But it wasn't Cream of Wheat. It was, Rob informed me with a little smile, grits.

If Ruth could only see me now, I thought.

After I'd helped Mrs. Wilkins wash the breakfast dishes, however, the fun was over. It was time to get down to business.

"I need to use a phone," I announced, and Mrs. Wilkins pointed to hers, hanging on the wall by the refrigerator.

"You can use that one," she said.

"No," I said. "For this particular call, I think I better use a pay phone."

Rob eyed me suspiciously. "What's up?" he wanted to know.

"Nothing," I said, innocently. "I just need to make a call. Is there a pay phone around here?"

Mrs. Wilkins looked thoughtful. "There's the one down the road, over by the IGA," she said.

"Perfect." To Rob, I said, "Can you drive me over there?"

He said he could, and we got up to go.  .  .  .

And so did Sean.

"Nuh-uh," I said. "No way. You stay here."

Sean's jaw dropped. "What do you mean?"

"I mean there are probably cops crawling all over the place, looking for a sixteen-year-old girl in the company of a twelve-year-old boy. They'll be on to us in a second. You stay here until I get back."

"But that's not fair," Sean declared, his voice breaking.

I felt of bubble of impatience well up inside me. But instead of snapping at him, I grabbed Sean by the arm and steered him out onto the back porch.

"Look," I said softly, so Rob and his mother wouldn't hear. "You said you wanted things back the way they were, didn't you? You and your mom, together, without your dad breathing down your necks?"

"Yes," Sean admitted, sullenly.

"Well, then let me do what I have to do. Which is something I have to do alone."

Sean was right about one thing: He was small for his age, but he really wasn't little. He wasn't even all that shorter than me. Which was how he was able to look me straight in the eye and say, accusingly, "That guy really is your boyfriend, isn't he?"

Where had that come from?

"No, Sean," I said. "I told you. We're just friends."

Sean brightened considerably. He said, "Okay," and went back inside.

Men. I swear I just don't get it.

Ten minutes later, I was standing in front of a little general store, the handset to an ancient pay phone pressed to my ear. I dialed carefully.

1-800-WHERE-R-YOU.

I asked for Rosemary, and when she came on, I said, "Hey, it's me. Jess."

"Jess?" Rosemary's voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh, my goodness. Is that really you?"

"Sure," I said. "Why?"

"Honey, I've been hearing all sorts of things on the news about you."

"Really?" I looked over at Rob. He was refilling the Indian's tank from the single pump in front of the store. We hadn't watched the news yet, and Mrs. Wilkins didn't get any newspapers, so I was eager to hear what they were saying about me. "What kind of stuff?"

"Well, about how last night, a group of Hell's Angels tore up Crane Military Base and kidnapped you and little Sean O'Hanahan off of it, of course."

"WHAT?" I yelled, so loud that Rob looked over at me. "That's not how it happened at all. Those guys were helping us to escape. Sean and I were being held against our will."

Rosemary said, "Well, that's not how that fellow—what's his name? Johnson, I think. That's not how Special Agent Johnson is telling it. There's a reward out for your safe return, you know."

This sounded interesting. "How much?"

"Twenty thousand dollars."

"Each?"

"No, that's just for you. Sean's father posted a hundred thousand dollar reward for his return."

I nearly hung up, I was so disgusted. "Twenty thousand dollars? Twenty piddling thousand dollars? That's all I'm worth to them? That loser. That's it. This is war."

Rosemary said, "I'd look out if I were you, honey. There's APBs out all over the state of Indiana. Folks are looking for you."

"Oh, yeah, I bet. Listen, Rosemary," I said, "I want you to do me a favor."

Rosemary said, "Anything, hon."

"Give Agent Johnson a message for me.  .  .  ."

Then I carefully stated the message I wanted Rosemary to relay.

"Okay," she said, when I was through. "You got it, honey. And, Jess?"

I had been about to hang up. "Yes?"

"You hang in there, honey. We're all behind you."

I hung up and told Rob about Special Agent Johnson's bogus kidnapping story—not to mention the crummy reward out for my capture. Rob was as mad as I was. Now that we knew there was an APB out on me, and that Hell's Angels were being blamed for what had happened at Crane, we agreed it wasn't a good idea for me to be seen tooling around on the back of Rob's bike. So we hurried back to his mom's place—but not until after I'd made one last call, this one from a pay phone outside a 7-Eleven on the turnpike.

My dad was where he usually is at lunchtime: Joe's. They get quite a noon crowd from the courthouse.

"Dad," I said. "It's me."

He nearly choked on his rigatoni, or whatever the special for the day was. My dad always taste-tests.

"Jess?" he cried. "Are you all right? Where are you?"

"Of course I'm all right," I said. "Now, anyway. Look, Dad, I need you to do me a favor."

"What are you talking about?" my dad demanded. "Where are you? Your mother and I have been worried sick. The folks up at Crane are saying—"

"Yeah, I know. That a bunch of Hell's Angels kidnapped Sean and me. But that's bogus, Dad. Those guys were rescuing us. Do you know what they were trying to do, Special Agents Johnson and Smith, that Colonel Jenkins guy? They were trying to make me into a dolphin."

My dad sounded like he was choking some more. "A what?"

Rob poked me hard in the back. I turned around to see what he wanted, and was horrified when an Indiana State Police patrol car eased into the parking lot of the convenience store.

"Look, Dad," I said, quickly ducking my head. "I gotta go. I just need you to do this one thing for me."

