at first but became nicer. I do not want to go back and see Mrs. K; she does not seem like someone who will become nicer. Loud Boy must not want to, either, because he just sits there making angry noises and the bus keeps going and that is a relief.
The bus stops nine more times. Most of the houses are the same dirty brown color as the house that is not home, but there are also stores and other buildings. None of them are buildings I know; this is still not Torrance. Loud Boy jumps up and says, “C’mon!” and we both follow him off the bus (without touching anything!).
We are standing on a street and Loud Boy pulls a water bottle and a bar and a piece of paper out of his bag. He drinks the water and takes a bite of the bar and looks at the paper, then he says, “This way—it’s a two-minute walk to the next bus.” Quiet Girl and me follow him, and I am happy because we are on our way!
Seven
VIC
Well, it’s going pretty darn well so far if I do say so myself. Except for Mara following us, which obviously wasn’t part of the plan. Nevaeh is probably awake by now, totally freaking out. But there’s not much I can do about it; when I threatened to take Mara back home, she said she’d rat us out. I kind of doubt she’d actually go through with it; I mean, she’d get in trouble, too. But like Commander Baxter always says, for a mission to succeed you need to adapt to changing circumstances, which is why I decided to keep going. If we stuck to the schedule, we’d be back by fifteen hundred, and Mrs. K wouldn’t even know we’d been gone.
Since we’d skipped breakfast, I ate an energy bar to refuel while we walked to the 910 bus toward Inglewood. From there, we’d take the Metro Green Line, then transfer to another bus. After that it was just a three-mile walk to Torrance Memorial Medical Center.
Piece of cake. Mara was giving me a hungry look, so I handed her the last few bites of my bar. “Hey, man,” I said to Q. “You hungry?”
He shook his head. I gotta say: when Q’s got a goal, the kid’s determined. I mean, he was sticking so close, he was practically tripping on my heels. If he knew the way to the bus stop, he’d probably be running there.
Mara looked ridiculous in her Dora pajamas: the cuffs were too long, since Mrs. K always made us buy a size up so that they’d last longer. Mara was working hard at not tripping, focusing on her feet the whole time, keeping that freaky clown doll buried up by her neck. Thank God she’d remembered to put on a pair of shoes, because there was a ton of broken glass on the ground. I thought about stopping to roll her cuffs, but we were on a tight schedule and really needed to catch that bus.
It said on my directions that it was a two-minute walk to Hill and First, but it turned out to be more like ten once you factored in waiting for traffic lights to change. I’d actually never been to this part of LA before; it was kind of weird, much more like a city than Echo Park, with lots of tall buildings. But there weren’t any people around; it was like one of those zombie apocalypse movies, where the hero is in a huge city but it’s really quiet. Thinking about that got me a little paranoid; I half expected to see a horde of the living dead come shuffling out of a construction site as we passed by. Honestly, I’d be glad when we got on the next bus. This place was seriously creeping me out.
At least there wasn’t anyone around to ask what a bunch of kids were doing downtown at oh-six-thirty on a Saturday morning, including an eight-year-old girl wearing pajamas. Because that would be tough to explain.
We got lucky: a 910 bus pulled up right as we got to the intersection. I climbed on and waved my pass at the driver. I was about to launch into an explanation of why Quentin and Mara didn’t have bus passes, but he just waved impatiently and said, “Move it, kids, I’m behind schedule!”
So obviously our luck was holding. I went to the back of the bus: we’d be on this one for a while, might as well get comfortable. It started moving before we got to our seats, and Quentin nearly fell on top of me; the kid refused to touch anything for some strange reason. Luckily, we were the only people on board. “Hold on to my backpack,” I instructed, because that seemed to stress him out less than taking my shoulder.
We’d just gotten squared away when I heard a familiar voice yelling, “Hey!” outside the window. I swiveled in my seat and peered out: Nevaeh was chasing after the bus, her braids flying, waving her hands frantically to get the bus driver’s attention.
I swallowed hard; she looked mad. I mean really, crazy mad. Especially when the bus driver chose to ignore her and instead gunned the engine, picking up speed as we drove deeper into the depths of downtown.
NEVAEH
Oh boy, am I angry. I swear I might actually strangle Vic when I catch up to him. He looked right at me out that bus window, but did he tell the driver to stop? Nope. Instead, he left me standing there panting as the bus turned a corner and sped off.
I had a stitch in my side and was covered in sweat. I’d never been in this part of downtown before—it was nasty, all boarded-up buildings and gutters clogged with trash. The whole place smelled like pee, too—not exactly what I was in the mood for this early on a Saturday morning.
