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fading away. Whoever they were—
whatever
they were—they weren’t following me. Outside the door, Will Junior put his hand on my shoulder again; but this time it didn’t feel so strange. He’d unbuttoned the topmost button of his shirt, which made him look less grown-up and more like a fourteen-year-old boy. He was holding the wrapped-up happy birthday pen set I’d dropped when I fainted.
    “You okay, Mibs?” he asked, his dark eyes filled with worry.
    “I have to get out of here,” I said, desperate. “You have to help me get out of here.”

Chapter VIII

    “I have to get to Salina, will.”
    “Are you sure you’re all right, Mibs?” he asked again, his hand still resting on my shoulder. “You just fainted, you know? You might be a little mixed up.”
    I looked Will Junior in the eye. “Please, Will. I’m not mixed up. Just help me get out of here. I need to get down to Salina.”
    Will Junior looked at me sadly and squeezed my shoulder. “You must miss your mom and dad a lot today, since it’s your birthday and all.”
    I pushed his hand away and turned in the direction of the door. “I have to get to Salina,” I repeated.
    “Maybe Mother will drive you—” Will Junior started to offer, chasing after me.
    “No, sir. I have to get there myself.” I knew I was talking crazy. I had only just turned thirteen years old and already I thought I could somehow travel the ninety miles to Salina, Kansas, all by myself. But I’d hitchhike if I had to. I’d walk. There was no other way around it. I couldn’t see going anywhere with a preacher’s wife if I was hearing voices in my head. It was like Fish had said, the church was no place for me to be. I had to leave and I had to do it right then and there. I had to find Poppa and I had to use my savvy to wake him up. That was all there was to it.
    I headed straight for the open double doors of the church. I could hear a fuss and a rumpus behind me in the fellowship hall and was certain I heard Ashley Bing’s sniggering laugh, followed by Emma Flint’s own copycat chortle. I watched as two boys from Samson’s Sunday school class ran past me, their mouths smeared with cake. The party had started without me. I guessed it was just going to have to finish the same way.
    I stepped out of the church, ready to
run
all the way to Salina if that was the only way to get there. Will Junior followed, nearly stepping on my heels.
    “Hey, slow down, Mibs! Wait for me.”
    When we reached the parking lot, I looked around. A few kids were playing in the grass, but most everyone else was now inside the church. Fish’s storm cloud hovered over the church, threatening rain.
    I started walking past car after car, headed for the road. As I neared the pink Heartland Bible Supply bus, I stopped. Hearing that singsong whisper again, quiet, quiet in the backs of my ears, I saw Bobbi leaning up against the bus, all alone and chewing and snapping her gum like some kind of standoffish rebel. I supposed she
was
rather rebellious at that, what with the pierced eyebrow and the tattoo, and I guessed that that little angel with the devil’s tail might’ve been right: At that moment, Bobbi looked lonelier than I would have ever imagined someone like her to be.
    The lettering on the bus caught my eye as I tried to ignore the whispering in my head. The big letters that spelled out
Heartland Bible Supply Company
were black and peeling, past pink, down to the original school bus orange. Below that, there were smaller black letters with the address and phone number of the company. I stopped short, dumbstruck by my good fortune. The Heartland Bible Supply truck had come from no place in the world other than Salina, Kansas; it said so right there on the side in stark black paint for all the world to see. And, heeding that, I figured that if the bus had
come
from Salina, it was bound to be going
back
to Salina. Maybe God had His eye on me after all.
    With a quick “thank you” to heaven, I