And I told him what the one thing was.

My dad wasn't too thrilled about it, to say the least.

He went, "Have you lost your mind? You listen here, Jessica—"

Nobody in my family ever calls me Jessica, except when they are really peeved at me.

"Just do it, please, Dad?" I begged. "It's really important. I'll explain everything later. Right now, I gotta go."

"Jessica, don't you—"

I hung up.

Rob had drifted away from me, distancing himself and his bike from the teenage girl at the pay phone, in case the cops made a connection. But it didn't look as if they had. One of them even nodded to me as he went into the store.

"Nice day," he said.

As soon as they were inside, Rob and I made a mad dash for his bike. We were already at the turnpike by the time they realized what they'd missed and came hurtling out of the store. I looked back over my shoulder and saw their mouths moving as we tore away. A few seconds later, they were in their car, sirens blaring.

I hung onto Rob more tightly. "We've got company," I said.

"Not for long," Rob said.

And suddenly we were off-road, brambles and sticks tearing at our clothing as we plunged down a ravine. Seconds later, we were splashing through a creekbed, the Indian's front wheel kicking up thick streams of water on either side of it. Above us, I could see the patrol car following along as best it could.  .  .  .

But then the creek made a bend away from the road, and soon the cop car disappeared from view. Soon I couldn't even hear its siren anymore.

When Rob finally pulled out of the creekbed and back up the ravine, I was wet from the waist down, and the Indian's engine was sounding kind of funny.

But we were safe.

"You all right?" Rob asked me, as I was wringing out the bottom of my T-shirt.

"Peachy," I said. "Listen, I'm sorry."

He was squatting beside the bike's front wheel, pulling out sticks and weeds that had wound into the spokes during our flight down the ravine. "Sorry about what?"

"Getting you involved in all this. I mean, I know you're on probation and all. The last thing you need is to be harboring a couple of fugitives. What if you get caught? They'll probably lock you up and throw away the key. I mean, depending on whatever it is you did to get on probation in the first place."

Rob had moved to the back tire. He squinted up at me, the afternoon sun bringing out the strong planes in his face. "Are you through?"

"Through what?"

"Through trying to trick me into telling you what I'm on probation for."

I put my hands on my hips. "I am not trying to trick you into doing anything. I am merely trying to let you know that I am aware of the great personal sacrifice you are making in helping Sean and me, and I appreciate it."

"You do, huh?"

He straightened. One of the sticks he'd wrenched from the Wheel had flicked drops of water up onto his face, so he pulled the bottom of his T-shirt out from the waistband of his jeans and scrubbed at them. When he did this, I happened to get a look at his bare stomach. The sight of it, all tightly muscled, with a thin band of dark hair down the center, did something to me.

I don't know what came over me, but suddenly, I was on my tiptoes, planting this big wet one on him. I have seriously never done anything like that before, but I just couldn't help it.

Rob seemed a little surprised at first, but he got over it pretty quickly. He kissed me back for a while, and it was just like in Snow White when all the woodland animals come out and start singing, and Prince Charming puts her up on the horse. For about a minute it was like that. I mean, my heart was singing just like one of those damned squirrels.

Then Rob reached up and started untangling my arms from around his neck.

"Jesus, Mastriani," he said. "What are you trying to do?"

That broke the spell pretty quick, let me tell you. I mean, Prince Charming would never have said something like that. I would have been mad if I hadn't heard the way his voice shook.

"Nothing," I said, very innocently.

"Well, you better cut it out," he said. "We've got a lot do. There's no time for any distractions."

I mentioned that I happened to like that particular distraction.

Rob went, "I'm in enough trouble right now without you adding to it, thanks." He picked up one of the helmets and shoved it down over my head. "And don't even think about trying something like that in front of the kid."

"What kid? What are you talking about?"

"The kid. O'Hanahan. What are you, blind, Mastriani? He's got it bad for you."

I tilted the helmet back and squinted at him. "Sean? For me?"

But all of a sudden, all the questions he'd been asking about Rob made sense.

I let the helmet drop back over my face. "Oh, God," I said.

"You got that right. He thinks you are one dope girl, Mastriani."

"He said that? He sure doesn't act like he thinks that. He really said I was dope?"

"Well." Rob swung onto his seat and gave the accelerator a kick. "I might be allowing my own feelings to cloud the matter a little."

Suddenly, all the birds and squirrels were singing again.

"You think I'm dope?" I asked dreamily.

He reached out and flicked my helmet. It made a hollow echoing sound inside my head, and brought me right out of my reverie.

"Get on the bike, Mastriani," he said.

When we got back to Rob's, Sean and Mrs. Wilkins were shelling peas and watching Ricki Lake.

"Jess," he said when I walked in. "Where have you been? You totally missed this guy. He weighed four hundred pounds and got stuck in a bathtub for over forty-eight hours! If you'd been here sooner, you could have seen it."

It was love. I could totally tell.

This was going to be harder than I thought.



C H A P T E R

21

The marching band was playing "Louie, Louie."

And not very well, I might add.

Still, Sean and I stayed where we were, sitting on the same metal bleachers that a week or so before I'd been electrocuted under. Before us stretched the football field, a sea of luscious green, upon which marched a herd of musicians playing for all they were worth, even though it was only an after-school rehearsal, and not the real thing. Football season was long over, but graduation was coming up, and the band would play at commencement.

Just not "Louie, Louie," hopefully.

"I don't get it," Sean said. "What are we doing here?"