I stalked to the nearest bus stop and checked the route map, then compared it to the printout from Vic’s desk. According to his directions, they were taking that bus all the way to a subway station across town. I could get on the next bus and hope to catch up to them, but it was kind of a long shot. I chewed my lip, trying to come up with another option.
I ran my finger down the list of connections. There it was: a few blocks away, another bus ran parallel to the 910. With any luck, it would make fewer stops, and I’d manage to intercept them before they reached the subway station.
And then I’d drag Vic home by the hair if I had to.
QUENTIN
Quiet Girl will not stop staring at me. She sits in the seat across the aisle and chews on her hair and looks at me. I like her pajamas; they have Dora on them. I used to watch Dora with Mommy, it was my favorite next to the Star Wars movies, which of course are the best because they have actual science! But in Dora the Explorer, there was a backpack and a map and a monkey named Boots and they have adventures with educational value. Dora the Explorer says that “azul” is blue and “amarillo” is yellow and “rojo” is red. And counting is uno, dos, tres . . .
Loud Boy says, “Are you counting?”
He is giving me a funny look. I point to the pajamas. “Dora.”
“Yeah, right, man. That’s Dora.”
“La Exploradora,” Quiet Girl says. She smiles at me.
“You like that show?” Loud Boy asks.
I do not say anything. Mommy always says needless chatter clouds the mind. I remember Mommy sitting on the couch patting the safe spot on my head while we watched Dora and the monkey help a train win a race.
“Hey, dude. No crying,” Loud Boy says.
Quiet Girl does not say anything, but she reaches across the aisle and touches my hand and says, “Me gusta Dora también.”
I usually do not like it when people touch me, but her hand just feels like air, so I say, “Swiper no swiping,” and Quiet Girl laughs and then Loud Boy laughs too. They are laughing so hard it makes me forget to be sad and then the bus is stopping and Loud Boy says, “Right on schedule!” and we get off again.
Eight
VIC
“Okay, we walk from here,” I said after consulting the map. It wasn’t even oh-seven-hundred yet, and we were nearly halfway to Torrance; not bad, especially considering I was the only one who’d brought my bus pass. I was a little worried about switching to a train; bus drivers were usually pretty chill, they could care less if kids got on so long as they didn’t make any trouble. But I didn’t know much about the subway; I’d only taken it once, for a school trip to a free concert. The music was kind of lame, but it was in this amazing symphony hall that looked like a spaceship and was built by Walt Disney, so how cool is that?
Mario had sat next to me at the concert, even though he was three years older, and they let him because everyone thought he was my brother for real. He’d snuck in some Red Vines; I don’t know where he got them, but Mario always had a stash of candy and he was super cool about sharing. I wondered if he still did that. Maybe there was another kid somewhere who slept on the top bunk, and got to share Mario’s candy and laugh at his awesome jokes. He had this great one about penguins that was completely hilarious; every time he told it I’d laugh so hard I nearly choked—
I realized that Mara and Q were just standing there staring at me. We were still a few blocks from the train station. To be honest, I wasn’t totally sure which way to go. I didn’t have my company-issued GPS system because obviously that’s not the kind of equipment they just let you take home, and it wasn’t so easy to find things without it.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out which way is north.”
Mara pointed back in the direction we’d come from and said, “Norte.” I was about to snap that she couldn’t possibly know that, but then I realized she was right. “I knew that,” I muttered.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did Q; they just kept looking at me like, Why aren’t we moving yet? So I started walking east toward the subway station.
After a couple of blocks I realized that I might, accidentally, have confused east with west. That happens sometimes, even to a seriously talented spy like me; I mean, a lot of people get their left hand confused with their right, right?
Anyway, nothing around us looked like a metro station; instead, we were under an overpass. There were cardboard boxes everywhere, and lots of trash. Way overhead, a whole bunch of highways crisscrossed each other like twisted ribbons. They actually kind of reminded me of that crazy symphony hall.
Q looked around and said, “This is not Torrance.”
“Man, you’re turning into a regular chatterbox,” I muttered. Out of nowhere, he’d started counting in Spanish on the bus, and now this. I kind of preferred him not talking, to be honest.
“We’re lost,” Mara said in Spanish. It had never occurred to me before, but she actually kind of looked like Dora, with her big eyes and bowl cut. Except the real Dora would be a lot more helpful in this situation. At least she could read a map.
“We’re not lost,” I retorted. “I was just . . . testing, to see if either of you were paying attention. And guess what? You failed.”
