Ashes to Asheville Read online

  There must be something special in my voice, because Zany stops spinning and looks straight at me.

  “What?”

  “Ooooh.” I can’t find the words. Can’t even wrap my brain around the thought. “Zany . . . ,” I whisper. And, because that’s not formal enough for the horrible thing that has happened, “Zoey Grace . . .”

  She looks at me, waits. It has been at least six months since I’ve called her Zoey Grace. I see the thought cross her face, see her realize, an instant before I say it, what has happened.

  “He stole Mama Lacy, too.” I look back at my empty seat where I left the brass jar sitting. “Mama Lacy’s gone.”

  chapter

  7

  The traffic jam is still clogging up I-77. Nobody’s going anywhere quick, except for us. Zany swings the car onto the shoulder and blasts along at thirty miles an hour, which feels fast compared to all the stopped cars. The heat is back on and the red light is still burning on the instrument panel. I’m ready for fire, whether from the overheating engine or from a crash, I can’t say. We’re zipping up a steep hill and the earth drops away inches to my right. I squeeze Haberdashery with both arms and he sticks his cold nose under my armpit.

  “We’re not supposed to drive over here,” I can’t help but tell Zany.

  “We’re not supposed to leave the car unlocked, either.” Her voice is a bit louder than mine, and I swallow the rest of my words. I’m not sure she could hear them very well, anyway. Our tires are riding on the bumpy strip of asphalt that’s meant to wake sleepy motorists who have drifted onto the shoulder. The buzzing is so loud that Haberdashery keeps barking at it, his muzzle jerking against my arm. I’m trying to wedge my seat belt under him to put it on while Zany scans the stopped traffic for the thief. The canary-yellow pickup isn’t hard to spot. Most of the traffic stuck on the interstate at this hour is big trucks pulling heavy loads. Zany hits the brakes so hard I bump my knees, and the dog, on the dashboard. She’s out of the car before I can stop her, dodging through slow-moving traffic while I shout after her, “What are you going to do?” I’m scared to get out of the car, and scared to stay in the car alone. I’m pretty much scared to do anything at this point. I hear cars honking at my sister.

  My heart starts thudding against the poodle I’m squeezing. What if the thief is dangerous? He sure looked dangerous when he was slouching next to his truck back at the rest stop. What if he does something bad to my sister? I’ve been without her for most of six months and even though I’m pretty sure she’s nuts, the thought of losing her entirely has me flinging myself out of the car and into traffic. A big truck blares its horn and I scream and Haberdashery pees. I don’t even have time to worry about the wet spot down my front. I shove Haberdashery back through the open window, afraid of dropping him in traffic. “Wait!” I tell him.

  There shouldn’t be so many cars on the interstate. It feels impossibly late to me, like midnight or after, but I know it can’t be yet, because we haven’t been driving that long. Everything looks bigger and scarier up close: the road, the cars, the tractor-trailers and the yellow truck Zany has just reached. By the time I catch up, she’s got her arm through the driver’s-side window of the robber’s truck, and he’s leaning back into the passenger seat to get away from her scrabbling fingers.

  “Give it back!” Zany shrieks, and I see that she’s totally lost it. That happens with Zany sometimes. She can shoot back sarcastic answers to my pestering nine times in a row, but on that tenth time, when she’s had enough, she snaps. At this moment, she’s going postal on the driver of the pickup truck. Up close, I can see he’s not very old, maybe not even old enough to be smoking. He’s trying to put his cigarette out in the ashtray so he can get both hands free to stop my sister from climbing through the window. He’s just a kid, with six thousand freckles across his nose, and eyes that are too big for his face.

  “Give it back!” Zany’s yelling. “Real smart, stealing from somebody during a traffic jam! Give it back right now! You don’t even know what you took!”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” He starts cranking up his window, but Zany tosses herself through headfirst, preventing it from rolling up any farther. Her feet kick the side of the truck to give her more leverage so she can lift herself up. I notice the bottoms of her boots have her name written on them in glitter paint.

