Chasing the Skip Read online

  Denver, Colorado.

  Days since Mom left: 29.

  Distance from Salt Lake City, Utah: 537.14 miles.

  2

  Calvin Zabrinsky owned a bail bond office in downtown Denver. I expected it to be in a seedy neighborhood surrounded by liquor stores, pawn shops, and payday loan places. Instead the office sat in a sleek building with glass walls, right between a psychiatrist and a law firm.

  Dad parked the truck so that it faced the shopping center across the street. When he opened the truck door, the cold October wind slapped me in the face. I unbuckled my seat belt, but Dad shook his head.

  “Wait here,” he said. “This won’t take long.”

  I sighed as Dad disappeared into the building. A girl could only take so much waiting, so I followed him. Dad wouldn’t complain once I got in there—not in front of Cal, anyway.

  I checked my watch. Three o’clock. If Mom hadn’t disappeared, I’d be riding on the back of Jamie’s motorcycle, headed home from school. What would Jamie be doing without me? He’d better not be giving a ride to some other girl. I’d have to e-mail Anna later, to ask her to check up on him.

  I took my time walking across the parking lot to Cal’s office. As I opened the door, a little bell rang over my head. Dad stood across a counter from a football-shaped man. His body sloped to a point at his head and feet, with a big, round belly in between.

  Dad already had his check in hand. Both he and Cal looked at me. They glanced at each other, and then Cal cleared his throat. They were probably talking about me.

  “You must be Ricki,” Cal said, a fake-chipper tone to his voice. “I was just asking Max when he was going to bring you in.”

  I was glad Dad had the sense to go by Max, which was the first part of Maxwell, our last name. Max was a much better bounty-hunter name than Robert, his real first name. Of course, Cal knew both of Dad’s names.

  “Well, here I am,” I said, looking at Dad. “Are you done?”

  Dad shook his head. “Take a seat.” He turned back to Cal. “How about that other job?”

  Cal watched Dad for a second, as if he was trying to decide something. “Okay,” he said. “Just a second.” He disappeared back into his office. Dad took a lollipop out of the basket on the counter and waved it at me. “You want one?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. Mom says you are what you eat.”

  “Candy?” Dad asked.

  “A sucker.”

  Dad smiled. “I walked into that one.”

  I plopped myself down in a seat and picked up a copy of Time magazine. I was behind on the news, but so is Time, since it only comes out once a week. I wondered if Cal’s clients were really that interested in politics. Maybe if Time did a lot of articles about prison reform.

  The cover story in this issue was about a bombing in Afghanistan. The cover had a picture of the secretary of state standing right next to the Afghan leader, deep in conversation. That story broke while I was at Grandma’s, reading the news on her ultraslow Internet.

  Cal came back and handed a folder to Dad, who looked the papers over.

  “It’s what you asked for,” Cal said.

  “You take requests?” I asked.

  Cal laughed. “Not exactly.”

  Dad chewed at the corner of his mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” Cal asked. “Not what you wanted?”

  “No,” Dad said. “It’s fine.”

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  Dad flipped another page. “Nothing.”

  Cal shrugged. “It’s a little riskier than usual, is all.”

  “Riskier?” I asked Dad. “What kind of danger are you putting me in?”

  Dad shook his head at me, and I returned the sweetest smile I could manage.

  “Really, Max,” Cal said, “if you’re not sure, you don’t have to take it. Could be rough with your daughter along.”

  Dad shook his head. “We’ll manage.”

  Cal rolled his eyes. “I should have gone with my gut and steered clear of this one. I knew he was going to run, but he’s a kid. I’ve got a soft spot for kids.”

  “He’s seventeen,” Dad said, looking at the paperwork. “That’s old enough to know better.”

  That was even younger than Alison. “Don’t you ever go after adults?” I asked.

  Dad didn’t look back at me. “Sure,” he said. “Just have a couple of young ones this week, that’s all.”

