Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(12)

Still crying, Antsy slipped out of bed and—after checking her door to be sure it was all the way closed—stripped out of her nightgown, putting on the clothes she’d worn the day before, that were still at the top of the laundry basket. She was seven years old, almost eight, and she knew she should get something clean, but she also knew her dresser drawers would scrape if she opened them, and it wasn’t like she’d spilled anything on herself at dinner.

Her backpack was partially under the bed. She pulled it out and froze. What did you put into a bag for running away? Her piggy bank was half-full, and she knew she’d need money, but it also jingled and jangled, and even padding it with the rest of her laundry wouldn’t stop the coins from bouncing around. She had her twenty dollars of birthday money still on top of the dresser, and that could go in the bag. That was easy.

Her favorite doll, her stuffed monkey, they both went into the bag, and she stepped into her shoes before slinging the bag over her shoulder and carefully, carefully easing her bedroom door open and peeking into the hall. There was no sign of Tyler. She could hear the sound of the television drifting up from the downstairs living room.

Good. The one thing about this new house that was bet ter than the old one: the floors didn’t creak. They were new and level and perfect, and as long as she stayed close to the wall, she could move like a ghost, even going up and down the stairs. She walked rather than creeping, confident in her understanding of the acoustics.

The television cast flickering shadows on the walls. Antsy passed silent and swift, and thanks to the placement of the couch, neither Tyler nor her mother saw her go.

She stopped when she reached the kitchen, looking around for food she could take without opening anything, without disturbing anything. There was fruit in the big bowl by the stove, and a whole loaf of bread. The peanut butter had been left on the counter after lunch, inviting and easy to grab. She stuffed all those things into her pack, careful to stay as quiet as possible, before making her silent way to the back door.

This was it, then. She could go back to her room right now, could put her nightgown back on and pretend this had all been a dream, and call her grandparents tomorrow, to beg them to come and get her. But would they listen? If her mother told them she was just acting out, which story would they believe? Staying here wouldn’t promise her safety. It would just promise she was still close enough for Tyler to get to, and she knew she wasn’t safe here.

So she eased the back door open and slipped into the night, and by the time it swung shut on its own and her mother came to investigate the sound, she was long gone, out of the yard and heading down the street, backpack over her shoulder and tears running down her cheeks. She was never going back. She knew that, as completely as she knew she’d had to go, and so she just kept on going.

She kept on going all the way to the end of her street and turned, heading into unfamiliar neighborhoods, one redhaired little girl in a denim jacket and corduroy pants walking into the night, alone.



* * *



THE NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS GAVE way to a main street, busy with cars and bright with lights even after eight o’clock at night. Antsy paused, considering the wisdom of retreating back into the safer, darker residential streets, but forced herself to keep on walking. Her maternal grandparents might not believe her, but her father’s mother would. She knew that. If she could find a store that would let her use their phone, she could call and ask for rescue; she could ask her grandmother to come and get her, and she knew calling from a place that wasn’t home would just make her story—her true story—all the more believable.

The first shopping plaza she found was built around a supermarket, lights bright and artificially white. They looked too much like the lights in Target and she shied away, looking for another option. There was a liquor store, but that didn’t seem like the kind of place that would want a little girl coming inside, no matter how much trouble she said she was in. There was a McDonald’s, but she’d been with her mother when she got a flat tire once, and no one at the McDonald’s they had gone to had been willing to let her use their phone.

And there was a little store with junk-filled windows, light seeping through the cracks between the items. Antsy drifted toward it. She hadn’t realized they lived this close to a thrift store now. She loved thrift stores. They were like scavenger hunts every single time you went there, and things were usually cheap enough that when she found something really good, she could even keep it if she wanted to.

The sign on the door read ANTHONY & SONS, TRINKETS AND TREASURES. Someone had used a big black marker and written something else on the very top of the doorframe. Antsy couldn’t imagine how tall that person would have needed to be.

Be sure, said the words scrawled above the door. Well, she was. She was sure it was cold out here, and the store would probably close soon, and she needed to get inside before someone saw her and asked where her parents were. She was sure she couldn’t go home.

She pushed the door open and stepped through.





5

HOW TO GET LOST




THE BELL OVER THE door jingled softly as it swung closed behind her, and Antsy gazed in awestruck wonder at the shop she had stepped into. It was a glorious cacophony of things, every shelf piled high with books and antique vases and dishes and chests overflowing with jewels or coins from countries she didn’t recognize or tiny, polished bones, as white as chalk. She started walking again when she noticed that the ceiling was just as crowded, dripping with stuffed birds and model airplanes. It felt like the junk shop she’d been looking for her entire life, and she couldn’t decide what to look at as she walked slowly forward, looking for the counter.