Chasing the Skip (6 page)

In no time, Dad had Ian’s feet and cuffs chained to the floor bolt. The whole time, Ian kept his head back, his face only a foot from mine. I curled my toes in my shoes. This was exactly the kind of person I’d always thought Dad picked up. Someone tough, someone who didn’t back down. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Dad slammed the side door. He picked up Ian’s belongings from the sidewalk and locked them in one of the utility boxes in the side of the truck, then walked around to the driver’s-side door.

Ian half smiled at me from the back seat.

“Hi,” I said.

Ian leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his cuffed hands. The chain attached to his cuffs stretched between his knees to the floor bolt. Dad hadn’t left him much slack. “Hey,” he said.

He didn’t ask me who I was, but I still felt the need to explain. “I’m Ricki,” I said. “I’m … his daughter.” I wasn’t sure what to call Dad. The bounty hunter? Mr. Maxwell? Was he on a first-name basis with skips?

Dad pulled open the driver’s-side door. “Turn around,” he barked at me. “Get back to your homework.” Then he focused on Ian. “You. Leave her alone.”

“Yes, sir,” Ian said, turning his half smile at Dad. “Whatever you say.”

Dad climbed into the driver’s seat and adjusted the rearview mirror so he could watch Ian while he drove. Then he picked up my math book and handed it to me.

“Get to work,” he said. “I mean it.”

“I thought you were going to help me.”

“Do as much as you can now, and I’ll help you tonight.”

I rolled my eyes. I guess Dad felt like he had to be terse around skips, since he didn’t have a badge or anything to make them respect him. I wanted to argue, but I didn’t want Ian to think I was some kind of baby, fighting with my dad about homework. So instead I opened up my math book as if it’d been my idea to do the work in the first place.

We stopped at a fast-food place on our way back to the freeway. The trailer wouldn’t fit through most drive-thrus, so Dad parked in the lot and then waved an arm at me. “I’m going to use the toilet. You come in and grab some food.”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” Okay, so I was starving. But I couldn’t talk to Ian unless I got him alone.

“I’m hungry,” Ian said.

“I didn’t ask you. Come on, Ricki.”

“Give me a break, bounty man,” Ian said. “You can’t starve me to death. I’ll sue.”

“It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive. You’ll live.” Dad gave me a look. “I’m going in,” he said. “You can starve if you want, but I want you out of the car.”

“But I’ve got homework to do,” I said, opening
Ethan Frome
. “I’m really starting to get into this book.”

I heard Ian chuckle from the back seat. Dad wasn’t buying it either. He just stood there, watching me like there was no way in hell he was going to let me stay.

So I climbed out of the car and shut the door on Ian, so he wouldn’t be able to hear. Persuading Dad was way easier when skips weren’t listening. “You’re not going to leave him in there, are you?” I asked. “What if something happens?”

Dad raised his eyebrows. “Like what, exactly?”

“Well,” I said, “what if he manages to reach the gear shift from the back seat and rolls the truck into the street? Or what if someone comes by and he convinces them that some psycho’s taken him prisoner and they let him go?”

Dad looked over my shoulder at Ian. “Seems unlikely,” he said. “I have to leave skips alone sometimes when I’m tracking by myself.”

“But you’re not by yourself now. You have me. And I can watch him.”

I expected Dad to refuse out of hand, but instead he watched me silently for a minute.

“What?” I asked.

“I told you I didn’t want you getting involved with my work.”

“And I told
you
that if you didn’t want me involved, you shouldn’t drag me along. If you don’t think I’m capable of watching a guy who’s
chained
in a
truck
—who’s so secure you’re not worried about leaving him
alone
—then you might as well drop me off with Child and Family Services.”

I held my breath. That last bit was taking it a little far. He might decide I was right about the Child Services part.

But he didn’t.

“Okay, fine,” Dad said. “I’ll bring you back some food. But you watch him from
outside
the truck, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

Dad gave me a sharp nod and then headed into the restaurant, looking back at me once over his shoulder.

When he was gone, I stood outside the truck, wondering what to do. I mean, I looked like an idiot standing there in the middle of a parking space. I could at least open the door and talk to Ian. Dad hadn’t forbidden that. If you weren’t supposed to leave dogs alone in locked vehicles, you probably shouldn’t do it with skips, either.

