Read Desert Crossing for Free Online

“Mom?”
    â€œWhat, honey?”
    I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. I wanted to tell her about the girl’s wide, staring eyes, about the way her arm arced over her head. But I thought of my mom alone in her house, worrying about us, and I didn’t say anything.
    â€œGood night, honey. And Lucy?”
    â€œYes?” I waited, hopeful.
    â€œThis isn’t on somebody else’s phone bill, is it? Did you use the phone card?”
    I sighed. “Yeah, I used the card.”
    â€œGood. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
    â€œOkay.” I tightened my fingers around the phone. “Mom?”
    â€œWhat, honey?”
    The silence crackled over the line, and I could feel myself beating uselessly against it, like a moth in a jar.
    â€œMom, do you think you could … could you stay on the phone for a while?”
    I heard her rustling out of bed, moving into the kitchen. Her voice got louder and closer as she pressed the phone against her shoulder. “Sure, honey. I can’t sleep anyway. You try to relax. I’ll pay some bills.”
    I curled on my side and switched off the light. In the darkness, I listened to the soft sounds of her tearing envelopes and shuffling papers, the distant scratching of her pen. After a while, she said, “Lucy?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œAre you okay now? I don’t want you to use up the whole phone card. Can you sleep?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œI’ll talk to you tomorrow, honey. Okay?”
    â€œOkay. Bye.”
    I slid my arm out from the warm cave of the covers and set the phone back in its cradle. The window seemed too close and too big, filling the room with whatever was outside. I stared into the blackness, thinking about the girl. Maybe she was out there somewhere, floating around in that cold, planetary silence.

9
    I woke up in the dark, shaking. There was someone in the room with me.
    I grabbed the sheets against my chest and then saw it was the dog—the black one, Oscar. He’d nudged the door open and was standing there watching me, his tongue hanging out in an easy pant. He clicked across the floor and jumped onto the bed, flopping noisily next to my face. His breath pulsed over me, warm and stale. I put one hand on his head and stroked the silky fur between his ears, slowly, until my heart stopped racing.
    I’d been dreaming about her. In the dream, we were driving through rain, that terrible rain, but we saw her this time. She was right in front of us, and Jamie tried to brake. She stretched out her arms. Her eyes were huge and frightened, and she was saying something. In the dream, we braked forever. But we hit her anyway.
    I lay there petting the dog until he fell asleep. The sky outside the window began to lighten. Quietly, I climbed out of bed and unzipped the pocket of my backpack. I found the charm bracelet and hooked a finger around it, lifting it up to the window. It gleamed in the thready pink light.
    I hadn’t had a chance to really look at it before. There were four silver charms: a heart like the one on my bracelet at home, an hourglass, a horseshoe, and a treasure chest. When I flicked the treasure chest with my finger, the lid opened, and there were tiny glittering jewels inside—just colored glass, but pretty: red, green, purple. I thought of the girl choosing it from a rack in a store, liking the surprise of it.
    Between the hourglass and the horseshoe was a link hanging down empty. I felt around the pocket of my jacket and my backpack to see if the other charm had fallen off. But I couldn’t find it. Maybe it was back on the road somewhere.
    I looked out at the desert, which was grayish-pink in the early light and rough with shrubs and rocks. The creased red slopes of the mountains rose in the distance. It was too early to get up. The whole house was quiet. I took the phone from the cradle and punched in the code from the phone card, then Ginny’s number.