  “What’d you think this was, a money jar?” she hollers, so I gather she’s trying to get ahold of Mama Lacy’s urn.

  “People keep their money all kinds of weird places.” He bumps his brake so my sister doesn’t fall to her death. I want to balance her from behind, but there’s nothing to grab except—well, her behind. I prop my shoulder under her hip instead, giving her what support I can.

  “It isn’t money!” Zany’s voice comes out in a shriek. “Didn’t you think to look? It’s not money. It’s my mother!”

  There is a silent scuffle and Zany’s body jerks away from me for a moment. Then she emerges from the truck window, urn in hand. I can see the thief’s face, shadowed, in the truck, but I can’t make out his expression. For several seconds, there is only the sound of car engines idling and the huff of all our breaths.

  Then something yips.

  Oh, crap.

  I spin just as somebody’s brakes give a squeak, and the yipping stops. Somehow I know what’s happened even before I see Haberdashery lying still on the road, a car stopped in front of him with its doors hanging open.

  Oh. Crap.

  “Fella, wait!” Zany shouts, but I’m already darting back through the slow-moving traffic. I drop to my knees beside my grandmother’s dog, and the driver who hit him, an old lady with her face all moon white, comes bustling up beside us.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Shut up, no he’s not!” My voice comes out in a sob.

  “What are you thinking, playing with a dog in traffic?”

  “I wasn’t playing, I was chasing ashes!” I don’t care that what I’m saying makes no sense. I care that there is blood on Haberdashery’s leg and he still isn’t moving. I see him blink, and my breath comes out in a whoosh when I realize that he is alive. Still. He’s clearly hurt and it’s my fault and the guilt is enough to make me madder than I’ve ever felt.

  “Traffic’s going like two miles an hour. How could you not see a dog in front of your face?” I screech at the old lady.

  “Fella!” Zany has caught up. To the driver, she says, “I’m sorry, ma’am. She’s just worried about the dog.”

  The old lady is clutching her chest, mouth gaping open at my rudeness. Even though it isn’t raining, she’s wearing one of those see-through plastic covers that old ladies tie over their hair to keep it from melting.

  “Let’s get you back to the car,” Zany says, tugging the old lady by the elbow. “Fella, get the dog and get out of the road. Let’s go.”

  I’m scared to pick Haberdashery up and maybe break him worse, but it’s not like we can stay here. Traffic’s still trying to move in the other eastbound lane, and the gap in front of the old lady’s car is growing longer.

  With Haberdashery cradled in my arms, I start toward our car on the shoulder of the road, but two minutes later Zany turns me with her hands on my shoulders. She pushes me toward the thief’s truck with its one black door standing out against all the yellow. “Get in.”

  “What?”

  “Go.”

  I crane my neck in confusion, but our own car is hidden by the crush of slow-moving trucks. People keep honking at us, even though we’re clearly trying our best to get out of the way. I’m still shaky with anger and upset. “Zany—”

  “Go!” She shoves me, tugs me, steers me until she’s gotten me into the truck with her and the thief. I’m wedged between my sister and the door handle, the injured poodle balanced on my knees.

  “Go.” This time she’s talking to the driver.
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  “This ain’t kidnapping, is it?” he asks. His freckles stand out against skin that’s gone pale, and his hazel eyes are pinched behind round-lens glasses. I’m not sure whether he’s worried that he’s kidnapping us or that we’re kidnapping him. For a thief, he’s not very brave.

  “Shut up. Look natural.” Zany is at her bossiest in a crisis. She keeps her eyes straight ahead, so I immediately twist around to see what she’s frightened of.

  The driver who hit Haberdashery has started moving again and caught up with traffic. I peer backward toward Mama Shannon’s car on the shoulder and I see what Zany’s scared of. Flashing lights announce a police car, parked directly behind our car on the shoulder. A cop is peering in our window with his flashlight.

