Free Pretty Sly by Elisa Ludwig Page A

tinier.
    We were doing this. We were really driving away in our stolen car—now a getaway car. It had all happened so fast. Two laws broken.
    No turning back now.
    And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I ended up in a stolen 1992 Volvo with my pseudocrush, sort-of makeout buddy behind the wheel, on a road trip to find my mysteriously missing mother.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
    SEVEN
    BY THE TIME we crossed the state line it was fully night. We’d made good time—speeding through Tolleson and Goodyear and whole nubby stretches of desert. The traffic on the road had opened up. Through the veiled haze I could make out some mountains looming in the distance.
    Aidan let out a cheer when he saw the sign. “Woo-hoo. California, baby. That makes how many hours to go?”
    “Two, I think?” I studied the map.
    We were both getting giddy now. Several hours on the road in a stolen vehicle will do that to you. It was all a little unreal.
    The fact that this Volvo, which vibrated and made weird rattling sounds any time we went over fifty miles per hour, had gotten us as far as it had, seemed somewhat miraculous. The other issue with the car in motionwas that the window on my side was busted, the glass sliding down every so often. How had no one stolen this hunk of metal before us?
    Still, none of that mattered. What was important was that we were on our way. Free. The breeze blowing into the car felt like a wind of good fortune, carrying us along. The classic rock pouring out of the radio was loud and heady. And we were going to find my mom. If only we could get there sooner. Like by teleport.
    Ever since she’d gone missing I ached inside with longing. I just wished I could see her through some kind of crystal ball, like Dorothy looking in on her family in Kansas, just to know that she was okay, wherever she was. Though my mom was from Missouri. Originally, anyway. I reached up to touch the bird at my throat.
    As though he were reading my mind, Aidan turned to me and asked, “What’s the deal with your mom, anyway? What’s she like?”
    “She’s awesome,” I said. I pictured her in her tank top and shorts, pulling weeds out of the garden, building things. Hatching the next great plan for us. She was young and beautiful, and way cooler than any other moms I knew. She had a lifetime of travel stories, a wicked sense of humor, and a skeleton key tattooed on her ankle. If it weren’t Aidan driving right now it could have easily been her, taking us on one of our summer trips or moving us to our next home. She was the queen of the road trip.
    “I mean, are you guys close?”
    “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t really remember a time when we hadn’t been together. We had our weekend movie nights on the couch, our pj’s-till-five days, our summer camping outings, our long talks at the kitchen table. No matter where we were living we’d taken those things with us. At the same time, she’d always encouraged me to be independent, to learn how to do things on my own.
    I wondered, suddenly, if that was because she’d known that something like this might happen. That she might one day have to leave. But that was paranoid, right?
    I flashed back to her note. She’d known enough to leave the money. But then she was always prepared. She was the kind of person who wrote everything down, had a to-do list for every hour of the day.
    “It’s gotta be something serious, don’t you think? I’m not even tight with my mom—she’s either at the tanning salon or shopping twenty-four/seven. My dad’s secretary, Wilma, has been more of a parent to me, practically, but I’m pretty sure a mother wouldn’t leave her kid like that unless she had a good reason.”
    He was right, of course. But I just wanted to change the subject, because I could feel some tension gathering in my throat and the last thing I wanted was for Aidan to see me