Free One Summer by JoAnn Ross Page A

glance down at the five-by-seven glossy Charity had left on the counter.
    Her duty done, at least for now, Charity carried the box of cupcakes outside to the Douchetts, wished them both a lovely afternoon, then continued home, looking forward to the opportunity to spend a quiet summer afternoon on her front porch with a pitcher of lemonade and Gabriel St. James’ photography book she’d bought at Tidal Wave Books before running into Adèle Douchett.

10
    Salem, Oregon
     
    It seemed to fifteen-year-old Johnny Harper that he’d spent his entire life packing. Every few weeks—or, if he was lucky, his travel reprieve could last as much as a couple of months—his mother would come into his bedroom, shake him awake, and tell him to grab whatever he could, and off he, his mother, and his sister would go, one step ahead of the landlord and the sheriff who were on their way to throw them out of their rented house or apartment.
    Even during those times they’d settle down for a while, he spent much of his time waiting for his mom to come home. Sometimes she’d just stay away overnight. Other times she’d disappear for two or three days. Not knowing that every four-year-old didn’t heat up his own SpaghettiOs on a propane camp stove because the electricity had been turned off, for a long time Johnny hadn’t realized that his life could have been different. Towns, houses, even people, all were a vague blur in his mind. But there were some that stuck out more often than others, replaying over and over, like a bad dream.
    One was from his fifth birthday, two years before his sister, Angel, had been born and before they’d both ended up in foster care. This time his mother had sneaked him out of a window in the middle of the night to escape whatever bad guys were chasing her. Then, pausing only for fitful naps at rest stops along the way, and buying junk food from the vending machines, she’d driven nearly nonstop from West Virginia to a desolate spot in the Nevada desert where the only things breaking up the barren landscape were rocks, wind-beaten Joshua trees, and a lonely scattering of single-wide trailers.
    One of the trailers, rusting on its flattened wheels, belonged to his grandmother, who’d stayed on after her husband, a man too fond of the bottle and slot machines, had died from a rattlesnake bite. Being that the grandfather Johnny had never met had been passed out on the dirt in front of his battered pickup at the time of the reptile attack, he hadn’t, the coroner had assured the stoic widow, even known what hit him. Or, more accurately, bit him.
    Johnny’s carrot red hair and freckles earned him the usual taunts from the other kids, who’d also laughed at his southern Appalachian accent and called him a cracker hillbilly. But that didn’t stop them from showing up for his birthday party after his grandmother promised there’d be cake.
    It was the first time he’d ever had a birthday party, which should have been cool, but experience had taught him that something was going to happen to ruin it. Especially since his mother hadn’t come back from a sudden trip to Las Vegas. Johnny suspected she was looking for medicine to help turn off the voices that whispered threats in her ear.
    Or maybe the voices had stayed quiet long enough for her to remember it was his birthday and she’d gone to get him a present. What she couldn’t understand was that all Johnny wanted—all he’d ever wanted—was a normal life like other kids had.
    His grandmother had picked up the cake at the grocery store this morning. It was a chocolate sheet cake covered in bright pink frosting, which only gave the kids something else to laugh about. She’d bought it at a discount from the mistake rack because the name of the person the cake had been made for had been misspelled. Being a practical woman and, as she was always telling him, needing to pinch her pennies, she’d replaced the pink plastic princess with two of his Hot Wheels