“I don’t have a hat, either. But I have these . . . ”
He held up the plastic bags and demonstrated by putting the bag on his head, wrapping it once around, and tucking it in so that it made a snug but strange-looking turban, puffed up at the top. Wearing a bag on your head seemed like something that Amber and Amber and Amber would have refused to do . . . and I felt like making a point that I wasn’t like that. I gamely wound it around my head.
“You should really put them around your hands, too,” he said, passing me a few more. “I don’t know what to do about your legs. They have to be cold.”
They were, but for some reason I didn’t want him to think that I couldn’t handle that.
“No,” I lied. “These tights are really thick. And these boots . . . they’re solid. I’ll take them for my hands, though.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Positive.” I had no idea why I was saying this. It just seemed like telling the truth would mean admitting some weakness.
Stuart had to push hard to fully open the door against the wind and accumulated snow. I didn’t know snow could pour. I’ve seen flurries and even steady snow that left an inch or two, but this was sticky and heavy and the flakes were the size of quarters. Within seconds, I was drenched. I hesitated at the bottom of the steps, and Stuart turned around to check on me.
“Sure?” he asked again.
I knew that I was either going to turn right there and then, or I was going to have to go all the way.
I gave a quick look back and saw the three Madisons doing a handstand pyramid in the middle of the restaurant.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
We took a small back road away from the Waffle House, guided only by the traffic warning lights that blinked on and off every other second, cutting a strobing yellow path through the dark. We walked right down the middle of the street, again in that postapocalyptic style. Silence reigned for at least fifteen minutes. Talking took energy we needed just to keep going, and opening our mouths meant that cold air could get in.
Every step was a tiny trial. The snow was so deep and sticky that it took a lot of force to withdraw my foot from my own footprint. My legs, of course, were frozen to the point where they started to feel warm again. The bags on my head and hands were somewhat effective. When we had set our pace, Stuart cracked open the conversation.
“Where is your family really?” he asked.
“In jail.”
“Yeah. You said that inside. But when I said really—”
“They’re in jail,” I said for the third time.
I tried to make this one stick. He got the point enough not to ask the question again, but he had to wrestle with my answer for a moment.
“For what?” he finally said.
“Uh, they were part of a . . . riot.”
“What, are they protesters?”
“They’re shoppers,” I said. “They were in a shopping riot.”
He stopped dead in his spot.
“Don’t even tell me that they were in the Flobie riot in Charlotte.”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“Oh my God! Your parents are in the Flobie Five!”
“The Flobie Five?” I repeated weakly.
“The Flobie Five were the topic of the day at work. I think every other customer brought them up. They had footage of the riot playing all day on the news. . . . ”
News? Footage? All day? Oh, good. Good, good, good. Famous parents—just what every girl dreams of.
“Everyone loves the Flobie Five,” he said. “Well, a lot of people do. Or, at least, people think it’s funny.”
But then he must have realized it wasn’t so funny for me, and that that was the reason I was wandering through a strange town on Christmas Eve with bags on my head.
“It makes you very cool,” he said, taking big, jumping steps to get in front of me. “CNN would interview you, for sure. Daughter of Flobie! But don’t worry. I’ll keep them back!”
He made a big display of pretending to hold back reporters and punching photographers, which was tricky choreography. It did cheer me up a little. I started playing the part a little myself, throwing my hands up over my face as if flashbulbs were going off. We did this for a while. It was a good distraction from our reality.
“It’s ridiculous,” I finally said, after I almost fell over as I tried to dodge an imaginary paparazzo. “My parents are in jail. Over a ceramic Santa house.”
“Better than for dealing crack,” he said, falling back in line beside me. “Right? Must be.”
“Are you always this chipper?”
“Always. It’s a requirement for working at Target. I’m like Captain Smiley.”
“Your girlfriend must love that!”
I only said it to make myself seem clever and observant, expecting him to say, “How did you know that I . . . ?” And I would say, “I saw the photo in your wallet.” And he would think I was very Sherlock Holmes and I would seem a little less deranged than I first appeared back at the Waffle House. (Sometimes, you have to wait a little bit for this kind of gratification, but it’s still worth it.)
Instead, he just whipped his head around quickly in my direction, blinked, and then turned back down the road with a very determined stride. The playfulness was gone, and he was all business.
“It’s not too much farther. But this is where we have to decide. There are two ways we can go from here. The down-this-road way, which will probably take us another forty-five minutes at the rate we’re going. Or the shortcut.”
“The shortcut,” I answered immediately. “Obviously.”
“It is way, way shorter, because this road bends around and the shortcut goes straight through. I’d definitely take it if it was just me, which it was up until a half an hour ago. . . . ”
“Shortcut,” I said again.
Standing in that storm, with the snow and wind burning the skin off my face and my head and hands wrapped in plastic bags—I felt I really didn’t need any more information. Whatever this shortcut was, it couldn’t be much worse than what we were already doing. And if Stuart had been planning on taking it before, there was no reason why he couldn’t take it with me.
“Okay,” Stuart said. “Basically, the shortcut takes us behind these houses. My house is just behind there, about two hundred yards. I think. Something like that.”