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Authors: Caroline B. Cooney
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there. It was strange to think of all this happening and no parents knew.
Rowen transferred the carrier to Kit’s car.
“Where’s Shea, anyway?” asked Kit as she strapped herself into the driver’s seat of the Volvo and Muffin found a place in the back next to Sam.
“We had a big fight,” said Row, without the slightest interest in Shea or the fight. When you were cousins you could be casual like that. “She didn’t like the movies I picked out and said I was a slime and why didn’t I leave and I said I was not a slime —”
“He is a slime,” Muffin explained.
“— and Shea threw us out —”
“Call Shea back,” said Kit, “and tell her as soon as Muffin and I have delivered Sam the Baby, we will be there for movies and spending the night. Don’t eat all the food without us.”
Chapter 6
R OUTE 80 WEST .
It was a good thing Kit had plenty of gas. Cinda had given her the exit number, but she hadn’t said it was fifteen miles! Oh, well. At seventy miles an hour, which was the scary rate traffic was moving, it didn’t take long. Kit, who was new to driving, preferred speeds like thirty miles an hour.
It was a relief to get off the highway.
North on Dexter Mill Road. They were practically in Pennsylvania.
It was beautiful, hilly country. The leaves had just begun turning. Splashes and trills of scarlet and orange leaves flared in the sunset and then vanished. The sky deepened quickly from blue to slate.
In the backseat, Muffin sang songs she remembered from her own babyhood, not so long ago. “Ride a pretty little horsey,” she sang to Sam.
At a twenty-four-hour convenience store (convenient to whom? There were no houses!) Kit turned left on Hennicot Road. Hennicot Road was just there; it seemed to serve no houses, no schools, no stores, no population whatsoever. It seemed not to go anywhere except farther and farther away. Muffin’s earlier question, the one Kit had answered so casually, sprang back into her mind. Why hadn’t the new parents come to the hospital?
Kit had not done much driving in the dark, but then, where she lived, it never really got dark. Every road — and her part of the state was a solid interweaving of roads — was lined with streetlights, and every store stayed open late, glowing with light, so darkness was only an occasional pocket.
Here, the trees closed overhead and the road tunneled beneath them, and she no longer knew what the sky was doing. Hennicot Road had potholes. Not ordinary potholes from the weight of trucks and the convulsions of freezing weather. Old crumbling holes, as if so few people drove here there was no reason to repave.
Kit had never been any place that was not full of people.
The huge sprawl that was New York City, that extended deep into New Jersey, had vanished. She was in a country she did not know; had not known existed. They went past the kind of house where people married their relatives, and had snarly foxy dogs that bit, and used the insides of cars for porch chairs.
“Aaaaahhhhhh, Kit!” shrieked Muffin.
Kit’s fingers went into spasm on the wheel.
“He’s going to the bathroom all over the place. He stinks! He’s worse than the oil tank farms on the New Jersey Turnpike! You have to change him. Drive over there to that diner. We’ll use their restroom to wash up in.”
He did stink. His smell slowly filled the Volvo.
Muffin was right about the diner. Lenore’s Breakfast and Lunch, it said. Kit was sorry Lenore didn’t serve dinner. She needed human beings. She would have gone in and ordered anything, just to be among people. Gratefully, Kit pulled into the parking lot. When she turned off the motor, she realized the diner was boarded up.
Plywood nailed over windows had split with age. Long peels of wooden layers hung at angles. A padlock on the front door hung open. An abandoned Dumpster overflowed with trash. Weeds grew up through the gravel, and vines were lifting the shingles from the roof of the
Rowen transferred the carrier to Kit’s car.
“Where’s Shea, anyway?” asked Kit as she strapped herself into the driver’s seat of the Volvo and Muffin found a place in the back next to Sam.
“We had a big fight,” said Row, without the slightest interest in Shea or the fight. When you were cousins you could be casual like that. “She didn’t like the movies I picked out and said I was a slime and why didn’t I leave and I said I was not a slime —”
“He is a slime,” Muffin explained.
“— and Shea threw us out —”
“Call Shea back,” said Kit, “and tell her as soon as Muffin and I have delivered Sam the Baby, we will be there for movies and spending the night. Don’t eat all the food without us.”
Chapter 6
R OUTE 80 WEST .
It was a good thing Kit had plenty of gas. Cinda had given her the exit number, but she hadn’t said it was fifteen miles! Oh, well. At seventy miles an hour, which was the scary rate traffic was moving, it didn’t take long. Kit, who was new to driving, preferred speeds like thirty miles an hour.
It was a relief to get off the highway.
North on Dexter Mill Road. They were practically in Pennsylvania.
It was beautiful, hilly country. The leaves had just begun turning. Splashes and trills of scarlet and orange leaves flared in the sunset and then vanished. The sky deepened quickly from blue to slate.
In the backseat, Muffin sang songs she remembered from her own babyhood, not so long ago. “Ride a pretty little horsey,” she sang to Sam.
At a twenty-four-hour convenience store (convenient to whom? There were no houses!) Kit turned left on Hennicot Road. Hennicot Road was just there; it seemed to serve no houses, no schools, no stores, no population whatsoever. It seemed not to go anywhere except farther and farther away. Muffin’s earlier question, the one Kit had answered so casually, sprang back into her mind. Why hadn’t the new parents come to the hospital?
Kit had not done much driving in the dark, but then, where she lived, it never really got dark. Every road — and her part of the state was a solid interweaving of roads — was lined with streetlights, and every store stayed open late, glowing with light, so darkness was only an occasional pocket.
Here, the trees closed overhead and the road tunneled beneath them, and she no longer knew what the sky was doing. Hennicot Road had potholes. Not ordinary potholes from the weight of trucks and the convulsions of freezing weather. Old crumbling holes, as if so few people drove here there was no reason to repave.
Kit had never been any place that was not full of people.
The huge sprawl that was New York City, that extended deep into New Jersey, had vanished. She was in a country she did not know; had not known existed. They went past the kind of house where people married their relatives, and had snarly foxy dogs that bit, and used the insides of cars for porch chairs.
“Aaaaahhhhhh, Kit!” shrieked Muffin.
Kit’s fingers went into spasm on the wheel.
“He’s going to the bathroom all over the place. He stinks! He’s worse than the oil tank farms on the New Jersey Turnpike! You have to change him. Drive over there to that diner. We’ll use their restroom to wash up in.”
He did stink. His smell slowly filled the Volvo.
Muffin was right about the diner. Lenore’s Breakfast and Lunch, it said. Kit was sorry Lenore didn’t serve dinner. She needed human beings. She would have gone in and ordered anything, just to be among people. Gratefully, Kit pulled into the parking lot. When she turned off the motor, she realized the diner was boarded up.
Plywood nailed over windows had split with age. Long peels of wooden layers hung at angles. A padlock on the front door hung open. An abandoned Dumpster overflowed with trash. Weeds grew up through the gravel, and vines were lifting the shingles from the roof of the
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