  “Go back!” I shout. Even though Haberdashery can’t usually stand me to be loud, he doesn’t bark or even lift his head. “We can tell that cop we caught a thief, and he can help us get to a vet quicker!” I roll my window down. “Hey!” I shout toward the police car. “Hey! This guy’s a thief! Hey!”

  Then the stranger is tugging me back into the truck by my sleeve while my sister leans across me to close my window. “Shut up, Fella!” The truck swerves into the other lane and back again. The thief takes a couple of deep breaths in and swears as he steadies the truck.

  “Why didn’t you let me flag him down?” I demand as we inch out of sight of the police car. I can still see its blue lights flashing against the filthy backs of coal trucks. My heart sinks. “We’ve been robbed,” I remind my sister.

  Zany holds up the urn, which flashes red, catching the lights from the fire trucks and ambulances up ahead. An ambulance screams past us on the shoulder, and when its noise subsides, Zany says, “We can’t go back. They’ll send us home. The car’s overheating, anyway. We couldn’t have kept driving it. And did you forget? We’re robbers, too, Fella.”

  The driver looks over with interest, but Zany glares and he turns to face the road.

  “You can’t stay in my car,” he says. “I’m not harboring fugitives.”

  “We’re not fugitives!” Zany protests. “We’re just trying to get someplace!”

  “Yeah, you and me both, and I can’t get there if I’m getting arrested for kidnapping!”

  “You should have thought of that before you broke into our car!” Zany sounds like she could spit nails.

  “Didn’t have to break in,” the driver says. “You left it unlocked. Like a damn invitation. I just need to get there, and I’m almost out of gas, and you left your car unlocked. Fancy getup your sidekick there is wearing. I thought you probably had money.”

  I glance down at my shimmery robe and pajama pants and one bare foot. “Seriously?”

  The robber cracks half a smile and then Zany cracks up laughing. My anger flares again.

  “Quit it!” I shove Zany with the heel of my hand. “We’ve killed Haberdashery and you’re laughing at my clothes!”

  “Oh, stop being dramatic,” Zany says, which she says to me lots, but I kind of feel like if there were ever a situation for dramatics, this would be it. We inch farther and farther from the police lights, drawing closer instead to the ambulance and fire truck lights up ahead. A firefighter waves us past the scene of a three-car accident. I can see crushed metal and shards of glass twinkling on the asphalt. I want very badly to crawl into the lap of either one of my mothers. Haberdashery is drooling in my arms, totally silent and still. I cradle him and wait.

  chapter

  8

  We pick up speed on the open interstate past the accident. It isn’t till we’re all the way back up to seventy that Zany says, “This is what you get for robbing strange cars, you know. Especially in a traffic jam, and in a very noticeable yellow truck. You get two new passengers with you, and an injured dog.” She doesn’t seem to remember that she and the thief were buddies just a second ago, when it came to laughing at my outfit.

  The driver clears his throat, tests his voice a couple of times. “I didn’t—I didn’t know what I was stealing,” he says after a minute. His voice is lower-pitched than I would have thought for a guy so small and thin. He sounds out of practice. “I wouldn’t have stolen from y’all if I knew.”

  “Well,” Zany says, so matter-of-factly that she sounds like Mama Shannon, “we’ve done plenty of things wrong tonight, too. Now get off at the next exit. This dog needs a vet.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to. It’s your fault he got hit.”

  “No, I’m saying I can’t. I have to be—I have to get there.”

  “You will. After this dog is taken care of. It’s my grandmother’s dog and my grandmother is already going to go ape when she finds out about all this and the least I can do is fix her stupid dog.”

  “I—” The boy huffs a sigh and swears.

  “You don’t want to be the one who killed this dog, do you?” Zany adds. “He’s just a little dog. None of this is his fault!”

  “Jesus! All right!” The kid has a lot of swearwords in his vocabulary, and he exercises most of them as he flips on his turn signal. I find it funny that a guy who would rob a fellow traveler at a rest stop would use his turn signal.

