The Spite House(5)
A current of anxiousness made her skin tingle. She managed to redirect it into a fist clenched under the table. This could be nothing—sometimes people didn’t even realize they’d been staring until they got caught—and she didn’t want to worry Stacy if that was the case. Even if it was something, it would be better for Stacy to see her big sister unflustered.
“Hungry?” she said to Stacy.
Stacy smiled back and nodded as though she’d be denied her food if she didn’t show the appropriate enthusiasm.
Dess looked around the dining area once more. Maybe coming here had been a mistake. They had dined out only a handful of times since they had left home, and almost exclusively in towns and cities with a more diverse racial makeup than this. Even then, in places where they thought they could better blend in, Dess had always been a little uneasy, measuring her surroundings like a secret agent who could never sit with their back to the door, who always knew where all the exits were.
Here they were surrounded by strangers, any one of whom might have seen a picture of them in a story online that reported them as “missing.” Presuming such a story even existed, to say nothing of it being important to anyone this far south. As far as Dess knew, they hadn’t made any headlines in the D.C. area. Maybe they’d pulled their escape off as well as they’d hoped. Or it was possible that none of their family or friends could get anyone else to care. One of the few things they had going for them, she figured, was that missing black people weren’t all that newsworthy, or much of a priority to the authorities. Fugitive black people, sure. But missing? That wasn’t going to lead the news any night of the week.
Nonetheless, she knew as well as her dad that it could still circulate in other ways. Church flyers, emails, true crime blogs, or YouTube channels that specialized in unexplained vanishings. It was at least possible, then, that one of the other patrons in the diner was, at this moment, trying to recall where they’d seen these two black girls. Yes, Dess and her father had been careful, and had been fortunate to get as far they had. But one unlucky day or careless moment could undo all of that, and she wasn’t being careful right now.
Stay cool. It’s okay. If it’s nothing and you turn it into something and get caught because you panicked, you’re going to feel dumb. You’re a normal girl having a normal meal with your sister. That’s all they see, and if that’s all you show them that’s all they’ll know.
Dess unclenched her fist and hoped her silence hadn’t made her sister worry. Stacy appeared not to have noticed. She was busy twisting and folding a handful of paper napkins into flowers. She had already finished a carnation and had rolled the stem for what Dess expected would be an attempt at a rose.
“All right, Staze, pop quiz time,” Dess said.
Stacy looked up and set her craftwork aside. “Uh-oh.”
“Don’t worry, this should be easy. What does ‘run’ mean?”
Stacy put on her serious face, which might look like a mockery to anyone who didn’t know her. “‘Run’ means run and hide.”
“Yeah. From who?”
“Everyone but you and Dad. Even police or firefighters.”
“And then?”
“Stay hidden until you or Dad come find me, or until I count to a thousand.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Count to ten, ten times on my fingers. Then count that as ‘one,’ and start over until I do the whole thing ten times.”
Dess nodded and smiled. Things were probably fine. They had been so far. True, their ultimate contingency plan wasn’t much of a plan at all, but it was better than nothing. As a last resort, if they were close to being caught by someone, they’d shout for Stacy to run and then Dess and her father would split up, if possible. Hopefully neither would be caught, but if one of them was, the other would track Stacy down, counting on her to evade any pursuers herself and then find a suitable hiding place that would hold for at least fifteen minutes. The reason they thought she had even the slightest chance of doing this was that she seemed able to do almost anything she really put her mind to.
They had put slim, circular GPS trackers originally designed as dog tags under the soles of her shoes. They weren’t thin enough for Stacy not to feel them, but she never complained about them or walked differently because of them. The trackers advertised a relatively limited range, and they hadn’t tested the tracking app’s reliability much out of reluctance to use a location feature on their phones. Still, the limited tests they had performed showed some promise.
During practice runs Stacy had found hiding places not too far from where she’d started, which was good, but she hadn’t hidden herself too well, either, so losing her was less of a concern than her being found by someone canvassing the area. Again, it was only for emergencies, and was mostly there to give them a semblance of control, a sense of preparedness for the worst, even if it had little chance of success.
Tanya returned with the waters and let out a small gasp at Stacy’s handiwork.
“Look at that. Aren’t you creative? Where’d you learn how to do that?”
“I saw someone else doing it one time,” Stacy said, her smile having returned, “so I taught myself.”
Tanya’s eyebrows lifted like she’d seen a minor yet impressive coin trick. “Can you make a bow?”