  “It’s my fault,” Cal said. “I’m the one taking the risk on ’em. You can have a different job, if you want. I’ve got a guy who skipped on reckless driving. Pay’s not as good, but it’d probably be quick.”

  “No,” Dad said. “I’ll take this one. He’s just a kid, like you said.”

  Cal waved a finger at Dad. “I never said ‘just.’ ‘Just’ is a dangerous word for a bounty hunter.”

  “Bail bond enforcement officer,” I said. Both Cal and Dad laughed.

  Ms. Nielson said that journalists didn’t just report the news. They asked deep questions to find the story. If Dad was hunting a kid, there had to be a story there somewhere.

  “So who is this kid?” I asked.

  “His name’s Ian Burnham,” Dad said. “Like the woods, but spelled differently.”

  I set the magazine back on the table. “The woods?”

  Dad sighed, shaking his head at me. “We’ve got to get you listening to some Shakespeare, Rick.”

  “Don’t call me Rick. That’s a boy’s name.”

  “Ricki’s a boy’s name too,” Dad said. “But your mom sure liked it. She only named you Erica because your grandma insisted.”

  “Well, I like Ricki, not Rick. Are you done yet?”

  “Almost,” Dad said, looking over the papers. “This lists all the charges?”

  “Just the ones they thought they could make stick.”

  Dad tapped his pen on the counter, squinting.

  I stood up and walked over to the counter to grab that lollipop after all. If Dad was going to take this long about it, I needed sugar. “Do you think about all your jobs this much?”

  “It pays to think twice,” Dad said. Then he set the folder down on the counter and signed the top paper.

  Cal took it from him, looked it over, and then signed it himself. He frowned at me. “You be careful, okay?” he said to Dad. “It could mean both our asses if she gets hurt.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Dad said. “It’ll just be a few more days.”

  In a few days I’d probably be back with Mom. I hoped Dad was right about that.

  Cal opened his mouth like he was going to say something else but thought better of it. He opened a file drawer and dropped the signed paper into it.

  Dad gave Cal a sharp nod, and we left. On our way across the parking lot, Dad shook his head at me.

  “I’ll drop you by the library for an hour. You need to get those homework assignments typed up and sent off.”

  I hadn’t done any homework, but I kept my mouth shut about that. “I could do it tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got a meeting tonight, so you can do it now. I’ll pick up dinner on my way back. What do you want?”

  In the last week, we’d exhausted the range of fast food. “Tacos?” I said. At least those weren’t deep fried.

  “Tacos it is.”

  “What’s this meeting? You already talked to Cal.”

  Dad was quiet for a second. “It’s personal.”

  I sighed. “Fine.” Maybe Dad had a girlfriend he didn’t want me to know about. It’s not like that would bother me. I didn’t have any illusions about my parents getting back together. Mom had plenty of boyfriends.

  Maybe his girlfriend didn’t like kids or didn’t know he had a daughter. I might be the one he was hiding, not her.

  I steered the conversation back toward the job. “Why did Cal keep telling you that you don’t have to take this one?”

  “He worries. He’s not comfortable with me taking you along. That’s why I asked you to
stay in the car.”

  “Whatever. Was he this concerned about Alison?”

  “I don’t think he expected Alison to be dangerous.”

  “I thought it was your job to bring in dangerous people.” We reached the truck, and I walked around to the passenger side, still waiting for Dad to answer. We both climbed in.

  “I don’t usually take the riskier jobs,” Dad said. “Ten little jobs will pay the bills just as well as one big one, and they’re a lot safer besides.”

  “How would you know which ones are big ones?”

  “More serious crimes. Longer sentences. People skipping child support or running from a drunk and disorderly aren’t likely to shoot the guy who’s coming to get them. A guy who’s looking at prison for ten to fifteen, though…”

  “So this kid. What’s he looking at?”

  Dad started the truck. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said. “You just ride along and it’ll be over before you know it.”