  We pass two different hospitals and at least five doctor’s offices before we finally find a vet. Even then, the windows are dark, the CLOSED sign just visible behind the glass. Of course. It’s after midnight. I don’t know how we’re going to find a vet that’s open at this hour, just aimlessly driving around some small Virginia town, peering at signs.

  “You got a phone?” Zany asks the stranger. We were just about to pull out of the parking lot of the closed vet’s office, and he hits the brakes. He feels around his pockets and produces a Nokia.

  “Did you steal that?” I ask, and Zany shushes me.

  “Call Information,” she suggests. “Find a vet that’s still open.”

  Instead, he passes the phone to Zany. She fights with it for a few seconds before placing her call.

  “I can’t—I don’t—does anybody have something to write with?” She starts saying a phone number over and over, but it’s different every time.

  “Can’t we find a phone book and look up a vet?” I suggest. Haberdashery’s little leg is so hurt and he’s not moving around very much, like maybe other things are hurt, too. I’m fighting back panic, but I don’t know what I can do about it. I don’t know how I ended up here, in the cab of some stranger’s pickup truck with an injured dog and no vet and a plan all shot to pieces.

  The driver doesn’t answer, but he does swing us into a parking lot and pull over next to a pay phone.

  “Well? Somebody go get the phone book,” Zany says. She’s handing the stranger back his phone, but she’s looking at me. I can tell she’s mad at me even though I’m not sure why.

  “I don’t want to move him,” I say.

  Zany huffs a short sigh. Then, “What’s your name?”

  “What do you mean, what’s my name?”

  “Not you.” She jerks her head at the driver. “Him. What’s your name? If I’m going to ask you to do stuff, I at least want to know who I’m asking.”

  “What kind of stuff are you going to ask me to do?”

  “Stop at pay phones. Drive to vets. Tell me your name.” She doesn’t sound annoyed anymore. She sounds like something is a little bit funny. I can’t imagine what.

  “Adam.”

  “Pleasure,” Zany says, and offers her hand. He looks at her strangely but takes one hand off the steering wheel to shake. He’s peering at her through black wire-framed glasses that make his brown eyes seem too big for his face. Between the big eyes and the long hair that brushes down over them, he looks like some weird kind of puppy. I can’t believe he ever struck me as scary. But Zany doesn’t seem to agree. I’ve seen her gaze at other boys like this—Sam from her class and our old neighbor Garrett—but I’ve never seen a boy look
back at her the same way. I get the weird feeling they’ve both forgotten I’m in the truck.

  “Her name’s Zany,” I announce, “because she’s completely crazy.”

  “My name is Zoey Grace,” Zany corrects me. “The only people who call me Zany are completely crazy.” She’s not acting like herself at all. Usually she’s proud of being Zany. “Adam. Will you do me a favor?”

  “Depends.” His accent sounds funny, different from any we would hear back home. I wonder how far he drove before he got to the rest area and stole from us.

  “Will you please go check the phone book in that booth for a vet’s office around here?”

  “Emergency vet office,” I add. “They have to be open twenty-four hours. Or at least at night.”

  “Don’t know how we’re going to pay a vet,” Zany says, “but I guess we don’t have much of a choice but to find one. Maybe they’ll bill us.”

  “Or maybe we can call Mama Shannon and she can send us the money.”

  Zany twists all the way around in her seat to look at me, which is how I know I’ve said something wrong, only I don’t know what it is.

  “Maybe Mama Shannon can send us the money? To take Mrs. Madison’s poodle to the vet?”

  “Well, we’re the ones who got him hurt.”

  “So? Mrs. Madison can afford it. Mrs. Madison can afford a lot of things. Lawyers. Whatever she wants. She can afford a stupid vet for her stupid dog.” Zany seems madder than she ought to, just for the bit of fight we seem to be having. One thing I’m noticing about Zany lately is that every little feeling she has gets blown up big.

  The thought of calling Mrs. Madison is two hundred times scarier than the thought of calling Mama Shannon, who is my mother and has to love me no matter how bad I mess up. But I swallow, hard. Adam shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I guess I can call Mrs. Madison if you want me to.”