Neither of them looked very impressed. “Anyway, c’mon.” I shrugged my pack higher on my shoulders and turned back the way we’d come. “It’s this way.”
We’d only gone ten feet when I heard something growling. And when I say “growling,” I mean it sounded like a lawn mower starting up, but a heck of a lot scarier. One thing about me that you might not know is that I don’t like dogs. I mean, I know there are crazy-cool K-9 dogs that are real cops and soldiers. But when I was younger, we had a neighbor who used to train dogs to fight, and one of them got into our yard once, and . . . well, let’s just say it was bad.
So I stopped dead, thinking, Please be a Chihuahua, please be a Chihuahua . . . But it’s never a Chihuahua when you want it to be, right? Instead, this huge pit bull came out from behind the stack of boxes in front of us. Its head was low, ducked beneath massive shoulders. The dog’s teeth were bared, and it was walking real slow, like a lion on a nature show.
And suddenly, I couldn’t move. I mean, all my elite training went right out the window. I wanted to run, I was telling my feet to run, but I couldn’t seem to get them to listen. Instead I just stared at this dog and started praying as it came closer and closer. Drool dripped from its fangs as it snarled even louder. Then it broke into angry barking and lunged for us.
NEVAEH
I got lucky and caught the other bus right as it was pulling up; I had to run, but this driver wasn’t a total jerk, so he waited for me.
I sat in the front, silently willing it to move faster as we lumbered south. I could picture the other bus moving parallel to us a few blocks away. At this hour on a Saturday, there weren’t many other passengers, so at most of the stops the driver just slowed down, then shifted back into gear when it was clear that no one was getting off or on.
I fervently hoped that Vic’s bus was stopping at every stop, and that maybe someone was loading on a bike or something, too; anything to slow them down.
I got off at the bus stop closest to the metro station and ran the final three blocks. I had to use three dollars’ worth of grocery money to buy a metro card, which did nothing to improve my mood. I slid it through the scanner and pushed past the turnstile, then took the stairs to the platform two at a time.
There were only a few people waiting for a train, and none of them were my irritating foster siblings. According to the computerized sign overhead, the next Green Line train wasn’t due for twelve minutes, which was a bad sign. If a train had just left, and they’d managed to catch it, they were already headed to Inglewood. Going all the way there to track them down would take at least another hour.
“I am seriously going to kill Vic,” I muttered.
An older white guy waiting on the platform gave me a funny look. He didn’t look like a creep, so I decided it was probably safe to talk to him.
“Excuse me,” I said loudly. “Did you see three kids come through here?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Sorry, miss.”
“Okay. Did I just miss a train?”
“Not sure. Just got here a minute ago myself,” he said with a shrug, then turned back to his paper.
I pulled out the copy of Vic’s map again and glared at it. Where are they? Was he following a different route after all? Maybe Vic had left this copy behind because he’d come up with a better way to get to Torrance. If that was true, this might all be a wasted trip. Maybe I should just go home and come clean to Mrs. K.
The thought made my stomach hurt. I could practically hear her mumbling about how tired she was, and how maybe she was no good at being a foster mother anymore. Then Ms. Judy from DCFS would show up, and I’d probably be back at the Welcome Center by dinner.
I dropped onto a bench and put my head in my hands. It didn’t seem to matter what I did, or how hard I tried. My life always fell apart anyway. I hated the thought of starting over again in a new foster home. Leaving the few friends I’d managed to make, like Jada. Dealing with new teachers and a new locker code, and getting lost in the halls because I didn’t know where anything was . . .
I smacked my head, suddenly realizing what had probably happened. Vic had a terrible sense of direction; he still had trouble finding his way home from school—that’s why I always had to walk him. It would be just like him to go the wrong way. If I checked the blocks around the train station, I’d probably find him standing there like an idiot.
I sprang off the bench and ran back to the stairs. I did a quick circle around the station, but didn’t see them. Of course, I thought. That would be way too easy. I’d have to be methodical about it, circling the station one block at a time. That way, I’d be less likely to miss them.
Nothing for the first few blocks. My spirits started to flag again; maybe they had caught a train before I got there.
Then, a few blocks west of the train station, I stepped beneath an overpass and saw the three of them standing there. I heaved a sigh of relief, then marched toward them, calling out, “Vic Quintero, you are in so much—”
I froze, suddenly spotting what they were all staring at. Between us was the biggest pit bull I’d ever seen. It was covered in battle scars, snarling and barking ferociously as it paced back and forth in front of them. Vic was staring at it, shaking slightly. Mara and Quentin were huddled behind him.