  The reporter questions were failing me. Then again, lots of people didn’t want to talk to the press. Sometimes you had to find the right angle to get people to talk. “So my own dad doesn’t care about my safety?”

  Dad laughed. “You’re good at this, you know.”

  “At what?”

  “Asking sneaky questions to get what you want. You might be good at my job.”

  “Does that mean I can help you?”

  “Oh, no. If I thought I couldn’t keep you safe, I wouldn’t take you with me. But that doesn’t mean you’re my new trainee.”

  It was worth the try. “So if you didn’t think you could keep me safe, what would you do with me, then?”

  “I’d figure something out.”

  “Yeah, well, like you said, it’s only for a few more days. Mom will be back soon.”

  Dad sighed like he wanted to say something else bad about Mom, but he didn’t.

  After Dad dropped me off at the library, I got a code to use the library computer, but I didn’t even touch my school website. The homeschool system was actually pretty cool—the assignments were all straight out of textbooks, so students could work them out on paper ahead of time and then fill out the online forms to send them in to be graded. Maybe if they’d offered journalism, I would have paid more attention to it, but of course they only had boring subjects like English and history and math.

  I logged on to one of the public computers and pulled up my e-mail, jittering my knee up and down, up and down.

  No new messages. Granted, it had only been yesterday that I last checked, but still. Jamie hadn’t sent me one single e-mail since I’d left town. I knew he preferred texting, but it wasn’t my fault Mom didn’t pay the cell bill before she left. We’d just switched carriers, so I didn’t know the password to go in and pay it myself.

  It had only been a week since my phone got turned off, but a week was a long time for Jamie to ignore me. He could have bothered to write me an e-mail just this once. I’d already sent him several. I knew I shouldn’t sound too needy, but sometimes weird things happened to e-mails—they got swallowed by cyberspace or whatever. Maybe he thought I was the one not e-mailing him.

  Jamie Boy, I wrote.

  Still haven’t heard from you. Such a shame, since I’m off having fabulous adventures with my bounty hunter dad. Check the blog for details. E-mail me and I’ll tell you all the stuff that doesn’t go into the blog.

  Ricki

  I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide if I should sign the e-mail “Erica.” Jamie always called me by my full name, ever since someone heard our names and thought I was Jamie and he was Ricky. In the end I left it. I liked Ricki better anyway.

  What I really needed was a way Jamie could call me. I reached into my pocket, finding Dad’s business card. Robert Maxwell. Bail Bond Enforcement. The card had his number on it, and an address for a P.O. box in Denver. He’d given me the card in case I needed to call him from the library or something. He’d just passed it across the seat like he was handing it to a client. He didn’t ask why I didn’t already have his phone number. He’d given it to me over the phone six times in the last year, but I’d lived fifteen years without it, so I never wrote it down. I was glad Dad didn’t call me on that now.

  I opened up a new e-mail, typed in the phone number and a quick message, and then sent it to my contacts list. If Dad wasn’t going to take me back to my friends, I could at least give them a way to call me. Anna would call, even if no one else did.

  I leaned back, tipping my chair onto its hind legs, and pulled up my blog. Ms. Nielson said that you didn’t have to work for a newspaper to be a journalist—people who blog report on what’s happening around them. She said some of the most important journalism happened that way. Even in places like the Middle East, protests and political movements spread online through social media more than they did through the formal press. Even the journalists at the top newspapers read blogs to keep up on what was happening in the world. I didn’t need good grades or anything to be a blogger. The blog I had now was for practice—when I got older I’d do a real one. I’d have lots of time to get good at it, and then when I had to support myself I could be one of those people making a living off their online writing.

  I’d put pressure on this entry, though. It had to be fun and exciting so that Jamie and Anna would leave comments to find out more. That would be tough to do with unbiased details.

  I’ve been with My Father, the Bounty Hunter, for a week now, though I just rode along with him for the first time today, like I was his partner. Big Mike has several partners, but Dad just has me. He usually takes small jobs, but now he’s taking on a big one, probably because he has me along to help.