I stepped over to the driver’s-side door—opposite Ian’s seat—and cracked it open.

“If you’re really not hungry, could you get me a burger?” Ian asked.

“Um,” I said, “I’m supposed to watch you. Sorry.”

“Eh. It’s cool.”

I leaned against the edge of the open door so my head was half inside the truck. “I like your shirt,” I said.

“Really?”

“I like metal too.”

Ian smiled, like he was actually impressed. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a straight-edger.”

“I’m not,” I said. “But a friend of mine is.”

The straight-edger scene is kind of different in Salt Lake. In most places it’s just a group of teenagers who listen to metal music and don’t drink or do drugs or smoke, which is cool. But in Utah it’s turned into kind of a gang. The straight-edgers there are always beating people up and graffitiing stuff, which Jake thought was stupid. So he wore the shirt to try to show people you didn’t have to be all violent to be a straight-edger—until some guy decided to take it out on him by bashing his head into a sound wall.

“That’s cool,” Ian said.

I smiled. Ian, who took an arrest in stride with his head up and his eyes open, thought
I
was cool. “So are you doing okay back there? It doesn’t look very comfortable to be chained up like that.”

“Yeah, these chains kind of chafe. You think you could unlock me?”

“No,” I said.

Ian grinned. “Kidding. So what are you doing here, anyway? Your old man bring you along a lot?”

“No,” I said. “Just this last week. My mom sort of took off, so I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” I don’t know why I told him that. Maybe I thought he would understand, since his parents were so messed up. I expected Ian to say something about how sorry he was, or about how awful it was to be left.

“Lucky you,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means good riddance. Parents are a pain in the ass.”

“Yeah, but now I’m stuck here, when all my friends are back in Utah.”

“So why don’t you go back?”

“I don’t have anywhere to stay.

“Whatever. Get an apartment.”

“With what money?”

“Get a job.”

“You make this sound easy.”

“Look,” Ian said. Stretching his chains tight so his hands just barely reached the back of the seat, he leaned toward me, looking at me intensely. “Sometimes you’ve got to grab the bull by the balls.”

“Won’t that get me kicked in the face?”

Ian laughed. “Sometimes. It got me chained in a truck. But at least I’m trying.”

I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. I liked the idea of hitching a ride back home and living my life again, with or without Mom. But there were so many details to worry about. I’d have to have some place to stay, at least while I was looking for a job. Maybe I could get Anna to work on her parents for me.

“So was it bull balls that got you charged with grand theft auto?”

Ian laughed. “You know my whole history or what?”

I shrugged. “My dad has a file on you.”

“What’s it say?”

“That your mom’s in rehab and your dad’s in jail.”

“That it?”

“And that your aunt had custody of you. We drove by there this morning.”

“And she helped you find me.”

“A little.”

“That figures.”

He looked down at his shoes, and I watched the sunlight sliding in the window and glancing off his profile.

“I’m sorry about your family,” I said.

“Look, girl. What was your name?”

“Ricki,” I said. “It’s short for Erica.”

“Look, Ricki, you don’t need to be sorry. Your mom leaving, my mom being a druggie, that’s just life. In life sometimes other people are going to give you shit. But when they do, you just make shitballs and toss them right back. Understand?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.” I leaned against the edge of the truck, trying to make sense of it. But here was Ian, chained in the very truck I’d been whining and miserable about, and not even blinking an eye. So maybe he had something there.

Then Dad walked toward us, carrying a brown paper bag under his arm, grease stains soaking through the bottom. He gave me a look as he approached. I stepped away from the door, and he opened it the rest of the way, sticking the food on the front seat.

As I moved to walk around to the front, Dad grabbed my arm and tugged me around the back of the trailer, out of Ian’s earshot.

“What?” I asked.

“What the hell were you doing?”

I wanted to tell him I was grabbing the bull by the balls, but he wouldn’t get it. Instead I squinted at him. “I was watching Ian, just like you said I could.”

“I told you to stay out of the truck.”

“I did. I just opened the door a little.”

Dad crossed his arms across his chest. “How many times do I have to tell you not to talk to skips?”

