Meg Cabot - When Lightning Strikes

I had done it once. I could do it again.

And this time, I was going to do it right.

C H A P T E R

15

When they came for me the next morning, I was already gone.

Oh, don't get your panties in a wad. I left a note. It went like this:

To Whom It May Concern,

I had to run out to do an errand. I'll be right back.

Sincerely,

Jessica Mastriani

I mean, I didn't want anyone to worry.

What happened was, I woke up early. And when I woke up, I knew where Sean was. Again.

So I showered and got dressed, and then I went out into the hallway, down some stairs, and out a door.

No one tried to stop me. No one was even around, except some soldiers, who were practicing drills or something in the yard. They just ignored me.

Which suited me fine.

Yesterday, when I'd been coming back from the pool, I'd noticed a little minibus that had pulled up to a stop outside the base's family housing units, where the officers with spouses and children lived. I walked over there now. Again, nobody tried to stop me. After all, it wasn't like I was a prisoner, or anything.

The minibus, the people at the stop said, went into the nearest town, where I'd bought my swimsuit and Sony PlayStation … and where I happened to know there was a bus station.

So I waited with all the other people, and when the minibus finally pulled up, I got on it. It chugged away, right in front of all the news vans and reporters and stuff. It rolled right along past them and the soldiers guarding the entrance to the base, keeping the reporters out.

And as simple as that, I left Crane Military Base.

The town outside of Crane isn't exactly this booming metropolis, but I still had trouble finding the bus station. I had to ask three people. First the minibus driver, who gave me the lamest directions on earth, then the kid behind the cash register of a convenience mart, and finally an old guy sitting outside a barber shop. In the end, I located it thanks to the fact that there was a bus sitting outside of it.

I bought my round-trip ticket—seventeen dollars—with the money my dad had given me before he'd left. "In case of an emergency," he'd said, and slipped me a hundred bucks.

Well, this was an emergency. Sort of.

I had breakfast at the bus stop. I got two chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts and a Sprite from the vending machines. Another dollar seventy-five.

I figured I might be bored during my ride, so I bought a book to read. It was the same book I'd noticed in Rob's back pocket the last time I'd seen him. I thought reading the same book might somehow bring us closer together.

Okay, I admit it: that's not true. It was the only book on the rack that looked the least bit interesting.

My bus pulled up at nine o'clock. I was the only person who got on it. I got a window seat. Have you ever noticed that things always look better when you look at them out of one of those tinted bus windows? I'm serious. Then you get off the bus and everything's all bright and you can see the dirt and you just think, "Ugh."

That's what I think, anyway.

It took us more than an hour to get to Paoli. I spent most of it looking out the window. There's not a lot to see in Indiana, except cornfields. I'm sure that's true of most states, however.

When we got to Paoli, I got off the bus and went into the station. It was bigger than the one outside of Crane. There were rows of plastic chairs for people to sit in, and a bank of pay phones. Still, I could pick out the undercover cops easy. There was one sitting by the vending machines, and another sitting near the men's room. Every time a bus came in, they'd stand up and go outside, and pretend to be waiting for someone. Then, when Sean didn't get off the bus, they'd go back and sit down again.

I observed them for over an hour, so I know what I'm talking about. There was also an unmarked police car parked across the street from the bus station, and another one in front of the bowling alley, a little ways away.

When it came time for Sean's bus to arrive, I knew I had to set up a diversion so the cops wouldn't snatch Sean before I had a chance to talk to him. So this is what I did:

I started a fire.

I know. People could have been killed. But listen, I made sure no one was in there first. I just lit this match I got from a pack I found, and threw it into the trash can in the ladies' room, after first checking to make sure all the stalls were empty. Then I went and stood by the pay phones, like I was expecting a call. Nobody noticed me. Nobody ever notices me. Short girls like me, we don't exactly stand out, you know?

After a few minutes, the smoke was billowing out really good. One of the ticket sellers noticed it first. She went, "Oh, my God! Fire! Fire!" and pointed toward the ladies' room door.

The other clerks totally freaked out. They started screaming for everyone to get out. Somebody shouted, "Dial 911!" One of the undercover cops asked if there was a fire extinguisher anywhere. The other got on his cell phone. He was telling the guys waiting outside in the unmarked cars to radio the fire department.

And right then the eleven-fifteen from Indianapolis pulled up outside. I sauntered out to meet it.

Sean was the fifth person to get off. He had on a disguise—or what he thought was one, anyway. What he'd done was, he'd dyed his hair brown. Big deal. You could still see his freckles from a mile away. Plus he still had on that stupid Yankees cap. At least he'd tried to pull it down low over his face.

But, I'm sorry, a twelve-year-old kid, who was small for his age anyway, getting off a Greyhound by himself, in the middle of a school day? Talk about conspicuous.

Fortunately, my little fire was really plugging away. I don't know if you've ever smelled burning plastic trash can before, but let me tell you, it isn't pleasant. And the smoke? Pretty black. Everyone who got off the bus looked, in a startled way, toward the station. Thick, acrid smoke was really pouring out of it now. All the ticket-takers were standing around outside, talking in shrill voices. You could tell this was the most exciting thing that had happened in the Paoli bus station for a while. The undercover cops were rushing around, trying to make sure everybody had gotten out. And then the fire engines showed up, sirens on full blast.

While all this was going on, I stepped up to Sean, took him by the arm, and said, "Keep moving," and started steering him down this alley by the station, as fast as I could.

He didn't want to come with me at first. It was kind of hard to hear what he said, since the fire engine's siren was so loud. I shouted into his ear, "Well, if you'd prefer to go with them, they're over there waiting for you," and I guess he got the message, because he stopped struggling after that.

When we'd gotten far enough away from the station that the sound of the sirens could no longer drown out our voices, Sean snatched his arm out of my grasp and demanded, in a very rude voice, "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your butt," I said. "What were you thinking, coming back here? This is the first place anybody with brains would look for you, you know."

Sean's blue eyes flashed at me from beneath the brim of his baseball cap. "Yeah? Well, where else am I supposed to go? My mom's in the city lockup," he said. "Thanks to you ."

"If you had leveled with me that day," I said, "instead of acting like such a little head-case, none of this would be happening."

"No," Sean shot back. "If you weren't a nark , none of this would be happening."

"Nark?" That got me mad. Everyone had been going on about what a wonderful "gift" I had. How it was a miracle, a blessing, blah, blah, blah.