  I tapped my nails on the keyboard. Objectivity had abandoned me today. Dad wasn’t treating me anything like a partner. Better get back to the facts. I opened my notebook to find some of the lists of details I’d made.

  Dad’s glove compartment is full of tools—binoculars, a Maglite, spare handcuffs, and a length of chain. He keeps his guns in the utility boxes on the sides of his pickup.

  I hadn’t actually seen the guns, but Dad said they were there.

  His clipboard, phone, and GPS are Velcroed to the dash for quick access while he drives. We haven’t gotten in any car chases yet. I’ll take detailed notes when we do.

  Did real journalists have a hard time making the truth sound exciting? The real story wasn’t in the contents of Dad’s truck; it was with the people he picked up. I paused, figuring out how to refer to Alison without putting in her name. I figured I could get Dad in trouble for that.

  Instead I described Dad’s arrest, calling Alison “the skip” and paying special attention to the part where he backed her against the door frame and yelled, “You’re under arrest!”

  When I was finished, I ran a search for Ethan Frome. I’d only been in the homeschool program a week, and I already had a book report past due. I scanned through a few summaries of the book before clicking over to the New York Times to read about the peace negotiations between Palestine and Israel.

  When the computer logged me off for going overtime, I let the chair legs fall back to the floor with a thud. I’d been here over an hour. Time to go meet Dad.

  Denver, Colorado.

  Days since Mom left: 29.

  Distance from Salt Lake City, Utah: 539.23 miles.

  3

  Dad was waiting in the parking lot. I climbed into the truck and unwrapped a taco, filling my mouth with cheese and shell.

  “You could wait until we get home,” Dad said. “We could set the table, even.”

  “I’m hungry,” I said, talking through a mouthful of taco to illustrate my point. “And that trailer is not a home.”

  Dad sighed, but he didn’t argue.

  As we pulled into the RV park in Sheridan, rain splattered across the windshield. I’d downed all three of my tacos. Dad backed the truck into our spot so the bumper reached under the trailer hitch. Despite what I’d said to Dad, walking up t
o the trailer still made me feel like it was time to relax—the same way I felt when I came home from school.

  No apartment I’d ever lived in with Mom had ever been as saturated with the musty smell of disintegrating upholstery, old crumbs, and fast-food grease. The grime lining the window ledges and smashed into the poo-brown carpet was dark enough to predate dinosaurs. The upholstery sported images of bright flowers in teal and orange and avocado green—colors that hadn’t been cool since the seventies and were probably questionable then. Besides, the entire trailer was barely the size of the living room in my last apartment with Mom.

  When Dad first picked me up, all my instincts told me to at least buy some sterile wipes at the 7-Eleven. But if Dad wanted to live in this hamster box, let him. I didn’t want him to get too used to having me around. Mom was always burning incense in our apartment, and I wished I had some now, but I’d left all that stuff at Grandma’s when Dad picked me up. I’d barely had room to bring two weeks’ worth of clothes. Other luxuries had been out of the question. Mom hadn’t left me enough money to keep paying rent, so I’d stashed the rest of our belongings in boxes in Grandma’s basement. I left the furniture behind. It was all thrift-store stuff anyway.

  Dad slept on the bed at the back, which had cabinets both above and beneath it. We shared the closet, which was about two feet wide and five feet tall. Most of Dad’s clothes had gotten stuffed into brown paper bags and chucked into the storage compartments on the outside of the trailer to make room for me. As it was, we were going to have to do laundry in the RV park coin-ops.

  I walked along the bench next to the tiny table to climb onto my bed above the hitch. When Dad picked me up, he’d given me that bed like he was doing me a favor. “I have to get into the cabinets by the other bed all the time,” he’d said. “I thought you might like to have your own space.” But my own space was a three-foot-high slot, barely the size of a twin mattress. At home I’d slept on a queen.