Lena Read Free Page A

out where we were? Or even worse, what if Marie told him about my daddy and the foster care people were searching for us the way they did a long time ago—waiting to catch us and send Dion one place and me another? Foster care people don’t care about separating us. I rubbed my eyes harder, feeling the tears pushing through. No matter what, me and Dion had to stay together.
    â€œYou crying, Lena?” I felt Dion’s little hand on my shoulder.
    â€œWhat would I be crying for?” I gave my eyes one more wipe and glared at her.
    Dion shrugged. She took a step back from me, hunkered down on her own knapsack. We must of been a sight—two kids in flannel shirts and jeans and hiking boots at a Trailways station—Dion chewing on her collar, me with my head in my hands.
    â€œLena?”
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    She swallowed, like she was a little bit scared of what she was gonna say.
    â€œWhere we going, Lena? You tell me that and I won’t ask you anything else—ever again if you don’t want me to.”
    People on the outside who didn’t understand would probably look at me and Dion and say, “Those kids are running away from home.” But I knew we was running to something. And to someplace far away from Daddy. Someplace safe. That’s where we were going.
    â€œMama’s house,” I whispered, my voice coming out hoarse and shaky. “We going to Mama’s house.”
    Dion shook her head. “Not the lies we tell people—the true thing. Where we going for real?”
    â€œMama’s house,” I said again, looking away from her.
    â€œLena?” Dion said. “Mama’s . . . dead. ”
    I swallowed. Dion hadn’t used that word for Mama before. It sounded strange coming out of her mouth. Wrong somehow. I squinted at some cars, then up at the sky where the pink was starting to fade into blue. Beautiful days broke me up inside. They made me think of all the kids in the world who could just wake up in the morning and pull the curtain back from their windows and stare out at the day and smile. I wanted that kind of life for Dion. I was too old to be wishing that for myself.
    â€œI know she’s dead. I didn’t say we was going to her. I said we was going to her house.”
    â€œAnd what’s gonna happen when we get there?”
    â€œYou said you wasn’t gonna ask no more questions, Dion.”
    Dion nodded and pulled her book out of her knapsack. I took a box of colored pencils out of mine and the brown paper bag our sandwiches had come in and started sketching. I sketched the field across the way from us and a blue car moving in front of it. I sketched the sky with the pink still in it and Dion sitting on her knapsack reading. Maybe we sat there an hour. Maybe two or three. We’d learned how to make ourselves invisible. Most people didn’t take a second look if they saw us—two boys sitting doing nothing. Sometimes we hung out at libraries. Dion loved those days ’cause she got to just read and read. And some days we went to a park if it was nice. But mostly we sat in hospital waiting rooms. Before I left Chauncey, I’d gone to the library and looked up all the hospitals I could find in Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio. People were always rushing around hospitals, thinking about their sick and their dying. They didn’t have time to stop and notice us sitting there—or if they did, I guess they figured we were waiting for some grown-up who was visiting. I’d usually let Dion sleep while I kept a lookout. If we found a car unlocked, it was good for sleeping in at night, but most times we slept in the woods. I’d learned to sleep real light and listen out.
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    I put a nurse in my drawing, then an old lady in a wheelchair. Soon a bus pulled in. Then another one. Some people got off. Some people got on. Me and Dion watched them. There was a skinny girl around Dion’s age carrying a suitcase. Dion