My mouth fell open. “I was just watching him. It’s not like I unchained him.”

“But I asked you not to talk to skips, and you deliberately disobeyed me.”

“I have to
obey
you? I thought we went over how I’m not your dog.”

“Ricki, I ask you to do these things for your safety. Skips aren’t ordinary people. They’re criminals.”

“But Ian’s just a guy. He’s only a little bit older than me.” He was also probably the toughest guy I’d ever met, but I didn’t figure Dad would appreciate that either.

“Oh, no,” Dad said. “You can’t think of him that way. This isn’t some kid you met at school. He’s in very serious trouble, and you will be too, if you aren’t careful.”

“I did exactly what you told me to do—watched him and stayed out of the truck. If you want me to be silent so you can pretend I’m not here, fine. But don’t expect me to ignore your skips just because you do.” That wasn’t exactly shitballing, but it was a start.

I spun around and ran back to my seat in the cab, where I knew Dad wouldn’t chew me out anymore. For once his stiffness in front of the skips could work in my favor.

Dad climbed into the driver’s side and shoved the paper bag at me, leaving a grease smear across the bench seat. I dug some fries out of the top.

“So, bounty man,” Ian said behind me. “What’d you bring me?”

“Nothing,” Dad said. “But I’m sure the prison food will be delicious.”

I didn’t see why he had to be mean. I turned around, extending a fry to Ian. “Want some?”

Ian smiled, shrugging his cuffed arms. “Guess you’ll have to feed me,” he said, licking his lips.

My eyes widened, killing my chances of playing it cool. Ian could have fed himself if he bent over a little. That wasn’t the point.

“He can eat when we get back to Denver,” Dad said sharply. “You turn around.”

I popped the fry into my own mouth, smiling at Ian. He grinned back, and I turned around slowly in my seat, delaying obedience.

As we pulled onto the freeway, Dad focused on the merging traffic. I heard Ian exhale, and hot air puffed over my shoulders, blowing down the back of my shirt. I tried not to react visibly, setting my fries on the seat and looking intently at my algebra. The pages had graphs on them covered in parabolas, but every time I tried to make my own graph it came out looking like a line. I was sure I’d missed something, but Ian sitting behind me made it hard to concentrate on figuring out what.

“So,” Ian said, “is it ‘Take Your Daughter to Work’ day?”

“Sure,” Dad said.

I leaned back in my seat a little farther, bench springs creaking. I could hear Ian breathing behind me, his smell drifting across the seat between us. Ms. Langley, my bio teacher back home, said that attraction was a chemical thing based on facial features, anatomy, and smell. It had been that way with Jamie—I’d started liking him when he gave me a ride home on his cousin’s motorcycle, and I was all pressed behind him, breathing him in.

“Lean back, buddy,” Dad said, and I heard the bench seat creak. “Don’t think about trying anything. You don’t mess with an armed man’s daughter.”

I wondered then if Dad actually carried a gun on his person. I knew he had them locked in the truck, but that wouldn’t help much in a confrontation with a dangerous skip.

“If you’re going to be like that,” I said, “why don’t you go back to leaving me with the trailer?”

“Girl’s got a point,” Ian said.

Dad’s eyebrows sprang together so fast that I thought they might conjoin. “Shut up,” Dad said. “Unless you want me to gag you.”

“Are you allowed to do that?” I asked.

Dad gave me another hard look. “You do your homework.”

I turned back to my book, drawing yet another axis on my graph paper. “I don’t see why I’ll ever need conic sections, anyway.”

“You probably won’t,” Dad said. “It’s the diploma that counts.”

“I don’t have a diploma,” Ian said.

“You’re making my point.”

I shrugged. “I still don’t get why they make us do this.”

Dad nodded. “Get back to old Ethan, then.”

“Ethan Frome,” I said, “is a weak-willed pansy who couldn’t make a decision to save his life.”

“How do you know that if you haven’t read the book yet?”

“I read the CliffsNotes.”

Dad gave me another look. “Where’d you get those?”

“Online.”

“You’ve ruined the book for yourself. No wonder you’re bored.”

“What’s to ruin? Ethan doesn’t like his wife at all, so I don’t get why he stays with her. If he hadn’t, they’d all have been better off for it.”